Wonderful post! This is easily the best resource I’m aware of on ways to reduce value drift, and I anticipate sharing it with a lot of people over the years.
In my view, one of the most threatening risks to EA is value drift—not collectively, but in the sense that many of the community’s most devoted members gradually lose interest and leave. There are a lot of people whose names you can see all over the 80K/GWWC websites from material produced a few years ago, but who are no longer involved in EA in any kind of public capacity (and may not be involved at all). We’re still growing, on net, but if getting older tends to lead to drift, I can imagine us hitting a point where so many people “age out” that growth drops to roughly zero.
If you decide you want to spend more time with value aligned people / other EAs, here are some concrete ways...
Something that wasn’t in your list: Helping the people who are already in your life become aligned with your values, or with the idea that you should keep your values.
The latter seems easier; it’s tough to get a random person to become truly interested in EA, but any close friend should care somewhat about your sticking to your plans and meeting your goals.
If my most religious friend told me they’d stopped going to church and felt “meh” about it, I’d be concerned for them even as an atheist, because the change might indicate that they were struggling with their life in general. If I decided to stop giving money to charity, I’d hope that my non-EA friends wouldn’t simply let the matter drop, and would at least gently ask questions that would prompt me to engage with my own beliefs and come up with a good reason that I’d abandoned something which was previously very important to me.
Send your future self letters...
My version of this is keeping a journal, where I sometimes address “Future Aaron” but mostly focus on recording my beliefs/feelings as they are on any given day, trusting that Future Aaron will read those entries and feel connected to me. I haven’t yet struggled with value drift, but I have seen my journal help me recover past states of mind to become more excited/inspired/etc. I hope that it will also reduce the odds that I drift away from EA over time.
There are a lot of people whose names you can see all over the 80K/GWWC websites from material produced a few years ago, but who are no longer involved in EA in any kind of public capacity (and may not be involved at all)
Do you know if anyone’s debriefed these folks?
Could be interesting to systematically interview people like this, to learn more about why people distance from EA & to see if any generalizable trends appear.
Wonderful post! This is easily the best resource I’m aware of on ways to reduce value drift, and I anticipate sharing it with a lot of people over the years.
In my view, one of the most threatening risks to EA is value drift—not collectively, but in the sense that many of the community’s most devoted members gradually lose interest and leave. There are a lot of people whose names you can see all over the 80K/GWWC websites from material produced a few years ago, but who are no longer involved in EA in any kind of public capacity (and may not be involved at all). We’re still growing, on net, but if getting older tends to lead to drift, I can imagine us hitting a point where so many people “age out” that growth drops to roughly zero.
Something that wasn’t in your list: Helping the people who are already in your life become aligned with your values, or with the idea that you should keep your values.
The latter seems easier; it’s tough to get a random person to become truly interested in EA, but any close friend should care somewhat about your sticking to your plans and meeting your goals.
If my most religious friend told me they’d stopped going to church and felt “meh” about it, I’d be concerned for them even as an atheist, because the change might indicate that they were struggling with their life in general. If I decided to stop giving money to charity, I’d hope that my non-EA friends wouldn’t simply let the matter drop, and would at least gently ask questions that would prompt me to engage with my own beliefs and come up with a good reason that I’d abandoned something which was previously very important to me.
My version of this is keeping a journal, where I sometimes address “Future Aaron” but mostly focus on recording my beliefs/feelings as they are on any given day, trusting that Future Aaron will read those entries and feel connected to me. I haven’t yet struggled with value drift, but I have seen my journal help me recover past states of mind to become more excited/inspired/etc. I hope that it will also reduce the odds that I drift away from EA over time.
Do you know if anyone’s debriefed these folks?
Could be interesting to systematically interview people like this, to learn more about why people distance from EA & to see if any generalizable trends appear.