The Power of Aligning Online and Offline Worlds
People got very excited about the potential of online collaboration and community during the COVID lockdowns, and it is exciting. Now we are fortunate to be able to do more in person again. And these can work together.
I have followed Scott Alexander for a long time now. Recently he posted that he was going to join a local rationalists’ meetup near me. So I started following that local meetup and went to one of their events. Then I joined their Discord. And now, I can participate in another lively intellectual community that is actually local.
It’s powerful if you can align your online and offline worlds. You can find the niche you’re really into online, with its endless breadth of possibilities, and then find a way to integrate that into the rest of your life with local meetups or conferences. And clarifying what you’re into online helps you find like-minded people just in everyday conversation by giving you an interesting topic to discuss with people.
This has been my experience with engaging more and more with the burgeoning progress community. It’s the community of people who want technological progress to speed up so we can have an abundant world and life can be better for everybody. I started following it online, finding myself focusing more and more on it. Now it is a rewarding hobby for me to read, write, and talk about it. It’s something that fits me really well, and devoting myself more to it challenges me to learn more and contribute more.
The Internet is a fantastic opportunity to develop your intellectual life, to find the one thing in the world that you are most fascinated by, and find a community with the same interest. Ultimately, this could be very good for enabling people to self-actualize, to find the best thing to devote themselves to, where they can contribute most and be most fulfilled.