Luca—thank you for this. I totally agree. We native English-speakers are often quite unaware, and unwittingly exclusionary and alienating, when we fall into these ways of speaking.
This can happen even across different English-speaking countries! I grew up in the US, but have also lived in the UK and Australia, and there can be significant failures of communication even across these academic cultures, based on different dialects being spoken too quickly, with too many culture-specific references.
I notice that many EAs adopt a sort of in-group ‘EA dialect’ that involves very fast speaking rate, staccato pace (fast-pause-fast-pause), and slightly over-annunciated consonants, as some sort of IQ-signal.
It sounds like the way that the hyper-intelligent Mentats from ‘Dune’ might speak, if they’ve had a bit too much Juice of Sapho.
That EA dialect is pretty hard to understand for non-native speakers, I imagine. I teach a class on Psychology of EA, which includes many undergrads who don’t have English as their first language, and they even find it hard to follow YouTube videos of many talks at EA events.
If we want EA to be a global movement that’s accessible (at least) to the 1.5-ish billion people who speak English as a second language, and not just to the 400 million-ish people who speak it as their first language, we need to be more aware of the issues you raise.
In my couple of years of experience as a fully committed EA, I’ve noticed IQ signalling is too many times more valued than trying to be clear and socially aware. I think that EA tends to attract a certain type of person (we know the drill: neurodivergent, high IQ, introvert, socially awkward, upper-class, UK/US born) and that’s great if this grouping-tendency makes people comfortable to be themselves. But the other side of the story is that a communication culture which is designed to favour a certain kind of person will become unwelcoming for people who are strongly different (e.g. me, an extrovert, neurotypical, socially aware, low-class, street-smart southern European).
So, I love the Mentat-style EA-dialect, I am super into using rationalist jargon in everyday conversations and I too like a bit of IQ signalling from time to time—because why not? But I think that a collective social and cultural awareness skills training would bring great good to EA as a movement.
Luca—thank you for this. I totally agree. We native English-speakers are often quite unaware, and unwittingly exclusionary and alienating, when we fall into these ways of speaking.
This can happen even across different English-speaking countries! I grew up in the US, but have also lived in the UK and Australia, and there can be significant failures of communication even across these academic cultures, based on different dialects being spoken too quickly, with too many culture-specific references.
I notice that many EAs adopt a sort of in-group ‘EA dialect’ that involves very fast speaking rate, staccato pace (fast-pause-fast-pause), and slightly over-annunciated consonants, as some sort of IQ-signal.
It sounds like the way that the hyper-intelligent Mentats from ‘Dune’ might speak, if they’ve had a bit too much Juice of Sapho.
That EA dialect is pretty hard to understand for non-native speakers, I imagine. I teach a class on Psychology of EA, which includes many undergrads who don’t have English as their first language, and they even find it hard to follow YouTube videos of many talks at EA events.
If we want EA to be a global movement that’s accessible (at least) to the 1.5-ish billion people who speak English as a second language, and not just to the 400 million-ish people who speak it as their first language, we need to be more aware of the issues you raise.
I totally agree.
In my couple of years of experience as a fully committed EA, I’ve noticed IQ signalling is too many times more valued than trying to be clear and socially aware. I think that EA tends to attract a certain type of person (we know the drill: neurodivergent, high IQ, introvert, socially awkward, upper-class, UK/US born) and that’s great if this grouping-tendency makes people comfortable to be themselves. But the other side of the story is that a communication culture which is designed to favour a certain kind of person will become unwelcoming for people who are strongly different (e.g. me, an extrovert, neurotypical, socially aware, low-class, street-smart southern European).
So, I love the Mentat-style EA-dialect, I am super into using rationalist jargon in everyday conversations and I too like a bit of IQ signalling from time to time—because why not? But I think that a collective social and cultural awareness skills training would bring great good to EA as a movement.