Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016

Elo

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

Yvain's latest post at SSC is, among other things, about the dynamics of tribes:

Scholars call the process of creating a new tribe “ethnogenesis” ... My model of ethnogenesis involves four stages: pre-existing differences, a rallying flag, development, and dissolution.

Homework assignment: apply the four-stage model to LessWrong.

Besides the triviality of everything having a beginning, a developement and an end, I found that the model is too simplicistic and already shows some crack when applied to LessWrong:

pre-existing difference: about LW there was only one man, Eliezer, who perceived the difference between what he considered a sane approach to AI and all the others approach;
then it came a blog about showing this approach and "raising the sanity waterline", which I think created the difference in many of his followers, or at least attracted enough interest. In this

... (read more)

1Viliam10y

The dissolution stage is described in greater detail in the linked article. The presence of people who proudly say they never bothered to read the Sequences (available as a free book now) was a huge warning long ago, but we somehow bought the belief that caring about your garden is cultish. Well, the garden is quite trampled now. I can imagine an improvement in creating specific subs for the "hardcore" topics. EDIT: I am not sure I understand Scott's explanation for the dissolution phase. He seems to suggest that it happens when "a tribe was never really that different from the surrounding population, stops caring that much about its rallying flag, and doesn’t develop enough culture". Yeah, but why does that happen? Sometimes the difference really wasn't so big. Imagine a minority that is not that much different from he majority, but is isolated by a language barrier, and maybe both sides have a habit of avoiding each other, which all contributes to creating myths about how the other side is completely weird. -- Then at some moment people start interacting with each other, the minority learns the majority language, and suddenly they all see they were quite similar. And then the old tribal boundaries dissolve, to be replaced by new boundaries, e.g. along hobbies or social class. But I don't think this aplies to LW. I mean, when I found LW, I was shocked to see that there actually exist people like me. (Hard to describe what exactly that means, other than "I know it when I see it".) And now, a few years later, I still perceive the huge difference between me and most of the society. However, now the LW website is not literally the only place where I can meet "LW-style" people, because the rationalist diaspora has grown, and now I can meet them e.g. at SSC. There are also the meetups, and there are people I have met on the meetups that I would stay in contact with even if the meetups would dissolve. So the LW website no longer has a monopoly on the "LW-style" peop