I played a small part in helping EAGx Melbourne to happen two weeks ago, by volunteering for the weekend. The team and the speakers and facilitators did a great job, there were lots of interesting and engaged people, and it was definitely a case of doing good while having fun.
Also at the conference, I facilitated a discussion group on Effective Environmentalism. It went fairly well—I’m still learning to facilitate and there are things I will do differently next time, but the discussion raised a bunch of important issues, and we got to meet others who are concerned about this.
Yes, insofar communities do that, but typically in emotive and highly biased ways. EA at least has more constructive norms for how these things are discussed. It’s not perfect, and it’s not fast, but here I see people taking pains to be as fair-minded as they can be. (We achieve that to different degrees, but the effort is expected.)
My System 1 doesn’t like this. Giving this power to a group of people and suggesting that we accept their guidance… that feels cultish, and not very compatible with a community of critical thinkers.