Great post, possibly essential reading for community-builders; adding a link to this in several of my drafts + my retreat post. I think another important thing for CBers is to create a culture where changing your mind is high-status and having strongly held opinions without good reasons is not, which is basically the opposite of the broader culture (though I think EA does a good job of this overall). Ways I’ve tried to do this in settings with EA newcomers:
1) excitedly changing your mind—thinking of a Robi Rahmanism “The last time I changed my mind about something was right now.” This doesn’t just model openness; it also makes changing your mind a two-way street, rather than you having all the answers and they just need to learn from you, which I think makes it less identity-threatening or embarrassing to change your mind.
2) saying, in conversations with already-bought-in EAs that are in front of newcomers, things like “Hmm, I think you’re under-updating.” This shows that we expect longtime EAs to keep evaluating new evidence (and that we are comfortable disagreeing with each other) rather than just to memorize a catechism.
Strongly agree, fostering a culture of openmindedness (love the example from Robi) and the expectation of updating from more experienced EAs seems good. In the updating case, I think making sure that everyone knows what “updating” means is a priority (sounds pretty weird otherwise). Maybe we should talk about introductory Bayesian probability in fellowships and retreats.
Great post, possibly essential reading for community-builders; adding a link to this in several of my drafts + my retreat post. I think another important thing for CBers is to create a culture where changing your mind is high-status and having strongly held opinions without good reasons is not, which is basically the opposite of the broader culture (though I think EA does a good job of this overall). Ways I’ve tried to do this in settings with EA newcomers:
1) excitedly changing your mind—thinking of a Robi Rahmanism “The last time I changed my mind about something was right now.” This doesn’t just model openness; it also makes changing your mind a two-way street, rather than you having all the answers and they just need to learn from you, which I think makes it less identity-threatening or embarrassing to change your mind.
2) saying, in conversations with already-bought-in EAs that are in front of newcomers, things like “Hmm, I think you’re under-updating.” This shows that we expect longtime EAs to keep evaluating new evidence (and that we are comfortable disagreeing with each other) rather than just to memorize a catechism.
Strongly agree, fostering a culture of openmindedness (love the example from Robi) and the expectation of updating from more experienced EAs seems good. In the updating case, I think making sure that everyone knows what “updating” means is a priority (sounds pretty weird otherwise). Maybe we should talk about introductory Bayesian probability in fellowships and retreats.
Yes, true, avoiding jargon is important!