Hypocrite 101 here as I am dating / have dated EAs, but anyway...
The problem this post is trying to solve is “EAs are a bit too weird for other people”, and the proposed solution is “let’s pair up romantically”. This solution would, in my opinion, aggravate another significant problem which is best laid out by this post here about risks of insularity within the community from excessive value alignment. The writer makes a much more rigorous than I am about to, but I think one element of it applies to this case: the quote “EA will miss its ambitious goal by working with only an insular subset of the people it is trying to save.”
Having friendships / relationships outside EA would diversify your own thought as well as potentially diversifying the pool of people interested in EA / EA thinking. So if you accept the arguments of this post that insularity / strong value-alignment is a threat, then friendships / relationships outside of EA are intrinsically valuable. Dating other EAs does not in itself create cultural and community insularity, but encouraging it as a solution to a problem of EAs not being great at external social integration would entrench community insularity.
The best counter-argument is that promoting friendships / relationships / any social interaction outside of EA won’t go far enough, and that the real problem is insularity at leadership levels within EA, that’s what we should break and give the non-dating a break. Which I think is fair. But withstanding that, still benefits for individuals or local groups (e.g. city-based) around external integration.
Other counter-arguments:
Most liberals marry liberals; most cultists marry cultists; people marry those from their fellow religion (and hunt them on dating apps) this is normal for humans to assortatively mate?
Or why can’t we have friends who bring us diversity instead?
Hypocrite 101 here as I am dating / have dated EAs, but anyway...
The problem this post is trying to solve is “EAs are a bit too weird for other people”, and the proposed solution is “let’s pair up romantically”. This solution would, in my opinion, aggravate another significant problem which is best laid out by this post here about risks of insularity within the community from excessive value alignment. The writer makes a much more rigorous than I am about to, but I think one element of it applies to this case: the quote “EA will miss its ambitious goal by working with only an insular subset of the people it is trying to save.”
Having friendships / relationships outside EA would diversify your own thought as well as potentially diversifying the pool of people interested in EA / EA thinking. So if you accept the arguments of this post that insularity / strong value-alignment is a threat, then friendships / relationships outside of EA are intrinsically valuable. Dating other EAs does not in itself create cultural and community insularity, but encouraging it as a solution to a problem of EAs not being great at external social integration would entrench community insularity.
The best counter-argument is that promoting friendships / relationships / any social interaction outside of EA won’t go far enough, and that the real problem is insularity at leadership levels within EA, that’s what we should break and give the non-dating a break. Which I think is fair. But withstanding that, still benefits for individuals or local groups (e.g. city-based) around external integration.
Other counter-arguments:
Most liberals marry liberals; most cultists marry cultists; people marry those from their fellow religion (and hunt them on dating apps) this is normal for humans to assortatively mate?
Or why can’t we have friends who bring us diversity instead?