I think it’s worth keeping in mind that every functioning culture includes a vast list of taboos which people enforce on others. In both regular Western culture, and EA culture, all of the following are considered inappropriate:
- Making sexist jokes - Not being sympathetic when someone else experiences a personal tragedy - Nuidity in the workplace - Answering somebody else’s phone - Smoking weed in the office - Bragging about money - Chewing with your mouth open - Refusing to shake somebody’s hand when you’re introduced - Making prolonged, intense eye contact with people - Not saying “pardon me” after farting or burping loudly - Over-sharing personal information with someone you don’t know very well - Asking an employee to carry out a duty that is far outside their normal role (e.g. “For the second half of your shift, can you please go to my parent’s house and change the bedsheets”) - Giving people unsolicited gifts which are too expensive - Swearing— Having sex with somebody much younger than you even if they’re above legal age of consent - Offering to buy somebody’s pet from them
Some of these taboos are hard to justify on the spot, but very few people seriously want to eliminate them all.
Perhaps we want EA culture to lean slightly more towards personal autonomy than normal Western culture does, but there’s never going to be a cohesive collection of humans who can productively interact together without seriously regulating each other’s behaviour.
In terms of what’s considered appropriate in “regular western culture,” a lot of this is not true enough to justify the generalizations you’re making:
There are variations within cultures in any country, never mind between western, and all other countries, whereby the extent to which crude sexism is considered appropriate. I’ve met many men from some different walks of life just in Canada whose sense of what’s normal is such that they’ll look down on other men who don’t tow the line with their chauvinistic attitudes and misogynistic comments.
While it’s far from being all of them, there are a lot of sections of the upper class where bragging about how much money one makes is considered respectable, and this influences other aspects of culture too, especially in North America.
Making intense eye contact during a normal interaction is considered inappropriate in most cultures, though there is relative nuance here. Spending a longer amount of time making direct eye contact as part of a back-and-forth in conversation is much more accepted in western cultures, for example, compared to in Russia or China, to the point that to avoid too much making eye contact during conversation in western cultures is often considered rude.
This is consistent with the point I’m trying to make—all human interactions in all contexts are happening within a super complex web of norms and taboos, and any proposal as simple as “just let people do whatever they want” is a non-starter
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)
I think it’s worth keeping in mind that every functioning culture includes a vast list of taboos which people enforce on others. In both regular Western culture, and EA culture, all of the following are considered inappropriate:
- Making sexist jokes
- Not being sympathetic when someone else experiences a personal tragedy
- Nuidity in the workplace
- Answering somebody else’s phone
- Smoking weed in the office
- Bragging about money
- Chewing with your mouth open
- Refusing to shake somebody’s hand when you’re introduced
- Making prolonged, intense eye contact with people
- Not saying “pardon me” after farting or burping loudly
- Over-sharing personal information with someone you don’t know very well
- Asking an employee to carry out a duty that is far outside their normal role (e.g. “For the second half of your shift, can you please go to my parent’s house and change the bedsheets”)
- Giving people unsolicited gifts which are too expensive
- Swearing—
Having sex with somebody much younger than you even if they’re above legal age of consent
- Offering to buy somebody’s pet from them
Some of these taboos are hard to justify on the spot, but very few people seriously want to eliminate them all.
Perhaps we want EA culture to lean slightly more towards personal autonomy than normal Western culture does, but there’s never going to be a cohesive collection of humans who can productively interact together without seriously regulating each other’s behaviour.
In terms of what’s considered appropriate in “regular western culture,” a lot of this is not true enough to justify the generalizations you’re making:
There are variations within cultures in any country, never mind between western, and all other countries, whereby the extent to which crude sexism is considered appropriate. I’ve met many men from some different walks of life just in Canada whose sense of what’s normal is such that they’ll look down on other men who don’t tow the line with their chauvinistic attitudes and misogynistic comments.
While it’s far from being all of them, there are a lot of sections of the upper class where bragging about how much money one makes is considered respectable, and this influences other aspects of culture too, especially in North America.
Making intense eye contact during a normal interaction is considered inappropriate in most cultures, though there is relative nuance here. Spending a longer amount of time making direct eye contact as part of a back-and-forth in conversation is much more accepted in western cultures, for example, compared to in Russia or China, to the point that to avoid too much making eye contact during conversation in western cultures is often considered rude.
This is consistent with the point I’m trying to make—all human interactions in all contexts are happening within a super complex web of norms and taboos, and any proposal as simple as “just let people do whatever they want” is a non-starter
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)