Yeah, I’ve never done circling, but it wouldn’t surprise me if your system-1 was spot on (though I guess this wasn’t the point of your comment – you’re more commenting on double standards of how people reacted to your system-1 freaking out).
I believe anyone who pitches people to participate in circling with others who are pretty much strangers to them (and not super-carefully-vetted) and applies implicit peer pressure and doesn’t warn them that this sort of thing can be psychologically risky and unsafe, is either dangerously clueless or a bad actor.
(I’m mainly noting the potential for abuse. I have no reason to believe that the majority of people who run these things in EA and adjacent spaces are doing things irresponsibly.)
I believe anyone who pitches people to participate in circling with others who are pretty much strangers to them (and not super-carefully-vetted) and applies implicit peer pressure and doesn’t warn them that this sort of thing can be psychologically risky and unsafe, is either dangerously clueless or a bad actor.
For what it’s worth, I live in the Bay Area, where there are large spirituality communities and surprisingly related “professional development” communities. These practices seem surprisingly normal in these communities.
I think that the leaders of these groups are typically very overconfident in their approaches, are a bit desperate to sell them, and not very epistemically sophisticated, so very rarely give adequate warnings and help.
(tbc my perspective then was “I feel like I’m being overly paranoid/unfair here but I’d just been exposed to n=1 anecdata of this sort of spidey sense being correct from a friend, so” and my perspective now is “I now have a very precise model of how this particular train could get derailed and I am … uncertain, but concerned”)
Yeah, I’ve never done circling, but it wouldn’t surprise me if your system-1 was spot on (though I guess this wasn’t the point of your comment – you’re more commenting on double standards of how people reacted to your system-1 freaking out).
I believe anyone who pitches people to participate in circling with others who are pretty much strangers to them (and not super-carefully-vetted) and applies implicit peer pressure and doesn’t warn them that this sort of thing can be psychologically risky and unsafe, is either dangerously clueless or a bad actor.
(I’m mainly noting the potential for abuse. I have no reason to believe that the majority of people who run these things in EA and adjacent spaces are doing things irresponsibly.)
For what it’s worth, I live in the Bay Area, where there are large spirituality communities and surprisingly related “professional development” communities. These practices seem surprisingly normal in these communities.
I think that the leaders of these groups are typically very overconfident in their approaches, are a bit desperate to sell them, and not very epistemically sophisticated, so very rarely give adequate warnings and help.
(tbc my perspective then was “I feel like I’m being overly paranoid/unfair here but I’d just been exposed to n=1 anecdata of this sort of spidey sense being correct from a friend, so”
and my perspective now is “I now have a very precise model of how this particular train could get derailed and I am … uncertain, but concerned”)