Perhaps surprisingly, given that LessWrong is often thought of primarily as an online community and forum, the next two largest response categories mentioned an in-person event (14%) or local group (14%).
The LessWrong community has had dozens (if not hundreds in total) of active meetup groups for almost a decade now, with a large number of people now very active in the community having come through those meetups. I am really quite surprised that you would say that it is surprising that people mention LessWrong meetups. They’ve always played a pretty big role in the structure of the EA and Rationality communities.
I think it’s fair to say (as I did) that LessWrong is often thought of as “primarily” online, and, given that, I think it’s understandable to find it surprising that these are the second most commonly mentioned way people hear about EA within the LessWrong category (I would expect more comments mentioning SlateStarCodex and other rationalist blogs for example). I didn’t say that “surprising that people mention LessWrong meetups” tout court. I would expect many people, even among those who are familiar with LessWrong meetups, to be surprised at how often they were mentioned, though I could be mistaken about that.
(That said, a banal explanation might be that those who heard about EA just straightforwardly through the LessWrong forum, without any further detail, were less likely to write anything codable in the open comment box, compared to those who were specifically influenced by an event or HPMOR)
Yeah, that seems fair. I do think that “LessWrong meetups” are a category that is more similar to the whole “Local Group” category, and the primary thing that is surprising to me is that there were so many people who choose LessWrong instead of Local Group and then decided to annotate choice that with a reference to their local group.
The LessWrong community has had dozens (if not hundreds in total) of active meetup groups for almost a decade now, with a large number of people now very active in the community having come through those meetups. I am really quite surprised that you would say that it is surprising that people mention LessWrong meetups. They’ve always played a pretty big role in the structure of the EA and Rationality communities.
I think it’s fair to say (as I did) that LessWrong is often thought of as “primarily” online, and, given that, I think it’s understandable to find it surprising that these are the second most commonly mentioned way people hear about EA within the LessWrong category (I would expect more comments mentioning SlateStarCodex and other rationalist blogs for example). I didn’t say that “surprising that people mention LessWrong meetups” tout court. I would expect many people, even among those who are familiar with LessWrong meetups, to be surprised at how often they were mentioned, though I could be mistaken about that.
(That said, a banal explanation might be that those who heard about EA just straightforwardly through the LessWrong forum, without any further detail, were less likely to write anything codable in the open comment box, compared to those who were specifically influenced by an event or HPMOR)
Yeah, that seems fair. I do think that “LessWrong meetups” are a category that is more similar to the whole “Local Group” category, and the primary thing that is surprising to me is that there were so many people who choose LessWrong instead of Local Group and then decided to annotate choice that with a reference to their local group.