The “weirdness points” idea describes a real dynamic, for sure. But it isn’t everything. For a lot of EAs, an even more precious currency might be “sustainable motivation points”. For that reason, EA usually does not recommend donating so much that you live in poverty, or working yourself ragged with no time to relax, but instead preaches a more moderate and achievable path of sustainable donations & effort, which can coexist with a pleasant life. By the same token, EA tries to push people to be more ambitious and seek more influence over the world (through career success and etc), but this isn’t a totalizing principle, and I don’t think anyone should interpret EA as making an oppressive demand that they subjugate important parts of their personality/presentation/culture/etc in order to become the optimal ladder-climbing achiever. People care about self-expression in many different ways (and, like you say, in different overall amounts), so it’s your own call what tradeoffs to make. But IMO, if EA is telling us to be more prestigious/normal/etc, we should interpret that as a friendly marginal nudge, not a totalizing moral obligation.
+1 that “sustainable motivation points” are important
Additionally, I’ve always found it odd to imagine “weirdness points” as a totally fixed quantity. This was echoed in comments on the original post. While I agree that people have a limited tolerance for having their social expectations violated, and violating their expectations can have consequences between “they take you a little less seriously” and “they judge you as untrustworthy, unpredictable, or otherwise bad”, it’s not like those social expectations are completely invariant. For example, in some social circumstances is possible to set people’s expectations, and increase their tolerance for you being weird.
ETA: it feels worth noting that much of the commentary on the post You have a set amount of “weirdness points”. Spend them wisely., both on the EA forum and on LW (where is was cross-posted) was criticism of the concept of weirdness points. One major criticism was that “don’t be weird” probably matters for advocates (since much of their work is to make their ideas more mainstream) but probably matters a lot less in other career paths.
The “weirdness points” idea describes a real dynamic, for sure. But it isn’t everything. For a lot of EAs, an even more precious currency might be “sustainable motivation points”. For that reason, EA usually does not recommend donating so much that you live in poverty, or working yourself ragged with no time to relax, but instead preaches a more moderate and achievable path of sustainable donations & effort, which can coexist with a pleasant life. By the same token, EA tries to push people to be more ambitious and seek more influence over the world (through career success and etc), but this isn’t a totalizing principle, and I don’t think anyone should interpret EA as making an oppressive demand that they subjugate important parts of their personality/presentation/culture/etc in order to become the optimal ladder-climbing achiever. People care about self-expression in many different ways (and, like you say, in different overall amounts), so it’s your own call what tradeoffs to make. But IMO, if EA is telling us to be more prestigious/normal/etc, we should interpret that as a friendly marginal nudge, not a totalizing moral obligation.
+1 that “sustainable motivation points” are important
Additionally, I’ve always found it odd to imagine “weirdness points” as a totally fixed quantity. This was echoed in comments on the original post. While I agree that people have a limited tolerance for having their social expectations violated, and violating their expectations can have consequences between “they take you a little less seriously” and “they judge you as untrustworthy, unpredictable, or otherwise bad”, it’s not like those social expectations are completely invariant. For example, in some social circumstances is possible to set people’s expectations, and increase their tolerance for you being weird.
ETA: it feels worth noting that much of the commentary on the post You have a set amount of “weirdness points”. Spend them wisely., both on the EA forum and on LW (where is was cross-posted) was criticism of the concept of weirdness points. One major criticism was that “don’t be weird” probably matters for advocates (since much of their work is to make their ideas more mainstream) but probably matters a lot less in other career paths.