Excerpt from a Twitter thread about the Scott Alexander doxxing situation, but also about the power of online intellectual communities in general:
I found SlateStarCodex in 2015. immediately afterwards, I got involved in some of the little splinter communities online, that had developed after LessWrong started to disperse. I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say it saved my life.
I may have found my way on my own eventually, but the path was eased immensely by LW/SSC. In 2015 I was coming out of my only serious suicidal episode; I was in an unhappy marriage, in a town where I knew hardly anyone; I had failed out of my engineering program six months prior.
I had been peripherally aware of LW through a few fanfic pieces, and was directed to SSC via the LessWrong comments section.
It was the most intimidating community of people I had ever encountered—I didn’t think I could keep up.
But eventually, I realized that not only was this the first group of people who made me feel like I had come *home,* but that it was also one of the most welcoming places I’d ever been (IRL or virtual).
I joined a Slack, joined “rationalist” tumblr, and made a few comments on LW and SSC. Within a few months, I had *friends*, some of whom I would eventually count among those I love the most.
This is a community that takes ideas seriously (even when it would be better for their sanity to disengage).
This is a community that thinks everyone who can engage with them in sincere good faith might have something useful to say.
This is a community that saw someone writing long, in-depth critiques on the material produced on or adjacent to LW/SSC...and decided that meant he was a friend.
I have no prestigious credentials to speak of. I had no connections, was a college dropout, no high-paying job. I had no particular expertise, a lower-class background than many of the people I met, a Red-Tribe-Evangelical upbringing and all I had to do, to make these new friends, was show up and join the conversation.
[...]
The “weakness” of the LessWrong/SSC community is also its strength: putting up with people they disagree with far longer than they have to. Of course terrible people slip through. They do in every group—ours are just significantly more verbose.
But this is a community full of people who mostly just want to get things *right,* become *better people,* and turn over every single rock they see in the process of finding ways to be more correct—not every person and not all the time, but more than I’ve seen everywhere else.
The transhumanist background that runs through the history of LW/SSC also means that trans people are more accepted here than anywhere else I’ve seen, because part of that ideological influence is the belief that everyone should be able to have the body they want.
It is not by accident that this loosely-associated cluster of bloggers, weird nerds, and twitter shitposters were ahead of the game on coronavirus. It’s because they were watching, and thinking, and paying attention and listening to things that sound crazy… just in case.
There is a 2-part lesson this community held to, even while the rest of the world is forgetting it:
You can’t prohibit dissent
It’s sometimes worth it to engage someone when they have icky-sounding ideas
It was unpopular six months ago to think COVID might be a big deal; the SSC/LW diaspora paid attention anyways.
You can refuse to hang out with someone at a party. You can tell your friends they suck. But you can’t prohibit them from speaking *merely because their ideas make you uncomfortable* and there is value in engaging with dissent, with ideas that are taboo in Current Year.
(I’m not leaving a link or username, as this person’s Tweets are protected.)
Excerpt from a Twitter thread about the Scott Alexander doxxing situation, but also about the power of online intellectual communities in general:
(I’m not leaving a link or username, as this person’s Tweets are protected.)