Thanks for writing this! I hadn’t thought about high engagement levels being more stable than medium or low ones, and that seems right to me. I agree that having people spend time with highly-engaged people is likely to be a good way to make them more engaged. And I definitely agree with your points about fidelity and epistemics being particularly important.
I’m uncertain some of your suggestions, though. You suggest inviting a few “promising” people to socials where most people are highly-engaged. I worry that doing this could result in a “cool kids club” in-group vibe, where people who haven’t been invited to join might not feel welcome in or good enough for EA. There are benefits to this—it might make people more strongly desire to join the highly-engaged group—it’s not obvious to me that it’s worth the cost of exclusivity.
Besides the “why am I not invited” cost, there’s another cost that you point out: only adding a few new people limits how quickly the group can grow. I agree that your approach would fairly reliably create new HEAs, but my guess is we’re early enough in working out how to grow EA that it’s worth looking for a more scalable approach that (a) isn’t exclusive and (b) has a better HEA to new person ratio. For example, 1:1 mentorship is somewhere in between your suggestion (several HEAs to each new person) and so-called “fellowships” (several new people to each HEA).
Thanks for writing this! I hadn’t thought about high engagement levels being more stable than medium or low ones, and that seems right to me. I agree that having people spend time with highly-engaged people is likely to be a good way to make them more engaged. And I definitely agree with your points about fidelity and epistemics being particularly important.
I’m uncertain some of your suggestions, though. You suggest inviting a few “promising” people to socials where most people are highly-engaged. I worry that doing this could result in a “cool kids club” in-group vibe, where people who haven’t been invited to join might not feel welcome in or good enough for EA. There are benefits to this—it might make people more strongly desire to join the highly-engaged group—it’s not obvious to me that it’s worth the cost of exclusivity.
Besides the “why am I not invited” cost, there’s another cost that you point out: only adding a few new people limits how quickly the group can grow. I agree that your approach would fairly reliably create new HEAs, but my guess is we’re early enough in working out how to grow EA that it’s worth looking for a more scalable approach that (a) isn’t exclusive and (b) has a better HEA to new person ratio. For example, 1:1 mentorship is somewhere in between your suggestion (several HEAs to each new person) and so-called “fellowships” (several new people to each HEA).