I don't drink, don't like trying to hold a conversation over loud music, and don't like starting conversations with strangers if I don't think we'll have anything in common. Why the hell do I go to bars?
1) Everyone else is there. It's a Schelling Point for non-specific social activity.
2) It's public. There are a whole host of complicated hospitality / power dynamic / pragmatic considerations that come with inviting people to your home, or being invited to someone else's. Bars take responsibility for all the trappings of hospitality.
3) It's a ubiquitous venue. In an urban area you'll always be able to find a bar in walking distance, whereas you can't say the same for a park or a museum.
4) It's a designated area for social interaction. If I did want to talk to a stranger, this is permitted in bars, whereas it's prohibited in most other venues. (Your mileage may vary here; The UK is a lot more staid about these things than the rest of Europe and North America.)
Another reason related to 2 is simple convenience. Compared to someones house a bar likely has:
readier access to beverages and food that may be required while socialising.
A large enough area to sit the relevant number of people comortably.
And be in a mutually beneficial location. E.g. if my friends and I all live 10+ miles from the city centre in differing directions it would be very difficult for us all to congregate at ones house, but easier for us to all reach a centre point. Even more so if we are all in the same place for another reason (after work drinks).
The other day, someone did something I didn't expect. It was something many people have done before; something that I thought of as very normal, but that I in no way understood and had not predicted.
As I said, this had happened many time before, so I wrote it off as "me not understanding people" or "people are weird" for a second, like I usually do, before realizing that "bad at" really means "lacking basic knowledge", which I had never realized before.
And then I thought "I should ask someone who is different from me why people do that, and eventually someone will have an answer."
But many people will have many more questions like this. So, what have you observed people doing time and time again, but never understood? Or something that you only understood after a long time or asking someone about it?
And can Less Wrong tell us, not necessarily why (I for one can make up evolutionary psychology fairy tales all day if I want) but what conscious thought process occurs behind these events?