Once you have so many smart contrarians that you run into sharp diminishing returns trying to recruit more, you want to attract smart non-contrarians. To pick a very silly example, a group of mostly Gentiles musing aimlessly on the ethics of genociding Jews (because it’s a local point of pride to play with any idea no matter how evil or stupid) is going to have a hard time attracting Jews.
Once you have so many smart contrarians that you run into sharp diminishing returns trying to recruit more
Why are there diminishing returns? Because too many smart contrarians cannot coexist? Because we ran out of smart contrarians to recruit? Because a group requires non-smart or non-contrarian people too in order to function better?
Also: over the last year many people joined LW, many of them referred here by HPMOR. I would expect these people to be less smart-contrarian.
Once you have so many smart contrarians that you run into sharp diminishing returns trying to recruit more, you want to attract smart non-contrarians. To pick a very silly example, a group of mostly Gentiles musing aimlessly on the ethics of genociding Jews (because it’s a local point of pride to play with any idea no matter how evil or stupid) is going to have a hard time attracting Jews.
Why are there diminishing returns? Because too many smart contrarians cannot coexist? Because we ran out of smart contrarians to recruit? Because a group requires non-smart or non-contrarian people too in order to function better?
Also: over the last year many people joined LW, many of them referred here by HPMOR. I would expect these people to be less smart-contrarian.