Why is the person who cares about effective altruism and their relationship to the person who doesn’t so key in answering this question?
Changing your mind is exhausting and challenging.
Changing your mind on topics that might affect all your future life choices and also might reflect badly on many of your past choices is incredibly difficult.
Asking someone to question everything either requires the person who is questioning everything to have:
a very weird disposition (unusually unaffected by wild swings in what their future should be and how good their past actions were); or
someone or many people there to gradually help them think clearly about what they truly believe about the world and what they truly care about.
If the person in question does not have a very weird disposition and can just casually question everything, then they do not need much beyond a little exposure. However, 99.9% of people on planet Earth are not like that! 99.9% of people on planet Earth find questioning everything quite emotionally challenging.
This can make conversations breakdown very quickly without a lot of trust and care, especially if the conversation moves extremely quickly and questions a lot of things all at once in ways that are brand new.
There are several ways community-builders can mitigate this:
Take a lot of time to understand where the person who doesn’t care is coming from with an open and curious mind (how they see the world, what they currently care about and why they think the stuff they care about is worth caring about). People are so interesting and if you take a genuine interest in the person you are talking to, this can go a long way to not only giving you the tools to discuss all this incredibly challenging stuff in a sensitive way, but also can give you insight into this human being in front of you who cares deeply about various things in their lives for various reasons. I am always blown away by how much people care and also how differently they think and feel about things and it is generally pretty wonderful if you get an opportunity to hear about another person’s life passions and wordview.
Go slowly. Give people permission to take it at their own pace. Give people permission to take one small corner at a time and not change their whole lives and worldview immediately or at all. By giving people room to change their minds at a safe pace for them, they can be more intellectually honest with themselves and ease into the emotional rollar-coaster that is questioning everything you believe about the world and everything you value deep down at an appropriate pace.
Once we believe something, once we care about something, we all tend to forget the often long journey to that worldview and that passion. We enthusiastically feel like because it is now obvious to us that it always was and then talk to others like it is no big deal.
Usually, if you don’t have an exceptionally weird disposition, questioning everything you think about the world and everything you care about is a challenging journey. I took more time to come around than I remembered for a long-time, once it all felt obvious to me. The memories of everything it took to change my mind came back to me slowly. This is so human I think. We move on fast once we believe something, no matter how long the journey took. Once we believe something is true, it often feels like we always knew it deep down (when actually, I think our brains just conveniently forget that so we have more space to think about new things).
Remembering that changing your mind and accepting that you were wrong in the past and that all your future plans might be worth changing is bloody hard. For people to think clearly, they often need room and support. They also need permission to think differently! These are really hard questions! Smart people definitely can very reasonably disagree.
The role, I see, of a community builder, is to create a space where people can safely think about what they think and what they care about. It is not to convince them of any one particular answer or any one particular value system. It seems fine to nudge people towards a wider moral circle. It seems fine to present people with why you believe what you believe. The rest is an open-minded, open-hearted, curious conversation.
It was incredibly useful to be reminded of the obvious fact that rewriting a load-bearing belief is crazy. Doing it has had me in tumultuous staits that absolutely needed to be sorted out asap but I had no way forward and no way back.
Sometimes I have been uneasy for days trying to adjust to the new world. Sometimes it would make me feel like an imposter when I would talk to people about ordinary stuff. Incredibly uncomfortable experience that I do immediately forget.
Why is the person who cares about effective altruism and their relationship to the person who doesn’t so key in answering this question?
Changing your mind is exhausting and challenging.
Changing your mind on topics that might affect all your future life choices and also might reflect badly on many of your past choices is incredibly difficult.
Asking someone to question everything either requires the person who is questioning everything to have:
a very weird disposition (unusually unaffected by wild swings in what their future should be and how good their past actions were); or
someone or many people there to gradually help them think clearly about what they truly believe about the world and what they truly care about.
I think often it requires both.
If the person in question does not have a very weird disposition and can just casually question everything, then they do not need much beyond a little exposure. However, 99.9% of people on planet Earth are not like that! 99.9% of people on planet Earth find questioning everything quite emotionally challenging.
This can make conversations breakdown very quickly without a lot of trust and care, especially if the conversation moves extremely quickly and questions a lot of things all at once in ways that are brand new.
There are several ways community-builders can mitigate this:
Take a lot of time to understand where the person who doesn’t care is coming from with an open and curious mind (how they see the world, what they currently care about and why they think the stuff they care about is worth caring about). People are so interesting and if you take a genuine interest in the person you are talking to, this can go a long way to not only giving you the tools to discuss all this incredibly challenging stuff in a sensitive way, but also can give you insight into this human being in front of you who cares deeply about various things in their lives for various reasons. I am always blown away by how much people care and also how differently they think and feel about things and it is generally pretty wonderful if you get an opportunity to hear about another person’s life passions and wordview.
Go slowly. Give people permission to take it at their own pace. Give people permission to take one small corner at a time and not change their whole lives and worldview immediately or at all. By giving people room to change their minds at a safe pace for them, they can be more intellectually honest with themselves and ease into the emotional rollar-coaster that is questioning everything you believe about the world and everything you value deep down at an appropriate pace.
Once we believe something, once we care about something, we all tend to forget the often long journey to that worldview and that passion. We enthusiastically feel like because it is now obvious to us that it always was and then talk to others like it is no big deal.
Usually, if you don’t have an exceptionally weird disposition, questioning everything you think about the world and everything you care about is a challenging journey. I took more time to come around than I remembered for a long-time, once it all felt obvious to me. The memories of everything it took to change my mind came back to me slowly. This is so human I think. We move on fast once we believe something, no matter how long the journey took. Once we believe something is true, it often feels like we always knew it deep down (when actually, I think our brains just conveniently forget that so we have more space to think about new things).
Remembering that changing your mind and accepting that you were wrong in the past and that all your future plans might be worth changing is bloody hard. For people to think clearly, they often need room and support. They also need permission to think differently! These are really hard questions! Smart people definitely can very reasonably disagree.
The role, I see, of a community builder, is to create a space where people can safely think about what they think and what they care about. It is not to convince them of any one particular answer or any one particular value system. It seems fine to nudge people towards a wider moral circle. It seems fine to present people with why you believe what you believe. The rest is an open-minded, open-hearted, curious conversation.
It was incredibly useful to be reminded of the obvious fact that rewriting a load-bearing belief is crazy. Doing it has had me in tumultuous staits that absolutely needed to be sorted out asap but I had no way forward and no way back.
Sometimes I have been uneasy for days trying to adjust to the new world. Sometimes it would make me feel like an imposter when I would talk to people about ordinary stuff. Incredibly uncomfortable experience that I do immediately forget.