Thanks for taking the time to do the interviews and writing this up! I think ethnographic studies (and qualitative research in general) are pretty neglected in this community, and I’m glad people are doing more of it these days.
I think this piece captures a lot of real but concerning dynamics. For example, I feel like I’ve personally seen, wondered about, or experienced things that are similar to a decent number of these stories, in particular:
Clear-Eyed Despair
Is EA bad, actually?/The Dangers of EA
Values and Proxies
To Gossip or Not to Gossip
High Variance
Team Player
And I’ve heard of stories similar to most of the other anecdotes from other people as well.
(As an aside, social dynamics like these are a big part of why I tend to think of myself as EA-adjacent and not a “real” EA.)
((I will caveat that I think there’s clearly a lot of positive things that go on in the community and lots of healthier-than-average dynamics as well, and it’s easy to be lost in negativity and lose sight of the big picture. This doesn’t take away from the fact that the negative dynamics exist, of course.))
Of these, the ones I worry the most about are the story described in Values and Proxies (that is, are explicit conversations about status seeking making things worse?), and the conflict captured in To Gossip or Not to Gossip/Delicate Topics and Distrust (how much should we rely on whisper networks/gossip/other informal social accountability mechanisms, when relying on them too much can create bad dynamics in itself?). Unfortunately, I don’t have super strong, well thought-out takes here.
In terms of status dynamics, I do think that they’re real, but that explicitly calling attention to them can indeed make them worse. (Interestingly, I’m pretty sure that explicitly pursuing status is generally seen as low status and bad?) I think my current attitude is that “status” as a term is overrated and we’re having too many explicit conversations about it, which in turn gives (new/insecure) people plenty of fodder to injure themselves on.
In terms of the latter problem, I could imagine it’d be quite distressing to hear negative feedback about people you admire, want to be friends with, or are attracted to, especially if said negative feedback is from professional experience when your primary interaction with the person is personal or vice versa. This makes it pretty awkward to have the “actually, X person is bad” conversations. I’ve personally tried to address this by holding a strong line between personal gossip and my professional attitude toward various people, and by being charitable/giving people the benefit of the doubt. However, I’ve definitely been burned by this in the past, and I do really understand the value in a lot of the gossip/whisper networks—style conversations that happen.
Since you’ve spent a bunch of time thinking about and writing about these problems, I’m curious why you think a lot of these negative dynamics exist, and what we can do to fix them?
If I had to guess, I’d say the primary reasons are something like:
The problem is important and we need people, but not you. In many settings, there’s definitely an explicit message of “why can’t we find competent people to work on all these important problems?”, but in adjacent settings, there’s a feeling of “we have so many smart young people, why do we not have things to do” and “if they really needed people, why did they reject me?”. For example, I think I get the former feeling whenever an AIS org I know tries to do hiring, while I get the latter when I talk to junior researchers (especially SERI MATS fellows, independent researchers, or undergrads). It’s definitely pretty rough to be told “this is the most important problem in the world” and then immediately get rejected. And I think this is exacerbated a lot by pre-existing insecurities—if you’re relying on external validation to feel good about yourself, it’s easy for one rejection (let alone a string of rejections) to feel like the end of the world.
Mixing of personal and professional lives. That is, you get to/have to interact with the same people in both work and non-work contexts. For example, I think something like >80% of my friends right now are EA/EA-adjacent I think many people talk about this and claim it’s the primary problem. I agree that this is real problem, but I don’t think it’s the only one, nor do I think it’s easy to fix. Many people in EA work quite hard—e.g. I think many people I know work 50-60 hours a week, and several work way more than that, and when that happens it’s just easier to maintain close relationships with people you work next to. And it’s not non-zero cost to ignore (gossip about) people’s behavior in their personal lives; such gossip can provide non-zero evidence about how likely they are to be e.g. reliable or well-intentioned in a professional setting. It’s also worth noting that this is not a unique problem to EA/AIS; I’ve definitely been part of other communities where personal relationships are more important for professional success. In those communities, I’ve also felt a much stronger need to “be social” and go to plenty of social events I didn’t enjoy to to network.
No (perceived) lines of retreat. I think many people feel (rightly or wrongly) like they don’t have a choice; they’re stuck in the community. Given that the community is still quite small somehow, this also means that they often have to run into the same people or issues that stress them out over and over. (E.g. realistically if you want to work on technical AI Safety, there’s one big hub in the Bay Area, a smaller hub in the UK, and a few academic labs in New York or Boston.) Personally, I think this is the one that I feel most acutely—people who know me IRL know that I occasionally joke about running away from the whole AI/AI Safety problem, but also that when I’ve tried to get away and e.g. return to my roots as a forecasting/psychology researcher, I find that I can’t avoid working on AI Safety-adjacent issues (and I definitely can’t get away from AI in general).
Explicit status discussions. I’m personally very torn on this. I continue to think that thinking explicitly about status can be very damaging both personally and for the community. People are also very bad at judging their own status; my guess is there’s a good chance that King Lear feels pretty status-insecure and doesn’t realize his role in exacerbating bad dynamics by explicitly pursuing status as a senior researcher. But it’s also not like “status” isn’t tracking something real. As in the Seeker’s Game story, it is the case that you get more opportunities if you’re at the right parties, and many opportunities do come from (to put it flippantly) people thinking you’re cool.
Different social norms and general social awkwardness. I think this one is really, really underrated as an explanation. Many people I meet in the community are quite awkward and not super socially adept (and honestly, I often feel I’m in this category as well). At the same time, because the EA/AIS scene in the Bay Area has attracted people from many parts of the world, we end up with lots of miscommunication and small cultural clashes. For example, I think a lot of people I know in the community try to be very explicit and direct, but at the same time I know people from cultures where doing so is seen as a social faux pas. Combined with a decent amount of social awkwardness from the parties involved, this can lead to plenty of misunderstandings (e.g., does X hate me? why won’t Y tell me what they think honestly?). Doubly so when people can’t read/aren’t familiar with/choose to ignore romantic signals from others.
I’ve been meaning to write more about this; maybe I will in the next few weeks?
Thanks for taking the time to do the interviews and writing this up! I think ethnographic studies (and qualitative research in general) are pretty neglected in this community, and I’m glad people are doing more of it these days.
I think this piece captures a lot of real but concerning dynamics. For example, I feel like I’ve personally seen, wondered about, or experienced things that are similar to a decent number of these stories, in particular:
Clear-Eyed Despair
Is EA bad, actually?/The Dangers of EA
Values and Proxies
To Gossip or Not to Gossip
High Variance
Team Player
And I’ve heard of stories similar to most of the other anecdotes from other people as well.
(As an aside, social dynamics like these are a big part of why I tend to think of myself as EA-adjacent and not a “real” EA.)
((I will caveat that I think there’s clearly a lot of positive things that go on in the community and lots of healthier-than-average dynamics as well, and it’s easy to be lost in negativity and lose sight of the big picture. This doesn’t take away from the fact that the negative dynamics exist, of course.))
Of these, the ones I worry the most about are the story described in Values and Proxies (that is, are explicit conversations about status seeking making things worse?), and the conflict captured in To Gossip or Not to Gossip/Delicate Topics and Distrust (how much should we rely on whisper networks/gossip/other informal social accountability mechanisms, when relying on them too much can create bad dynamics in itself?). Unfortunately, I don’t have super strong, well thought-out takes here.
In terms of status dynamics, I do think that they’re real, but that explicitly calling attention to them can indeed make them worse. (Interestingly, I’m pretty sure that explicitly pursuing status is generally seen as low status and bad?) I think my current attitude is that “status” as a term is overrated and we’re having too many explicit conversations about it, which in turn gives (new/insecure) people plenty of fodder to injure themselves on.
In terms of the latter problem, I could imagine it’d be quite distressing to hear negative feedback about people you admire, want to be friends with, or are attracted to, especially if said negative feedback is from professional experience when your primary interaction with the person is personal or vice versa. This makes it pretty awkward to have the “actually, X person is bad” conversations. I’ve personally tried to address this by holding a strong line between personal gossip and my professional attitude toward various people, and by being charitable/giving people the benefit of the doubt. However, I’ve definitely been burned by this in the past, and I do really understand the value in a lot of the gossip/whisper networks—style conversations that happen.
Since you’ve spent a bunch of time thinking about and writing about these problems, I’m curious why you think a lot of these negative dynamics exist, and what we can do to fix them?
If I had to guess, I’d say the primary reasons are something like:
The problem is important and we need people, but not you. In many settings, there’s definitely an explicit message of “why can’t we find competent people to work on all these important problems?”, but in adjacent settings, there’s a feeling of “we have so many smart young people, why do we not have things to do” and “if they really needed people, why did they reject me?”. For example, I think I get the former feeling whenever an AIS org I know tries to do hiring, while I get the latter when I talk to junior researchers (especially SERI MATS fellows, independent researchers, or undergrads). It’s definitely pretty rough to be told “this is the most important problem in the world” and then immediately get rejected. And I think this is exacerbated a lot by pre-existing insecurities—if you’re relying on external validation to feel good about yourself, it’s easy for one rejection (let alone a string of rejections) to feel like the end of the world.
Mixing of personal and professional lives. That is, you get to/have to interact with the same people in both work and non-work contexts. For example, I think something like >80% of my friends right now are EA/EA-adjacent I think many people talk about this and claim it’s the primary problem. I agree that this is real problem, but I don’t think it’s the only one, nor do I think it’s easy to fix. Many people in EA work quite hard—e.g. I think many people I know work 50-60 hours a week, and several work way more than that, and when that happens it’s just easier to maintain close relationships with people you work next to. And it’s not non-zero cost to ignore (gossip about) people’s behavior in their personal lives; such gossip can provide non-zero evidence about how likely they are to be e.g. reliable or well-intentioned in a professional setting. It’s also worth noting that this is not a unique problem to EA/AIS; I’ve definitely been part of other communities where personal relationships are more important for professional success. In those communities, I’ve also felt a much stronger need to “be social” and go to plenty of social events I didn’t enjoy to to network.
No (perceived) lines of retreat. I think many people feel (rightly or wrongly) like they don’t have a choice; they’re stuck in the community. Given that the community is still quite small somehow, this also means that they often have to run into the same people or issues that stress them out over and over. (E.g. realistically if you want to work on technical AI Safety, there’s one big hub in the Bay Area, a smaller hub in the UK, and a few academic labs in New York or Boston.) Personally, I think this is the one that I feel most acutely—people who know me IRL know that I occasionally joke about running away from the whole AI/AI Safety problem, but also that when I’ve tried to get away and e.g. return to my roots as a forecasting/psychology researcher, I find that I can’t avoid working on AI Safety-adjacent issues (and I definitely can’t get away from AI in general).
Explicit status discussions. I’m personally very torn on this. I continue to think that thinking explicitly about status can be very damaging both personally and for the community. People are also very bad at judging their own status; my guess is there’s a good chance that King Lear feels pretty status-insecure and doesn’t realize his role in exacerbating bad dynamics by explicitly pursuing status as a senior researcher. But it’s also not like “status” isn’t tracking something real. As in the Seeker’s Game story, it is the case that you get more opportunities if you’re at the right parties, and many opportunities do come from (to put it flippantly) people thinking you’re cool.
Different social norms and general social awkwardness. I think this one is really, really underrated as an explanation. Many people I meet in the community are quite awkward and not super socially adept (and honestly, I often feel I’m in this category as well). At the same time, because the EA/AIS scene in the Bay Area has attracted people from many parts of the world, we end up with lots of miscommunication and small cultural clashes. For example, I think a lot of people I know in the community try to be very explicit and direct, but at the same time I know people from cultures where doing so is seen as a social faux pas. Combined with a decent amount of social awkwardness from the parties involved, this can lead to plenty of misunderstandings (e.g., does X hate me? why won’t Y tell me what they think honestly?). Doubly so when people can’t read/aren’t familiar with/choose to ignore romantic signals from others.
I’ve been meaning to write more about this; maybe I will in the next few weeks?