I agree that many neurodivergent people can develop quite a good set of emotional skills (like some of your Bay Area rationalists did), and can promote emotionally responsive and caring environments.
(When I teach my undergrad course on ‘Human Emotions’—syllabus here—one of my goals is to help neurodivergent students improve their understanding of the evolutionary origins and adaptive functions of specific emotions, so they take them more seriously as human phenomena worth understanding)
My main concern is that EA should not become just another activist movement where emotions over-ride reason, where ‘lived experience’ gets prioritized over quantitative data, and where neurodivergent people get cancelled, shunned, and stigmatized for the slightest violations of social norms, or for ‘offending’ neurotypical people.
You’re right that striking the right balance is worth a lot more discussion—although my sense is that, so far, EA as a community has actually done remarkably well on this issue!
howdoyousay—thanks for this supportive post.
I agree that many neurodivergent people can develop quite a good set of emotional skills (like some of your Bay Area rationalists did), and can promote emotionally responsive and caring environments.
(When I teach my undergrad course on ‘Human Emotions’—syllabus here—one of my goals is to help neurodivergent students improve their understanding of the evolutionary origins and adaptive functions of specific emotions, so they take them more seriously as human phenomena worth understanding)
My main concern is that EA should not become just another activist movement where emotions over-ride reason, where ‘lived experience’ gets prioritized over quantitative data, and where neurodivergent people get cancelled, shunned, and stigmatized for the slightest violations of social norms, or for ‘offending’ neurotypical people.
You’re right that striking the right balance is worth a lot more discussion—although my sense is that, so far, EA as a community has actually done remarkably well on this issue!