A fair point. Maybe I’m committing the typical mind fallacy and underestimating the general gullibility of people. If someone offers you something, it’s obvious to me that you should look for strings, consider the incentives of the giver, and ponder the consequences (including those concerning your mind). If you don’t understand why something is given to you, it’s probably wise to delay grabbing the cheese (or not touching it) until you understand.
And still this all looks to me like a plain-vanilla example of a bootstrapping an organization and creating a base of support, financial and otherwise, for it. Unless you think there were lies, misdirections, or particularly egregious sins of omission, that’s just how the world operates.
Also, anyone who succeeds in attracting people to an enterprise, be it by the most impeccable of means, will find the people they have assembled creating tribal markers anyway. The leader doesn’t have to give out funny hats. People will invent their own.
People do a lot of things. Have biases, for example.
There is quite a bit of our evolutionary legacy it would be wise to deemphasize. Not like there aren’t successful examples of people doing good work in common and not being a tribe.
edit: I think what’s going on is a lot of the rationalist tribe folks are on the spectrum and/or “nerdy”, and thus have a more difficult time forming communities, and LW/etc was a great way for them to get something important in their life. They find it valuable and rightly so. They don’t want to give it up.
I am sympathetic to this, but I think it would be wise to separate the community aspects and rationality itself as a “serious business.” Like, I am friends with lots of academics, but the academic part of our relationship has to be kept separate (I would rip into their papers in peer review, etc.) The guru/disciple dynamic I think is super unhealthy.
A fair point. Maybe I’m committing the typical mind fallacy and underestimating the general gullibility of people. If someone offers you something, it’s obvious to me that you should look for strings, consider the incentives of the giver, and ponder the consequences (including those concerning your mind). If you don’t understand why something is given to you, it’s probably wise to delay grabbing the cheese (or not touching it) until you understand.
And still this all looks to me like a plain-vanilla example of a bootstrapping an organization and creating a base of support, financial and otherwise, for it. Unless you think there were lies, misdirections, or particularly egregious sins of omission, that’s just how the world operates.
Also, anyone who succeeds in attracting people to an enterprise, be it by the most impeccable of means, will find the people they have assembled creating tribal markers anyway. The leader doesn’t have to give out funny hats. People will invent their own.
People do a lot of things. Have biases, for example.
There is quite a bit of our evolutionary legacy it would be wise to deemphasize. Not like there aren’t successful examples of people doing good work in common and not being a tribe.
edit: I think what’s going on is a lot of the rationalist tribe folks are on the spectrum and/or “nerdy”, and thus have a more difficult time forming communities, and LW/etc was a great way for them to get something important in their life. They find it valuable and rightly so. They don’t want to give it up.
I am sympathetic to this, but I think it would be wise to separate the community aspects and rationality itself as a “serious business.” Like, I am friends with lots of academics, but the academic part of our relationship has to be kept separate (I would rip into their papers in peer review, etc.) The guru/disciple dynamic I think is super unhealthy.