Ha! Thanks for the great comment (also very funny!!) to a great post. Really resonates with me re:
warmth of community being a prime motivator for me to get involved in something or stick with something
Re the Less Wrong community and what you said about them teaching themselves rationality and then deciding at some point that they know enough to be more rational than the average person. Yes!! It is sooo counterproductive and often results in overconfidence and, frankly, often, misplaced arrogance and contrarian attitudes. It’s a shame, but I think with a name like that, Less Wrong was inevitably going to attract that kind of mindset.
Also, LOL about ‘chunibyo’ - will be using that word!
I also agree with OP that it can often feel like EA and its connected circles find it good to treat their members like disembodied thinking machines and often completely erase their wider personality from the picture, unlike other spaces like church which OP describes, where IRL embodied experiences are observed and valued, and real human needs such as the community aspect, are met. In my case it wasn’t church but I have really enjoyed being part of direct action environmental groups, BECAUSE of the human element and the thrill of doing things IRL with nice people.
It’s so draining not to be seen!… And no one lives their lives constantly thinking about EA topics.
Also, from the perspective of improving the quality of arguments, considering forum members as ‘disembodied thinking beings’ rather than very real human beings with different personalities, history, genders, bodies, nationalities, languages etc hurts the discourse in two ways:
It prevents us from monitoring demographic information of people taking part in debates to make sure we have a broad enough range of perspectives—because, yes, new perspectives are often the product of unique LIVED experiences (Eg feminist economics, etc).
Not paying attention to the person behind the arguments means missing an opportunity to be aware of any potential biases in the arguments. Encouraging people to bring ‘their whole selves to the discourse’ would also nudge them towards more intellectual rigour, as they will be scrutinised more.
I think it’s a shame that OP feels like he cannot contribute to the EA movement and surely it speaks to a failure to show people how they can contribute, but I think that for example the work that goes into making a community happy and engaged is just as important as whatever work that community does. A parallel I can think of is Reproductive Labour. For so long domestic work or the work of making and raising children (traditionally done by women) was considered economically useless or even harmful to the broader economy by mainstream (and often male) economists. But when feminist economists came along they explained that all that housework was a precondition to any economic work being done at all — you cannot go to work without food in your tummy, or if there’s no one to look after the children (or even make and raise the children who will become workers in turn!). So whatever your method for estimating, it’s immensely valuable (a quick Google estimates its value in the UK to be 1.24 Trillion pounds annually, compared to an overall size of the economy of about £2.7 trillion pounds.). This aspect of the economy, reproductive labour, doesn’t appear on GDP measures, but is absolutely essential to everything else happening.
There’s a parallel here because I think in order the support the amazing work that goes on in the more concrete sides of EA (eg research, fantastic blog posts, charity entrepreneurship, fundraising etc) we need the human fuel to sustain it. That can mean memes, or frankly fun meetups, and deep friendships that go beyond a purely corporate feel.
In the environmental groups I was a part of people would meet for random things like knitting or banner-making and although they weren’t ‘effective’ things to do they supported the rest of the work. It’s very hard to stay involved with a movement that sees everything through the lens of extreme productivity and effectiveness.
I think everyone on this forum agrees that taking time to do things just for fun is important for well being and long term productivity.
What if being REALLY serious about fun and play, in the way that Google and the other Silicon Valley companies used to be known for (toboggans in the offices, playrooms etc), was a way to make the EA community both more inclusive and more effective? I really believe there’s a good case to be made for this and would solve the problem that OP has of not feeling like his needs for community and fun are being met AND the uncertainty about what they can contribute.
Beautiful comment. I wholeheartedly agree that fun and friendship are not an extra or a nice-to-have, but are the lifeblood of communities and movements.
Ha! Thanks for the great comment (also very funny!!) to a great post. Really resonates with me re:
warmth of community being a prime motivator for me to get involved in something or stick with something
Re the Less Wrong community and what you said about them teaching themselves rationality and then deciding at some point that they know enough to be more rational than the average person. Yes!! It is sooo counterproductive and often results in overconfidence and, frankly, often, misplaced arrogance and contrarian attitudes. It’s a shame, but I think with a name like that, Less Wrong was inevitably going to attract that kind of mindset.
Also, LOL about ‘chunibyo’ - will be using that word!
I also agree with OP that it can often feel like EA and its connected circles find it good to treat their members like disembodied thinking machines and often completely erase their wider personality from the picture, unlike other spaces like church which OP describes, where IRL embodied experiences are observed and valued, and real human needs such as the community aspect, are met. In my case it wasn’t church but I have really enjoyed being part of direct action environmental groups, BECAUSE of the human element and the thrill of doing things IRL with nice people.
It’s so draining not to be seen!… And no one lives their lives constantly thinking about EA topics.
Also, from the perspective of improving the quality of arguments, considering forum members as ‘disembodied thinking beings’ rather than very real human beings with different personalities, history, genders, bodies, nationalities, languages etc hurts the discourse in two ways:
It prevents us from monitoring demographic information of people taking part in debates to make sure we have a broad enough range of perspectives—because, yes, new perspectives are often the product of unique LIVED experiences (Eg feminist economics, etc).
Not paying attention to the person behind the arguments means missing an opportunity to be aware of any potential biases in the arguments. Encouraging people to bring ‘their whole selves to the discourse’ would also nudge them towards more intellectual rigour, as they will be scrutinised more.
I think it’s a shame that OP feels like he cannot contribute to the EA movement and surely it speaks to a failure to show people how they can contribute, but I think that for example the work that goes into making a community happy and engaged is just as important as whatever work that community does. A parallel I can think of is Reproductive Labour. For so long domestic work or the work of making and raising children (traditionally done by women) was considered economically useless or even harmful to the broader economy by mainstream (and often male) economists. But when feminist economists came along they explained that all that housework was a precondition to any economic work being done at all — you cannot go to work without food in your tummy, or if there’s no one to look after the children (or even make and raise the children who will become workers in turn!). So whatever your method for estimating, it’s immensely valuable (a quick Google estimates its value in the UK to be 1.24 Trillion pounds annually, compared to an overall size of the economy of about £2.7 trillion pounds.). This aspect of the economy, reproductive labour, doesn’t appear on GDP measures, but is absolutely essential to everything else happening.
There’s a parallel here because I think in order the support the amazing work that goes on in the more concrete sides of EA (eg research, fantastic blog posts, charity entrepreneurship, fundraising etc) we need the human fuel to sustain it. That can mean memes, or frankly fun meetups, and deep friendships that go beyond a purely corporate feel.
In the environmental groups I was a part of people would meet for random things like knitting or banner-making and although they weren’t ‘effective’ things to do they supported the rest of the work. It’s very hard to stay involved with a movement that sees everything through the lens of extreme productivity and effectiveness.
I think everyone on this forum agrees that taking time to do things just for fun is important for well being and long term productivity.
What if being REALLY serious about fun and play, in the way that Google and the other Silicon Valley companies used to be known for (toboggans in the offices, playrooms etc), was a way to make the EA community both more inclusive and more effective? I really believe there’s a good case to be made for this and would solve the problem that OP has of not feeling like his needs for community and fun are being met AND the uncertainty about what they can contribute.
Beautiful comment. I wholeheartedly agree that fun and friendship are not an extra or a nice-to-have, but are the lifeblood of communities and movements.