I thought it'd be worth bringing to attention here, because if there's one adjective that would not apply to the online LW community, it's "laid back".

Hmm. I have pretty strong Daoist / Stoic tendencies, and a large part of that deals with rejection of "should-ness;" that is, things are as they are, and carrying around a view of how the world "should" be that disagrees with the actual world is, on net, harmful.

I've gotten some pushback from LWers on that view, as they use the delta between their should-world and their is-world to motivate themselves to act. As far as I can tell, that isn't necessary; one can be motivated by the is-world directly, and if one reasons in the is-world one is more likely to make successful plans than if one reasons in the should-world (which is where one will reason, since diffs between the should-world and is-world are defects!).

But I think that LW is useful at dissolving that pushback; the practice of cashing out beliefs as predictions about the world rather than tribal identifications or moral claims is basically the practice of living in the is-world instead of the should-world.

How much could we benefit from being more laid-back, from openly and deliberately saying "fuck it"? From doing what we actually want to do without regard for what's expected of us?

I would say substantially. LW largely seems to advocate for preference utilitarianism, whereas EA and animal rights subsets of the group often come suspiciously close to deontological "whatever you do care about, here is what you should care about". As a matter of fact, the whole advocacy for consistency in ethics (e.g. "shut up and multiply") can backfire since System 1's values are not necessarily consistent. I'm not suggesting giving up on these attempts, but I guess that many people would benefit from being able to listen to System 1's voice saying "I want to invent a lightsaber" without having System 2 immediately scream "but people in Africa are suffering, and you're just being scope insensitive".

I think the steelman of "The Dude" is that you shouldn't run your mind like a police state, it's cutting against the grain.

But "The Dude" is kinda "trampy," for lack of a better word, I don't think he's a diamond in the rough or anything like that.

Raymond Smullyan's The Tao is Silent is possibly relevant.

There is, well, y'know, early Christianity... :-)

Matthew 6:25-27:

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

and Matthew 6:34:

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

I thought it'd be worth bringing to attention here, because if there's one adjective that would not apply to the online LW community, it's "laid back". Note that many of us are lazy, but we struggle with laziness, we keep looking for self-help and trying to figure out our motivation systems and trying so hard to achieve. Other urges and "sufferings" we struggle with are the need to fit in, the need to make sense of the world, the need to be perfectly clear in thought and expression (and the need to demand that of others), and so on and so forth.

QFT

I could speculate why this is the way it is but that would be too much work to type up.