Heh. I once drove ~45 minutes to a Less Wrong meetup in Santa Clara, made a U-turn at the end of the block the house was on and drove straight back home.
Well… I would say that it was one part not knowing what to expect—was I just going to mingle in this house full of extremely bright people for a few hours? I wasn’t sure I was going to know what to do with myself.
It was one part doubt about my own.. uh.. qualifications for being there. I haven’t commented much on my main account, nor made a submission (I hope you’ll forgive me for using a throwaway account for these comments). I’m a college senior whose done well in every class (from lit. to programming to organic chem. to math), but I don’t yet have a passion, nor area of expertise, so I wasn’t sure that I would be able to contribute much… or even last long (i.e. be able to carry on) in a conversation with the opinionated and up-to-date scholars there.
I guess the advice I would give would be this: cater more to shy / socially anxious people. Maybe have a snippet you can paste at the end of every announcement, just summarizing what goes on there and who all is welcome, what the ecology / environment is like, etc. Tell people what the sufficient conditions are for their being welcome.
Heh. I once drove ~45 minutes to a Less Wrong meetup in Santa Clara, made a U-turn at the end of the block the house was on and drove straight back home.
Is there anything useful you can say about anything we could change that would stop that from happening again?
Well… I would say that it was one part not knowing what to expect—was I just going to mingle in this house full of extremely bright people for a few hours? I wasn’t sure I was going to know what to do with myself.
It was one part doubt about my own.. uh.. qualifications for being there. I haven’t commented much on my main account, nor made a submission (I hope you’ll forgive me for using a throwaway account for these comments). I’m a college senior whose done well in every class (from lit. to programming to organic chem. to math), but I don’t yet have a passion, nor area of expertise, so I wasn’t sure that I would be able to contribute much… or even last long (i.e. be able to carry on) in a conversation with the opinionated and up-to-date scholars there.
I guess the advice I would give would be this: cater more to shy / socially anxious people. Maybe have a snippet you can paste at the end of every announcement, just summarizing what goes on there and who all is welcome, what the ecology / environment is like, etc. Tell people what the sufficient conditions are for their being welcome.