We end up seeming more deferential and hero-worshipping than we really are.
I feel like this post is missing something. I would expect one of the strongest predictors of the aforementioned behaviors to be age. Are there any people in their thirties you know who are prone to hero-worshipping?
I don’t consider hero-worshipping an EA problem as such, but a young people problem. Of course EA is full of young people!
Make sure people incoming to the community, or at the periphery of the community, are inoculated against this bias, if you spot it. Point out that people usually have a mix of good and bad ideas. Have some go-to examples of respected people’s blind spots or mistakes, at least as they appear to you.
This seems like good advice to me, but I expect it to benefit from being aware that you need to talk about these things to a young person because they are young.
This is a great point. I also think there’s a further effect, which is that older EAs were around when the current “heroes” were much-less -impressive university students or similar. Which I think leads to a much less idealising frame towards them.
But I can definitely see that if you yourself are young and you enter a movement with all these older, established, impressive people… hero-worshipping is much more tempting.
Michael—interesting point. EA is a very unusual movement in that the founders (Will MacAskill Toby Ord, etc) were very young when they launched the movement, and are still only in their mid-30s to early 40s. They got some guidance & inspiration from older philosophers (e.g. Derek Parfit, Peter Singer), but mostly they recruited people even younger than them into the movement … and then eventually some older folks like me joined as well.
So, EA’s demographics are quite youth-heavy, but there’s also much less correlation between age and prestige in EA than in most moral/activist movements.
Hmm I find the correlation plausible but I’m not sure I’m moved to act differently by it. I wouldn’t guess it’s a strong enough effect that all young people need this conversation or all older people don’t, so I’m still going to focus on what people say to judge whether they are making this mistake or not.
Also, to the extent that we’re worried that the illusion of consensus harms our credibility, that’s going to be more of a problem with older people, I expect.
I feel like this post is missing something. I would expect one of the strongest predictors of the aforementioned behaviors to be age. Are there any people in their thirties you know who are prone to hero-worshipping?
I don’t consider hero-worshipping an EA problem as such, but a young people problem. Of course EA is full of young people!
This seems like good advice to me, but I expect it to benefit from being aware that you need to talk about these things to a young person because they are young.
This is a great point. I also think there’s a further effect, which is that older EAs were around when the current “heroes” were much-less -impressive university students or similar. Which I think leads to a much less idealising frame towards them.
But I can definitely see that if you yourself are young and you enter a movement with all these older, established, impressive people… hero-worshipping is much more tempting.
Michael—interesting point. EA is a very unusual movement in that the founders (Will MacAskill Toby Ord, etc) were very young when they launched the movement, and are still only in their mid-30s to early 40s. They got some guidance & inspiration from older philosophers (e.g. Derek Parfit, Peter Singer), but mostly they recruited people even younger than them into the movement … and then eventually some older folks like me joined as well.
So, EA’s demographics are quite youth-heavy, but there’s also much less correlation between age and prestige in EA than in most moral/activist movements.
Hmm I find the correlation plausible but I’m not sure I’m moved to act differently by it. I wouldn’t guess it’s a strong enough effect that all young people need this conversation or all older people don’t, so I’m still going to focus on what people say to judge whether they are making this mistake or not.
Also, to the extent that we’re worried that the illusion of consensus harms our credibility, that’s going to be more of a problem with older people, I expect.