QEDDEQ's Shortform

post by QEDDEQ (esp44) · 2024-12-17T22:01:04.010Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

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comment by QEDDEQ (esp44) · 2024-12-17T20:52:52.295Z · LW(p) · GW(p)


I went to the 2024 Secular Solstice + Rationalist Megameetup in NYC and noticed the proportion of men / masculine-presenting people with long hair at this event was substantially (>3 stdevs) above the national base rate (1-3% depending on source). 
This is not particularly important, but I still found it interesting and wondered why

Hypotheses:
- Coincidence: my sample was anomalous and not representative of the broader rationalist community
- Relative to the rest of the population, people in this community prioritize other things (writing, thinking about existential risk, working on cool projects perhaps) over routine chores (getting a haircut)
- This group has a higher [desire to consciously / tendency to unconsciously] deviate from norms or defaults and this is simply one of the ways it manifests
- This group has higher representation of people from particular population subgroups (cultural, regional, social, etc.) where long hair is the norm / default
- People with shared beliefs and interests will often have similar aesthetic / style preferences (this would explain higher uniformity of appearance, but still not this particular type of uniformity)

Curious if anyone has noticed the same thing or has theories

Replies from: Linda Linsefors
comment by Linda Linsefors · 2024-12-17T22:25:11.612Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'm not surprised by this observation. In my experience rationalists also have more than base-rate of all sorts of gender non-conformity, including non-binary and trans people. And the trends are even stronger in AI Safety.

I think the explanation is:

  • High tolerans for this type of non-conformity
  • High autism which corelates with these things

- Relative to the rest of the population, people in this community prioritize other things (writing, thinking about existential risk, working on cool projects perhaps) over routine chores (getting a haircut)

I think that this is almost the correct explanation. We prioritise other things (writing, thinking about existential risk, working on cool projects perhaps) over caring about weather someone else got a haircut.