Summary: There are multiple reasons why, in my opinion, we in EA should not encourage intra-community dating beyond how it arises organically in the community. Yet that’s not the same thing as not thinking about it. A modicum of public discussion about intra-community dating is probably not ‘culty’ compared to much of what the EA community already engages in regardless. One solution may be for those of us who are personal friends with each other in EA to make greater effort to provide support to each other in our mutual pursuits of romantic partners amenable to an EA lifestyle, especially including outside the EA community as well.
I agree the EA community should not systematically think about us dating each other. By “systematically,” I mean that I don’t think the EA community ought to try seeking a programmatic way for us to date each other. There are multiple reasons I expect doing so would be a poor choice for the EA community. The concern we’ve discussed in this thread in that is that it could make EA look ‘culty,’ which I agree is a legitimate concern. One issue I’ve got with how the EA community tends to think about brand management and public relations, or whatever the social movement equivalent for those concepts are, is that we tend to reflexively care about it only when it comes up at random, as opposed to thinking about it systematically.
That’s relevant because, relative to much more significant aspects of EA, whether we openly “think about dating each other” is not that ‘culty.’ There is some op-ed in a semi-popular magazine, print and/or online, about how communities concerned about AI alignment as an existential risk amount to doomsday cults. Much of the population perceives veganism as a cult. I’ve met a lot of people over the years who have told me that the phenomenon of widespread adoption of common lifestyle changes among community members still makes it gives off ‘culty’ vibes. Meanwhile, plenty of cultures within global society publicly and systematically encourage dating within their cultures. It seems like doing this along lines of national or religious identity is more publicly acceptable than doing so along racial lines. Like with what form it would likely take in EA, plenty of subcultures and movements that lend themselves to particular ways of life have online dating websites dedicated to their communities.
Thus, I think the other downsides to systematically encouraging dating within the EA community, such as the skewed gender ratio perhaps quickly resulting in the system failing to satisfy the needs of most involved individuals, are greater than EA appearing ‘culty.’ It’s important to distinguish why I think we shouldn’t systematically encourage intra-community dating because I also expect it would be wrong for us to “not think about” each other’s dating needs at all. For example, I don’t think it’s a negative thing that this EA Forum post and all these discussions in the comments are publicly taking place on the EA Forum. It seems to me the majority of community members never check the EA Forum with a frequency approaching a regular basis, never mind the millions of people who hear about EA but never become part of the movement. I think the solution is for us to extend private offers as peers in the same community to talk about each other’s efforts to find romantic partners who spend our lives with also fits with living the EA-inspired lives we each want to live out.
Summary: There are multiple reasons why, in my opinion, we in EA should not encourage intra-community dating beyond how it arises organically in the community. Yet that’s not the same thing as not thinking about it. A modicum of public discussion about intra-community dating is probably not ‘culty’ compared to much of what the EA community already engages in regardless. One solution may be for those of us who are personal friends with each other in EA to make greater effort to provide support to each other in our mutual pursuits of romantic partners amenable to an EA lifestyle, especially including outside the EA community as well.
I agree the EA community should not systematically think about us dating each other. By “systematically,” I mean that I don’t think the EA community ought to try seeking a programmatic way for us to date each other. There are multiple reasons I expect doing so would be a poor choice for the EA community. The concern we’ve discussed in this thread in that is that it could make EA look ‘culty,’ which I agree is a legitimate concern. One issue I’ve got with how the EA community tends to think about brand management and public relations, or whatever the social movement equivalent for those concepts are, is that we tend to reflexively care about it only when it comes up at random, as opposed to thinking about it systematically.
That’s relevant because, relative to much more significant aspects of EA, whether we openly “think about dating each other” is not that ‘culty.’ There is some op-ed in a semi-popular magazine, print and/or online, about how communities concerned about AI alignment as an existential risk amount to doomsday cults. Much of the population perceives veganism as a cult. I’ve met a lot of people over the years who have told me that the phenomenon of widespread adoption of common lifestyle changes among community members still makes it gives off ‘culty’ vibes. Meanwhile, plenty of cultures within global society publicly and systematically encourage dating within their cultures. It seems like doing this along lines of national or religious identity is more publicly acceptable than doing so along racial lines. Like with what form it would likely take in EA, plenty of subcultures and movements that lend themselves to particular ways of life have online dating websites dedicated to their communities.
Thus, I think the other downsides to systematically encouraging dating within the EA community, such as the skewed gender ratio perhaps quickly resulting in the system failing to satisfy the needs of most involved individuals, are greater than EA appearing ‘culty.’ It’s important to distinguish why I think we shouldn’t systematically encourage intra-community dating because I also expect it would be wrong for us to “not think about” each other’s dating needs at all. For example, I don’t think it’s a negative thing that this EA Forum post and all these discussions in the comments are publicly taking place on the EA Forum. It seems to me the majority of community members never check the EA Forum with a frequency approaching a regular basis, never mind the millions of people who hear about EA but never become part of the movement. I think the solution is for us to extend private offers as peers in the same community to talk about each other’s efforts to find romantic partners who spend our lives with also fits with living the EA-inspired lives we each want to live out.