Ben, could you elaborate on how important you think representativeness is? I ask, because the gist of what you’re saying is that it was bad the leaders’ priorities were unrepresentative before, which is why it’s good there is now more alignment. But this alignment has been achieved by the priorities of the community changing, rather than the other way around.
If one thought EA leaders should represent the current community’s priorities, then the fact the current community’s priorities had been changed—and changed, presumably, by the leaders—would seem to be a cause for remorse, not celebration.
As a further comment, if representativeness is a problem the simple way to solve this would be by inviting people to the leaders’ forum to make it more representative. This seems easier than supposing current leaders should change their priorities (or their views on what they should be for the community).
I’m not aiming to take a stance on how important representativeness is. My goal is to get people to focus on what I see as the bigger issue we face today: how should we design a community when the new members and the “middle” have mainstream cause priorities and the “core” have (some) unusual ones?
Ben, could you elaborate on how important you think representativeness is? I ask, because the gist of what you’re saying is that it was bad the leaders’ priorities were unrepresentative before, which is why it’s good there is now more alignment. But this alignment has been achieved by the priorities of the community changing, rather than the other way around.
If one thought EA leaders should represent the current community’s priorities, then the fact the current community’s priorities had been changed—and changed, presumably, by the leaders—would seem to be a cause for remorse, not celebration.
As a further comment, if representativeness is a problem the simple way to solve this would be by inviting people to the leaders’ forum to make it more representative. This seems easier than supposing current leaders should change their priorities (or their views on what they should be for the community).
I’m not aiming to take a stance on how important representativeness is. My goal is to get people to focus on what I see as the bigger issue we face today: how should we design a community when the new members and the “middle” have mainstream cause priorities and the “core” have (some) unusual ones?