“Best handled by people firmly grounded in some other community or field or worldview.”
I’d be interested in you fleshing out a bit more what bring grounded in this way looks like to you. (E.g. what are some examples of communities/fields/worldviews EAs you know have successfully done this with?)
Not totally sure what I mean. Something like regularisation, helping to dampen fanaticism, unilateralism, information cascades, goodharting.
Complexity science, secular Buddhism, Christianity, neoliberalism, libertarianism, phenomenology, humanism (hallo Swiss EAs), transhumanism, environmentalism, various conflict theories (Marxism, IR realism, feminism, game theory, public choice theory), the hermeneutics of suspicion, global justice, basic goods, capability theory, entrepreneurship, patriotism, evo psych, circling, Toastmasters, punk, weird Twitter. (I’m including a couple adjacent people who know EA and work with EAs but don’t call themselves EAs.)
This is besides a thousand fandoms and hobbies (which help with social grounding but less on intellectual grounding).
Thanks. This was interesting and I think I buy that this can be really important. This comment actually gave me an interesting new frame on some of the benefits I’ve gotten from having a history with punk music.
In some ways I think you get this for free by being old enough to have graduated from uni before EA existed. I hadn’t exactly appreciated this as a way my experience differs from younger EAs’.
Like Howie, the past year of intense community building and working with young people have made me reflect on my age + relationship with my family + Jewish community and how those have been potentially more grounding than I gave them credit for. My college friends are a perfect blend of “buy a bunch of EA ideas” and “aren’t in the community” and “skeptical of some stuff” and “really fucking smart” to call me out on nonsense.
Rationality was a deep love of mine, at 17! But not the only love.
“Best handled by people firmly grounded in some other community or field or worldview.”
I’d be interested in you fleshing out a bit more what bring grounded in this way looks like to you. (E.g. what are some examples of communities/fields/worldviews EAs you know have successfully done this with?)
Not totally sure what I mean. Something like regularisation, helping to dampen fanaticism, unilateralism, information cascades, goodharting.
Complexity science, secular Buddhism, Christianity, neoliberalism, libertarianism, phenomenology, humanism (hallo Swiss EAs), transhumanism, environmentalism, various conflict theories (Marxism, IR realism, feminism, game theory, public choice theory), the hermeneutics of suspicion, global justice, basic goods, capability theory, entrepreneurship, patriotism, evo psych, circling, Toastmasters, punk, weird Twitter. (I’m including a couple adjacent people who know EA and work with EAs but don’t call themselves EAs.)
This is besides a thousand fandoms and hobbies (which help with social grounding but less on intellectual grounding).
Thanks. This was interesting and I think I buy that this can be really important. This comment actually gave me an interesting new frame on some of the benefits I’ve gotten from having a history with punk music.
In some ways I think you get this for free by being old enough to have graduated from uni before EA existed. I hadn’t exactly appreciated this as a way my experience differs from younger EAs’.
Implies that we should have non-focus universities as well as focus universities. Nature reserves. Strategic groupthink antidote reserve.
(99% joking)
Like Howie, the past year of intense community building and working with young people have made me reflect on my age + relationship with my family + Jewish community and how those have been potentially more grounding than I gave them credit for. My college friends are a perfect blend of “buy a bunch of EA ideas” and “aren’t in the community” and “skeptical of some stuff” and “really fucking smart” to call me out on nonsense.
Rationality was a deep love of mine, at 17! But not the only love.