Beyond Selidor

I have real issues with this idea, actually, as much as I appreciated finding a group of friends with similar views (these sort of statements are apparently guaranteed to bring Jordan and me out of the woodwork; I await Alexey's participation :) ).

It seems like the more you encourage people to define their own communities, the more you can end up with insular self-supporting groups made up of people with too much confidence in their world view... to caricature this problem: for every 'enlightened atheist' group of people, there's a counterbalancing fundamentalist Christian group, and neither are forced to properly consider the others' perspectives.

This is part of why I think public education is a social good: because it forces people to interact with those from different backgrounds, at least to some extent.

- James H