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What has your experience been with SSC/ACX or SSC-adjacent communities in your area? What are your thoughts on the future of the scene at large, online and offline?
Went to a local informal ACX meetup recently and was pleasantly surprised by the group. The members were all interesting in their own way: most had niche intellectual interests they could discuss at length (including ones they had written about on their substacks or elsewhere online), some had studied at elite universities, others had met many in the greater Lesswrong-Bay Area rationalist scene. At 25 I was one of the younger members, but not the youngest, and everyone was <31 (in this meetup at least). This got me wondering about the state of the rat/rat-adjacent community (side note: is there any sort of official name for this space? I think most of us are familiar with the scene I'm describing here but I'm not sure what to label it) at large. Do meetups happen regularly in your area? What's the turnout like, and are you regularly seeing newer/younger members joining? Has anything interesting come of them: like a business/organization started or the groups achieving any sort of collective goals?
I've always found it interesting how this space manages to naturally attract smart, open-minded, and intellectually curious people. And it does so because (I think) reading LessWrong/SSC selects for these qualities in a way that an open forum that sells itself on fostering them probably wouldn't, such a place would probably just revert to the median subreddit-level discourse. I've seen comments suggesting it's on the decline. For example: that this site's weekly threads get less activity than the subreddit's did at its peak. I guess this site in particular will struggle in the long-term to find new posters to replace the ones that leave or just post less frequently without Reddit to promote it. At the same time, I wouldn't, for the reasons I described, want to just advertise it to the masses. But the SSC subreddit doesn't seem as active as it once was either.
Related question: are there any new/younger writers in the space? Scott recommends Ricki Heicklen who graduated from undergrad in 2019 but she hasn't posted in a while.
I'm the organizer for my city's LW/SSC/Rationality (capital R) meetup. We have a similar demographic to the one you experienced, minus the "many in the greater..." part. Most of our group is 30 or younger, with a few 40+ people sprinkled in. Engagement varies in a pattern I've yet to study or understand: some socials get 10+ people out, others three; some purposeful meetups (i.e., we're discussing topic X) get eight, others a mere two. (I suspect it's a combination of unlucky schedule misalignments, the topic only appealing to a handful of people, and it often being a hastily-designed event due to my personal time/energy constraints.)
Nothing major has come out of the group at a collective level. I hold an annual goals meetup on the first week of January designed to help members network with each other to find similar people and potential accountability partners, but it ends up with people stating their goals and never following up on them until the next year when they've been forgotten. Some members hang out with each other outside of the group. I've started accountability partnerships with a few. I do think there's opportunity given the average member's intelligence and ambition.
I think regularly attending is largely worthwhile solely because of the people you meet there. I don't have many IRL friends interested in the topics we discuss, so the meetups are a good outlet to talk about things in person, especially with people smarter than me! Consider attending more and trying to grow the group without sacrificing the member quality.
Regarding new/younger writers in the space: I don't know of anyone besides myself (and I wouldn't even count myself considering how small of a following I have). I graduated from undergrad in 2020 and regularly post on my website/publish monthly changes to Substack. Happy to DM you if you're interested in the link. (I don't want to post it here because it feels like improper advertising.)
I wouldn't mind you advertising, for one. Feel free to take this comment as a reason to; now it's not unprompted.
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I've liked the groups I attended. Intelligent, friendly, and surprisingly not that socially awkward.
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