On 3 - I think seriously examining what made Quaker membership so impactful, as well as ahead of the moral curve, is something we should consider as a community. I think we should consider that various culture parts of Quakerism may have contributed meaningfully to their productivity—for example, I do wonder if EA meetups that emphasise silence, with occassional spoken words or passages read aloud by members who felt compelled, would actually have a bunch of unknown positive effects to the quality of debate and ideas.
I am definitely uncertain about what this would mean in a multitude of ways but I do think emulation means that you can improve a community through grabbing a series of positives that you might not, through a priori reasoning, realise are positives. Things that seem unnecessary might be very important—and we should be open to historical precedents to see if we can try any of these (at least particularly low cost examples) and see if we find a bunch of unintended positive results.
Thanks for this—really appreciate your thoughts!
On 3 - I think seriously examining what made Quaker membership so impactful, as well as ahead of the moral curve, is something we should consider as a community. I think we should consider that various culture parts of Quakerism may have contributed meaningfully to their productivity—for example, I do wonder if EA meetups that emphasise silence, with occassional spoken words or passages read aloud by members who felt compelled, would actually have a bunch of unknown positive effects to the quality of debate and ideas.
I am definitely uncertain about what this would mean in a multitude of ways but I do think emulation means that you can improve a community through grabbing a series of positives that you might not, through a priori reasoning, realise are positives. Things that seem unnecessary might be very important—and we should be open to historical precedents to see if we can try any of these (at least particularly low cost examples) and see if we find a bunch of unintended positive results.