But why exactly should I help those in the community who believe that the moral thing to do when someone is on their knees is to curb stomp them while yelling “I should have been admitted to EAG 2016!”? Why should I expose myself further by doing ambitious things (No I don’t mean fraud- that’s not an ambitious thing that’s a—criminal—thing) when if I fail people are going to make everything worse by screaming “I told you so” to signal that they never would have been such a newb? Yeah. No. The circle I’m drawing around who is and is not in my community is getting dramatically redrawn. This is not because one person or company made a series of very bad decisions, it’s because so many of your actions are those of people I will not invest in further and who I don’t want anywhere near my life or life’s work.
This paragraph really resonated with me. I suspect many people whom we would benefit greatly from having in our community are turned off because of they got the same feeling you articulated here.
I’m finding difficult to articulate why I think this is, but let me attempt:
When I’ve been at my least productive, I find myself falling into a terrible zero-sum mindset of actively searching for things that are unjust or unfair. My thoughts often take the shape of something like:
Why do influential EA’s only care about <thing they think is important> and not <thing I think is important> ?
‘If EA was less <elitist/nepotistic> and more <democratic/open/whatever> then my pet cause would get the attention it deserves! ’
On the other hand, when I’m at my most productive and fully immersed projects that matter to me, I don’t ever find myself thinking those thoughts. I’m too focused on actually getting things done and producing surplus to care about how others spend their time and resources.
In this mindset I’m incredibly optimistic and I intuitively feel that any problem solvable if I put my mind to it. In the former mindset, everything seems doomed to fail and I want to sneer at anyone who thinks otherwise.
These mindsets feel very distinct, and it’s very clear the latter is highly conducive to success and the former is actively harmful. If somebody with the latter mindset gets their first impression of EA from people with the former, I don’t blame them for bailing.
This paragraph really resonated with me. I suspect many people whom we would benefit greatly from having in our community are turned off because of they got the same feeling you articulated here.
I’m finding difficult to articulate why I think this is, but let me attempt:
When I’ve been at my least productive, I find myself falling into a terrible zero-sum mindset of actively searching for things that are unjust or unfair. My thoughts often take the shape of something like:
On the other hand, when I’m at my most productive and fully immersed projects that matter to me, I don’t ever find myself thinking those thoughts. I’m too focused on actually getting things done and producing surplus to care about how others spend their time and resources.
In this mindset I’m incredibly optimistic and I intuitively feel that any problem solvable if I put my mind to it. In the former mindset, everything seems doomed to fail and I want to sneer at anyone who thinks otherwise.
These mindsets feel very distinct, and it’s very clear the latter is highly conducive to success and the former is actively harmful. If somebody with the latter mindset gets their first impression of EA from people with the former, I don’t blame them for bailing.
I didn’t notice this comment and I think it’s excellent. Thank you so much for sharing.