I think a very healthy epistemic habit is to not be completely caught up in the thoughtspace of any one community. Thinking is a garbage-in-garbage-out process. If all your inputs are from EA/rationalism, then you end up regurgitating EA/rationalism without adding new insights.
One of my favorite EA Forum posts has been this cause investigation for violence against women and girls, which the author mentions is inspired by their work as a healthcare worker and observing violence against women on the ground. Part of the reason this is so valuable is because it is extremely unlikely that EAs would have been exposed to this otherwise. The author combined external knowledge with EA reasoning/cost-effectiveness analysis to create something that neither the average EA nor the average healthcare worker could have created.
Deference to EA/rationalist conventional wisdom is useful in the many domains where you are not an expert. But EA did not get to be this way through parochial thinking. It got this way through new ideas continually being introduced so that good ones float to the top.
In summary: you should be able to point to a sizable number of intellectual influences that are not EA or EA-adjacent. EA is a question, not an answer, and our ability to give good answers is contingent on our continually bringing new perspectives and insights to the marketplace of ideas.
I think a very healthy epistemic habit is to not be completely caught up in the thoughtspace of any one community. Thinking is a garbage-in-garbage-out process. If all your inputs are from EA/rationalism, then you end up regurgitating EA/rationalism without adding new insights.
One of my favorite EA Forum posts has been this cause investigation for violence against women and girls, which the author mentions is inspired by their work as a healthcare worker and observing violence against women on the ground. Part of the reason this is so valuable is because it is extremely unlikely that EAs would have been exposed to this otherwise. The author combined external knowledge with EA reasoning/cost-effectiveness analysis to create something that neither the average EA nor the average healthcare worker could have created.
Deference to EA/rationalist conventional wisdom is useful in the many domains where you are not an expert. But EA did not get to be this way through parochial thinking. It got this way through new ideas continually being introduced so that good ones float to the top.
In summary: you should be able to point to a sizable number of intellectual influences that are not EA or EA-adjacent. EA is a question, not an answer, and our ability to give good answers is contingent on our continually bringing new perspectives and insights to the marketplace of ideas.