[Edit: this whole comment makes less sense after Julia’s edits. Thanks for helping out with my questions, Julia.]
I’m not trying to be oblivious or facetious, but I don’t really understand what it means when Julia and other people say “it’s okay to leave EA” or “it’s fine to leave if you need to” or conversely for someone else to say, perhaps to themselves “it’s not okay to leave EA”. It doesn’t feel… concrete enough? For me to make sense of. I want to taboo the words “fine” and “okay” to try to understand better.
Sometimes EA is hard for me and I want to leave and I’m like “is it fine? Is it okay?” And like, damn, that seems like a really hard question.
I directionally agree with “My guess is that if you feel like you’re drowning, you need to disrupt something about your circumstances, and you’ll eventually be more able to do good work (in EA or outside EA) than if you’d continue struggling in the same place.”, especially if people have felt like they’re drowning for months instead of e.g. hours.
Some things people could interpret this post as meaning:
Julia thinks you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself if you leave EA (because it wouldn’t be healthy or productive). (Idk if this is true, I feel like the fact that I’d be disappointed in myself if I didn’t do EA stuff drives me to do actually valuable EA stuff, do we know that self-punishment is always eventually counterproductive?)
Julia Wise won’t hate you if you leave EA (probably true)
Julia Wise wants to send care and warm feelings towards EAs who leave and EAs who are struggling (probably true)
Julia Wise thinks that in general, people who want to leave EA probably feel more negative about having that desire than is healthy? Useful? Productive?
Julia Wise claims no one will resent you leaving EA if you want to (probably false)
Julia Wise thinks EA will be better off if it has a culture of not resenting people who leave EA (probably?)
It’s guaranteed to not be true that if you leave EA, some sentient beings have a horrible time instead of a good time (probably false)
In expectation, more sentient beings will have a good time instead of a horrible time, if you leave EA contingent on you wanting to leave EA (?? sounds like Julia agrees it’s unclear)
I think there is a chance you’re overcomplicating it a bit 😅. I think she is just trying to create a culture where people don’t feel socially anxious about leaving EA if it is good for their mental health.
Social norms are present everywhere, including EA, and even if we are quite nerdy and prone to rule-binding, the pressure and expectation to do good can conflate against some of the members’ mental health.
And then, she is also saying that everyone should feel they are entitled to choose not to sacrifice (a significant portion of) their happiness to improve the world, and not feel bad about it. People sometimes rationalize it in that it is not sustainable, but I prefer understanding just allowing people to not be maximally altruistic as opposed to maximally efficient with their altruistic budget. As in a similar spirit to https://mindingourway.com/youre-allowed-to-be-inconsistent/
I don’t know, my sense is the earlier comment correctly points to something being a little off here. Like a (not necessarily intentional) motte-and-bailey thing where the bailey (the part that gets defended) is “this community should have a norm of not shaming people for being less-than-maximally altruistic,” and the motte is “it’s ethically acceptable for people to not act maximally altruistically.” But drawing from the latter claim (without justifying/scrutinizing it with ethical arguments) seems like severely devaluing ethical argumentation, which seems pretty questionable both philosophically and as a norm. (It also feels weirdly at odds with the community’s usual norm of caring a lot about ethical reasoning/argumentation.) I think the earlier comment does well at teasing apart different versions of “it’s fine,” a necessary step for noticing the potential motte-and-bailey error.
(I’m still sympathetic to a community norm of letting people leave if they want to; I feel iffy about the community justifying that norm by denying the ethical value of helping others more, or by denying the claim that (if approached in a healthy way) this community has e.g., some ideas that are pretty helpful for doing more good.)
I don’t have a lot of the answers about the “best” way to think about it, but +1 to breaking down “it’s fine” or “it’s ok” into component parts. <3 offered for when it feels hard.
[Edit: this whole comment makes less sense after Julia’s edits. Thanks for helping out with my questions, Julia.]
I’m not trying to be oblivious or facetious, but I don’t really understand what it means when Julia and other people say “it’s okay to leave EA” or “it’s fine to leave if you need to” or conversely for someone else to say, perhaps to themselves “it’s not okay to leave EA”. It doesn’t feel… concrete enough? For me to make sense of. I want to taboo the words “fine” and “okay” to try to understand better.
Sometimes EA is hard for me and I want to leave and I’m like “is it fine? Is it okay?” And like, damn, that seems like a really hard question.
I directionally agree with “My guess is that if you feel like you’re drowning, you need to disrupt something about your circumstances, and you’ll eventually be more able to do good work (in EA or outside EA) than if you’d continue struggling in the same place.”, especially if people have felt like they’re drowning for months instead of e.g. hours.
Some things people could interpret this post as meaning:
Julia thinks you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself if you leave EA (because it wouldn’t be healthy or productive). (Idk if this is true, I feel like the fact that I’d be disappointed in myself if I didn’t do EA stuff drives me to do actually valuable EA stuff, do we know that self-punishment is always eventually counterproductive?)
Julia Wise won’t hate you if you leave EA (probably true)
Julia Wise wants to send care and warm feelings towards EAs who leave and EAs who are struggling (probably true)
Julia Wise thinks that in general, people who want to leave EA probably feel more negative about having that desire than is healthy? Useful? Productive?
Julia Wise claims no one will resent you leaving EA if you want to (probably false)
Julia Wise thinks EA will be better off if it has a culture of not resenting people who leave EA (probably?)
It’s guaranteed to not be true that if you leave EA, some sentient beings have a horrible time instead of a good time (probably false)
In expectation, more sentient beings will have a good time instead of a horrible time, if you leave EA contingent on you wanting to leave EA (?? sounds like Julia agrees it’s unclear)
I think there is a chance you’re overcomplicating it a bit 😅. I think she is just trying to create a culture where people don’t feel socially anxious about leaving EA if it is good for their mental health. Social norms are present everywhere, including EA, and even if we are quite nerdy and prone to rule-binding, the pressure and expectation to do good can conflate against some of the members’ mental health.
And then, she is also saying that everyone should feel they are entitled to choose not to sacrifice (a significant portion of) their happiness to improve the world, and not feel bad about it. People sometimes rationalize it in that it is not sustainable, but I prefer understanding just allowing people to not be maximally altruistic as opposed to maximally efficient with their altruistic budget. As in a similar spirit to https://mindingourway.com/youre-allowed-to-be-inconsistent/
I don’t know, my sense is the earlier comment correctly points to something being a little off here. Like a (not necessarily intentional) motte-and-bailey thing where the bailey (the part that gets defended) is “this community should have a norm of not shaming people for being less-than-maximally altruistic,” and the motte is “it’s ethically acceptable for people to not act maximally altruistically.” But drawing from the latter claim (without justifying/scrutinizing it with ethical arguments) seems like severely devaluing ethical argumentation, which seems pretty questionable both philosophically and as a norm. (It also feels weirdly at odds with the community’s usual norm of caring a lot about ethical reasoning/argumentation.) I think the earlier comment does well at teasing apart different versions of “it’s fine,” a necessary step for noticing the potential motte-and-bailey error.
(I’m still sympathetic to a community norm of letting people leave if they want to; I feel iffy about the community justifying that norm by denying the ethical value of helping others more, or by denying the claim that (if approached in a healthy way) this community has e.g., some ideas that are pretty helpful for doing more good.)
Thanks, this was a helpful prompt. I agree some of this was pretty muddled. I edited to say some more specific things.
I don’t have a lot of the answers about the “best” way to think about it, but +1 to breaking down “it’s fine” or “it’s ok” into component parts. <3 offered for when it feels hard.