I agree, taking your words literally, with all their qualifications (“can risk,” “not necessarily true,” “sometimes,” etc). There are a few other important caveats I think EA needs to keep in mind.
“Newcomer” is a specific role in the group, which can range from a hostile onlooker, to an loud and incompetent notice, to a neutral observer, to a person using the group for status or identity rather than to contribute to its mission, to a friendly and enthusiastic participant, to an expert in the topic area who hasn’t been part of the specific group before.
Being welcoming to newcomers does not mean tolerating destructive behavior, and it can absolutely encompass vigorous and ongoing acculturation of the newcomer to the group, requiring them to conform to the group’s expectations in order to preserve the group’s integrity.
In order to avoid such efforts of acculturation resulting in total conformism and cultish behavior, the group needs to find a way to enact it that is professional and limited to specific, appropriate domains.
Generally, the respect that a participant has earned from the group is an important determinant of how seriously their proposals for change will be taken. They should expect that most of the ideas they have for change will be bad ones, and that the group knows better, until they’ve spent time learning and understanding why things are done the way they are (see Chesterton’s Fence). Over time, they will gain the ability to make more useful proposals and be entrusted with greater independence and responsibility.
In EA, I think we have foolishly focused WAY too much on inviting newcomers in, and completely failed at acculturation. We also lack adequate infrastructure to build the intimate working relationships that allow bonds of individual trust and respect to develop and structure the group as a whole. Those pods of EAs who have managed to do this are typically those working in EA orgs, and they get described as “insular” because they haven’t managed to integrate their local networks with the broader EA space.
I don’t see a need to be more blandly tolerant of whatever energy newcomers are bringing to the table in EA. Instead, I think we need very specific interventions to build one-on-one, long-term, working relationships between less and more experienced EA individuals, and a better way to update the rest of EA on the behavior and professional accomplishments of EAs. Right now, we appear to be largely dependent on hostile critics to provide this informational feedback loop, and it’s breaking our brains. At the same time, we’ve spent the last few years scaling up EA participation so much without commeasurate efforts at acculturation, and that has badly shrunk our capacity to do so, possibly without the ability to recover.
I agree, taking your words literally, with all their qualifications (“can risk,” “not necessarily true,” “sometimes,” etc). There are a few other important caveats I think EA needs to keep in mind.
“Newcomer” is a specific role in the group, which can range from a hostile onlooker, to an loud and incompetent notice, to a neutral observer, to a person using the group for status or identity rather than to contribute to its mission, to a friendly and enthusiastic participant, to an expert in the topic area who hasn’t been part of the specific group before.
Being welcoming to newcomers does not mean tolerating destructive behavior, and it can absolutely encompass vigorous and ongoing acculturation of the newcomer to the group, requiring them to conform to the group’s expectations in order to preserve the group’s integrity.
In order to avoid such efforts of acculturation resulting in total conformism and cultish behavior, the group needs to find a way to enact it that is professional and limited to specific, appropriate domains.
Generally, the respect that a participant has earned from the group is an important determinant of how seriously their proposals for change will be taken. They should expect that most of the ideas they have for change will be bad ones, and that the group knows better, until they’ve spent time learning and understanding why things are done the way they are (see Chesterton’s Fence). Over time, they will gain the ability to make more useful proposals and be entrusted with greater independence and responsibility.
In EA, I think we have foolishly focused WAY too much on inviting newcomers in, and completely failed at acculturation. We also lack adequate infrastructure to build the intimate working relationships that allow bonds of individual trust and respect to develop and structure the group as a whole. Those pods of EAs who have managed to do this are typically those working in EA orgs, and they get described as “insular” because they haven’t managed to integrate their local networks with the broader EA space.
I don’t see a need to be more blandly tolerant of whatever energy newcomers are bringing to the table in EA. Instead, I think we need very specific interventions to build one-on-one, long-term, working relationships between less and more experienced EA individuals, and a better way to update the rest of EA on the behavior and professional accomplishments of EAs. Right now, we appear to be largely dependent on hostile critics to provide this informational feedback loop, and it’s breaking our brains. At the same time, we’ve spent the last few years scaling up EA participation so much without commeasurate efforts at acculturation, and that has badly shrunk our capacity to do so, possibly without the ability to recover.
Excellent points here. I think this is close to what I am trying to get at.
I agree that we shouldn’t just open the floodgates and invite anyone and everyone.