Here’s two simple and linked cases: Weird aspie poly people are central to what the community has so far done. Also libertarian anti woke people. A sharp cultural change like the one proposed here will drive us out. Losing my part of the community will probably reduce its ability to act more than losing the part of the community that wants these changes.
The impact on the global portfolio of charitable action is much less clear, because people like me will coalesce elsewhere in communities that try to be actively cringe and have a bit of a right wing reputation to avoid new comers who want to drive us out. But we’ll probably still be worrying about ai, utilitarianism, and trying to make ethical concerns into real world changes.
The same thing will also happen if my group stays in/ regains control of ea culture. The people who bounce or leave will end up doing good things elsewhere in communities that match their preferences better.
EA is a way, not the way, and changes to the culture should be judged in utilitarian terms by how they influence the global portfolio of action, not by how they change the level of useful work directly done through EA.
Second: As a poly EA, I’m more likely to bother to show up for things if I think I might get laid. It increases engagement and community cohesion. A group that is a good place to meet interesting opposite gender people is going to have an intrinsic advantage in pulling in casually interested people over one where that is strictly banned.
The claim that functional groups tend to ban dating within the group seems to me to be simply untrue in general and across cultures.
Of course the bouncing because hit on too often issue points in the other direction. But I don’t think anyone has actually tried to measure the relative magnitudes of these effects. There is just a completely non rigorous statement that clearly the expected value calculation points against making poly people happy.
Second: As a poly EA, I’m more likely to bother to show up for things if I think I might get laid. It increases engagement and community cohesion.
I upvoted the comment for sharing a relevant point of view, but I personally care most about an EA community where people obsess over ideas and taking action to make the world better. So, anything that attracts people for other reasons is something I see as a risk (dilution of quality). I’m not sure it’s that important to draw in lots of casually interested people (definitely not saying you fit that description – I’m just talking about the part of “increases engagement”).
To be clear, I know some poly people or people who “sleep around” who seem as serious about EA as it gets, so I’m not saying one can’t have both.
That said, the most committed EAs I know who “sleep around” mostly do so outside of EA because they’ve decided doing it within EA has more risks than benefits and they attend EA events for impact rather than socially. (And my guess is that the most committed EAs who are poly pursue more serious poly relationships rather than lots of casual ones – but I don’t actually know.)
So, there’s a sense in which I totally agree with the OP. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to try to do anything about this from top down. One thing we can do from the bottom up is socially encourage people for being highly dedicated and impact-oriented. (People tend to notice when someone has a high opinion of them and finds their attitude impressive.)
Edit: I guess one point that made me much more sympathetic toward the view that casual dating is not in tension with high dedication to (the moral inspiration of) EA is that several commenters mentioned that some of their best long-term relationships started casually. If that’s the case for someone (that pursuing casual relationships is one of the best ways for finding long-term relationship happiness), then that’s of course different!
Hey Tim, just want to say I really appreciate the honest response. We’ve butted heads a couple times on this topic and you rigorously stick to your values which I admire.
I’ll echo what others have said in that the idea of using casual sex as a motivator to get people out to EA events makes me very uncomfortable. I agree that it’s probably a strong motivator when in play, but I’d rather we get people out because they are interested in the ideas presented.
In the interest of intellectual rigor though, I’m fine with softer/different incentives like free food at events, non impact related activities, etc. I suppose sex seems more risky and messy than those other incentives but my thoughts here aren’t clearly formed yet.
Weird aspie and poly people are absolutely central to what EA has done and how far we’ve come. Frankly I also just enjoy talking with them because those types of people tend to have novel ideas that are well thought out. That being said I don’t think that creating a soft norm of separating poly from EA would necessarily drive those people away.
For instance, what if people in EA communities with a lot of poly folks created a separate meetup specifically for poly people? Or joined an existing one?
For one this would make sexual issues in EA less abundant, and two would help people develop their identity/social network outside of EA. Not putting all their eggs in one basket, so to speak.
On the EV side I agree with you that this is something which would be highly problematic and difficult to study rigorously, but I think it’s still worth looking at it from a lens of utility.
My thought is that because casual sex / making people sexually uncomfortable is such a huge issue for the average person, if we can tone down that behavior a bit it will help us convince far more people to join EA. On top of that it would reduce scandals, and hopefully make decision makers more objective when giving grants or hiring.
I think what I said about getting laid as an incentive to showing up was rather misunderstood. I’m not actually good at being precise, and this issue makes it harder for me to speak carefully.
I’m drawing here on two core sets of background ideas, one is the ssc essay about the Fabian society, where it seems like one of the things that made them extremely effective was that the group meetings were an excellent place for people to meet a large set of their social needs (including finding marriage partners), and not just a place where they talked about socialism.
The second is that I grew up in a church where one of the things everyone knew was that one reason young people went to church meetings was to meet other young Christians to date. This was part of why it worked as a cohesive community.
Based on these models I expect communities where people form romantic relationships inside the community to end up more cohesive, more successful, and more functional in terms of their mission than communities where this is disallowed.
Of course nothing here disagrees directly with the idea that ‘sleeping around is bad.’
I suppose I get to disliking that as a statement of a norm because it sounds (to me) sex puritanical, and because it is saying (in my head) that the members of our community are not adults who can make their own choices about how to live their lives and who to sleep with. And, frankly because of the whole context that makes me interpret things unchraritably.
A norm of generally don’t hit on newbies until they’ve been around for a while is probably good (though details in implementation matter!) .
I think there is also a distinction between people like me who see EA primarily as a social organization built around a set of ideas, rather than those who see it as a professional network. The rules for a social network are, and should be different. But part of the strength of EA is that it is both, and unfortunately the two seem to be in tension (and not just around this issue—the whole who gets to go to EA global is another example of the same problem).
I also suspect that EA without a social cloud around the professionals is dead in the long run, because the just here to hang out and talk people are where the money for those jobs come from (and if that view is correct, the way to make EA strongest in the long run is to make it a good social group, and hanging out with cool people where there is a chance you might meet someone to date really is almost always strictly better than the same social group where there is no chance of that).
One last point: The current scandals are caused by visibility and maybe sbf. People out there are trying to attack EA by actively looking for the worst sort of true things they can say about the community. Taking what those attacks say as representative of the community is a serious mistake.
Second: As a poly EA, I’m more likely to bother to show up for things if I think I might get laid. It increases engagement and community cohesion.
[emphasis added]
I just want to flag that this makes me pretty uncomfortable. Not all engagement is good, and if a change in policy / culture increases engagement on the margin because it attracts people who want to show up to get laid (who otherwise wouldn’t have been there), I think I’m personally okay with not having this engagement.
It’s also not clear that if EA changes the dynamics of events or the movement such that there are now an extra group of people who are engaging now that there are opportunities to get laid, that this wouldn’t lead to other people disengaging, so I think the extent to which this actually leads to positive engagement and community cohesion is an open question.
The impact on the global portfolio of charitable action is much less clear, because people like me will coalesce elsewhere in communities that try to be actively cringe and have a bit of a right wing reputation to avoid new comers who want to drive us out. But we’ll probably still be worrying about ai, utilitarianism, and trying to make ethical concerns into real world changes.
...changes to the culture should be judged in utilitarian terms by how they influence the global portfolio of action, not by how they change the level of useful work directly done through EA.
I’m not sure if I’m understanding you correctly. Your two claims sound like:
“If people like me are driven out of the EA community, they will coalesce elsewhere, have a cringe + right wing reputation, and continue to do work on AI / try to make ethical concerns into real world changes.”
“Changes to EA culture should take into account all impacts and not just the direct impact done through EA.”
If you assume that more normie / left-leaning EAs[1] won’t continue to do the “EA-equivalent” to the same extent (e.g. they go off and become a campaign coordinator for the median social justice movement), doesn’t this imply EA should actively move away from “cringe + right wing reputation” by your own argument?[2]
i.e. if “cringe right wing” EAs are going to work on AI safety regardless of their involvement in EA, and “normie left wing” EAs will be more impactful in EA than outside of it, this implies the counterfactual loss in impact is asymmetrical, and if you suggest taking into account all impacts and not just the direct impact through EA, then presumably this supports moving in the normie left wing direction.
Fwiw, I’m not the biggest fan of these labels, and I think they risk being more tribal than adding clarity to the conversation. Like I think folks on a wide range on the political spectrum can have meaningful and useful things to contribute to the EA movement. But I am using it just as antonyms to the examples you gave.
Again, just using your words, not necessarily reflective of any personal views of what you might refer to as “weird aspie” / “libertarian anti-woke” EAs. I’m also not necessarily advocating that EA should actually move away from this group, just trying to understand your argument.
Here’s two simple and linked cases: Weird aspie poly people are central to what the community has so far done. Also libertarian anti woke people. A sharp cultural change like the one proposed here will drive us out. Losing my part of the community will probably reduce its ability to act more than losing the part of the community that wants these changes.
The impact on the global portfolio of charitable action is much less clear, because people like me will coalesce elsewhere in communities that try to be actively cringe and have a bit of a right wing reputation to avoid new comers who want to drive us out. But we’ll probably still be worrying about ai, utilitarianism, and trying to make ethical concerns into real world changes.
The same thing will also happen if my group stays in/ regains control of ea culture. The people who bounce or leave will end up doing good things elsewhere in communities that match their preferences better.
EA is a way, not the way, and changes to the culture should be judged in utilitarian terms by how they influence the global portfolio of action, not by how they change the level of useful work directly done through EA.
Second: As a poly EA, I’m more likely to bother to show up for things if I think I might get laid. It increases engagement and community cohesion. A group that is a good place to meet interesting opposite gender people is going to have an intrinsic advantage in pulling in casually interested people over one where that is strictly banned.
The claim that functional groups tend to ban dating within the group seems to me to be simply untrue in general and across cultures.
Of course the bouncing because hit on too often issue points in the other direction. But I don’t think anyone has actually tried to measure the relative magnitudes of these effects. There is just a completely non rigorous statement that clearly the expected value calculation points against making poly people happy.
I upvoted the comment for sharing a relevant point of view, but I personally care most about an EA community where people obsess over ideas and taking action to make the world better. So, anything that attracts people for other reasons is something I see as a risk (dilution of quality). I’m not sure it’s that important to draw in lots of casually interested people (definitely not saying you fit that description – I’m just talking about the part of “increases engagement”).
To be clear, I know some poly people or people who “sleep around” who seem as serious about EA as it gets, so I’m not saying one can’t have both.
That said, the most committed EAs I know who “sleep around” mostly do so outside of EA because they’ve decided doing it within EA has more risks than benefits and they attend EA events for impact rather than socially. (And my guess is that the most committed EAs who are poly pursue more serious poly relationships rather than lots of casual ones – but I don’t actually know.)
So, there’s a sense in which I totally agree with the OP. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to try to do anything about this from top down. One thing we can do from the bottom up is socially encourage people for being highly dedicated and impact-oriented. (People tend to notice when someone has a high opinion of them and finds their attitude impressive.)
Edit: I guess one point that made me much more sympathetic toward the view that casual dating is not in tension with high dedication to (the moral inspiration of) EA is that several commenters mentioned that some of their best long-term relationships started casually. If that’s the case for someone (that pursuing casual relationships is one of the best ways for finding long-term relationship happiness), then that’s of course different!
Hey Tim, just want to say I really appreciate the honest response. We’ve butted heads a couple times on this topic and you rigorously stick to your values which I admire.
I’ll echo what others have said in that the idea of using casual sex as a motivator to get people out to EA events makes me very uncomfortable. I agree that it’s probably a strong motivator when in play, but I’d rather we get people out because they are interested in the ideas presented.
In the interest of intellectual rigor though, I’m fine with softer/different incentives like free food at events, non impact related activities, etc. I suppose sex seems more risky and messy than those other incentives but my thoughts here aren’t clearly formed yet.
Weird aspie and poly people are absolutely central to what EA has done and how far we’ve come. Frankly I also just enjoy talking with them because those types of people tend to have novel ideas that are well thought out. That being said I don’t think that creating a soft norm of separating poly from EA would necessarily drive those people away.
For instance, what if people in EA communities with a lot of poly folks created a separate meetup specifically for poly people? Or joined an existing one?
For one this would make sexual issues in EA less abundant, and two would help people develop their identity/social network outside of EA. Not putting all their eggs in one basket, so to speak.
On the EV side I agree with you that this is something which would be highly problematic and difficult to study rigorously, but I think it’s still worth looking at it from a lens of utility.
My thought is that because casual sex / making people sexually uncomfortable is such a huge issue for the average person, if we can tone down that behavior a bit it will help us convince far more people to join EA. On top of that it would reduce scandals, and hopefully make decision makers more objective when giving grants or hiring.
I think what I said about getting laid as an incentive to showing up was rather misunderstood. I’m not actually good at being precise, and this issue makes it harder for me to speak carefully.
I’m drawing here on two core sets of background ideas, one is the ssc essay about the Fabian society, where it seems like one of the things that made them extremely effective was that the group meetings were an excellent place for people to meet a large set of their social needs (including finding marriage partners), and not just a place where they talked about socialism.
The second is that I grew up in a church where one of the things everyone knew was that one reason young people went to church meetings was to meet other young Christians to date. This was part of why it worked as a cohesive community.
Based on these models I expect communities where people form romantic relationships inside the community to end up more cohesive, more successful, and more functional in terms of their mission than communities where this is disallowed.
Of course nothing here disagrees directly with the idea that ‘sleeping around is bad.’
I suppose I get to disliking that as a statement of a norm because it sounds (to me) sex puritanical, and because it is saying (in my head) that the members of our community are not adults who can make their own choices about how to live their lives and who to sleep with. And, frankly because of the whole context that makes me interpret things unchraritably.
A norm of generally don’t hit on newbies until they’ve been around for a while is probably good (though details in implementation matter!) .
I think there is also a distinction between people like me who see EA primarily as a social organization built around a set of ideas, rather than those who see it as a professional network. The rules for a social network are, and should be different. But part of the strength of EA is that it is both, and unfortunately the two seem to be in tension (and not just around this issue—the whole who gets to go to EA global is another example of the same problem).
I also suspect that EA without a social cloud around the professionals is dead in the long run, because the just here to hang out and talk people are where the money for those jobs come from (and if that view is correct, the way to make EA strongest in the long run is to make it a good social group, and hanging out with cool people where there is a chance you might meet someone to date really is almost always strictly better than the same social group where there is no chance of that).
One last point: The current scandals are caused by visibility and maybe sbf. People out there are trying to attack EA by actively looking for the worst sort of true things they can say about the community. Taking what those attacks say as representative of the community is a serious mistake.
[emphasis added]
I just want to flag that this makes me pretty uncomfortable. Not all engagement is good, and if a change in policy / culture increases engagement on the margin because it attracts people who want to show up to get laid (who otherwise wouldn’t have been there), I think I’m personally okay with not having this engagement.
It’s also not clear that if EA changes the dynamics of events or the movement such that there are now an extra group of people who are engaging now that there are opportunities to get laid, that this wouldn’t lead to other people disengaging, so I think the extent to which this actually leads to positive engagement and community cohesion is an open question.
I’m not sure if I’m understanding you correctly. Your two claims sound like:
“If people like me are driven out of the EA community, they will coalesce elsewhere, have a cringe + right wing reputation, and continue to do work on AI / try to make ethical concerns into real world changes.”
“Changes to EA culture should take into account all impacts and not just the direct impact done through EA.”
If you assume that more normie / left-leaning EAs[1] won’t continue to do the “EA-equivalent” to the same extent (e.g. they go off and become a campaign coordinator for the median social justice movement), doesn’t this imply EA should actively move away from “cringe + right wing reputation” by your own argument?[2]
i.e. if “cringe right wing” EAs are going to work on AI safety regardless of their involvement in EA, and “normie left wing” EAs will be more impactful in EA than outside of it, this implies the counterfactual loss in impact is asymmetrical, and if you suggest taking into account all impacts and not just the direct impact through EA, then presumably this supports moving in the normie left wing direction.
Fwiw, I’m not the biggest fan of these labels, and I think they risk being more tribal than adding clarity to the conversation. Like I think folks on a wide range on the political spectrum can have meaningful and useful things to contribute to the EA movement. But I am using it just as antonyms to the examples you gave.
Again, just using your words, not necessarily reflective of any personal views of what you might refer to as “weird aspie” / “libertarian anti-woke” EAs. I’m also not necessarily advocating that EA should actually move away from this group, just trying to understand your argument.