Much has been written about how groups tend to get more extreme over time. This is often based on evaporative cooling, but I think there’s another factor: it’s the only way to avoid the geeks->mops->sociopaths death spiral.
An EA group of 10 people would really benefit from one of those people being deeply committed to helping people but hostile to the EA approach, and another person who loves spreadsheets but is indifferent to what they’re applied to. But you can only maintain the ratio that finely when you’re very small. Eventually you need to decide if you’re going to ban scope-insensitive people or allow infinitely many, and lose what makes your group different.
“Decide” may mean consciously choose an explicit policy, but it might also mean gradually cohere around some norms. The latter is more fine-tuned in some ways but less in others.
Much has been written about how groups tend to get more extreme over time. This is often based on evaporative cooling, but I think there’s another factor: it’s the only way to avoid the geeks->mops->sociopaths death spiral.
An EA group of 10 people would really benefit from one of those people being deeply committed to helping people but hostile to the EA approach, and another person who loves spreadsheets but is indifferent to what they’re applied to. But you can only maintain the ratio that finely when you’re very small. Eventually you need to decide if you’re going to ban scope-insensitive people or allow infinitely many, and lose what makes your group different.
“Decide” may mean consciously choose an explicit policy, but it might also mean gradually cohere around some norms. The latter is more fine-tuned in some ways but less in others.