I think I broadly agree. It would also help with attracting actual professionals. The “bar to entry” decision is talking price, but I am generally interested in it. The thing we lose is the ability to say is “Well, that person wasn’t REALLY EA” but the thing we gain is the ability to say is “Well, that person was kicked out of EA/never joined” or something like that when talking about a bad actor who has not acted in an EA way but has connections to the community. I don’t think that should be our main consideration, but it is worthwhile to know that the lever exists to distance ourselves from bad actors. My main consideration here is that it does look more serious, I’ve written before about Rotary and AIESEC and their membership, and how being a member has obligations and is a much clearer thing than EA movement as is.
On the other hand, I suppose in universities where EA clubs are university clubs they do have that more formal form, so perhaps we can investigate how things look like there compared to geographical communities, see if anything noticeable is different compared to countries where the clubs are not formal university clubs (I believe many countries do not have the western concept of University club, I think EA Hungary had student clubs not incorporated in universities for example). Probably there’s too many other factors also correlated which confounds the study, but maybe we’d have enough data points?
I think I broadly agree. It would also help with attracting actual professionals. The “bar to entry” decision is talking price, but I am generally interested in it. The thing we lose is the ability to say is “Well, that person wasn’t REALLY EA” but the thing we gain is the ability to say is “Well, that person was kicked out of EA/never joined” or something like that when talking about a bad actor who has not acted in an EA way but has connections to the community. I don’t think that should be our main consideration, but it is worthwhile to know that the lever exists to distance ourselves from bad actors. My main consideration here is that it does look more serious, I’ve written before about Rotary and AIESEC and their membership, and how being a member has obligations and is a much clearer thing than EA movement as is.
On the other hand, I suppose in universities where EA clubs are university clubs they do have that more formal form, so perhaps we can investigate how things look like there compared to geographical communities, see if anything noticeable is different compared to countries where the clubs are not formal university clubs (I believe many countries do not have the western concept of University club, I think EA Hungary had student clubs not incorporated in universities for example). Probably there’s too many other factors also correlated which confounds the study, but maybe we’d have enough data points?