Nice! I really like the idea of EAs getting ahead by coordinating in unconventional ways.
The ideas in “Building and EA social safety net” could be indirectly encouraged by just making EA a tighter community with more close friendships. I’m pretty happy giving an EA friend a 0-interest loan, but I’d be hesitant to do that for a random EA. By e.g. organizing social events where close friendships could form, more stuff like that would happen naturally. Letting these things happen naturally also makes them harder to exploit.
One issue with this sort of thinking is in practice setting up lots of events sometimes doesn’t lead to people becoming this close. Some local communities for effective altruism have community members being roommates together, working at the same organizations, and doing all the social stuff. That waxes and wanes with how well organized it all is. Lots of EA community organizers will move from where they’re from to another city, e.g., Berkeley, and basically on both ends switching the person who takes the role of de facto event organizer means organization will stagnate as someone else gets used to doing it all. That this apparently happens often means sustaining a space in which close friendships are likely to occur is hard. Doing it consistently over multiple years in hindsight appears hard. I don’t know how good evidence there is for optimal methods in doing this.
Nice! I really like the idea of EAs getting ahead by coordinating in unconventional ways.
The ideas in “Building and EA social safety net” could be indirectly encouraged by just making EA a tighter community with more close friendships. I’m pretty happy giving an EA friend a 0-interest loan, but I’d be hesitant to do that for a random EA. By e.g. organizing social events where close friendships could form, more stuff like that would happen naturally. Letting these things happen naturally also makes them harder to exploit.
One issue with this sort of thinking is in practice setting up lots of events sometimes doesn’t lead to people becoming this close. Some local communities for effective altruism have community members being roommates together, working at the same organizations, and doing all the social stuff. That waxes and wanes with how well organized it all is. Lots of EA community organizers will move from where they’re from to another city, e.g., Berkeley, and basically on both ends switching the person who takes the role of de facto event organizer means organization will stagnate as someone else gets used to doing it all. That this apparently happens often means sustaining a space in which close friendships are likely to occur is hard. Doing it consistently over multiple years in hindsight appears hard. I don’t know how good evidence there is for optimal methods in doing this.