This is a really great post Holden; thank you for writing it.
And I’m nervous about what I perceive as dynamics in some circles where people seem to “show off” how little moderation they accept—how self-sacrificing, “weird,” extreme, etc. they’re willing to be in the pursuit of EA goals. I think this dynamic is positive at times and fine in moderation, but I do think it risks spiraling into a problem.
As a somewhat outside observer, it seems a larger number of EAs, including many of those who drive the zeitgeist of this forum, are orienting their entire lives around EA (working directly + EA dominated social life + dating within EA + consumption of media through twitter/podcasts largely consisting of EA curation). I think this is a serious concern for many reasons, but one important one is that I suspect an insular community is more likely to produce behaviours like those described in your post.
I ultimately think this was inevitable due to the way that moralities diverge in the limit, rather than converge, so which morality was chosen has large effects on future actions.
(BTW, this is why I suspect moral realism is not true, that is there are no facts of the matter over what’s good or bad.)
This is a really great post Holden; thank you for writing it.
As a somewhat outside observer, it seems a larger number of EAs, including many of those who drive the zeitgeist of this forum, are orienting their entire lives around EA (working directly + EA dominated social life + dating within EA + consumption of media through twitter/podcasts largely consisting of EA curation). I think this is a serious concern for many reasons, but one important one is that I suspect an insular community is more likely to produce behaviours like those described in your post.
I ultimately think this was inevitable due to the way that moralities diverge in the limit, rather than converge, so which morality was chosen has large effects on future actions.
(BTW, this is why I suspect moral realism is not true, that is there are no facts of the matter over what’s good or bad.)