(fwiw I upvoted this post, because I thought it raised a lot of interesting points that are worth discussing despite disagreeing some bits).
In sum: I think your post sometimes lacks specificity which makes people think you’re talking more generally than (I suspect) you are.
Who exactly you’re proposing doesn’t buy into the agenda—this is left vague in your post. Are you envisioning 20% of people? 50%? What kinds of roles are these folks in? Is it only junior level non-technical roles or even mid-managers doing direct work?
Those details matter because I think I’d be fine with e.g. junior ops people at an AI org not fully buying the specific research agenda of that org, but I’m not sure about the other roles here.
Who do you count as the EA community or movement? I think if we are thinking big tent EA where you have people with the needed skills for the movement but not necessarily a deep understanding of EA, I’m more sympathetic to this argument. But if we’re thinking core community EA where many people are doing things like community building or for whom EA is a bit part of their lives, I feel much more uncomfortable with people deferring to authority—perhaps I feel particularly uncomfortable with people in the meta space deferring to authority.
I vibe with the sentiment “particularly uncomfortable with people in the meta space deferring to authority”, but I think it’s too strong. e.g. I think it’s valuable for people to be able to organize big events, and delegate tasks among the event organizers.
Maybe I’m more like “I feel particularly uncomfortable with people in the meta space deferring without high bandwidth, and without explicit understanding that that’s what they’re doing”.
I think the important thing with delegation which Howie pointed out, is that there is a social contract in the example you gave of event organising between the volunteer / volunteer manager or employer / contractor where I’d expect that in the process of choosing to sign up for this job, the person makes a decision based on their own thinking (or epistemic deference) to contribute to this event—I think this is what you mean by high bandwidth?
If so, I feel in agreement with the statement: “I feel particularly uncomfortable with people in the meta space delegating choice without high bandwidth, and without explicit understanding that that’s what they’re doing”
I’m fine with junior ops people at an AI org being not really atall bought into the specific research agenda.
I’m fine with senior technical people not being fully bought in—in the sense that maybe they think if it were up to them a different agenda would be slightly higher value, or that they’d go about things a slightly different way. I think we should expect that people have slightly different takes, and don’t get the luxury of ironing all of those differences out, and that’s pretty healthy. (Of course I like them having a go at discussing differences of opinion, but I don’t think failure to resolve a difference means that the they need to adopt the party line or go find a different org.)
That makes sense, and feels mostly in line with what I would imagine.
Maybe this is a small point (since there will be many more junior than senior roles in the long run) : I feel like the senior group would likely join an org for many other reasons than deference to authority (e.g. not wanting to found an org themselves, wanting to work with particular people they feel they could get a good work environment from, or because of epistemic deference). It seems like in practice those would be much stronger motivating reasons than authority, and I’m having a hard time picturing someone doing this in practice.
(fwiw I upvoted this post, because I thought it raised a lot of interesting points that are worth discussing despite disagreeing some bits).
In sum: I think your post sometimes lacks specificity which makes people think you’re talking more generally than (I suspect) you are.
Who exactly you’re proposing doesn’t buy into the agenda—this is left vague in your post. Are you envisioning 20% of people? 50%? What kinds of roles are these folks in? Is it only junior level non-technical roles or even mid-managers doing direct work?
Those details matter because I think I’d be fine with e.g. junior ops people at an AI org not fully buying the specific research agenda of that org, but I’m not sure about the other roles here.
Who do you count as the EA community or movement? I think if we are thinking big tent EA where you have people with the needed skills for the movement but not necessarily a deep understanding of EA, I’m more sympathetic to this argument. But if we’re thinking core community EA where many people are doing things like community building or for whom EA is a bit part of their lives, I feel much more uncomfortable with people deferring to authority—perhaps I feel particularly uncomfortable with people in the meta space deferring to authority.
I vibe with the sentiment “particularly uncomfortable with people in the meta space deferring to authority”, but I think it’s too strong. e.g. I think it’s valuable for people to be able to organize big events, and delegate tasks among the event organizers.
Maybe I’m more like “I feel particularly uncomfortable with people in the meta space deferring without high bandwidth, and without explicit understanding that that’s what they’re doing”.
I think the important thing with delegation which Howie pointed out, is that there is a social contract in the example you gave of event organising between the volunteer / volunteer manager or employer / contractor where I’d expect that in the process of choosing to sign up for this job, the person makes a decision based on their own thinking (or epistemic deference) to contribute to this event—I think this is what you mean by high bandwidth?
If so, I feel in agreement with the statement: “I feel particularly uncomfortable with people in the meta space delegating choice without high bandwidth, and without explicit understanding that that’s what they’re doing”
I’m fine with junior ops people at an AI org being not really at all bought into the specific research agenda.
I’m fine with senior technical people not being fully bought in—in the sense that maybe they think if it were up to them a different agenda would be slightly higher value, or that they’d go about things a slightly different way. I think we should expect that people have slightly different takes, and don’t get the luxury of ironing all of those differences out, and that’s pretty healthy. (Of course I like them having a go at discussing differences of opinion, but I don’t think failure to resolve a difference means that the they need to adopt the party line or go find a different org.)
That makes sense, and feels mostly in line with what I would imagine.
Maybe this is a small point (since there will be many more junior than senior roles in the long run) : I feel like the senior group would likely join an org for many other reasons than deference to authority (e.g. not wanting to found an org themselves, wanting to work with particular people they feel they could get a good work environment from, or because of epistemic deference). It seems like in practice those would be much stronger motivating reasons than authority, and I’m having a hard time picturing someone doing this in practice.