Relatedly, be wary of cutting ties to non-EA friends, social spaces, hobbies, or other sources of meaning. If you don’t have many such ties (e.g. because you’ve just moved to a new place), actively foster new ones. This isn’t just so that you have something to catch you if you end up wanting more distance from EA—it’s also an important psychological buffer to have in place to ensure that you feel able to think clearly about EA ideas, social pressures, and so on in the first place. If your life is set up such that your brain subconsciously thinks that criticizing EA could alienate you from your entire support structure, you’re likely to have a much harder time thinking independently.
When I see new peoples setting themselves up so they only spend time with other EAs, I feel worried.
It could be good to make ‘have a social life outside’ a norm.
I’ve tried to do this via keeping in touch with my friends from university, which I’ve found really valuable. I know others who’ve done it via a social scene around a hobby, or by having flatmates who aren’t EAs.
I agree with this in principle… But there’s a delicious irony in the idea of EA leadership (apols for singling you out in this way Ben) now realising “yes this is a risk; we should try and convince people to do the opposite of it”, and not realising the risks inherent in that.
The fundamental issue is the way the community—mostly full of young people—often looks to / overrelies on EA leadership for ideas of causes to dedicate themselves to, but also ideas about how to live their life. This isn’t necessarily the EA leadership fault, but it’s not as if EA has never made claims about how people should live their lives before; from donating 10% of their income to productivity ‘hacks’ which can become an industry in themselves.
I think there are many ways to put the wisdom of Helen’s post into action, and one of them might be for more EA leadership to be more open to saying what it doesn’t know. Both in terms of the epistemics but the whole how to live your life stuff. I’m not claiming EA leaders act like some kind of gurus—far from it in fact—but I think some community members often regard them as such. But one thing I think it would be great is to hear more EA leaders coming out with a tone about EA ideas like “honestly, I don’t know—I’m just on this journey trying to figure things out myself, here’s the direction I’m trying to move to”.
I say this for two reasons: 1) because, knowing lots of people in leadership positions, I know this is how a lot of them feel both epistemically and in terms of how to live your life as an EA but it’s not said in public; and 2) I think knowing this has made me feel a lot more healthy psychological distance from EA, because it lowers the likelihood of putting leaders on a pedestal / losing my desire to think independently.
[“We’re just kids feeling our way in the dark of a cold, uncaring universe trying to inch carefully towards ending all suffering and maximising pleasure of all beings everywhere”. New tag-line?]
When I see new people setting themselves up so they only spend time with other EAs, I feel worried.
When you see this happen, is it usually because EA fills up someone’s limited social schedule (such that they regretfully have to miss other events), or because they actively drop other social things in favor of EA? I’m surprised to see the phrase “setting themselves up”, because it implies the latter.
I also wonder how common this is. Even when I worked at CEA, it seems like nearly all of my coworkers had active social lives/friend groups that weren’t especially intertwined with EA. And none of us were in college (where I’d expect people to have much more active social lives).
When I see new peoples setting themselves up so they only spend time with other EAs, I feel worried.
It could be good to make ‘have a social life outside’ a norm.
I’ve tried to do this via keeping in touch with my friends from university, which I’ve found really valuable. I know others who’ve done it via a social scene around a hobby, or by having flatmates who aren’t EAs.
I agree with this in principle… But there’s a delicious irony in the idea of EA leadership (apols for singling you out in this way Ben) now realising “yes this is a risk; we should try and convince people to do the opposite of it”, and not realising the risks inherent in that.
The fundamental issue is the way the community—mostly full of young people—often looks to / overrelies on EA leadership for ideas of causes to dedicate themselves to, but also ideas about how to live their life. This isn’t necessarily the EA leadership fault, but it’s not as if EA has never made claims about how people should live their lives before; from donating 10% of their income to productivity ‘hacks’ which can become an industry in themselves.
I think there are many ways to put the wisdom of Helen’s post into action, and one of them might be for more EA leadership to be more open to saying what it doesn’t know. Both in terms of the epistemics but the whole how to live your life stuff. I’m not claiming EA leaders act like some kind of gurus—far from it in fact—but I think some community members often regard them as such. But one thing I think it would be great is to hear more EA leaders coming out with a tone about EA ideas like “honestly, I don’t know—I’m just on this journey trying to figure things out myself, here’s the direction I’m trying to move to”.
I say this for two reasons: 1) because, knowing lots of people in leadership positions, I know this is how a lot of them feel both epistemically and in terms of how to live your life as an EA but it’s not said in public; and 2) I think knowing this has made me feel a lot more healthy psychological distance from EA, because it lowers the likelihood of putting leaders on a pedestal / losing my desire to think independently.
[“We’re just kids feeling our way in the dark of a cold, uncaring universe trying to inch carefully towards ending all suffering and maximising pleasure of all beings everywhere”. New tag-line?]
When you see this happen, is it usually because EA fills up someone’s limited social schedule (such that they regretfully have to miss other events), or because they actively drop other social things in favor of EA? I’m surprised to see the phrase “setting themselves up”, because it implies the latter.
I also wonder how common this is. Even when I worked at CEA, it seems like nearly all of my coworkers had active social lives/friend groups that weren’t especially intertwined with EA. And none of us were in college (where I’d expect people to have much more active social lives).