4⁄22 from 6 years of social/professional relationships with EA types who are hot on personal development
3⁄22 from my 2nd-8th years with the pre-EA/EA community
2⁄22 from 2 years of independent thought prompted by reading philosophy and having a utilitarian friend at sixth form
1⁄22 from 3 years of colleagues at non-EA orgs (Oxfam retail and a “digital transformation” consultancy startup)
1⁄22 from independent thought plus ~7 years of knowing sexually diverse communities via university and EA
1⁄22 from 26 years of family
1⁄22 from really mixed sources
(+ the Robin Hanson one that I want to take off the list in light of the value drift post)
Takeaway: My first year of being part of an EA-type community was disproportionately valuable.
I wonder how other people’s experiences compare, and if they’re similar, the extent to which that implies that we should focus community-building on brief intense immersion and retention-wise simply optimise for something like subscribers to a quarterly newsletter.
I think these can be categorised as follows (as of Oct 2017):
8⁄22 came from my 1st year with the “pre-EA” community (felicifia.org/reducing-suffering.org (4), Toby Ord (3), the rationalists (1))
4⁄22 from 6 years of social/professional relationships with EA types who are hot on personal development
3⁄22 from my 2nd-8th years with the pre-EA/EA community
2⁄22 from 2 years of independent thought prompted by reading philosophy and having a utilitarian friend at sixth form
1⁄22 from 3 years of colleagues at non-EA orgs (Oxfam retail and a “digital transformation” consultancy startup)
1⁄22 from independent thought plus ~7 years of knowing sexually diverse communities via university and EA
1⁄22 from 26 years of family
1⁄22 from really mixed sources
(+ the Robin Hanson one that I want to take off the list in light of the value drift post)
Takeaway: My first year of being part of an EA-type community was disproportionately valuable.
I wonder how other people’s experiences compare, and if they’re similar, the extent to which that implies that we should focus community-building on brief intense immersion and retention-wise simply optimise for something like subscribers to a quarterly newsletter.