Meta note: that you got downvotes (I can surmise this from the number of votes and the total score) seems to suggest this is advice people don’t want to hear, but maybe they need.
I don’t think this position is unpopular in the EA community. You have more than one goal and that’s fine got lots of upvotes, and my impression is that there’s a general consensus that breaks are important and that burnout is a real risk (even though people might not always act according to that consensus).
I’d guess that it’s getting downvotes because it doesn’t really explain why we should be less productive: it just stakes out the position. In my opinion, it would have been more useful if it, for example, presented evidence showing that unproductive time is useful for living a fulfilled life, or presented an argument for why living a fulfilled life is important even for your altruistic values (which Jakob does more of in the comments).
Meta meta note: In general, it seems kind of uncooperative to assume that people need more of things they downvote.
I second Lukas’s thoughts on how this post could have been more useful. In addition, I haven’t seen much evidence of the phenomena discussed by the author (those people in EA who I’ve met tend to be fairly productive, but basically all of them also have hobbies and enjoy doing silly/non-productive things on a regular basis). More numbers, or even a couple of specific anecdotes, would have been helpful.
I also agree with the meta-meta-note. Unless someone explains that they downvoted because they disagreed, it seems healthier to assume that a downvote indicates displeasure with an argument’s presentation, rather than the associated opinion/subject matter. Few communities are more likely to say “great post, even though I disagree” than this one.
That said, if anyone reading this has a habit of downvoting arguments they disagree with, even if those arguments are presented clearly and with solid data/logic, I’d weakly recommend against doing that; I think the Forum will flourish in the long run if well-crafted writing and thinking is reliably rewarded—or at least not punished.
Having spent significant time around both the EA and the LW community and having written several controversial posts and then subsequently talked with folks who downvoted those posts, I now have strong reason to believe that most downvotes are in fact “boos” rather than anything more substantive. When people have substantive disagreements with posts they more often post comments indicating that and just don’t vote on a post either way.
I’m sure this is not universally true but it’s been my experience, so when I see downvotes on a post that isn’t obviously spam, trolling, or otherwise clearly low-quality (rather than in this case just not containing much content, a kind of post that is clearly not universally downvoted because many low content posts get either neutral or positive responses, which I must assume given their lack of content is a function of agreement with the idea presented), I find it reasonable to ask “why ‘boo’ at this?”. Hence my comment as a possible explanation for more “boos” than “yays”.
I agree it would be preferable if people didn’t use votes as “boos” and “yays”, and I think we could fix this—maybe by only allowing people who comment on a post to vote on it, although I think that risks creating lots of meaningless comments because people just want to vote, so there is probably some other solution that would work better—but unfortunately my experience suggests that’s exactly how most people vote on posts and comments.
Thanks for your comments Aaron and Lukas. From my own experience, I have definitely encountered more people with an always-working mentality within EA than outside it. Anectodally, almost all the people (~ 10) I have met who seriously consider meal replacements as adequate alternatives to home cooked food have been EAs. This might be an inverse causal effect (ambitious people might like the EA concept more than others), but it is still problematic if people feel the need to constantly optimize themselves and work harder due to the social pressure within EA.
In my experience (which could be different from yours), meal replacements are less about productivity than things like whether you like eating food, enjoy cooking food, have time to cook food, don’t want to eat food you don’t like, etc. In other words, it’s more about valuing food or the process of cooking it less, rather than necessarily valuing productivity more.
I don’t think this position is unpopular in the EA community. You have more than one goal and that’s fine got lots of upvotes, and my impression is that there’s a general consensus that breaks are important and that burnout is a real risk (even though people might not always act according to that consensus).
I’d guess that it’s getting downvotes because it doesn’t really explain why we should be less productive: it just stakes out the position. In my opinion, it would have been more useful if it, for example, presented evidence showing that unproductive time is useful for living a fulfilled life, or presented an argument for why living a fulfilled life is important even for your altruistic values (which Jakob does more of in the comments).
Meta meta note: In general, it seems kind of uncooperative to assume that people need more of things they downvote.
I second Lukas’s thoughts on how this post could have been more useful. In addition, I haven’t seen much evidence of the phenomena discussed by the author (those people in EA who I’ve met tend to be fairly productive, but basically all of them also have hobbies and enjoy doing silly/non-productive things on a regular basis). More numbers, or even a couple of specific anecdotes, would have been helpful.
I also agree with the meta-meta-note. Unless someone explains that they downvoted because they disagreed, it seems healthier to assume that a downvote indicates displeasure with an argument’s presentation, rather than the associated opinion/subject matter. Few communities are more likely to say “great post, even though I disagree” than this one.
That said, if anyone reading this has a habit of downvoting arguments they disagree with, even if those arguments are presented clearly and with solid data/logic, I’d weakly recommend against doing that; I think the Forum will flourish in the long run if well-crafted writing and thinking is reliably rewarded—or at least not punished.
(I work for CEA, but these views are my own.)
Having spent significant time around both the EA and the LW community and having written several controversial posts and then subsequently talked with folks who downvoted those posts, I now have strong reason to believe that most downvotes are in fact “boos” rather than anything more substantive. When people have substantive disagreements with posts they more often post comments indicating that and just don’t vote on a post either way.
I’m sure this is not universally true but it’s been my experience, so when I see downvotes on a post that isn’t obviously spam, trolling, or otherwise clearly low-quality (rather than in this case just not containing much content, a kind of post that is clearly not universally downvoted because many low content posts get either neutral or positive responses, which I must assume given their lack of content is a function of agreement with the idea presented), I find it reasonable to ask “why ‘boo’ at this?”. Hence my comment as a possible explanation for more “boos” than “yays”.
I agree it would be preferable if people didn’t use votes as “boos” and “yays”, and I think we could fix this—maybe by only allowing people who comment on a post to vote on it, although I think that risks creating lots of meaningless comments because people just want to vote, so there is probably some other solution that would work better—but unfortunately my experience suggests that’s exactly how most people vote on posts and comments.
Thanks for your comments Aaron and Lukas. From my own experience, I have definitely encountered more people with an always-working mentality within EA than outside it. Anectodally, almost all the people (~ 10) I have met who seriously consider meal replacements as adequate alternatives to home cooked food have been EAs. This might be an inverse causal effect (ambitious people might like the EA concept more than others), but it is still problematic if people feel the need to constantly optimize themselves and work harder due to the social pressure within EA.
In my experience (which could be different from yours), meal replacements are less about productivity than things like whether you like eating food, enjoy cooking food, have time to cook food, don’t want to eat food you don’t like, etc. In other words, it’s more about valuing food or the process of cooking it less, rather than necessarily valuing productivity more.
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