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gog  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   5599 thread views

Where are the people smarter than us hanging out?

In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?

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I guess I’m just asking “what is the next tier of discourse above this one.”

The next tier doesn't exist in online forums although it can happen in some 1 to 1 private DMs.

The reason is simple, it's not even about the lack of geniuses.

It is that mental energy is an extremely scarce resource.

People are universally fucking lazy and have a budget of only a few minutes per comments.

On the rare instances where someone does lengthy researched comments, like I sometimes do, the person will systematically face disappointment as the probability that the community will engage with as much knowledge as passion and him are close to zero. Not even in the same order of magnitude.

Online communities are extremely poor, extremely scarce in energy.

I'm constantly seeing people stop at the same layer of the discourse, repeat the same shit they seem to systematically never learn from, until they die.

As usual, it is a tragedy to see what I see, and to this problem, there is almost no remedy.

hyper-focused subject-matter communities, usually by invite only or knowing certain people. Special Discord groups, etc.

The next tier of discourse is gated off, because it requires a very high level depth in a field to engage in that of discourse.

  • After-work research-lab dinners with a little bit of alcohol and out of earshot of your PI

  • long-form podcasts (think some of the stuff Razib/Huberman do...less so Rogan/Lex)

  • (pre-covid) certain meetups in areas of very-very high academic + economic activity (Basically Berkeley, Boston & Palo Alto)

  • (post-covid) very closed off private discord groups

If your question is, where do where the smart kids of smart millionaires hang out, then the unfortunate answer is in exclusive frats of ivy league universities. The quality of discourse is low, but damn does a shit ton of money flow through the naïve hands of these 20yr old brats.

After-work research-lab dinners with a little bit of alcohol and out of earshot of your PI

Nope. I attend a lot of them and none of them come close to a good discussion on TM.

there aren’t secret super elite conversations that are way more advanced or complex than ones we have here out there

I beg to differ I think the motte can be disrupted, I intend to write a blog about it.

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