My god some spectacularly bad takes on here. The top-rated one is just bananas-level stupid:
While there may be a substantial worldview gap, I suspect the much larger difference is that most Sneer Clubbers are looking to boost their status by trying to bully anyone who looks like a vulnerable target, and being different, as LessWrong is, is enough to qualify.
Yes, that's right. I spend my time boosting my status by (checks notes) commenting on the internet.
I'll go one further: "intelligence" as conceived by "IQ" is a mostly meaningless concept and the word, when used in everyday English, mostly just means "agrees with me"
This shit is just as bad, frankly. The quest to quantify and then rank All The Things is inherently dangerous.
If you spend your money on a yacht, people say “cool yacht”.
I was going to say, I have never heard a single human soul in my decades upon this earth say "cool yacht."
Why is it so hard for these dorks to admit that they don’t actually care about being smart or rational and that they just want a bunch of other dorks to be friends with?
(Not to be trivially reductionist, but...) Because admitting you want friends is unmasculine. IBTP
I think the simplest explanation is that it appeals to their urge to ruthlessly quantify all human interactions, including statements about their worldview.
I mean, yes, but I feel like they at least put in some effort to give it a veneer of seriousness / normality. This struck me as being exceptional in its "we are right and you should go do this" tone with no effort whatsoever at quoting a dissenting voice.
A choice quote from the comments:
I am not as gifted at persuasive writing as (say) Eliezer,
Don't sell yourself short, kid.
This, so much this