I think in community building, it is a good trajectory to start with strong homogeneity and strong reference to ‘stars’ that act as reference points and communication hubs, and then to incrementally soften and expand as time passes. It is a much harder or even impossible to do this in reverse, as this risks to yield a fuzzy community that lacks the mechanisms to attract talent and converge on anything.
With that in mind, I think some of the rigidity of EA thinking in the past might have been good, but the time has come to re-think how the EA community should evolve from here on out.
I think in community building, it is a good trajectory to start with strong homogeneity and strong reference to ‘stars’ that act as reference points and communication hubs, and then to incrementally soften and expand as time passes. It is a much harder or even impossible to do this in reverse, as this risks to yield a fuzzy community that lacks the mechanisms to attract talent and converge on anything.
With that in mind, I think some of the rigidity of EA thinking in the past might have been good, but the time has come to re-think how the EA community should evolve from here on out.