I interpret your underlying point to be that LW is used by the most prolific contributors not only as a place to discuss and learn about rationality and related topics, but also as a place to socialize with like-minded people who share their unusual interests in topics such as sci-fi that are not of interest to most people—and often the socializing aspect is combined with the rationality-dojo aspect in a single post or comment, when people give fun references to sci-fi or D&D or whatever or just go off on tangents about things of interest to them.
There are clearly advantages and disadvantages to not having a norm of encouraging (mostly) ‘generic rationality’ discussion with no (or minimal) references to things that would be unfamiliar to most (or too many) of the target audience (what is the target audience specifically? how many is too many?).
I don’t have a clear idea of what the advantages and disadvantages are, or what the alternatives, but I’m curious how many people who are strongly interested in rationality are turned away by such things. Do we think that many people are seriously discouraged despite having a strong interest in rationality, or are we talking about people who clicked a random link and left immediately because it was “too weird”?
I interpret your underlying point to be that LW is used by the most prolific contributors not only as a place to discuss and learn about rationality and related topics, but also as a place to socialize with like-minded people who share their unusual interests in topics such as sci-fi that are not of interest to most people—and often the socializing aspect is combined with the rationality-dojo aspect in a single post or comment, when people give fun references to sci-fi or D&D or whatever or just go off on tangents about things of interest to them.
There are clearly advantages and disadvantages to not having a norm of encouraging (mostly) ‘generic rationality’ discussion with no (or minimal) references to things that would be unfamiliar to most (or too many) of the target audience (what is the target audience specifically? how many is too many?).
I don’t have a clear idea of what the advantages and disadvantages are, or what the alternatives, but I’m curious how many people who are strongly interested in rationality are turned away by such things. Do we think that many people are seriously discouraged despite having a strong interest in rationality, or are we talking about people who clicked a random link and left immediately because it was “too weird”?