It is important to notice that the “island” doesn’t have to be fully built from start. “Let’s start a new subgroup” sounds scary; too much responsibility and possibly not enough status. “Let’s have one meeting where we try the norm X and see how it works” sounds much easier; and if it works, people would be more willing to have another meeting like that, possibly leading to the creation of a new community.
I am afraid I can’t give this topic the time and energy it deserves, so I will mostly recycle some old thoughts: I believe that a community designed for long-term survival needs to be “eukaryotic”—to allow subgroups with different ideas of how to achieve the stated common goal, and different levels of commitment; yet treating all subgroup members as valid members of the group. (That means, a subgroup going against the goals of the whole can be excommunicated, just like an individual going against the group. It’s just that neither mere membership in a subgroup, nor a lack thereof, is considered a violation of group norms. It is perfectly okay to join one or more subgroups, just like it is perfectly okay to ignore them.)
This is important in long term, because people’s capacity to participate in group activities change over time. For example, now that I have kids, I cannot spend the same amount of time on LW as I did before. (Generally, people with kids, but also e.g. currently changing jobs, will opt out of time-intensive group activities. If you kick them out, or just make them feel unwelcome, you are losing their potential contribution in future, when their situation changes again.) On the other hand, people with enough time and lot of agency will feel that more should be done, and you should provide them a valid way to do this, getting some other members involved, but allowing other members to ignore the project. Otherwise, they will probably leave the group and go to some other place where their contributions will be more welcome.
The obvious example of a very-long-living “eukaryotic” organisation is the Catholic Church. On the outside, it has clear boundaries (people generally know whether they are members or nonmembers), but actually very little is expected from the members, other than profess their membership and participate in a few rituals (which is technically costly signalling, but recently the cost is relatively low, e.g. some people just visit the church once in a year on Christmas). People who desire more intense participation can become priests and/or join some internal subgroup such as Jesuits. Both options are valid for a Catholic; the whole organisation works on the assumption that most people will choose the “easy” option and some will choose the “hard” option; without either group the organisation would fall apart. There can be multiple competing internal groups, such as Jesuits and Dominicans, as long as they signal credibly that they are subordinate to the whole.
I hesitate to use Mensa as an example of a successful organisation, but let’s admit it has survived a few decades. Mensa is also “eukaryotic”; the officially recognized subgroups are called “special interest groups”, and are defined by a shared interest of a few Mensans, e.g. playing chess. (When I was more optimistic about Mensa, I was thinking about creating a rationalist SIG within Mensa.) You can participate in one, or many, or none of the SIGs.
Then I have a personal example of when I was active in the Esperanto community. On outside, it is a community of people speaking the same artificial language; but the problem is that despite the shared language those people often lack a common topic. (Which usually defaults to meta, but using Esperanto to talk about Esperanto and the Esperanto movement can get boring quickly. Except to old people, who often love to talk about the past endlessly.) So with a few friends I founded a subgroup, with the goal to promote Esperanto using internet and electronic media generally. This didn’t mean leaving the larger community, nor inviting everyone to the project; we were a well-defined subgroup. We created a few websites and multimedia products, and later merged with another subgroup.
So, if the rationalist community is to exist long enough, it should have similar structure. A clear boundary with simple but clear rules (e.g. “if you believe in horoscopes, you are not a rationalist, no matter how you wish to identify”). Active subgroups. And some authority (e.g. a council of high-status rationalists) that can authoritatively declare the boundaries, admonish and excommunicate heretic subgroups, talk to media, etc. (to prevent “if you say that Deepak Chopra is not an important member of the rationalist movement, that’s just your opinion, man”).
It is important to notice that the “island” doesn’t have to be fully built from start. “Let’s start a new subgroup” sounds scary; too much responsibility and possibly not enough status. “Let’s have one meeting where we try the norm X and see how it works” sounds much easier; and if it works, people would be more willing to have another meeting like that, possibly leading to the creation of a new community.
I added it (citing you) to the OP since it was pretty concise and fit into the Practical Applications section.
First, thank you so much for writing this!
It is important to notice that the “island” doesn’t have to be fully built from start. “Let’s start a new subgroup” sounds scary; too much responsibility and possibly not enough status. “Let’s have one meeting where we try the norm X and see how it works” sounds much easier; and if it works, people would be more willing to have another meeting like that, possibly leading to the creation of a new community.
I am afraid I can’t give this topic the time and energy it deserves, so I will mostly recycle some old thoughts: I believe that a community designed for long-term survival needs to be “eukaryotic”—to allow subgroups with different ideas of how to achieve the stated common goal, and different levels of commitment; yet treating all subgroup members as valid members of the group. (That means, a subgroup going against the goals of the whole can be excommunicated, just like an individual going against the group. It’s just that neither mere membership in a subgroup, nor a lack thereof, is considered a violation of group norms. It is perfectly okay to join one or more subgroups, just like it is perfectly okay to ignore them.)
This is important in long term, because people’s capacity to participate in group activities change over time. For example, now that I have kids, I cannot spend the same amount of time on LW as I did before. (Generally, people with kids, but also e.g. currently changing jobs, will opt out of time-intensive group activities. If you kick them out, or just make them feel unwelcome, you are losing their potential contribution in future, when their situation changes again.) On the other hand, people with enough time and lot of agency will feel that more should be done, and you should provide them a valid way to do this, getting some other members involved, but allowing other members to ignore the project. Otherwise, they will probably leave the group and go to some other place where their contributions will be more welcome.
The obvious example of a very-long-living “eukaryotic” organisation is the Catholic Church. On the outside, it has clear boundaries (people generally know whether they are members or nonmembers), but actually very little is expected from the members, other than profess their membership and participate in a few rituals (which is technically costly signalling, but recently the cost is relatively low, e.g. some people just visit the church once in a year on Christmas). People who desire more intense participation can become priests and/or join some internal subgroup such as Jesuits. Both options are valid for a Catholic; the whole organisation works on the assumption that most people will choose the “easy” option and some will choose the “hard” option; without either group the organisation would fall apart. There can be multiple competing internal groups, such as Jesuits and Dominicans, as long as they signal credibly that they are subordinate to the whole.
I hesitate to use Mensa as an example of a successful organisation, but let’s admit it has survived a few decades. Mensa is also “eukaryotic”; the officially recognized subgroups are called “special interest groups”, and are defined by a shared interest of a few Mensans, e.g. playing chess. (When I was more optimistic about Mensa, I was thinking about creating a rationalist SIG within Mensa.) You can participate in one, or many, or none of the SIGs.
Then I have a personal example of when I was active in the Esperanto community. On outside, it is a community of people speaking the same artificial language; but the problem is that despite the shared language those people often lack a common topic. (Which usually defaults to meta, but using Esperanto to talk about Esperanto and the Esperanto movement can get boring quickly. Except to old people, who often love to talk about the past endlessly.) So with a few friends I founded a subgroup, with the goal to promote Esperanto using internet and electronic media generally. This didn’t mean leaving the larger community, nor inviting everyone to the project; we were a well-defined subgroup. We created a few websites and multimedia products, and later merged with another subgroup.
So, if the rationalist community is to exist long enough, it should have similar structure. A clear boundary with simple but clear rules (e.g. “if you believe in horoscopes, you are not a rationalist, no matter how you wish to identify”). Active subgroups. And some authority (e.g. a council of high-status rationalists) that can authoritatively declare the boundaries, admonish and excommunicate heretic subgroups, talk to media, etc. (to prevent “if you say that Deepak Chopra is not an important member of the rationalist movement, that’s just your opinion, man”).
Thanks. Particularly like:
I added it (citing you) to the OP since it was pretty concise and fit into the Practical Applications section.