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I went to the 2024 Secular Solstice + Rationalist Megameetup in NYC and noticed the proportion of men / masculine-presenting people with long hair at this event was substantially (>3 stdevs) above the national base rate (1-3% depending on source).
This is not particularly important, but I still found it interesting and wondered why
Hypotheses:
- Coincidence: my sample was anomalous and not representative of the broader rationalist community
- Relative to the rest of the population, people in this community prioritize other things (writing, thinking about existential risk, working on cool projects perhaps) over routine chores (getting a haircut)
- This group has a higher [desire to consciously / tendency to unconsciously] deviate from norms or defaults and this is simply one of the ways it manifests
- This group has higher representation of people from particular population subgroups (cultural, regional, social, etc.) where long hair is the norm / default
- People with shared beliefs and interests will often have similar aesthetic / style preferences (this would explain higher uniformity of appearance, but still not this particular type of uniformity)
Curious if anyone has noticed the same thing or has theories
I'm not surprised by this observation. In my experience rationalists also have more than base-rate of all sorts of gender non-conformity, including non-binary and trans people. And the trends are even stronger in AI Safety.
I think the explanation is:
- Relative to the rest of the population, people in this community prioritize other things (writing, thinking about existential risk, working on cool projects perhaps) over routine chores (getting a haircut)
I think that this is almost the correct explanation. We prioritise other things (writing, thinking about existential risk, working on cool projects perhaps) over caring about weather someone else got a haircut.