I used the word “icky” to mean “this makes me feel a bit sus because it could plausibly be harmful to push this but I’m not confident it is wrong”. I also think it is mostly harmful to push it to young people who are newly excited about EA and haven’t had the space to figure out their own thoughts on deferring, status, epistemics, cause prio etc.
I don’t think the OP said anything about a Berkeley EA hub specifically? (Indeed, #3 talks about EA hubs, so Akash is clearly not referring to any particular hub.) Personally, when I read the sentence you quoted I nodded in agreement, because it resonates with my experience living both in places with lots of EAs (Oxford, Nassau) and in places with very few EAs (Buenos Aires, Tokyo, etc.), and noticing the difference this makes. I never lived in Berkeley and don’t interact much with people from that hub.
I think there’s probably not that much we’d disagree on about what people should be doing and my comment was more of a “feeling/intuitions/vague uncomfortableness” thing rather than anything well-thought out because of a few reasons I might flesh out into something more coherent at some point in the future.
I used the word “icky” to mean “this makes me feel a bit sus because it could plausibly be harmful to push this but I’m not confident it is wrong”. I also think it is mostly harmful to push it to young people who are newly excited about EA and haven’t had the space to figure out their own thoughts on deferring, status, epistemics, cause prio etc.
I don’t think the OP said anything about a Berkeley EA hub specifically? (Indeed, #3 talks about EA hubs, so Akash is clearly not referring to any particular hub.) Personally, when I read the sentence you quoted I nodded in agreement, because it resonates with my experience living both in places with lots of EAs (Oxford, Nassau) and in places with very few EAs (Buenos Aires, Tokyo, etc.), and noticing the difference this makes. I never lived in Berkeley and don’t interact much with people from that hub.
I think there’s probably not that much we’d disagree on about what people should be doing and my comment was more of a “feeling/intuitions/vague uncomfortableness” thing rather than anything well-thought out because of a few reasons I might flesh out into something more coherent at some point in the future.