Epistemic status: Iâm still pretty confused about this whole thing, and wasnât involved in ideation. (Though I helped when asked by choosing whom to email, editing the LW email , and making a post.)
A few good people who were genuinely concerned about me mentioned to me privately that if I donât take the Red Button exercise, there could be social consequences, or it might even lead to me missing out on job opportunities in the EA Community.
Iâll second Ruby in taking some blame for the overly serious/âsanctimonious tone of the email, which I made some edits to before both emails were sent. I didnât make it more serious, but neither did I make it less serious, even though this whole practice feels more like a âfun social gameâ than âserious community ritualâ to me.
To be clear, I donât know whether the aforementioned âsocial consequencesâ would exist. I wouldnât plan to think about the results of Petrov Day if I were considering someone for a job, or in any other context where I had any say in someoneâs EA community experience. And maybe everyone else is on the same page with me â judging by the comments here, it feels like the Forumâs users generally donât take the activity seriously in its current form.
But if someone out there does plan to âimpose consequencesâ in some form, and states that desire, I think they risk damaging our ability to do fun community things that arenât also tied to future professional success.*
In the future, I donât want this event to be associated with social pressure or coercion, however incidentally. Iâve also never been enthusiastic about it in its current form, and if Iâm still working on the Forum this time next year, I hope Iâll be helping to produce something different for the holiday.
*Though fun community things can still be meaningful! The best discussion Iâve seen on different ways to interpret the activity, and the balance between âserious and funâ, is here.
Habrykaâs reply is a good representation of what seems valuable about the activity to me. But I wouldnât want to follow him in âlosing trustâ in anyone who pressed the button. (As long as they had a good reason; if the reason is âI never liked the Forum much and I wanted to watch it burnâ, thatâs obviously a bit different.)
Epistemic status: Iâm still pretty confused about this whole thing, and wasnât involved in ideation. (Though I helped when asked by choosing whom to email, editing the LW email , and making a post.)
Iâll second Ruby in taking some blame for the overly serious/âsanctimonious tone of the email, which I made some edits to before both emails were sent. I didnât make it more serious, but neither did I make it less serious, even though this whole practice feels more like a âfun social gameâ than âserious community ritualâ to me.
To be clear, I donât know whether the aforementioned âsocial consequencesâ would exist. I wouldnât plan to think about the results of Petrov Day if I were considering someone for a job, or in any other context where I had any say in someoneâs EA community experience. And maybe everyone else is on the same page with me â judging by the comments here, it feels like the Forumâs users generally donât take the activity seriously in its current form.
But if someone out there does plan to âimpose consequencesâ in some form, and states that desire, I think they risk damaging our ability to do fun community things that arenât also tied to future professional success.*
In the future, I donât want this event to be associated with social pressure or coercion, however incidentally. Iâve also never been enthusiastic about it in its current form, and if Iâm still working on the Forum this time next year, I hope Iâll be helping to produce something different for the holiday.
*Though fun community things can still be meaningful! The best discussion Iâve seen on different ways to interpret the activity, and the balance between âserious and funâ, is here.
Habrykaâs reply is a good representation of what seems valuable about the activity to me. But I wouldnât want to follow him in âlosing trustâ in anyone who pressed the button. (As long as they had a good reason; if the reason is âI never liked the Forum much and I wanted to watch it burnâ, thatâs obviously a bit different.)