That's also a great excuse for rejecting low-status people, mwahahaha! :D
(Connotationally: The mere fact that this filters out low-status people doesn't make it a suboptimal strategy for the explicit goal of not diluting the teaching.)
The sort of Sufism Shah was talking about was a secret society. They weren't and aren't subject to the ADA. If they want to reject low-status people, they don't need excuses.
This being said, a lot of low-status people do have social lives.
What I want to get people to discuss here is obvious given the title. What has been their experience regarding who and specially how many people they live with, and how that impacted their motivation and happiness.
I don't want to peruse papers on happiness and productivity, because I'm particularly interested in anecdotal tales coming from a Lesswrong sample.
Three pieces of information seem relevant, so if that is okay with whoever comments, I'd ask people to tell us if they consider themselves introverts (recharge batteries by being alone) extroverts, or both. As well as their age and hometown.
The reason I want to have a fuller understanding of this is that I've slowly come to have a strong belief that the main problem with people I know who are suffering, or failing to achieve their goals, is living with fewer tribal affiliates than they "need". And that belief could very well be false or biased.
I'm equally interested in what people think in general about their friends' living situation: "Most of my friends who live with friends experience such and such emotion, but the ones who live with family experience such and such problems with motivation"
as I am in personal experiences.
Following a suggestion about creating topics like this before, I'll put my own case in the comments.