PISE follows the tiered approach (which is the default for any student organization in the Netherlands). There, the board is involved with strategy and day-to-day operations, active members are part of one of the organizing committees that focus on careers/socials/marketing or some other topic, and passive members just join events.
However, I can definitely relate to the inclusive vs exclusive issue. When we first had low barriers to entry, some people became active members without reading up too much about EA. Later in the year, conversations were sometimes diluted when some participants had no more EA knowledge than the basics. On the other hand, some of the members that showed the greatest progress over the year, would not have been accepted to PISE in the first place if there had been a higher barrier to entry.
My feeling on this is that there is a distinction between how many people could become interested and how many people we have capacity for right now. The number of people who have the potential to become engaged, have a deep understanding of the ideas along with how they relate to existing conclusions and feel comfortable pushing back on any conclusions that they find less persuasive in a transparent way is much larger than the number of people we can actually engage deeply like this.
I feel like a low barrier of entry is great when your existing membership is almost all really engaged people with really nuanced views. A newcomer can come in, and with the right mindset, the group can quickly cross inferential gaps with them as they arise because everyone agrees on the fundamental principles (even if there might be disagreement on final cause prioritisation etc). Once a group is 50% newcomers though, it becomes extremely difficult to cross those inferential gaps because conversations are constantly getting side-tracked from the concepts and ideas that are relatively robust that are foundational to so many of the conclusions (even though there is still plenty to debate once you’re past the foundational premises).
I feel like the barrier of entry should shift depending on the current composition. When there are less newcomers, I think that it’s good to have a low barrier of entry and put a tonne of effort into including pretty much anyone who is curious who buys into the idea that helping others is a worthwhile use of their efforts and that maybe a scientific method-y kind of way of approaching this could be good too.
Once a group is more newcomers than people who have a deep understanding of the existing ideas and concepts, then I think crossing inferential gaps is too hard for it to be productive to try and be inclusive to even more newcomers. I think then prioritising whoever is reading the most and finding it the most natural or whoever already understands the ideas makes a little more sense (on the margin).
It’s less of a a question of who has the potential to understand things, it’s more a question of whether the group has the capacity to give them that understanding.
PISE follows the tiered approach (which is the default for any student organization in the Netherlands). There, the board is involved with strategy and day-to-day operations, active members are part of one of the organizing committees that focus on careers/socials/marketing or some other topic, and passive members just join events.
However, I can definitely relate to the inclusive vs exclusive issue. When we first had low barriers to entry, some people became active members without reading up too much about EA. Later in the year, conversations were sometimes diluted when some participants had no more EA knowledge than the basics. On the other hand, some of the members that showed the greatest progress over the year, would not have been accepted to PISE in the first place if there had been a higher barrier to entry.
My feeling on this is that there is a distinction between how many people could become interested and how many people we have capacity for right now. The number of people who have the potential to become engaged, have a deep understanding of the ideas along with how they relate to existing conclusions and feel comfortable pushing back on any conclusions that they find less persuasive in a transparent way is much larger than the number of people we can actually engage deeply like this.
I feel like a low barrier of entry is great when your existing membership is almost all really engaged people with really nuanced views. A newcomer can come in, and with the right mindset, the group can quickly cross inferential gaps with them as they arise because everyone agrees on the fundamental principles (even if there might be disagreement on final cause prioritisation etc). Once a group is 50% newcomers though, it becomes extremely difficult to cross those inferential gaps because conversations are constantly getting side-tracked from the concepts and ideas that are relatively robust that are foundational to so many of the conclusions (even though there is still plenty to debate once you’re past the foundational premises).
I feel like the barrier of entry should shift depending on the current composition. When there are less newcomers, I think that it’s good to have a low barrier of entry and put a tonne of effort into including pretty much anyone who is curious who buys into the idea that helping others is a worthwhile use of their efforts and that maybe a scientific method-y kind of way of approaching this could be good too.
Once a group is more newcomers than people who have a deep understanding of the existing ideas and concepts, then I think crossing inferential gaps is too hard for it to be productive to try and be inclusive to even more newcomers. I think then prioritising whoever is reading the most and finding it the most natural or whoever already understands the ideas makes a little more sense (on the margin).
It’s less of a a question of who has the potential to understand things, it’s more a question of whether the group has the capacity to give them that understanding.