Don’t ask what EA can do for you, ask what you can do for EA.
An obvious-in-hindsight statement I recently heard from a friend:
“If I’d believe that me being around was net negative for EA, I’d leave the community.”
While this makes complete sense in theory, it is emotionally difficult to commit to it if most of your friends are in EA. This makes it hard for us to evaluate our impact on the community properly. Motivated reasoning is a thing.
So, it may be wothwhile for us to occasionally reflect on the following questions:
If I were to look back in ten years and find that my presence, in hindsight, was bad for EA. What were the reasons?
Who could I ask for an honest evaluation of which bits of my behavior serve the cause, and which harm it?
If I were to decide that my presence harms the community. How would I get my social needs met anyways?
Yeah I’ve definitely stopped doing things that I think will harm the community (I’ve reduced flirting a lot). But that said I think the kinds of people likely to reduce behaviours are (unlike me) the people who least need to.
I think for most people, they need not worry. And for those that do, there are ways they can avoid harmful patters—avoid events where those patterns occur, go on courses, talk to friends and develop strategies to avoid them.
I don’t think we need to be martyr’s here, and for 99.9% of people there is a way for their social needs to be met in the community. But like 1% of people will have to change a bit.
Don’t ask what EA can do for you, ask what you can do for EA.
An obvious-in-hindsight statement I recently heard from a friend:
While this makes complete sense in theory, it is emotionally difficult to commit to it if most of your friends are in EA. This makes it hard for us to evaluate our impact on the community properly. Motivated reasoning is a thing.
So, it may be wothwhile for us to occasionally reflect on the following questions:
If I were to look back in ten years and find that my presence, in hindsight, was bad for EA. What were the reasons?
Who could I ask for an honest evaluation of which bits of my behavior serve the cause, and which harm it?
If I were to decide that my presence harms the community. How would I get my social needs met anyways?
Yeah I’ve definitely stopped doing things that I think will harm the community (I’ve reduced flirting a lot). But that said I think the kinds of people likely to reduce behaviours are (unlike me) the people who least need to.
I think for most people, they need not worry. And for those that do, there are ways they can avoid harmful patters—avoid events where those patterns occur, go on courses, talk to friends and develop strategies to avoid them.
I don’t think we need to be martyr’s here, and for 99.9% of people there is a way for their social needs to be met in the community. But like 1% of people will have to change a bit.