FB: Ideas Communities

Communities Post # 3 out of 4.

Ideas Communities

Let's about book clubs or discussion groups. More commonly - getting together with a friend and arguing over some weird thing we read about politics in Indonesia. I do a lot less of this than I do of activity communities. I'm deliberately not counting anything online, because I'm pessimistic about the "community" aspect of online idea spaces. I'm also being deliberate about in person relationships partly in the face of what perceive will be a growing influence of artificial intelligence in online communication.

The main strength of idea communities should be on the truth dimension. In Edmonton, I attend meetups to discuss the blog Astral Codex Ten, and I get to be challenged by really smart people about really interesting ideas. Similar groups should exist in Calgary. But there are real trade-offs there worth discussing.

In person idea groups usually suffer a lot for breadth. Discussions get much more difficult once you go much past ~5 people, and diversity can be awful. I've seen blog meet-ups that are overwhelmingly young dudes with university degrees, or book clubs that are overwhelmingly middle-aged women with university degrees. Not the end of the world, but worth noting. I've made some pretty deep connections with people this way before though, and I'd be really interested in doing something like this close to where I live.

Is it effortless? That depends on how much I care about truth. There are lots of reading circles in Calgary - bible studies, anarchist groups - and I'm sure I'd learn something from each. I might draw blood from biting my tongue, on the other hand.

But the interesting trade-off for me is on the usefulness or satisfaction dimension. I hesitate to devote too much time to activities that really distill down to occasional beers in the pub. Right now I don't devote much time, and I like having beers in a pub, so there's no conflict, but ideally it would be amazing to build a community that cares a lot about truth and also wants to transition that into doing something about it.