It has become really salient to me recently that good practice involves lots of prolific output in low-stakes throwaway contexts. Whereas a core piece of EA and rationalist mindsets is steering towards high-stakes things to work on, and treating your outputs as potentially very impactful and not to be thrown away. In my own mind “practice mindset” and “impact mindset” feel very directly in tension.
I have a feeling that something around this mindset difference is part of why world-saving orientation in a community might be correlated with inadequate opportunities for low-stakes leadership practice.
(recognizing that there’s definitely areas within the rationality community / memeset that reinforce fairly similar high-stakes-memes as the EA memeset. But my experience is that overall the rationality community doesn’t put nearly as pervasive pressure to be ‘impactful’ – there’s a lot more room for just exploring interesting ideas because they are neat, or whatnot)
Worth noting here that the Schedule at MAPLE is very conducive for creating these low-stakes contexts. In fact, inside the Schedule, you are always in such a context…
There is a world-saving mission at MAPLE, but at MAPLE, it does not define people’s worth or whether they deserve care / attention or whether they belong in the community. I think the issue with both the EA and rationalist community is that people’s “output” is too easily tied to their sense of worth. I could probably write many words on this phenomenon in the Bay community.
It is hard to convey in mere words what MAPLE has managed to do here. There is a clearer separation between “your current output level” and “your deserving-ness / worthiness as a human.” It was startling to experience this separation occurring on a visceral level within me. Now I’m much more grounded, self-confident, and less likely to take things personally, and this shift feels permanent and also ongoing.
It has become really salient to me recently that good practice involves lots of prolific output in low-stakes throwaway contexts. Whereas a core piece of EA and rationalist mindsets is steering towards high-stakes things to work on, and treating your outputs as potentially very impactful and not to be thrown away. In my own mind “practice mindset” and “impact mindset” feel very directly in tension.
I have a feeling that something around this mindset difference is part of why world-saving orientation in a community might be correlated with inadequate opportunities for low-stakes leadership practice.
This is actually exactly why I think the rationality community / memeset makes more sense as entry level EA than the EA community
(recognizing that there’s definitely areas within the rationality community / memeset that reinforce fairly similar high-stakes-memes as the EA memeset. But my experience is that overall the rationality community doesn’t put nearly as pervasive pressure to be ‘impactful’ – there’s a lot more room for just exploring interesting ideas because they are neat, or whatnot)
Worth noting here that the Schedule at MAPLE is very conducive for creating these low-stakes contexts. In fact, inside the Schedule, you are always in such a context…
There is a world-saving mission at MAPLE, but at MAPLE, it does not define people’s worth or whether they deserve care / attention or whether they belong in the community. I think the issue with both the EA and rationalist community is that people’s “output” is too easily tied to their sense of worth. I could probably write many words on this phenomenon in the Bay community.
It is hard to convey in mere words what MAPLE has managed to do here. There is a clearer separation between “your current output level” and “your deserving-ness / worthiness as a human.” It was startling to experience this separation occurring on a visceral level within me. Now I’m much more grounded, self-confident, and less likely to take things personally, and this shift feels permanent and also ongoing.
I think this is a very important point, and that anyone trying to build community around a mission should pay attention to it.
+1
Good to train in a gym before you fight.