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WingedViper comments on Open thread, February 15-28, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: David_Gerard 15 February 2013 11:17PM

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Comment author: drethelin 15 February 2013 11:49:32PM 12 points [-]

Does anyone else believe in deliberate alienation? Forums and organizations like Lesswrong often strive to be and claim to want to be more (and by extension indefinitely) inclusive but I think excluding people can be very useful in terms of social utilons and conversation, if not so good for $$$. There's a lot of value in having a pretty good picture of who you're talking to in a given social group, in terms of making effective use of jargon and references as well as appeals to emotion that actually appeal. I think thought should be carefully given as to who exactly you let in or block out with any given form of inclusiveness or insensitivity.

On a more personal note, I think looking deliberately weird is a great way to make your day to day happenstance interactions more varied and interesting.

Comment author: WingedViper 16 February 2013 12:06:07AM 2 points [-]

Acting "weird" (well or just weird, depends) is something I have contemplated, too. For now I have to confess that I mostly try to stick to the norms (especially in public) except if I have a good reason to do otherwise. I think I might make this one of my tasks to just do some random "weird" acts of kindness.

About the alienation: I don't think that we should do a lot about that. I think enforcing certain rules and having our own memes and terms for stuff already has some strong effects on that. I certainly felt a bit weird when I first came here. And I already was having thoughts like "don't judge something by it's cover" etc. in my mind (avoiding certain biases).