EA - EA needs Life-Veterans and "Less Smart" people by Jeffrey Kursonis

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA needs Life-Veterans and "Less Smart" people, published by Jeffrey Kursonis on March 8, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Healthy communities have all kinds. There is a magic in the plant world when a diversity of plants co-exist. Permaculture has been innovating through realizing how the community of plants help each other by each contributing a different gift to the benefit of the whole. Plants communicate with each other via mushroom like strands underground and work together. Interestingly, they speak French. Just kidding.I’ve been in a movement that changed the world in a positive way and eventually fell apart, it was very very similar to EA in many ways — a bunch of talented young people trying to do good in the world. We had all the same criticisms people throw at EA and we did listen and learn as much as we had the capacity to. I won’t tell the whole story here, but we didn’t fall apart because of bad things, it was a necessary evolution, but one of the key problems that kept us from surviving was a lack of diversity.For some reason when I was young, I think it’s because I was smart, I figured out that if older people had already faced all the challenges I face maybe they would be a good source of data and the gritty life wisdom of how to apply the data. So I would go out of my way to befriend them and listen to them. It was mixed results.lots of older people are just bitter, but there were enough that had made it through a life full of thriving and were happy to share it. You just have to find the right one’s.Most of the world is made up of average people, smart people call them dumb, but they’re really just average. The thing is, if everybody in the room is smart, who is going to see the world as most of the world sees the world? That’s a data poor room.If we are really smart we’ll make sure to surround ourselves not just with other smart people but with a variety of young and old, different cultures, different life experience levels and some average people. That’s a room rich in data.Never underestimate the simple wisdom of simple people.and because most of the people in the world are religious, we should have them around too. You just need to find the right one’s.generous and kind and who want everyone to thrive.Wisdom is learning how to live in reality.when we’re young we are really far from reality.you have a bedroom and a phone and an iPad in a lovely house, all provided for you magically. You have no clue how that all accrued to you. You’re not yet in touch with reality. But as you attend the school of hard knocks year after year, slowly but surely reality drifts in.essentially what happens is that as you are slowly disconnected from your parents and the “magical accrual” fades away, you learn how real life works.Wise people have had the time it takes to boil it all down to pure essence, filter out the dross and see the pure reality.when you can see it, you can figure out how to negotiate it. It simply takes some years and a person oriented toward thriving rather than increasing bitterness.If you have a lot of data, what you need more than anything is wisdom to interpret the data and wisdom to creatively imagine real world applications from the data.You simply cannot be a movement committed to getting more effective at doing good in the world if you do not have some elder wisdom in the room. It’s a glaring deficit. Thank God for Singer, but he’s not around enough.Especially in this time of post-FTX self examination and reforming, in this time of making efforts concerning the mental health of young people under pressure to save the world—this is the time to round out the community with some village like balance; The young, the old, the strong, the average all making life thrive like plants all mixed up in the jungle.And artists! My God...