Personal take: with the kind of work EA is mainly about (practice altruism, reduce suffering, tackle serious issues), it is very hard to be very “fun” about it. I don’t think it is about perfect grammar (I am sure you can still have grammar mistakes while being serious), but it is more about the “boundary” of “fun” and how sometimes the non-serious tone is correlated with non-serious attitude towards certain topics, and that may not be helpful to address those topics.
I want to provide a little bit of narrative. At an AVA Conference I took some silly pictures with people; we still wanted to cause change in food systems and reduce the number of animals that suffer, and we took 60 seconds to giggle and pose for pictures. At an EA book discussion group folks were smiling and friendly while discussing moral philosophy and career issues. At an EAG conference I got a group of people together to have afternoon tea and we had light-hearted chitchat, even through we all desperately wanted to reduce suffering in the world. At an EAGx conference folks got together for drinks and dinner, with lots of laughter and non-serious topics.
Tentatively, I want to say that it is possible for serious pursuits and for enjoyment/fun to co-exist, although I’m less confident if is is realistic to expect a large number of strangers to do so on an internet forum. The type of fun probably matters a lot: I don’t want to see the EA Forum become filled with memes and jokes, even if they are EA-relevant.
I see where you’re coming from, but I can’t help but wonder if a more cheerful approach isn’t also possible and perhaps even more conducive to impact. Julia Wise’s thoughts in http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/06/cheerfully.html and also especially Nate Soares’ https://mindingourway.com/detach-the-grim-o-meter/ would perhaps go in that direction. Basically: Being grim kind of sucks long-term. And maybe being more positive will lead to more impact.
But without further empirical data this is just speculation on my part :P
(Just as a couple of thoughts that are better than my n=1: In community building the recommendation is opportunity, rather than obligation, framing, so it probably works better? I recall there also being some studies on advertisements with negative/positive/humorous tone, and the latter two had better effects. Probably low external validity though. Also, though, comedians like John Oliver probably have a much higher reach compared to the usual by just being, well, entertaining and fun.)
I am not completely sure on the emphasizing of the community building based on fun part - that might be what fundamentally I view differently on; I believe people should best be united by passion/values and the things to do, the other stuff seems a bit for entertaining/personal/socializing purposes (and harder to be unified on), less for “a community with a goal” type of organizations (which could def happen in smaller subsets/scale) - people who are passionate about the values will stick around anyways is my take/current thought
On being cheerful though- that part I agree. I like posts celebrating progress as well
Thanks both! Yeah I do think ultimately the goals of EA and the Forum are not “fun” per say, but hopefully we can still create a space that has positivity. And I think currently, when people write about good news or progress or celebrating success, they get a relatively large amount of karma.
I also agree that we don’t want the tone to be too grim, both because that’s probably bad for motivation, and because I think that can even skew the topics that get discussed in bad ways (like if discussions were all doomy). I think that the Forum could use more cheerful content on the margin. :)
Personal take: with the kind of work EA is mainly about (practice altruism, reduce suffering, tackle serious issues), it is very hard to be very “fun” about it. I don’t think it is about perfect grammar (I am sure you can still have grammar mistakes while being serious), but it is more about the “boundary” of “fun” and how sometimes the non-serious tone is correlated with non-serious attitude towards certain topics, and that may not be helpful to address those topics.
I want to provide a little bit of narrative. At an AVA Conference I took some silly pictures with people; we still wanted to cause change in food systems and reduce the number of animals that suffer, and we took 60 seconds to giggle and pose for pictures. At an EA book discussion group folks were smiling and friendly while discussing moral philosophy and career issues. At an EAG conference I got a group of people together to have afternoon tea and we had light-hearted chitchat, even through we all desperately wanted to reduce suffering in the world. At an EAGx conference folks got together for drinks and dinner, with lots of laughter and non-serious topics.
Tentatively, I want to say that it is possible for serious pursuits and for enjoyment/fun to co-exist, although I’m less confident if is is realistic to expect a large number of strangers to do so on an internet forum. The type of fun probably matters a lot: I don’t want to see the EA Forum become filled with memes and jokes, even if they are EA-relevant.
I see where you’re coming from, but I can’t help but wonder if a more cheerful approach isn’t also possible and perhaps even more conducive to impact. Julia Wise’s thoughts in http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/06/cheerfully.html and also especially Nate Soares’ https://mindingourway.com/detach-the-grim-o-meter/ would perhaps go in that direction. Basically: Being grim kind of sucks long-term. And maybe being more positive will lead to more impact.
But without further empirical data this is just speculation on my part :P
(Just as a couple of thoughts that are better than my n=1: In community building the recommendation is opportunity, rather than obligation, framing, so it probably works better? I recall there also being some studies on advertisements with negative/positive/humorous tone, and the latter two had better effects. Probably low external validity though. Also, though, comedians like John Oliver probably have a much higher reach compared to the usual by just being, well, entertaining and fun.)
I am not completely sure on the emphasizing of the community building based on fun part - that might be what fundamentally I view differently on; I believe people should best be united by passion/values and the things to do, the other stuff seems a bit for entertaining/personal/socializing purposes (and harder to be unified on), less for “a community with a goal” type of organizations (which could def happen in smaller subsets/scale) - people who are passionate about the values will stick around anyways is my take/current thought
On being cheerful though- that part I agree. I like posts celebrating progress as well
Thanks both! Yeah I do think ultimately the goals of EA and the Forum are not “fun” per say, but hopefully we can still create a space that has positivity. And I think currently, when people write about good news or progress or celebrating success, they get a relatively large amount of karma.
I also agree that we don’t want the tone to be too grim, both because that’s probably bad for motivation, and because I think that can even skew the topics that get discussed in bad ways (like if discussions were all doomy). I think that the Forum could use more cheerful content on the margin. :)