A week ago I would have thought this was a silly discussion. As I’ve thought more about LW’s group nature, I’ve realized that this kind of cultural thing does matter.
It feels group-narcissistic to waste time on this, but the small difference this makes will be magnified over years and hundreds of thousands of repetitions. E.g.: at some point a major news outlet will do an article on OB/LW, and it will repeatedly use whatever the self-moniker is, and impressions of OB/LW will be slightly altered. (Parallel: I can’t stop being marginally more negative on Google because their employees call themselves “googlers.”)
The name will also subtly affect internal psychology and self-perception, and act as a slight magnet or a slight repellent over time.
It’s worth taking the time to think about this and work on it, even if it takes a couple of weeks. Don’t give up if the right answer doesn’t show up in the next twelve hours.
Occasionally, well-respected community members could say things that are intentionally false, but persuasive and subtle, a la http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/02/my-favorite-lia.html.
You get points for catching these mistakes. Perhaps you submit your busts privately to some arbiter so others have the same challenge.
Later, the error is revealed and discussed.
This would also have the benefit of causing everyone to read the most-respected members’ writings ultra-critically, rather than sitting back and being spoon-fed.
One key thing this idea has is short term feedback. Frequent, rapid feedback is essential for getting good at this kind of thing. (IMO that’s why economics is still so useless relative to the other sciences: the experiments take fifty years to run.)