After my fair share of drinks during university, I rarely drink in the last 7 years – approx. since I joined the Rationalist communities –, even when others in my group are drinking hard.
Bit of a counterpoint to the post. Usually, I can trust a person more once we’ve gone drinking together; but interestingly, I can Rationalists relatively quickly without any drinks. (As a person, not necessarily as a friend.) Maybe this is because of the much stronger internal consistency of the community members, and that their statements can very often be taken at face value? There are still people in the community whom my intuition does not fully trust (not for tangible reasons), and I believe our relationship would benefit from drinking enough that both of us feel the lack of self-inhibition in the other person, effectively acting as a Veritaserum. (I don’t insist on alcohol; open to suggestions for other drugs.) Unfortunately, I haven’t had more than a couple beers with any LW community member, that would probably be an interesting experience.
However, some of the best gatherings I’ve had were with sober people (almost always in the LW community), and these were great partly because everyone was sober. If for nothing else, I applaud your experiment and the mindset you and your friends described.
After my fair share of drinks during university, I rarely drink in the last 7 years – approx. since I joined the Rationalist communities –, even when others in my group are drinking hard.
Bit of a counterpoint to the post. Usually, I can trust a person more once we’ve gone drinking together; but interestingly, I can Rationalists relatively quickly without any drinks. (As a person, not necessarily as a friend.) Maybe this is because of the much stronger internal consistency of the community members, and that their statements can very often be taken at face value? There are still people in the community whom my intuition does not fully trust (not for tangible reasons), and I believe our relationship would benefit from drinking enough that both of us feel the lack of self-inhibition in the other person, effectively acting as a Veritaserum. (I don’t insist on alcohol; open to suggestions for other drugs.) Unfortunately, I haven’t had more than a couple beers with any LW community member, that would probably be an interesting experience.
However, some of the best gatherings I’ve had were with sober people (almost always in the LW community), and these were great partly because everyone was sober. If for nothing else, I applaud your experiment and the mindset you and your friends described.