I liked HPMoR’s writing style. But I think it’s a matter of life experience—if I hadn’t spent my formative years surrounded by blithering idiots and utter institutional incompetence at every level and isolated as a result, I’d probably want to slap him too.
And maybe it’s a good strategy in terms of recruitment: it’s easier to attract people with less social capital, since the people with more social capital already have lives and don’t need to associate with institutions to build up social capital—and being four standard deviations to the right of just about everyone else in the immediate meatspace environment is a sure way to end up with very little social capital.
If the/a goal is to create a social-capital-building institution, that is. It may not be optimal for maximizing memetic spread.
I liked HPMoR’s writing style. But I think it’s a matter of life experience—if I hadn’t spent my formative years surrounded by blithering idiots and utter institutional incompetence at every level and isolated as a result, I’d probably want to slap him too.
And maybe it’s a good strategy in terms of recruitment: it’s easier to attract people with less social capital, since the people with more social capital already have lives and don’t need to associate with institutions to build up social capital—and being four standard deviations to the right of just about everyone else in the immediate meatspace environment is a sure way to end up with very little social capital.
If the/a goal is to create a social-capital-building institution, that is. It may not be optimal for maximizing memetic spread.