You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

LM7805 comments on Open Thread, September 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Mestroyer 24 September 2013 01:25AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (261)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: LM7805 25 September 2013 05:00:08PM 7 points [-]

My local hackerspace, and broadly the US and European hacker communities. This is mainly because information security is my primary focus, but I find myself happier interacting with hackers because in general they tend not only to be highly outcome-oriented (i.e., inherently consequentialist), but also pragmatic about it: as the saying goes, there's no arguing with a root shell. (Modulo bikeshedding, but this seems to be more of a failure mode of subgroups that don't strive to avoid that problem.) The hacker community is also where I learned to think of communities in terms of design patterns; it's one of the few groups I've encountered so far that puts effort into that sort of community self-evaluation. Mostly it helps me because it's a place where I feel welcome, where other people see value in the goals I want to achieve and are working toward compatible goals. I'd encourage any instrumental rationalist with an interest in software engineering, and especially security, to visit a hackerspace or attend a hacker conference.

Until recently I was also involved in the "liberation technology" activism community, but ultimately found it toxic and left. I'm still too close to that situation to evaluate it fairly, but a lot of the toxicity had to do with identity politics and status games getting in the way of accomplishing anything of lasting value. (I'm also dissatisfied with the degree to which activism in general fixates on removing existing structures rather than replacing them with better ones, but again, too close to evaluate fairly.)