Are there people external to the project who are going to keep an eye on this? I think it would be sensible for each participant to have a buddy outside the house who checks in with them regularly. And for each buddy to know who the other buddies are.
I’ve come around somewhat to the outside buddy idea below; I dunno about the buddies knowing each other. That seems to introduce a whole new layer of difficulty, unless you’re just talking about, like, an email list.
Cool. Yes, a mailing list sounds even better than the low-tech solution I had in mind, which was “every buddy learns 80% of the names of the other buddies through the grapevine, and they happen to be one or two hops away on the social network”.
This seems extreme. Do you not expect that each participant will already have at least one friend outside the house they can talk to about the house if things go poorly, without this needing to be an explicit policy? Or do you worry that things will go so poorly that this won’t work for some reason? If so, can you share a more detailed model?
I think there’s a difference between a friend that one could talk to (if they decide to), and a friend tasked with the specific responsibility of checking in and intervening if things seem to be going badly.
Parts of the house setup pattern-match to a cult, cult members aren’t good at realizing when they need to leave, but their friends can probably tell much more easily.
(I don’t mean the above as negatively as it sounds connotatively, but it’s the most straightforward way to say what I think is the reason to want external people. I also think this reasoning degrades gracefully with the amount of cultishness.)
Yep, this is why I’m in favor of the “outside friend” norm. In particular, despite not planning to make a bad cult, if I accidentally do, I’m in favor of it being noticed as soon as possible, so it can either be fixed or dismantled.
I’m not proposing a house policy here. I’m suggesting that a Dragon would do well to have regular followups with someone outside the house, and I’m proposing that some members of the wider community offer to be those someones.
In the past I’ve had regular video calls with a couple people who were doing long-term experiments with their lifestyle; I think it was helpful. I believe such an arrangement was part of the Leverage polyphasic sleep experiment.
Jacob is right: There’s a difference between a friend one can reach out to if one needs to, and a friend one is scheduled to talk to once a week. Personally, I struggle to keep up with friends without scheduled meetings, and it sounds like the Dragon Army will be very busy.
Also, there is a difference between reaching out to a friend when things have gone very wrong and one needs to get out; and bringing up a less drastic problem during a weekly check-in. In the first case, you need a couch to crash on and maybe a lawyer. In the second case, you need someone who will listen to you and bring an outside perspective, and maybe refer you to other resources.
Partially, I’m afraid that if this doesn’t go well, our community will lose a cohort of promising people. It would be a shame if that happened because we failed to pay attention to how they were doing.
But also, if the experiment goes very well, this arrangement would be a means by which the wider community can learn from what went right.
Partially, I’m afraid that if this doesn’t go well, our community will lose a cohort of promising people.
I really don’t know what you mean by “lose” here (and I’m worried that others will have varying interpretations as well). Do you mean they’ll become less promising? Not promising? Leave the community? Go crazy? Die?
Anyway, this seems sensible, but I still want to nudge you and everyone else in the direction of sharing more explicit models of what you think could actually go wrong.
Sorry, I was imagining a scenario where a person has an unpleasant experience and then leaves the community because for the last several months all their close contacts in the community were in the context of an unpleasant living situation. That’s bad for the person, and unfortunate for the community as well.
I see a possible failure mode where a member of a participant’s family not into any rationalist community sees the Dragon Army rules and pattern-matches the rules and behavior into ‘cult’ (not arguing whether that pattern match is correct here, just saying that it might happen).
A family member concerned that their loved one might be involved in a dangerous cult might take extraordinary measures to remove that person from the situation, which might get very ugly.
I’m not sure that a nonparticipating buddy is sufficient to mitigate the risk of ‘rescue’.
Are there people external to the project who are going to keep an eye on this? I think it would be sensible for each participant to have a buddy outside the house who checks in with them regularly. And for each buddy to know who the other buddies are.
I’ve come around somewhat to the outside buddy idea below; I dunno about the buddies knowing each other. That seems to introduce a whole new layer of difficulty, unless you’re just talking about, like, an email list.
Cool. Yes, a mailing list sounds even better than the low-tech solution I had in mind, which was “every buddy learns 80% of the names of the other buddies through the grapevine, and they happen to be one or two hops away on the social network”.
This seems extreme. Do you not expect that each participant will already have at least one friend outside the house they can talk to about the house if things go poorly, without this needing to be an explicit policy? Or do you worry that things will go so poorly that this won’t work for some reason? If so, can you share a more detailed model?
I think there’s a difference between a friend that one could talk to (if they decide to), and a friend tasked with the specific responsibility of checking in and intervening if things seem to be going badly.
Sure, but what I’d like to know is why Nisan thinks that difference is important in this case.
Parts of the house setup pattern-match to a cult, cult members aren’t good at realizing when they need to leave, but their friends can probably tell much more easily.
(I don’t mean the above as negatively as it sounds connotatively, but it’s the most straightforward way to say what I think is the reason to want external people. I also think this reasoning degrades gracefully with the amount of cultishness.)
Yep, this is why I’m in favor of the “outside friend” norm. In particular, despite not planning to make a bad cult, if I accidentally do, I’m in favor of it being noticed as soon as possible, so it can either be fixed or dismantled.
I’m not proposing a house policy here. I’m suggesting that a Dragon would do well to have regular followups with someone outside the house, and I’m proposing that some members of the wider community offer to be those someones.
In the past I’ve had regular video calls with a couple people who were doing long-term experiments with their lifestyle; I think it was helpful. I believe such an arrangement was part of the Leverage polyphasic sleep experiment.
Jacob is right: There’s a difference between a friend one can reach out to if one needs to, and a friend one is scheduled to talk to once a week. Personally, I struggle to keep up with friends without scheduled meetings, and it sounds like the Dragon Army will be very busy.
Also, there is a difference between reaching out to a friend when things have gone very wrong and one needs to get out; and bringing up a less drastic problem during a weekly check-in. In the first case, you need a couch to crash on and maybe a lawyer. In the second case, you need someone who will listen to you and bring an outside perspective, and maybe refer you to other resources.
Partially, I’m afraid that if this doesn’t go well, our community will lose a cohort of promising people. It would be a shame if that happened because we failed to pay attention to how they were doing.
But also, if the experiment goes very well, this arrangement would be a means by which the wider community can learn from what went right.
I really don’t know what you mean by “lose” here (and I’m worried that others will have varying interpretations as well). Do you mean they’ll become less promising? Not promising? Leave the community? Go crazy? Die?
Anyway, this seems sensible, but I still want to nudge you and everyone else in the direction of sharing more explicit models of what you think could actually go wrong.
Sorry, I was imagining a scenario where a person has an unpleasant experience and then leaves the community because for the last several months all their close contacts in the community were in the context of an unpleasant living situation. That’s bad for the person, and unfortunate for the community as well.
I see a possible failure mode where a member of a participant’s family not into any rationalist community sees the Dragon Army rules and pattern-matches the rules and behavior into ‘cult’ (not arguing whether that pattern match is correct here, just saying that it might happen).
A family member concerned that their loved one might be involved in a dangerous cult might take extraordinary measures to remove that person from the situation, which might get very ugly.
I’m not sure that a nonparticipating buddy is sufficient to mitigate the risk of ‘rescue’.