So first, I do in fact want EA culture to lean substantially more towards personal autonomy than Western culture does—I like autonomy a lot!
I think some regulation is inevitable as people interact. For example, if I go around calling everyone names and never showering, people might be like “Amber is smelly and rude, so I’m not going to invite her to my parties”. And then, if I noticed people never invited me to parties, I might be like ‘huh! maybe I should shower, and be less rude’. So in a way, people there are ‘controlling’ and ‘regulating’ my behaviour, but that doesn’t seem overly coercive.
What I object to is if one person thinks I’m smelly and rude and is like “no-one else should invite Amber to parties”. This seems to me to be illegitimately hijacking the norm-creation process. Like ideally norms should arise out of the majority preferences of the group; it’s bad if a minority decide This Is How It’s Going To Be and the rest have to conform.
I agree that if all the concerns about relationship norms in EA culture were comming from small minority, then this would not justify changing them (but the minority are still entitled to try and advocate/persuade).
But when it comes to culture/status, I think the dynamics mean majority rule is pretty much baked in by default anyway! So we might not have to worry much about that.
Interestingly, we might have different impressions about what the median attitude is in the community when it comes to questions like—
“Is it a bad idea to have sex with your manager?” - “Is it a red flag when a local university group organiser is regularly hooking up with newcommers?” - “Do long term, stable, committed relationships generally lead to better community health overall?”
Maybe this depends on how big/small you draw the boundary for who counts as part of the EA community, but most people I know who engage with EA would answer “yes” to those questions. (I’m in Australia, perhaps Bay Area is very different)
So first, I do in fact want EA culture to lean substantially more towards personal autonomy than Western culture does—I like autonomy a lot!
I think some regulation is inevitable as people interact. For example, if I go around calling everyone names and never showering, people might be like “Amber is smelly and rude, so I’m not going to invite her to my parties”. And then, if I noticed people never invited me to parties, I might be like ‘huh! maybe I should shower, and be less rude’. So in a way, people there are ‘controlling’ and ‘regulating’ my behaviour, but that doesn’t seem overly coercive.
What I object to is if one person thinks I’m smelly and rude and is like “no-one else should invite Amber to parties”. This seems to me to be illegitimately hijacking the norm-creation process. Like ideally norms should arise out of the majority preferences of the group; it’s bad if a minority decide This Is How It’s Going To Be and the rest have to conform.
I agree that if all the concerns about relationship norms in EA culture were comming from small minority, then this would not justify changing them (but the minority are still entitled to try and advocate/persuade).
But when it comes to culture/status, I think the dynamics mean majority rule is pretty much baked in by default anyway! So we might not have to worry much about that.
Interestingly, we might have different impressions about what the median attitude is in the community when it comes to questions like—
“Is it a bad idea to have sex with your manager?”
- “Is it a red flag when a local university group organiser is regularly hooking up with newcommers?”
- “Do long term, stable, committed relationships generally lead to better community health overall?”
Maybe this depends on how big/small you draw the boundary for who counts as part of the EA community, but most people I know who engage with EA would answer “yes” to those questions. (I’m in Australia, perhaps Bay Area is very different)