I enjoyed reading this—I spent 10 years active in Quakerism, including a college course on Quaker history and a year working at a Quaker retreat center. I also happened to write a post about EA and Quakerism recently. I like the idea of drawing inspiration from historical Quakers. But I feel confused about what it would look like for EA to emulate peak Quakerism.
Some counter-points: - Early (and peak) Quakers went down some weird ineffective paths. It’s cool that they were into nonviolence and class equality, but they were also really into renaming the days of the week and months of the year to avoid pagan names. Even at their peak, they were maybe most notable for dressing funny. Even one of the cofounders described the fastidiousness about clothing as “a silly poor gospel.” - Quakerism doesn’t have heresy per se as a concept, but you could definitely get kicked out for doing it wrong. Perhaps most commonly in the past for marrying a non-Quaker, but also for extramarital sex or disagreeing about the nature of God.
Modern Quakerism isn’t very religious for a religion (at least in the UK and coastal US—there are evangelical branches elsewhere), but until the 20th century it really was. I don’t really understand what led this particular sect to hit on a bunch of social policies that look really good to modern views, but a ton of 17th century sects didn’t.
As for what made them successful, a couple of things come to mind - inability to participate in the military or universities (because those required violence and swearing an oath of loyalty to the crown respectively) meant that their talented people went into business. Similar to other religious minorities that sometimes do well after being cornered into one part of the economy. - Businesses did well partly because they were so fastidious about honesty, so they had a reputation for fairness. I do think this is worth learning from—for a while one theory about what EA’s brand should be was “astonishingly rigorous”, and I think there’s something parallel here.
Early (and peak) Quakers went down some weird ineffective paths. It’s cool that they were into nonviolence and class equality, but they were also really into renaming the days of the week and months of the year to avoid pagan names.
This sounds like hits-based cause selection. The median early Quaker cause area wasn’t particularly effective, but their best cause area was probably worth all of the wasted time in all of the others.
I enjoyed reading this—I spent 10 years active in Quakerism, including a college course on Quaker history and a year working at a Quaker retreat center. I also happened to write a post about EA and Quakerism recently.
I like the idea of drawing inspiration from historical Quakers. But I feel confused about what it would look like for EA to emulate peak Quakerism.
Some counter-points:
- Early (and peak) Quakers went down some weird ineffective paths. It’s cool that they were into nonviolence and class equality, but they were also really into renaming the days of the week and months of the year to avoid pagan names. Even at their peak, they were maybe most notable for dressing funny. Even one of the cofounders described the fastidiousness about clothing as “a silly poor gospel.”
- Quakerism doesn’t have heresy per se as a concept, but you could definitely get kicked out for doing it wrong. Perhaps most commonly in the past for marrying a non-Quaker, but also for extramarital sex or disagreeing about the nature of God.
Modern Quakerism isn’t very religious for a religion (at least in the UK and coastal US—there are evangelical branches elsewhere), but until the 20th century it really was. I don’t really understand what led this particular sect to hit on a bunch of social policies that look really good to modern views, but a ton of 17th century sects didn’t.
As for what made them successful, a couple of things come to mind
- inability to participate in the military or universities (because those required violence and swearing an oath of loyalty to the crown respectively) meant that their talented people went into business. Similar to other religious minorities that sometimes do well after being cornered into one part of the economy.
- Businesses did well partly because they were so fastidious about honesty, so they had a reputation for fairness. I do think this is worth learning from—for a while one theory about what EA’s brand should be was “astonishingly rigorous”, and I think there’s something parallel here.
This sounds like hits-based cause selection. The median early Quaker cause area wasn’t particularly effective, but their best cause area was probably worth all of the wasted time in all of the others.