Things I’d like to try more to make conversations better
Running gather towns / town halls when there’s a big conversation happening in EA
I thought the Less Wrong gather town on FTX was good and I’m glad it happened
I’ve run a few internal-to-CEA gather towns on tricky issues so far and I’m glad I did, though they didn’t tend to be super well attended.
Offering calls / conversations when a specific conversation is getting more heated or difficult
I haven’t done this yet myself, but it’s been on my mind for a while, and I was just given this advice in a work context, which reminded me.
If a back and forth on the forum isn’t going well, it seems really plausible that having a face to face call, or offering to mediate one for other people (this one I’m more skeptical of, especially without having any experience in mediation, though I do think there can be value add here) will make that conversation go better, give space for people to be better understood and so on.
An off-beat but related idea
Using podcasts where people can explain their thinking and decision making, including in situations where they wouldn’t do the same thing again, since podcasts allow for longer more natural explanations
Things I’d like to try more to make conversations better
Running gather towns / town halls when there’s a big conversation happening in EA
I thought the Less Wrong gather town on FTX was good and I’m glad it happened
I’ve run a few internal-to-CEA gather towns on tricky issues so far and I’m glad I did, though they didn’t tend to be super well attended.
Offering calls / conversations when a specific conversation is getting more heated or difficult
I haven’t done this yet myself, but it’s been on my mind for a while, and I was just given this advice in a work context, which reminded me.
If a back and forth on the forum isn’t going well, it seems really plausible that having a face to face call, or offering to mediate one for other people (this one I’m more skeptical of, especially without having any experience in mediation, though I do think there can be value add here) will make that conversation go better, give space for people to be better understood and so on.
An off-beat but related idea
Using podcasts where people can explain their thinking and decision making, including in situations where they wouldn’t do the same thing again, since podcasts allow for longer more natural explanations