(I realize I'm preaching to the choir by posting this here. But I figure it's good to post it regardless.)

Introduction

Recently, Scott Alexander gave a list of tight-knit communities with strong values:

The Amish: They live apart in tight-knit communities with strong countercultural values, and carefully control their technological and ideological environment. 10/10.
Cults and communes: Any cult mature enough to have its own compound, or any communal living project, has succeeded almost as thoroughly as the Amish. We may not support their insane religious beliefs, or the various sex crimes they are no doubt committing, but they have succeeded at Fukuyama’s suggestion of knitting themselves a new god within the liberal order. 9.5/10.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Mormons: Get lots of people of the same religion together in one place - a timeless classic. Some of the ultra-est of the ultra-Orthodox are still more fluent in Yiddish than English, giving them near-invincibility from the mainstream. 9/10.
The Free State Project: some libertarians made a deal that if enough other libertarians agreed, they would all move to New Hampshire and try to turn it into a libertarian paradise. They got about 20,000 people on board; the results ranged from building entirely new libertarian towns in the forest, to buying homes in Portsmouth or Manchester and keeping in touch with their libertarian friends. 7/10.
Serious Christianity: Lots of Christians have social circles centered around their church, send their children to Christian schools, have Christian therapists they can visit if they feel down, and consume Christian media. On the other hand, they usually work a secular job, and most of their neighbors are secular. 6/10.
The LGBTQ community: don’t laugh at this one. If you know many of these people, you know they have their own parallel society of LGBT friends, LGBT bars, and LGBT dating sites. They attend LGBT parties, conform to LGBT fashions, and watch LGBT sports (like roller derby). They live in special LGBT-friendly neighborhoods, and everyone around them follows LGBT-friendly norms. They even have their own flag, an obvious first step for people trying to form a country-within-a-country. 5/10.
The rationalists: I live on a street with five other rationalist families and a small rationalist microschool. The broader Bay Area rationalist community has its own parties, dating sites

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