It may well be the strength of argument. It could also be the lead of a very influential/respected figure and the power of groupthink. In my experience, 2 forums with similar mission statements (‘political debating sites’, say, or ‘atheist sites’) often end up having distinct positions on all sorts of things that most of their posters converge around. The same is true of any group, although if ‘theists’ was a genuine survey of theists the world over it’s at least a far more representative group.
It would be very interesting to add a control group in some way: confront someone with the issue who was of a typical LessWrong demographic but hadn’t read anything about Newcomb on Less Wrong for instance.
If it’s not just a quality of this sort of group-think, my best guess is that it’s to do with the greater practical focus (or at least theoretical belief in practical focus!) on LessWrong. I suspect most people automatically parse this sort of philosophical question as ‘what is more abstractly logical’ whereas people on here probably parse it more as ‘what should I do to win’. But I think these sort of ‘our inherent group qualities’ explanations are almost always locatable but often unnecessary in light of group-think.
It may well be the strength of argument. It could also be the lead of a very influential/respected figure and the power of groupthink. In my experience, 2 forums with similar mission statements (‘political debating sites’, say, or ‘atheist sites’) often end up having distinct positions on all sorts of things that most of their posters converge around. The same is true of any group, although if ‘theists’ was a genuine survey of theists the world over it’s at least a far more representative group.
It would be very interesting to add a control group in some way: confront someone with the issue who was of a typical LessWrong demographic but hadn’t read anything about Newcomb on Less Wrong for instance.
If it’s not just a quality of this sort of group-think, my best guess is that it’s to do with the greater practical focus (or at least theoretical belief in practical focus!) on LessWrong. I suspect most people automatically parse this sort of philosophical question as ‘what is more abstractly logical’ whereas people on here probably parse it more as ‘what should I do to win’. But I think these sort of ‘our inherent group qualities’ explanations are almost always locatable but often unnecessary in light of group-think.