Re divergence, there will always be people who want to move the movement in a different direction. More democracy just means more transparency, more reasoning in a social context,[1] more people to persuade, and a more informed membership. Hopefully, this stops bad divergence but still allows good pivots.
The downside is that everything takes longer. Honestly, this is perhaps my biggest worry about making things more democratic: it slows everything down. So, for example, the pivot from GHD to longtermism in EA’s second wave would probably have taken much longer (or might not have occurred at all). If longtermism is true, and if it was right for EA to make that pivot, then slowing that pivot down would have been a disaster.
I don’t think I understand why you think having a voting membership would mean more social events. Could you explain it to me? I think it would make the movement more responsive to what the community thinks is best for EA, and I think there’s a case to be made that thousands of brains are better than dozens. This might mean more social events, but it might mean fewer. Let’s have the community figure it out through democracy.[2]
Yes, people can definitely hold people to account without being members, but they have far less ‘teeth’. They can say what they think on the forum, but that’s very different from being able to elect the board members, or pass judgements as part of a general assembly.
Re divergence, there will always be people who want to move the movement in a different direction. More democracy just means more transparency, more reasoning in a social context,[1] more people to persuade, and a more informed membership. Hopefully, this stops bad divergence but still allows good pivots.
The downside is that everything takes longer. Honestly, this is perhaps my biggest worry about making things more democratic: it slows everything down. So, for example, the pivot from GHD to longtermism in EA’s second wave would probably have taken much longer (or might not have occurred at all). If longtermism is true, and if it was right for EA to make that pivot, then slowing that pivot down would have been a disaster.
I don’t think I understand why you think having a voting membership would mean more social events. Could you explain it to me? I think it would make the movement more responsive to what the community thinks is best for EA, and I think there’s a case to be made that thousands of brains are better than dozens. This might mean more social events, but it might mean fewer. Let’s have the community figure it out through democracy.[2]
Yes, people can definitely hold people to account without being members, but they have far less ‘teeth’. They can say what they think on the forum, but that’s very different from being able to elect the board members, or pass judgements as part of a general assembly.
See Sperber and Mercier’s ‘The Enigma of Reason’ for why this might be a good thing
Personally, I think we should do fewer purely social events, but we should do more things that are both impactful and social.