Comment on Open thread, July 16-22, 2013

Sun, 21 Jul 2013 17:20:45 GMT

The first example in my mind when I wrote that were the negative reactions about "rationalist rituals" (some comments were deleted). An alternative explanation is that it was mostly trolling.

At the recent LW meetup I organized, I tried to start the topic of becoming stronger: where would we individually want to become stronger, and how we could help each other with some specific goals. The whole topic was sabotaged (other sources later confirmed it was done intentionally) and turned to idle chatting by a participant, who happens to be a manager in a corporation. An alternative explanation is that the specific person simply has an aversion to the specific topic.

A few times happened to me that when I approached people with "we could do this as a group together", I was refused, but when I said "I want to do this, and I need you to do this", people complied. (Once it was about compiling a DVD with information from different sources; second time about making a computer application.) People are more willing to obey than to cooperate as equals, perhaps because this is what they are taught. Most likely, in other situation I react the same way. An alternative explanation is that people don't want to be responsible for coordination, motivating others, etc.

I know a few people with hobbies that could be used together to make something greater. For example: writing stories + drawing pictures = making an illustrated story book. When I tried to contact them together, they refused (without seeing each other). Based on the previous experiences, I suspect that if I inserted myself as the boss, and told each person "I want to do this, and I need you to this", they would be more likely to agree, although I am otherwise not needed in the process.

Uhm, perhaps other people can add more convincing examples?

Discuss