As much as I share appreciation for those helping with community health, this karma magnet post is displacing visibility of posts and doing little to advance the discourse.
I do think that EA is made of human beings, and injections of positivity can help humans avoid burning out or getting so stressed that the quality of our reasoning and arguments declines.
Seeing some human kindness directed at other EAs made me feel less stress on the Forum, and I wasnât even the target of the kindness!
Like, I think reasonable people can disagree about the right ways to inject that positivity, how much is needed, etc. I think this post was good, but I could imagine seeing evidence that would change my mind about that.
But I think âkarma magnetâ is probably factually wrong about the main motivation behind this post (and I think itâs a bit rude to single this post out when I suspect karma is a non-small motivation for the more-substantive posts too!). And if you think that thereâs never a useful social function served by things like gratitude posts, then I flatly disagree.
I do think that EA is made of human beings, and injections of positivity can help humans avoid burning out or getting so stressed that the quality of our reasoning and arguments declines.
Hm, this phrasing makes it sound sort of like I think the only reason for EAs to treat each other with kindness, try to make EA a nice place to be, etc., is to prevent âburnoutâ (which sounds like itâs about keeping EAs productive) and protect the quality of our epistemics.
So, to be clear: I also endorse EAs being nice because niceness is good in its own right. EAs deserve happiness too, and I just plain endorse human beings flourishing and having good lives.
(I think the underlying generators/âattitudes/âperspectives behind this are good by scope-insensitive consequentialist lights (given how humans actually work in real life), but I donât think every local act of kindness needs to be justified by explicitly consequentialist reasoning.)
Strong downvote.
As much as I share appreciation for those helping with community health, this karma magnet post is displacing visibility of posts and doing little to advance the discourse.
I do think that EA is made of human beings, and injections of positivity can help humans avoid burning out or getting so stressed that the quality of our reasoning and arguments declines.
Seeing some human kindness directed at other EAs made me feel less stress on the Forum, and I wasnât even the target of the kindness!
Like, I think reasonable people can disagree about the right ways to inject that positivity, how much is needed, etc. I think this post was good, but I could imagine seeing evidence that would change my mind about that.
But I think âkarma magnetâ is probably factually wrong about the main motivation behind this post (and I think itâs a bit rude to single this post out when I suspect karma is a non-small motivation for the more-substantive posts too!). And if you think that thereâs never a useful social function served by things like gratitude posts, then I flatly disagree.
Hm, this phrasing makes it sound sort of like I think the only reason for EAs to treat each other with kindness, try to make EA a nice place to be, etc., is to prevent âburnoutâ (which sounds like itâs about keeping EAs productive) and protect the quality of our epistemics.
So, to be clear: I also endorse EAs being nice because niceness is good in its own right. EAs deserve happiness too, and I just plain endorse human beings flourishing and having good lives.
(I think the underlying generators/âattitudes/âperspectives behind this are good by scope-insensitive consequentialist lights (given how humans actually work in real life), but I donât think every local act of kindness needs to be justified by explicitly consequentialist reasoning.)
Strong agree. I had a few calls with the OP last year and they came across as having an incredibly sweet and authentic character.
Karma magnet was intended as a statement of its effect, not the authorâs intent.
I have no doubts as to the good motivations of its author.
I simply think such gratitude can be expressed without displacing potential object-level posts for days.
Posts can achieve goals other than advancing the discourse, and Iâm OK with that.
+1 But also, lowering stress for community members is part of advancing the discourse, in my view.