Thanks for the data! I agree there’s a fair bit of overlap in clusters of people.
Two points:
I am talking about the cultural values more than simply the individuals. I think a person’s environment really brings very different things out of them. The same person(s) working at Amazon, DC politics, and a global-health non-profit, will get invited to live out different values and build quite different identities for themselves. The same person in-person and on Twitter can also behave as quite different people. I think LessWrong has a distinct culture from the EA Forum, and I think EAG has a distinct culture from ACX meetups.
Not every person in a scene strongly embodies the ideals and aspirations of that scene. Many people who come to rationalist meetups I have yet to get on the same page about with lots of values e.g. I still somewhat regularly have to give arguments against various reasons for why people sometimes endorse self-deception, even to folks who have been around for many years. The ideals of EA and LW are different.
So even though the two scenes have overlap in people, I still think the scenes live out and aspire to different values and different cultures, and this explains a lot of difference in outcomes.
Thanks for the data! I agree there’s a fair bit of overlap in clusters of people.
Two points:
I am talking about the cultural values more than simply the individuals. I think a person’s environment really brings very different things out of them. The same person(s) working at Amazon, DC politics, and a global-health non-profit, will get invited to live out different values and build quite different identities for themselves. The same person in-person and on Twitter can also behave as quite different people. I think LessWrong has a distinct culture from the EA Forum, and I think EAG has a distinct culture from ACX meetups.
Not every person in a scene strongly embodies the ideals and aspirations of that scene. Many people who come to rationalist meetups I have yet to get on the same page about with lots of values e.g. I still somewhat regularly have to give arguments against various reasons for why people sometimes endorse self-deception, even to folks who have been around for many years. The ideals of EA and LW are different.
So even though the two scenes have overlap in people, I still think the scenes live out and aspire to different values and different cultures, and this explains a lot of difference in outcomes.