[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart ...
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Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart people online?
Going to a big school and meeting people with different backgrounds
and interests has made me painfully aware of how ignorant I am. I'd
like to meet people who will challenge me intellectually and act as
a catalyst for my growth. I'm thinking of reading some lesswrong
posts and hanging around in the comments and perhaps exploring that
part of the internet. It's not perfect but it's a start I guess.
What are some of your experiences with meeting people on the
internet and how does one go about meeting great people?
Author : lemonade5117
Score : 33 points
Date : 2022-08-31 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| I can't tell if you're still a student at the big school, but if
| you are I would definitely prioritize building local friendships
| and maintaining them above meeting new people on the Internet. It
| sounds like the locals are pretty smart and would challenge you
| intellectually the way you'd like.
| julienreszka wrote:
| Don't hesitate to reach out, people answer more often than you
| would think and you risk about nothing
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Twitter is a place where interesting people doing interesting
| work in all kinds of fields with all kinds of priors from all
| kinds of perspectives post threads about their work generally for
| non-specialist consumption. Among my follows from intellectual
| perspective are animal studies folks, small book publishers,
| medieval studies, anthropologists, chemists, banking nerds,
| political scientists, contract lawyers, religious educators, sex
| educators, Native American advocates....
|
| From cultural perspective as an older white northeast US man I
| pick folks to follow from as wide a demographic and timezone
| range as possible.
|
| Lots of other stuff happens at Twitter too of course but this is
| what I use it for. Haven't found another soup like it.
|
| And of course the VAST majority of the world is not on Twitter,
| maybe owns a phone but not a computer, and does interesting
| things unknown to the digital sphere. To actually EXPAND your
| worldview you have to travel. Go to the places, put your entire
| meatspace sensory apparatus in the environment. But the Platos
| shadow online version is I think what you were asking about.
|
| There are LOTS of ways to optimize Twitter use but to start just
| make sure you change the algorithm to latest tweets, rather than
| "Home Tweets" and then start adding people. When you get up to
| 1000 follows you should have a steady stream of worldview
| novelty.
|
| Addition: "meet" has multiple connotations and often the two way
| interactive meet with interesting people is hard/impossible
| because they are very busy and/or manage their time, etc. Twitter
| presents an opportunity for learning passively through osmosis,
| which is also not the same as two way interaction but can be
| worldview expanding all the same.
| advisedwang wrote:
| I recommend starting by reading. Read history, politics, fiction.
| Read banned books and popular books. You can expand your horizons
| much faster this way than trying to meet 100s of people, and it
| allows you to find a direction that appeals to you.
| luantrindade wrote:
| You have an opportunity in each corner if you allow yourself to
| see it!
| boboralice wrote:
| Real world meetups about subjects you're interested in will have
| better value than most online stuff.
|
| Read books about things that interest you, and use Goodreads as a
| source of inspiration for future reading material.
|
| Get off Facebook. Either learn to optimize Twitter as someone
| else suggested, or get off there too, because it's easy for it to
| become an echo chamber if you aren't smart about how you use it.
| I prefer Mastodon because if you choose a good instance there's
| less fluff and you're not funneled into your own echo chamber.
|
| Where possible, I use special-interest-focused-forums (yes, old-
| fashioned forums still exist) instead of Reddit. Again, some
| parts of Reddit are good, but a lot have horribly biased
| moderation. It depends on the subject.
|
| Start a blog and link it to your social media. I've found
| participating in blogging challenges has helped me build
| readership and find new blogs to read, and those blogs have
| helped me find meetups or conferences in subjects I'm interested
| in. Some of those have required travel, but the travel has been
| worth it.
| Something1234 wrote:
| Where do you find blogging challenges?
| millzlane wrote:
| I googled blogging challenges. Then found a "30 day blogging
| challenge" keyword. Then found this:
| https://30dayblogchallenge.com/
| Aromasin wrote:
| To piggy back on the optimising twitter comment, does anyone
| know how to disable recommended content on Twitter? I keep
| getting people telling me that I'm missing out, and I've fine
| tuned my feed so it's a bunch of scientists and engineers who's
| work I'm interested in, but Twitter keeps giving me content
| from people they follow, or popular topics. It seems every
| third tweet is something I simply have zero interest in. Is it
| really that valuable?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Non-fiction books. The Economist.
| 10g1k wrote:
| 1) Stay away from Twitter, TikTok, and 4chan.
|
| 2) Try Thinkspace.
|
| 3) Try online forums specifically inhabited by members of
| professions and academic fields.
| ktpecot wrote:
| Could try checking out bigger blogs that you like and joining
| their discord for better/more stimulating interactions than
| comments. Also if you're in a big enough city Less Wrong and EA
| probably have in person meetups. If they don't they have a lot of
| resources for starting them.
| bckr wrote:
| Add depth, insight, and research to conversations and stick
| around for awhile. Send emails or DMs to people who are open to
| it. It's really just like meeting people anywhere, but your
| charisma comes through in your writing instead of your speech and
| appearance.
| white_dragon88 wrote:
| Lol. Don't. I'm old and experienced and it wasn't because of my
| internet interactions. You seek out what you want on the
| internet, even when you don't think you do. Talk to real people
| in real time who can read your body language and face, with
| opinions to challenge you face to face. Again. Just don't.
| frantzmiccoli wrote:
| My first feeling here is: please reach out. I wouldn't mind a
| quick honest online call to exchange views and all. My contacts
| details can be deduced from my profile.
|
| Besides that I have found it hard to meet interesting people, I
| have found a few through meetup.com communities, some in
| professional context. Some people are jewels that need to be
| cherished and admired, there is no magic mine where you can find
| them for free.
|
| One learning though, the harder it is to get somewhere the more
| interesting people you will find. In that sense all those
| networking events have a quality that is proportional to how hard
| it is to get in.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| join online communities at random and learn why people think they
| way they do. Particularly seek out those communities whose
| opinions puzzle you.
| gardenfelder wrote:
| Interesting fact ~5 hours into this story: lemonade5117 has yet
| to enter the conversation. Seems to me that there really is not
| enough information to evaluate the query: would help to know more
| about his/her goals and interests.
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