Finding meaningful roles for ordinary folks (‘mediocrities’) is a big challenge for almost every human organization, movement, and subculture. It’s not unique to EA—although EA does tend to be quite elitist (which is reasonable, given that many of its core insights and values require a very high level of intelligence and openness to understand.)
The usual strategy for finding roles for ordinary people in organizations is to create hierarchical structures in which the ordinary people are bossed around/influenced/deployed by more capable leaders. This requires a willingness to accept hierarchies as ethically and pragmatically legitimate—which tends to be more of a politically conservative thing, and might conflict with EA’s tendency to attract anti-hierarchical liberals.
Of course, such hierarchies don’t need to involve full-time paid employment. Every social club, parent-teacher association, neighborhood association, amateur sports team, activist group, etc involves hierarchies of part-time volunteers. They don’t expect full-time commitments. So they’re often pretty good at including people who are average both in terms of their traits and abilities, and in terms of the time they have available for doing stuff, beyond their paid jobs, child care, and other duties.
It’s not unique to EA—although EA does tend to be quite elitist (which is reasonable, given that many of its core insights and values require a very high level of intelligence and openness to understand.)
Which parts of EA would you say require “a very high level of intelligence...to understand”? :)
I suspect this thread would be more productive if “very high” was defined more precisely before he answers. I suspect top 30%, top 10% and top 1% might have very different answers.
Would be bold to assume the leaders are “more capable” in hierarchical structures! Maybe it’s more true in the private sector than in (say) government, though.
mikbp: good question.
Finding meaningful roles for ordinary folks (‘mediocrities’) is a big challenge for almost every human organization, movement, and subculture. It’s not unique to EA—although EA does tend to be quite elitist (which is reasonable, given that many of its core insights and values require a very high level of intelligence and openness to understand.)
The usual strategy for finding roles for ordinary people in organizations is to create hierarchical structures in which the ordinary people are bossed around/influenced/deployed by more capable leaders. This requires a willingness to accept hierarchies as ethically and pragmatically legitimate—which tends to be more of a politically conservative thing, and might conflict with EA’s tendency to attract anti-hierarchical liberals.
Of course, such hierarchies don’t need to involve full-time paid employment. Every social club, parent-teacher association, neighborhood association, amateur sports team, activist group, etc involves hierarchies of part-time volunteers. They don’t expect full-time commitments. So they’re often pretty good at including people who are average both in terms of their traits and abilities, and in terms of the time they have available for doing stuff, beyond their paid jobs, child care, and other duties.
Which parts of EA would you say require “a very high level of intelligence...to understand”? :)
I suspect this thread would be more productive if “very high” was defined more precisely before he answers. I suspect top 30%, top 10% and top 1% might have very different answers.
Would be bold to assume the leaders are “more capable” in hierarchical structures! Maybe it’s more true in the private sector than in (say) government, though.