like, I feel like if you were in this movement 50 years ago you would be saying “we shouldn’t be encouraging gay relationships within this movement because it’d make the place feel uninviting for people who don’t want to be hit on by people of hte same sex”?
When it comes to intervening in people’s personal lives, I would never advocate a top down solution to something like this to be clear. If an organizer in a local group suggested we should kick out anyone who is poly or sleeps around I would be far more likely to see that organizer as problematic than the group in question.
The reason I strongly agree is that this is a community norm suggestion, and I think it’s a healthy one.
To your point about the gay community fifty years ago—I agree! If there is a subset of highly taboo social norms, regardless of their moral valence, that are promoted in a community it will taint the ideas of that community to the general public. Fifty years ago I would’ve probably said something similar, like “it’s fine to have gay people in the movement and we will not judge you. However this is not a movement to promote the rights of gay people, this is a movement to make charity better and doing good more effective.”
Overall I think it would be better for EA and for poly acceptance if people who were poly tried to form/stick to their own sub culture outside of EA for dating around (which absolutely exists, I practiced polyamory years before I found EA.) People who advocate polyamory could focus more on that, and many folks in EA would have less of their entire life/identity tied up in EA, which I see as a good thing.
I guess my objections to this are -I think the median person’s view of poly is like “seems like a bad way to do relationships but also none of my business” which is distinct from being weirded out by poly people
-I’m not trying to be a poly advocate, I’m trying to live a lifestyle which is poly? I object to you trying to discourage this on the grounds that discrimination is bad? Like i feel like you are saying “it would be better for poly acceptance if EA were less friendly to poly relationships” which no?
-A movement focused on ‘doing the most good’ is going to attract people with moral views pretty different to the median. We’re not a political party, we are a social movement which naturally has people doing weird things in pursuit of its goals so I think it’s good that we advertise ourselves as being tolerant of weird people?
A bit confused on your second point but my thinking goes like this—the more people we get to think rationally about morals relationships etc the better. This is urgent due to issues like value lock in.
If we can get drastically more people overall to even care about morality or be open to changing their moral stances from rational argumentation, then yes that would be way better for poly acceptance! Even if on the margin there were less people in EA that are poly and/or having poly relationships in EA.
like, I feel like if you were in this movement 50 years ago you would be saying “we shouldn’t be encouraging gay relationships within this movement because it’d make the place feel uninviting for people who don’t want to be hit on by people of hte same sex”?
When it comes to intervening in people’s personal lives, I would never advocate a top down solution to something like this to be clear. If an organizer in a local group suggested we should kick out anyone who is poly or sleeps around I would be far more likely to see that organizer as problematic than the group in question.
The reason I strongly agree is that this is a community norm suggestion, and I think it’s a healthy one.
To your point about the gay community fifty years ago—I agree! If there is a subset of highly taboo social norms, regardless of their moral valence, that are promoted in a community it will taint the ideas of that community to the general public. Fifty years ago I would’ve probably said something similar, like “it’s fine to have gay people in the movement and we will not judge you. However this is not a movement to promote the rights of gay people, this is a movement to make charity better and doing good more effective.”
Overall I think it would be better for EA and for poly acceptance if people who were poly tried to form/stick to their own sub culture outside of EA for dating around (which absolutely exists, I practiced polyamory years before I found EA.) People who advocate polyamory could focus more on that, and many folks in EA would have less of their entire life/identity tied up in EA, which I see as a good thing.
I guess my objections to this are
-I think the median person’s view of poly is like “seems like a bad way to do relationships but also none of my business” which is distinct from being weirded out by poly people
-I’m not trying to be a poly advocate, I’m trying to live a lifestyle which is poly? I object to you trying to discourage this on the grounds that discrimination is bad? Like i feel like you are saying “it would be better for poly acceptance if
EA were less friendly to poly relationships” which no?
-A movement focused on ‘doing the most good’ is going to attract people with moral views pretty different to the median. We’re not a political party, we are a social movement which naturally has people doing weird things in pursuit of its goals so I think it’s good that we advertise ourselves as being tolerant of weird people?
A bit confused on your second point but my thinking goes like this—the more people we get to think rationally about morals relationships etc the better. This is urgent due to issues like value lock in.
If we can get drastically more people overall to even care about morality or be open to changing their moral stances from rational argumentation, then yes that would be way better for poly acceptance! Even if on the margin there were less people in EA that are poly and/or having poly relationships in EA.
Does that model make sense?