Armchair expertise is good

This post part of an attempt to draft in public. See my reasoning here. This is a personal post so if you see it, it should be because you chose to. I invite you to become a joint editor or suggest comments/​text blocks below.

Equipping

When I was a Christian, we used to talk about ‘equipping’. This was the notion that it was the church’s job to teach and prepare members of the community.

‘Equipping’ was many things but it included:

  • Teaching about the Bible and how to live

  • Encouraging people to pray

  • Providing people with models to be functional at work, as parents and in marriage

  • And so on

My church saw itself as a coordination hub for its community. If there was a problem, the church though that it was it’s responsibility to fix. Sometimes in EA I think we have too little of this mindset. It’s great to give people agency, but there are some similar problems that community members face. And they could be ‘equipped better’

  • Providing everyone with easy access to the resources we think make people most productive

  • Providing everyone with easy access to the resources we think make people happiest

  • Creating a space where community members see their value in correcting experts

  • Allowing people a way to create track records of predictions, projects and funding decisions that will allow them to control more resources later

  • Creating processes for people to find friends, collaborators and mentors

Solutions