I’m also worried about Leverage and various other cults and disasters, not just FTX.
I wouldn’t think of the separate communities as “movements” per se. Rather, each cause area would have a professional network of nonprofits and companies.
Basically, why do mid-sized companies usually not spawn cults and socially harm their members like movements like EA and the animal welfare community sometimes do? I think it’s because movements by their nature try to motivate members towards their goals, using social pressures. This attracts young idealists, some of whom will be impressionable. People will try radical stuff like traveling to locations where they’re unsupported, going on intensive retreats, circling, drugs, polyamory, etc. These things benefit some people in some situations, but in they also can put people in vulnerable situations. My hypothesis is that predators detect this vulnerability and then start even crazier and more cultish projects, arguably including Leverage and FTX, under the guise of advancing the movement’s goals.
Companies rarely put junior staff in such vulnerable positions. People generally know not to sleep with subordinates, and better manage conflicts of interest. They don’t usually give staff a pass for misbehaviour due to being value-aligned.
We don’t need to lose our goals, or our social network, but we could strip away a lot of risk-increasing behaviour that “movements” do, and take on some risk-reducing “professionalising” measures that’s more typical of companies..
I agree that ideas are powerful things, and that people will continue to want to follow those ideas to their conclusions, in collaboration with others. But I’m suggesting to be faithful to those ideas might be to shape up a little bit and practice them somewhat differently. For the case of Christianity, it’s not like telling Christians to disavow the holy Trinity. It’s more like noticing abuse in a branch of Christianity, and thinking “we’ve got to do some things differently”. Except that EA is smaller and thousands of years younger, so can be more ambitious in the ways we try to reform.
Roughly yes, with some differences:
I think the disasters would scale sublinearly
I’m also worried about Leverage and various other cults and disasters, not just FTX.
I wouldn’t think of the separate communities as “movements” per se. Rather, each cause area would have a professional network of nonprofits and companies.
Basically, why do mid-sized companies usually not spawn cults and socially harm their members like movements like EA and the animal welfare community sometimes do? I think it’s because movements by their nature try to motivate members towards their goals, using social pressures. This attracts young idealists, some of whom will be impressionable. People will try radical stuff like traveling to locations where they’re unsupported, going on intensive retreats, circling, drugs, polyamory, etc. These things benefit some people in some situations, but in they also can put people in vulnerable situations. My hypothesis is that predators detect this vulnerability and then start even crazier and more cultish projects, arguably including Leverage and FTX, under the guise of advancing the movement’s goals.
Companies rarely put junior staff in such vulnerable positions. People generally know not to sleep with subordinates, and better manage conflicts of interest. They don’t usually give staff a pass for misbehaviour due to being value-aligned.
We don’t need to lose our goals, or our social network, but we could strip away a lot of risk-increasing behaviour that “movements” do, and take on some risk-reducing “professionalising” measures that’s more typical of companies..
I agree that ideas are powerful things, and that people will continue to want to follow those ideas to their conclusions, in collaboration with others. But I’m suggesting to be faithful to those ideas might be to shape up a little bit and practice them somewhat differently. For the case of Christianity, it’s not like telling Christians to disavow the holy Trinity. It’s more like noticing abuse in a branch of Christianity, and thinking “we’ve got to do some things differently”. Except that EA is smaller and thousands of years younger, so can be more ambitious in the ways we try to reform.