On the one hand I empathise with your situation – (seemingly) interested in the guiding principles and the core idea and put off by other aspiring EAs in your immediate vicinity. On the other hand, I don’t see your situation as generalisable to EA as a whole and very contrary to most experiences on conferences, in local groups etc (e.g. DGB is neither bible-like, nor an EA-blueprint imho).
Your title’s “why” seems to be solely based on a small sample of local EAs and the “how” is just a ‘really think about how much good the actions you take do’?
You could’ve addressed your local group directly, or started separate events or meet-ups meeting your standards (which is something people did before and which is encouraged as to circumvent lock-in). You could’ve been more careful with the generalisations and written a caveat on how to not run a local group as to not put off newcomers. But in this format, you don’t really provide a differentiated critique and I’m not really sure where you’re going with this post. Hence a downvote.
It is true that my experience comes from only one local group and it is great to hear that this does not necessarily extent to others. I just felt that the cause of all this is not the group but rather how EA-culture is set up. Therefore, it would not surprise me to see those problems elsewhere.
As to “how”, calculating your actions is all it takes.
Starting a separate event or group is a nice idea. Thank you !
On the one hand I empathise with your situation – (seemingly) interested in the guiding principles and the core idea and put off by other aspiring EAs in your immediate vicinity. On the other hand, I don’t see your situation as generalisable to EA as a whole and very contrary to most experiences on conferences, in local groups etc (e.g. DGB is neither bible-like, nor an EA-blueprint imho).
Your title’s “why” seems to be solely based on a small sample of local EAs and the “how” is just a ‘really think about how much good the actions you take do’?
You could’ve addressed your local group directly, or started separate events or meet-ups meeting your standards (which is something people did before and which is encouraged as to circumvent lock-in). You could’ve been more careful with the generalisations and written a caveat on how to not run a local group as to not put off newcomers. But in this format, you don’t really provide a differentiated critique and I’m not really sure where you’re going with this post. Hence a downvote.
It is true that my experience comes from only one local group and it is great to hear that this does not necessarily extent to others. I just felt that the cause of all this is not the group but rather how EA-culture is set up. Therefore, it would not surprise me to see those problems elsewhere.
As to “how”, calculating your actions is all it takes.
Starting a separate event or group is a nice idea. Thank you !