Thanks, Nikola! +1 on so much of this. A few specific thoughts:
I often hear people say things like “they’re so cool” or “they’re superhuman” about individuals who are highly engaged with EA. Saying this makes newcomers want to emulate these individuals more and become more engaged to get some of that sweet, sweet status.
I agree that having high-status role models can be really inspiring/motivating. At the same time, I think some of these comments can have unintended harmful effects. I’ve seen a few ways this can go wrong:
“I’m not superhuman, so this isn’t for me”—The “some people are super cool/superhuman” mentality can reinforce the idea that there are “Super Cool/Smart/Amazing people” and then “All of the Regular People.” I worry that people—especially newcomers—might assume they’re in the latter category and then get turned off.
“This feels weird—why are they worshipping these people?” I think a lot of people are generally put off by hero-worship/cults of personality. This is especially true of people with high epistemic standards. I worry that these people will here “X is superhuman”, see a bunch of people nodding along, and then think, “wow, this community is weird and puts people on pedestals. Not for me!”
An idea for how to solve this (epistemic status: uncertain and hastily written)-- emphasize the actionsthat the high-status people are taking. My guess is that it’s generally better for people to tie status to actions rather than people. But talking about people can be a good way to help people see which actions are considered “high-status.”
Ex: Instead of “X is superhuman”, I currently prefer the framing “I really admire X. X is super agentic and always looking for ways to have a higher impact. As soon as X changed their mind about their cause prioritization, they started thinking seriously about changing their career plan.” I think the latter frame places the emphasis on specific concrete things the person is doing—and ideally these are things that other members could do (i.e., admiring someone for being agentic signals “you should try to be more agentic”, whereas admiring someone for being naturally smart/talented/gifted might be less likely to foster motivation to grow/improve.)
Would love to know what you think about this! (And to be clear, I don’t think your initial statement was incompatible with any of this. It’s quite possible you agree with everything & didn’t want to use space to go into all of this).
The second point comes mostly from intuition: If you imagine a highly engaged person surrounded by non-engaged people and a non-engaged person surrounded by highly engaged people, the non-engaged person’s engagement will probably increase faster than the engaged person’s engagement will decrease.
Agreed. I also think this is one of the biggest flaws of the current fellowship model. At Penn, my estimate is that roughly 20% of fellows were moderately-to-highly engaged (i.e, taking the ideas seriously & considering changes to their studies/careers).
In practice, this meant that a given fellowship group often had one promising person, a facilitator, and 3-4 people who weren’t as engaged. I think this had the effect of making the promising person less excited (to borrow your analogy, “few people want to be more Catholic than the other bishops.”)
A few possible ways to solve this: Filtering more at the beginning (e.g., having 1-on-1s with fellowship applicants and coming up with a good evaluation system) placing people into fellowship groups based on how likely they are to be engaged (I think some other unis do this), or experimenting with alternatives to the intro fellowship. I’d be curious if you have any thoughts on this challenge & these possible solutions.
Strong +1 (+2?) on residencies. I think being around Sydney/Thomas was quite influential for me/other Penn organizers. My guess is that aggressively tabling (not just at club fairs, but pretty much every day for the first few weeks of the semester) and 1-on-1s (with potential organizers and other people who seemed engaged) were the two most important components of the residency. Would be curious to hear what you think the most important parts of the Cambridge residencies.
Strong agree with the idea that we should emphasize actions people are taking and avoid hero-worship-like phrases. I was mostly using my own mental shorthand when I said “superhuman” and forgot to translate to other-people-speak.
Regarding the makeup of fellowship groups, I think probably giving people an option to attend some socials which are generally attended by highly engaged people could be good? So that, if there’s a lack of engagement in their cohorts, they can make up for it by finding a way to interact with engaged people somewhere else.
Haven’t though much about what was most important about the Cambridge residencies, but some important aspects are definitely:
Encouraging us to think big (aim for us one day becoming as good as the best groups, and then even better)
Providing advice and support with organizing
Holding intro talks and events (Kuhan has a very good intro presentation), and having one-on-ones with promising organizers
Thanks, Nikola! +1 on so much of this. A few specific thoughts:
I agree that having high-status role models can be really inspiring/motivating. At the same time, I think some of these comments can have unintended harmful effects. I’ve seen a few ways this can go wrong:
“I’m not superhuman, so this isn’t for me”—The “some people are super cool/superhuman” mentality can reinforce the idea that there are “Super Cool/Smart/Amazing people” and then “All of the Regular People.” I worry that people—especially newcomers—might assume they’re in the latter category and then get turned off.
“This feels weird—why are they worshipping these people?” I think a lot of people are generally put off by hero-worship/cults of personality. This is especially true of people with high epistemic standards. I worry that these people will here “X is superhuman”, see a bunch of people nodding along, and then think, “wow, this community is weird and puts people on pedestals. Not for me!”
An idea for how to solve this (epistemic status: uncertain and hastily written)-- emphasize the actions that the high-status people are taking. My guess is that it’s generally better for people to tie status to actions rather than people. But talking about people can be a good way to help people see which actions are considered “high-status.”
Ex: Instead of “X is superhuman”, I currently prefer the framing “I really admire X. X is super agentic and always looking for ways to have a higher impact. As soon as X changed their mind about their cause prioritization, they started thinking seriously about changing their career plan.” I think the latter frame places the emphasis on specific concrete things the person is doing—and ideally these are things that other members could do (i.e., admiring someone for being agentic signals “you should try to be more agentic”, whereas admiring someone for being naturally smart/talented/gifted might be less likely to foster motivation to grow/improve.)
Would love to know what you think about this! (And to be clear, I don’t think your initial statement was incompatible with any of this. It’s quite possible you agree with everything & didn’t want to use space to go into all of this).
Agreed. I also think this is one of the biggest flaws of the current fellowship model. At Penn, my estimate is that roughly 20% of fellows were moderately-to-highly engaged (i.e, taking the ideas seriously & considering changes to their studies/careers).
In practice, this meant that a given fellowship group often had one promising person, a facilitator, and 3-4 people who weren’t as engaged. I think this had the effect of making the promising person less excited (to borrow your analogy, “few people want to be more Catholic than the other bishops.”)
A few possible ways to solve this: Filtering more at the beginning (e.g., having 1-on-1s with fellowship applicants and coming up with a good evaluation system) placing people into fellowship groups based on how likely they are to be engaged (I think some other unis do this), or experimenting with alternatives to the intro fellowship. I’d be curious if you have any thoughts on this challenge & these possible solutions.
Strong +1 (+2?) on residencies. I think being around Sydney/Thomas was quite influential for me/other Penn organizers. My guess is that aggressively tabling (not just at club fairs, but pretty much every day for the first few weeks of the semester) and 1-on-1s (with potential organizers and other people who seemed engaged) were the two most important components of the residency. Would be curious to hear what you think the most important parts of the Cambridge residencies.
Strong agree with the idea that we should emphasize actions people are taking and avoid hero-worship-like phrases. I was mostly using my own mental shorthand when I said “superhuman” and forgot to translate to other-people-speak.
Regarding the makeup of fellowship groups, I think probably giving people an option to attend some socials which are generally attended by highly engaged people could be good? So that, if there’s a lack of engagement in their cohorts, they can make up for it by finding a way to interact with engaged people somewhere else.
Haven’t though much about what was most important about the Cambridge residencies, but some important aspects are definitely:
Encouraging us to think big (aim for us one day becoming as good as the best groups, and then even better)
Providing advice and support with organizing
Holding intro talks and events (Kuhan has a very good intro presentation), and having one-on-ones with promising organizers