This certainly seems important (I do think this is a key value the community provides). But it is importantly different from “the rationality content of the community is directly helpful for people-in-general.” If it were just “people who get you”, this wouldn’t obviously be more or differently important than other random subcultures.
Agreed on the difference. Different subcultures, I think, all try to push different narratives about how they are significantly different from other subcultures; they are in competition with other subcultures for brain-space. On that observation, my priors that rationalist content is importantly different to other subcultures in that regard are low.
I suppose my real point in writing this is to advise against a sort of subcultural Fear Of Being Ordinary—rationalism doesn’t have to be qualitatively different from other subcultures to be valuable. For people under its umbrella, it can be very valuable, for reasons that have almost nothing to do with the quirks of the subculture itself.
This certainly seems important (I do think this is a key value the community provides). But it is importantly different from “the rationality content of the community is directly helpful for people-in-general.” If it were just “people who get you”, this wouldn’t obviously be more or differently important than other random subcultures.
Agreed on the difference. Different subcultures, I think, all try to push different narratives about how they are significantly different from other subcultures; they are in competition with other subcultures for brain-space. On that observation, my priors that rationalist content is importantly different to other subcultures in that regard are low.
I suppose my real point in writing this is to advise against a sort of subcultural Fear Of Being Ordinary—rationalism doesn’t have to be qualitatively different from other subcultures to be valuable. For people under its umbrella, it can be very valuable, for reasons that have almost nothing to do with the quirks of the subculture itself.
Nod. I do agree with that.