I was really hoping you were going to provide an actionable version of “keep your tribal identity small”
For me, the most useful parts of the KYIS outlook were, meeting people with a fresh slate without saying “yes I’m one of those people”, not feeling like you personally are being threatened when people criticise your group, not feeling that impulse to delude yourself and everyone around you into thinking the outgroup are monsters.
The issue is, I notice that we can only stay in this state of neutrality for so long. Eventually, we find our tribe, we develop an ideology (cluster of beliefs about how the world works and how to do good) that is simply too useful to step outside of, we become publicly associated with controversial projects. That will happen. If we don’t learn how to move soundly in that fire we wont end up moving soundly at all.
I guess the actionable version is to develop transferable skills, abilities, wealth, or social capital that are highly valued by many different tribes.
Then you have the leverage to flit from one to the next, and not care about standing up for any particular tribe.
However, the game to acquire wealth, social capital, and valued skills is basically the game that we are all playing and has lots of competition. The only way to “opt out” is to join a local monopoly (i.e. a tribe). Also, in the real world, tribes often “loan us resources” to develop our skills, capital, etc. in exchange for “joining” the tribe.
I don’t think that applies to the sense of tribe that I mean. When you find your tribe, the sense of tribe that I mean, you will realise that leaving it is not really an option that you ever could have had. It is simply what you are. It is simply the group of people who want for the world the same thing that you want for the world.
It can take a long time to find that tribe and to recognise it. It isn’t lesswrong, it isn’t EA. It’s funny to think about how much of an ideological split there is between discounting neartermists and alignmentist longtermists, and how we can still be friends, if anyone started talking about why they’re different (and why they’re still friends) there would be a lot of discomfort, but for now we just act like it isn’t there.
I was really hoping you were going to provide an actionable version of “keep your tribal identity small”
For me, the most useful parts of the KYIS outlook were, meeting people with a fresh slate without saying “yes I’m one of those people”, not feeling like you personally are being threatened when people criticise your group, not feeling that impulse to delude yourself and everyone around you into thinking the outgroup are monsters.
The issue is, I notice that we can only stay in this state of neutrality for so long. Eventually, we find our tribe, we develop an ideology (cluster of beliefs about how the world works and how to do good) that is simply too useful to step outside of, we become publicly associated with controversial projects. That will happen. If we don’t learn how to move soundly in that fire we wont end up moving soundly at all.
I guess the actionable version is to develop transferable skills, abilities, wealth, or social capital that are highly valued by many different tribes.
Then you have the leverage to flit from one to the next, and not care about standing up for any particular tribe.
However, the game to acquire wealth, social capital, and valued skills is basically the game that we are all playing and has lots of competition. The only way to “opt out” is to join a local monopoly (i.e. a tribe). Also, in the real world, tribes often “loan us resources” to develop our skills, capital, etc. in exchange for “joining” the tribe.
I don’t think that applies to the sense of tribe that I mean. When you find your tribe, the sense of tribe that I mean, you will realise that leaving it is not really an option that you ever could have had. It is simply what you are. It is simply the group of people who want for the world the same thing that you want for the world.
It can take a long time to find that tribe and to recognise it. It isn’t lesswrong, it isn’t EA. It’s funny to think about how much of an ideological split there is between discounting neartermists and alignmentist longtermists, and how we can still be friends, if anyone started talking about why they’re different (and why they’re still friends) there would be a lot of discomfort, but for now we just act like it isn’t there.