(Re-writing this comment from the original to make my point a little more clear).
I think it is probably quite difficult to map the decisions of someone on a continuum from really bad to really good if you can’t simulate the outcomes of many different possible actions. There’s reason to suspect that the “optimal” outcome in any situation looks vastly better than even very good but slightly sub-optimal decisions, and vise-versa for the least optimal outcome.
In this case we observed a few people who took massive risks (by devoting their time and energy into understanding or developing a particular technology which very well may have turned out to be a boondoggle) receive massive rewards from the success of it, although it could have very well turned out differently, based on what everyone knew at the time. I think the arguments for cryptocurrency becoming sucessful that existed in the past were very compelling but they weren’t exactly airtight logical proofs (and still aren’t even now). Not winning hugely because a legitimately large risk wasn’t taken isn’t exactly “losing” (and while buying bitcoins when they were cheap wasn’t a large risk, investing time and energy into becoming knowledgable enough about crypto to know it was worth taking the chance may have been. A lot of the biggest winners were people who were close to the development of cryptocurrencies).
But even so, a few of these winners are close to the LW community and have invested in its development or some of its projects. Doesn’t that count for something? Can they be considered part of the community too? I see no reason to keep the definition so strict.
(Re-writing this comment from the original to make my point a little more clear).
I think it is probably quite difficult to map the decisions of someone on a continuum from really bad to really good if you can’t simulate the outcomes of many different possible actions. There’s reason to suspect that the “optimal” outcome in any situation looks vastly better than even very good but slightly sub-optimal decisions, and vise-versa for the least optimal outcome.
In this case we observed a few people who took massive risks (by devoting their time and energy into understanding or developing a particular technology which very well may have turned out to be a boondoggle) receive massive rewards from the success of it, although it could have very well turned out differently, based on what everyone knew at the time. I think the arguments for cryptocurrency becoming sucessful that existed in the past were very compelling but they weren’t exactly airtight logical proofs (and still aren’t even now). Not winning hugely because a legitimately large risk wasn’t taken isn’t exactly “losing” (and while buying bitcoins when they were cheap wasn’t a large risk, investing time and energy into becoming knowledgable enough about crypto to know it was worth taking the chance may have been. A lot of the biggest winners were people who were close to the development of cryptocurrencies).
But even so, a few of these winners are close to the LW community and have invested in its development or some of its projects. Doesn’t that count for something? Can they be considered part of the community too? I see no reason to keep the definition so strict.