Hi Julia—I wholeheartedly agree with your semantic point: the words “hardcore” and “softcore” seem potentially harmful.
However, I wonder if the stronger thesis is true:
“Having strictly defined categories of involvement doesn’t seem likely to help.”
It seems plausible, but I can think of worlds in which categories of involvement actually do play an important role. (For instance, there is a reason galas will do things like sort donors into silver, gold, and platinum levels based on their level of contribution.) Since one could see strong arguments for both sides, it seems like the sort of hypothesis that benefit from a mechanism posit, as talked about in my last post: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/sn/a_call_for_mechanistic_thinking_in/
My guess is that, for example, the distinction between priests and parishioners does play a socially useful function. Since the labels are non-normative (unlike “hardcore” and “softcore”), they seem to establish healthy attractors at two different levels of dedication. On the macro-level, I wouldn’t be surprised if this wasn’t a distinction which contributed to Christianity being able to maintain relative social equilibrium for many centuries. It seems like EA is going to need a similar degree of social equilibrium to achieve its most ambitious goals—e.g., a stable piece of culture that helps us continue to figure out what to do and then do it for many many years.
I’ve thought about this question for two days, and in the end I feel sure that “hardcore” and “softcore” are not the terms we want, but not sure about whether using category words for EAs is helpful or not.
People seem to self-sort pretty well even without the words. In any in-person group, even when all the people have the same official title (“member,” “parishioner,” etc), everybody knows who just shows up sometimes and who writes the newsletter, serves on all the committees, etc. Because so much of EA happens outside of face-to-face communities, perhaps we struggle more to figure out who is who.
Hi Julia—I wholeheartedly agree with your semantic point: the words “hardcore” and “softcore” seem potentially harmful.
However, I wonder if the stronger thesis is true: “Having strictly defined categories of involvement doesn’t seem likely to help.”
It seems plausible, but I can think of worlds in which categories of involvement actually do play an important role. (For instance, there is a reason galas will do things like sort donors into silver, gold, and platinum levels based on their level of contribution.) Since one could see strong arguments for both sides, it seems like the sort of hypothesis that benefit from a mechanism posit, as talked about in my last post: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/sn/a_call_for_mechanistic_thinking_in/
My guess is that, for example, the distinction between priests and parishioners does play a socially useful function. Since the labels are non-normative (unlike “hardcore” and “softcore”), they seem to establish healthy attractors at two different levels of dedication. On the macro-level, I wouldn’t be surprised if this wasn’t a distinction which contributed to Christianity being able to maintain relative social equilibrium for many centuries. It seems like EA is going to need a similar degree of social equilibrium to achieve its most ambitious goals—e.g., a stable piece of culture that helps us continue to figure out what to do and then do it for many many years.
What do you think? =)
I’ve thought about this question for two days, and in the end I feel sure that “hardcore” and “softcore” are not the terms we want, but not sure about whether using category words for EAs is helpful or not.
People seem to self-sort pretty well even without the words. In any in-person group, even when all the people have the same official title (“member,” “parishioner,” etc), everybody knows who just shows up sometimes and who writes the newsletter, serves on all the committees, etc. Because so much of EA happens outside of face-to-face communities, perhaps we struggle more to figure out who is who.