To put it bluntly, EA/rationalist community kinda selects for people who are easy to abuse in some ways. Willing to donate, willing to work to improve the world, willing to consider weird ideas seriously—from the perspective of a potential abuser, this is ripe fruit ready to be taken, it is even obvious what sales pitch you should use on them.
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For what it’s worth, I think this is true for basically all intense and moral communities out there. The EA/rationalist groups generally seem better than many religious and intense political groups in these areas, to me. However, even “better” is probably not at all good enough.
There are certain goals for which having a moral or intense community is helpful. Whether or not I want to live in such a community I consider it okay for other people to build those communities. On the other hand, building cults is not okay in the same sense.
Intense communities also generally focus on something where otherwise there’s not much focus in society, increase cognitive diversity and are thus able to produce certain kinds of innovations that wouldn’t happen with less cognitive diversity.
I was just thinking of the far right-wing and left-wing in the US; radical news organizations and communities. Q-anon, some of the radical environmentalists, conspiracy groups of all types. Many intense religious communities.
I’m not making a normative claim about the value of being “moral” and/or “intense”, just saying that I’d expect moral/intense groups to have some of the same characteristics and challenges.
For what it’s worth, I think this is true for basically all intense and moral communities out there. The EA/rationalist groups generally seem better than many religious and intense political groups in these areas, to me. However, even “better” is probably not at all good enough.
What are “intense” and/or “moral” communities? And, why is it (or is it?) a good thing for a community to be “moral” and/or “intense”?
There are certain goals for which having a moral or intense community is helpful. Whether or not I want to live in such a community I consider it okay for other people to build those communities. On the other hand, building cults is not okay in the same sense.
Intense communities also generally focus on something where otherwise there’s not much focus in society, increase cognitive diversity and are thus able to produce certain kinds of innovations that wouldn’t happen with less cognitive diversity.
I was just thinking of the far right-wing and left-wing in the US; radical news organizations and communities. Q-anon, some of the radical environmentalists, conspiracy groups of all types. Many intense religious communities.
I’m not making a normative claim about the value of being “moral” and/or “intense”, just saying that I’d expect moral/intense groups to have some of the same characteristics and challenges.