For this to be the explanation presumably intra-EA conflict would not merely need to be driving people away, but driving people away at higher rates than it used to. It’s not clear to me why this would be the case.
My mental model is that in the early years, a disproportionately large portion of the EA community consisted of the community’s founders and their friends (and friends of friends, etc.) This cohort is likely to be very tolerant of the early members’ idiosyncrasies- it’s even possible some of those friendships were built around those idiosyncrasies. As time went on, more people found EA through other means (reading DGB in a university class, hearing about EA on a podcast, etc.) This new cohort is much less likely to tolerate those early idiosyncrasies. (The Pareto Fellowship application process could be a good example).
It’s also worth noting that highly engaged EAs are quite close socially. It’s possible that many of those 178 people might be thinking of the same people!
Good point about double counting as a possible issue. That means we shouldn’t try to infer the number of people driven away. However, we should still be able to say that bad experiences with other EAs are causing more engaged EAs to leave than other factors, since those other factors are also subject to double counting.
My mental model is that in the early years, a disproportionately large portion of the EA community consisted of the community’s founders and their friends (and friends of friends, etc.) This cohort is likely to be very tolerant of the early members’ idiosyncrasies- it’s even possible some of those friendships were built around those idiosyncrasies.
That’s true, and those friendships also probably reduced conflict as well—much harder to take a very negative view of someone you know well socially.
My mental model is that in the early years, a disproportionately large portion of the EA community consisted of the community’s founders and their friends (and friends of friends, etc.) This cohort is likely to be very tolerant of the early members’ idiosyncrasies- it’s even possible some of those friendships were built around those idiosyncrasies. As time went on, more people found EA through other means (reading DGB in a university class, hearing about EA on a podcast, etc.) This new cohort is much less likely to tolerate those early idiosyncrasies. (The Pareto Fellowship application process could be a good example).
Good point about double counting as a possible issue. That means we shouldn’t try to infer the number of people driven away. However, we should still be able to say that bad experiences with other EAs are causing more engaged EAs to leave than other factors, since those other factors are also subject to double counting.
That’s true, and those friendships also probably reduced conflict as well—much harder to take a very negative view of someone you know well socially.