I tend to (or at least try to remember to) draw on NVC a lot in conversation about emotionally fraught topics, but it’s hard for me to recall the specifics of my wording afterwards, and they often include a lot of private context. But here’s an old example which I picked because it happened in a public thread and because I remember being explicitly guided by NVC principles while writing my response.
As context, I had shared a link to an SSC post talking about EA on my Facebook page, and some people were vocally critical of its implicit premises (e.g. utilitarianism). The conversation got a somewhat heated tone and veered into, among other things, the effectiveness of non-EA/non-utilitarian-motivated volunteer work. I ended making some rather critical comments in return, which led to the following exchange:
The other person: Kaj, I also find you to be rather condescending (and probably, privileged) when talking about volunteer work. Perhaps you just don’t realize how large a part volunteers play in doing the work that supposedly belongs to the state, but isn’t being taken care of. And your suggestion that by volunteering you mainly get to feel better about yourself, and then “maybe help some people in the process”, is already heading towards offensive. I have personally seen/been involved in/know of situations where a volunteer literally saved someone’s life, as in, if they weren’t there and didn’t have the training they had, the person would most likely have died. So, what was your personal, verified lives saved per dollar efficiency ratio, again, that allows you to make such dismissive comments?
Me: I’m sorry. I was indeed condescending, and that was wrong of me. I was just getting frustrated because I felt that Scott’s post had a great message about what people could accomplish if they just worked together, which was getting completely lost squabbling over a part of it that was beside the actual point. When I saw you say call lives saved per dollar an absolutely terrible metric, I felt hurt because I felt that the hard and thoughtful work the EA scene has put into evaluating different interventions was being dismissed without being given a fair evaluation. I felt a need to defend them—any myself, since I’m a part of that community—at that point.
I do respect anyone doing volunteer work, especially the kind of volunteer work you’re referring to. When I was writing my comment, I was still thinking of activism primarily in the context of Scott’s original post (and the post of his preceding it), which had been talking about campaigns to (re)post things on Twitter, Tumblr, etc. These are obviously very different campaigns from the kind of work that actually saves lives.
Even then, you are absolutely correct about the fact that my remarks have often unfairly devalued the value of volunteer work. So to set matters straight: anyone who voluntarily works to make other’s lives better has my utmost respect. Society and the people in it would be a lot worse off without such work, and I respect anyone who actually does important life-saving work much more than I respect, say, someone who hangs around in the EA community and talks about pretty things without actually doing much themselves. (I will also admit that I’ve kinda fallen to the latter category every now and then.)
I also admit that the people in the field have a lot of experience which I do not have, and that academic analyses about the value of some intervention have lots of limitations that may cause them to miss out important things. I do still think that systematic, peer-reviewed studies are the way to go if one wishes to find the most effective ways of making a difference, but I do acknowledge that the current level of evidence is not yet strong and that there are also lots of individual gut feelings and value judgement involved in interpreting the data.
I don’t want there to be any us versus them thing going on, with EAs on the one side and traditional volunteers on the other. I would rather have us all be on the same side, where we may disagree on what is the best way to act, but support each other regardless and agree that we have a shared goal in making the world a better place.
(The conversation didn’t proceed anywhere from that, but the other person did “like” my comment.)
I tend to (or at least try to remember to) draw on NVC a lot in conversation about emotionally fraught topics, but it’s hard for me to recall the specifics of my wording afterwards, and they often include a lot of private context. But here’s an old example which I picked because it happened in a public thread and because I remember being explicitly guided by NVC principles while writing my response.
As context, I had shared a link to an SSC post talking about EA on my Facebook page, and some people were vocally critical of its implicit premises (e.g. utilitarianism). The conversation got a somewhat heated tone and veered into, among other things, the effectiveness of non-EA/non-utilitarian-motivated volunteer work. I ended making some rather critical comments in return, which led to the following exchange:
(The conversation didn’t proceed anywhere from that, but the other person did “like” my comment.)