I really appreciated your comment and think it’s important to acknowledge and ensure neurodiverse people feel welcome, and I’m coming from a place where I agree with Maya’s reflections on emotions within EA and am neurotypical.
Not sure I have time to post my thoughts in depth but I think the rational Vs. intuitive emotional intelligence tension within EA is something worth a lot more thought. It’s a tension / trade-off I’ve picked up on in the EA professional realm: where people aren’t getting on in EA organisations, where people aren’t feeling heard, and where the working culture becomes one that’s more afraid of losing status / threat mindset than supportive, to the detriment of employees.
Maybe as a counter to what you’re saying, some of the people who helped me best own and articulate my emotions (in the context of another EA repeatedly undermining me) are bay-area rationalist EAs who you might describe as neurodivergent. Why? I think a lot of people from that community have just done the work on themselves to recognise emotions in themselves, and consequently in others. And this is driven by valuing emotions / internal worlds intrinsically—in that integrating head and heart way you write about—and then getting better in that domain.
So to link this back to Maya’s post;
agree with making sure EA is truly inclusive and, in being better at responding to emotions and traumatic experiences, doesn’t swing to excluding neurodivergent people,
I think this tension / trade-off goes beyond social realm, and into the professional, and
I would like to play up how many neurodivergent people—especially those who might instinctively behave in a way that creates the culture Maya has highlighted as problematic - can actually be really good at creating an emotionally responsive and caring environment.
Happy to discuss further time permitting (which is sadly not on my side!)
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!
I really appreciated your comment and think it’s important to acknowledge and ensure neurodiverse people feel welcome, and I’m coming from a place where I agree with Maya’s reflections on emotions within EA and am neurotypical.
Not sure I have time to post my thoughts in depth but I think the rational Vs. intuitive emotional intelligence tension within EA is something worth a lot more thought. It’s a tension / trade-off I’ve picked up on in the EA professional realm: where people aren’t getting on in EA organisations, where people aren’t feeling heard, and where the working culture becomes one that’s more afraid of losing status / threat mindset than supportive, to the detriment of employees.
Maybe as a counter to what you’re saying, some of the people who helped me best own and articulate my emotions (in the context of another EA repeatedly undermining me) are bay-area rationalist EAs who you might describe as neurodivergent. Why? I think a lot of people from that community have just done the work on themselves to recognise emotions in themselves, and consequently in others. And this is driven by valuing emotions / internal worlds intrinsically—in that integrating head and heart way you write about—and then getting better in that domain.
So to link this back to Maya’s post;
agree with making sure EA is truly inclusive and, in being better at responding to emotions and traumatic experiences, doesn’t swing to excluding neurodivergent people,
I think this tension / trade-off goes beyond social realm, and into the professional, and
I would like to play up how many neurodivergent people—especially those who might instinctively behave in a way that creates the culture Maya has highlighted as problematic - can actually be really good at creating an emotionally responsive and caring environment.
Happy to discuss further time permitting (which is sadly not on my side!)
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!