I feel like there’s also an ambiguity in the term “community” being used to both mean:
A relatively small and tightly knit social group of people in specific areas who know each-other in real life;
And a larger global community of people who are involved in EA to varying levels, but it doesn’t make up the majority of their social life.
A lot of the posts about EA community issues seems to be implicitly about the stereotypical “people who go to Bay Area house parties” community. Which is not representative of the wider community of people who might attend EA conferences, work/volunteer in EA orgs or donate.
A bit of side topic here, but thank you very much Jeff for writing this post and making an effort to understand everyone, structure this discussion and come to some agreement/conclusions. I see a lot of value in it. Plus, it was very comforting for me personally, as some previous talks left me quite upset.
I feel like there’s also an ambiguity in the term “community” being used to both mean:
A relatively small and tightly knit social group of people in specific areas who know each-other in real life;
And a larger global community of people who are involved in EA to varying levels, but it doesn’t make up the majority of their social life.
A lot of the posts about EA community issues seems to be implicitly about the stereotypical “people who go to Bay Area house parties” community. Which is not representative of the wider community of people who might attend EA conferences, work/volunteer in EA orgs or donate.
Good point! I’m trying to talk about the second category here, though that does include the first to some extent.
A bit of side topic here, but thank you very much Jeff for writing this post and making an effort to understand everyone, structure this discussion and come to some agreement/conclusions. I see a lot of value in it. Plus, it was very comforting for me personally, as some previous talks left me quite upset.