One problem here is that we are trying to optimize a thing that is broken on an extremely fundamental level.
Rationality, transhumanism, hardcore nerdery in general attracts a lot of extremely socially dysfunctional human beings. They also tend to skew towards a ridiculously biologically-male-heavy gender distribution.
Sometimes life throws unfair challenges at you; the challenge here is that ability and interest in rationality correlates negatively with being a well-rounded human.
We should search very hard for extreme out-of-the-box solutions to this problem.
One positive lead I have been given is that the anti-aging/life-extension community is a lot more gender balanced. Maybe LW should try to embrace that. It’s not a solution, but that’s the kind of thing I’m thinking of.
When I read “extreme out-of-the-box solutions to this problem … the anti-aging/life-extension community”, I almost expected the solution to be something like: “Given literally unlimited time, even nerds can learn social skills.” :D
I am not familiar with the anti-aging/life-extension community, so I can just make a guess: it is also about professions. Talking about artificial intelligence (and physics) will attract programmers (and physicists), but talking about curing aging will also attract doctors, biologists, and chemists.
One problem here is that we are trying to optimize a thing that is broken on an extremely fundamental level.
Rationality, transhumanism, hardcore nerdery in general attracts a lot of extremely socially dysfunctional human beings. They also tend to skew towards a ridiculously biologically-male-heavy gender distribution.
Sometimes life throws unfair challenges at you; the challenge here is that ability and interest in rationality correlates negatively with being a well-rounded human.
We should search very hard for extreme out-of-the-box solutions to this problem.
One positive lead I have been given is that the anti-aging/life-extension community is a lot more gender balanced. Maybe LW should try to embrace that. It’s not a solution, but that’s the kind of thing I’m thinking of.
When I read “extreme out-of-the-box solutions to this problem … the anti-aging/life-extension community”, I almost expected the solution to be something like: “Given literally unlimited time, even nerds can learn social skills.” :D
I am not familiar with the anti-aging/life-extension community, so I can just make a guess: it is also about professions. Talking about artificial intelligence (and physics) will attract programmers (and physicists), but talking about curing aging will also attract doctors, biologists, and chemists.