For me, a big change happened when I had been around in EA long enough, done enough things, and spoken to enough people to be able to say, “if I say something disagreeable to somebody and it turns out they are one of those people who will judge me personally for disagreeing with the dominant paradigm on x thing, it’s their loss, not mine.” I also feel I can say something disagreeable to people and they will tend to hear me out rather than ignore me as a newbie who doesn’t know anything (in fairness, when I was just starting, I actually didn’t know much at all!).
For the newest people (I’ve only been in EA for 2 years, so I am still quite new) with few legible achievements and almost no connections, this is more difficult. If you constantly feel you have to think about how to get into x office or get in the good graces of y person or receive z grant, you feel far more pressure to fight against your own doubt for fear that people will judge you for your disagreements. This is unhealthy.
Obviously there is a continuum: it’s not that you can either disagree all the time or never disagree, but there are varying amounts of disagreement that people feel comfortable having.
Sometimes people talk about “f**k you money” to mean money that you can use to ride out unemployment if you decide you don’t like your job anymore and want to quit. In EA circles there is an analogous concept, something like “I respectfully disagree with your worldview social capital” or “I respectfully disagree with your worldview concrete achievements that you cannot ignore”. The more of that you have, especially the latter, the better. Luckily, the latter is also relatively correlated with how much you’ve been able to achieve, which is (hopefully) correlated with impact.
Love the analogy of “f**k you money” to “I respectfully disagree with your worldview social capital” or “I respectfully disagree with your worldview concrete achievements that you cannot ignore”!
For me, a big change happened when I had been around in EA long enough, done enough things, and spoken to enough people to be able to say, “if I say something disagreeable to somebody and it turns out they are one of those people who will judge me personally for disagreeing with the dominant paradigm on x thing, it’s their loss, not mine.” I also feel I can say something disagreeable to people and they will tend to hear me out rather than ignore me as a newbie who doesn’t know anything (in fairness, when I was just starting, I actually didn’t know much at all!).
For the newest people (I’ve only been in EA for 2 years, so I am still quite new) with few legible achievements and almost no connections, this is more difficult. If you constantly feel you have to think about how to get into x office or get in the good graces of y person or receive z grant, you feel far more pressure to fight against your own doubt for fear that people will judge you for your disagreements. This is unhealthy.
Obviously there is a continuum: it’s not that you can either disagree all the time or never disagree, but there are varying amounts of disagreement that people feel comfortable having.
Sometimes people talk about “f**k you money” to mean money that you can use to ride out unemployment if you decide you don’t like your job anymore and want to quit. In EA circles there is an analogous concept, something like “I respectfully disagree with your worldview social capital” or “I respectfully disagree with your worldview concrete achievements that you cannot ignore”. The more of that you have, especially the latter, the better. Luckily, the latter is also relatively correlated with how much you’ve been able to achieve, which is (hopefully) correlated with impact.
Love the analogy of “f**k you money” to “I respectfully disagree with your worldview social capital” or “I respectfully disagree with your worldview concrete achievements that you cannot ignore”!