It seems to me that the first issue with close-knit groups is purpose.
Mmm; I think people are mostly adaption-executors when it comes to a lot of social interaction, and close-knitness comes from ape-things like familiarity and spending a lot of time around each other and looking into each other’s eyes, not having a shared purpose. The stated purpose is typically the excuse for the gathering.
I think this is more true for male-only groups; the primary way to get strong relationships between men is to put them on a team tasked with accomplishing a goal, possibly with an opposing team to rally together against. But I think that ‘camaraderie’ is a specific thing different from ‘close-knitness.’
close-knitness comes from ape-things like familiarity and spending a lot of time around each other and looking into each other’s eyes
Well, yes, but that takes time. A lot of time.
There are a couple of shortcuts. One is shared strong emotions, but that might be a bit difficult in this case. Another is purpose which leads to shared activity and forced cooperation.
I’m not seriously proposing trying to reorganize LW into purposeful teams, but you mentioned groups and plans and feedback—what kind of activity will those groups undertake?
I believe at least some people here have some stuff they want to do that is not orthogonal with rationality and may be helped by a group effort. Translation of some materials, writing articles, research, programming projects, just discussions of some topics. Then there is going to be a Group Bragging thread, where people can tell how much they have managed to do in a month or so. If the group hasn’t bragged for a few months, it’s considered dead. That can also give us some new info about group building and maintainance, which seems like a neglected topic here, as well as some data about which groups survive better than the others.
Generally true, and that’s the reason I believe it. As for group coalescence process… I’m thinking about paying lots of attention to newcomers and setting an active chat as well as a dedicated “meeting” time at least once a week when everybody’s online to discuss the topic at hand. Sure, any group may add anything they want if they think it helps.
Mmm; I think people are mostly adaption-executors when it comes to a lot of social interaction, and close-knitness comes from ape-things like familiarity and spending a lot of time around each other and looking into each other’s eyes, not having a shared purpose. The stated purpose is typically the excuse for the gathering.
I think this is more true for male-only groups; the primary way to get strong relationships between men is to put them on a team tasked with accomplishing a goal, possibly with an opposing team to rally together against. But I think that ‘camaraderie’ is a specific thing different from ‘close-knitness.’
Well, yes, but that takes time. A lot of time.
There are a couple of shortcuts. One is shared strong emotions, but that might be a bit difficult in this case. Another is purpose which leads to shared activity and forced cooperation.
I’m not seriously proposing trying to reorganize LW into purposeful teams, but you mentioned groups and plans and feedback—what kind of activity will those groups undertake?
I believe at least some people here have some stuff they want to do that is not orthogonal with rationality and may be helped by a group effort. Translation of some materials, writing articles, research, programming projects, just discussions of some topics. Then there is going to be a Group Bragging thread, where people can tell how much they have managed to do in a month or so. If the group hasn’t bragged for a few months, it’s considered dead. That can also give us some new info about group building and maintainance, which seems like a neglected topic here, as well as some data about which groups survive better than the others.
That’s generally true for any sufficiently large collection of people. The issue is how do you bootstrap the whole group coalescence process.
Generally true, and that’s the reason I believe it. As for group coalescence process… I’m thinking about paying lots of attention to newcomers and setting an active chat as well as a dedicated “meeting” time at least once a week when everybody’s online to discuss the topic at hand. Sure, any group may add anything they want if they think it helps.
In person events like CFAR workshops and also the community camp I attended in Berlin seem to be good at this.