If you act on it by donating, you can be done with it. It’s a conversation-stopper.
Alternatively, if you act on it through direct work, it becomes pressing to focus on the specific details of that work. The ideas, institutions, and community surrounding EA/LW can’t follow you into the weird specialized niche you’ll inevitably grow into. To navigate that area, EA/LW offer very little value, even though those were the motivating forces that directed you there in the first place.
Cultural forms seem to last and grow when the main way you participate is by talking, identifying, and showing up to meetings; and when they appeal to people who have a strong need for that.
What I think might help would be if EAs shifted their focus away from the ideology and towards building relationships with each other. If EA was less about “help the world” and more about “help each other help the world,” I think we’d get farther faster.
If you act on it by donating, you can be done with it. It’s a conversation-stopper.
In 2014, it felt like donations were a good conversation topic. There were enough new charities to evaluate that it was worthwhile to get other people’s opinions. The EA community and the number of new charities were small enough that we could come close to knowing most of the people involved in starting the charities, and expect most EAs to know something about those new charities.
Then the EA movement became much larger than the Dunbar number, it became harder to keep track of all the charities, and the value of additional funding declined a bit. At least some of those factors made it harder for EA to be a good community.
EA (and rationality) might be an ouroboros.
If you act on it by donating, you can be done with it. It’s a conversation-stopper.
Alternatively, if you act on it through direct work, it becomes pressing to focus on the specific details of that work. The ideas, institutions, and community surrounding EA/LW can’t follow you into the weird specialized niche you’ll inevitably grow into. To navigate that area, EA/LW offer very little value, even though those were the motivating forces that directed you there in the first place.
Cultural forms seem to last and grow when the main way you participate is by talking, identifying, and showing up to meetings; and when they appeal to people who have a strong need for that.
What I think might help would be if EAs shifted their focus away from the ideology and towards building relationships with each other. If EA was less about “help the world” and more about “help each other help the world,” I think we’d get farther faster.
In 2014, it felt like donations were a good conversation topic. There were enough new charities to evaluate that it was worthwhile to get other people’s opinions. The EA community and the number of new charities were small enough that we could come close to knowing most of the people involved in starting the charities, and expect most EAs to know something about those new charities.
Then the EA movement became much larger than the Dunbar number, it became harder to keep track of all the charities, and the value of additional funding declined a bit. At least some of those factors made it harder for EA to be a good community.