Get In The Van

If this were fiction that would make Buck your manic-pixie-dream-girl and I find that hilarious.

I think the most important GITV moments are often connected to people, and I think we as a community should put the effort into understanding new people. In my case, I think I had not one but two different moments, and different people connected to those:

1. The first one happened in early 2018 in Oxford. I was lucky enough to have gone there for a master's degree, and mid-way through it, I found out about one talk by Catherine Hollander, from Givewell, on making the best out of your money. I had always been interested in how to end poverty, so quite appealing. There, I met Darius Meissner, they invited me for a dinner after the event, and I think he really took the time to understand me well. In particular, I starkly remember one conversation where he argued that eating animals might not be good, and me saying that I cared more about the environmental reasons. This is something that in retrospect feels weird, almost as if the only reason I said that was because I heard other people believe so. But it also highlights something important: changing the (moral) views of people takes time, even when they make a lot of sense. The good thing was that such a simple conversation made me slip towards becoming a vegetarian, and I remember buying much less meat already there. 2018 was also a year that EAs were putting a lot of focus on longtermism. Indeed, after this first event, Huw from EA Oxford invited me to talk a bit and gave me a couple of books to read. Unfortunately, the talk, focussed mostly on longtermism did not resonate well with me. I was (1) confused about the fuzzy arguments on the "astronomical" importance of the long-term future, (2) unsure if that was even actionable, it's not like going vegetarian or donating money. They were arguing for a career change, which felt probably too much. Later on, I attended a couple of career planning events, which I liked, but I never really bought in so much into longtermism. I think I somewhat took it into account when choosing my PhD, but it was far from being the main consideration. The second career retreat especially was a bit offputting. Too much crazy conversation around paperclips and the sort. I remember being in a conversation where someone was arguing that having fewer children was better because it would free you more time to do greater amounts of good. I honestly think this is the kind of weird stuff that is not really super helpful. Maybe intellectually interesting, but not ... the kind of thing we should be focused on?

2. After that, I went back to Spain, Madrid, not knowing that there was an incipient group there. I found out about this group relatively quickly afterward because I enjoyed going to entrepreneurship events and they were hosting one intro event on the Google campus. I honestly did not know whether I would stick around or not. But I think the reason I did was that Pablo Melchor was there and was very welcoming, and willing to listen. They needed someone to help organize events and I helped him more or less until covid happened, when big changes happened and we became more international (now there is one large Hispanic speaking group 🙂). I also remember talking to Jaime Sevilla (a good friend of mine) and feeling a bit defensive, because he wanted to know what I was more interested in and encouraged me to take action and organize events straightforwardly 😜

From all of this, I try to remember that doing good as an EA is socially demanding, as it requires doing things people don't usually do. For that reason, I try to give people time and space to learn. I think reading is a great way to learn more and get more engaged, and as a community, we have really good written material. On the other hand, my path to EA is very different from the people who, like Jaime, got interested in EA from a rationalist perspective. In any case, it is good to remember that at EA is very weird, and at some point you were on the other side of the conversation where you would have liked to feel included, and listened to.

Really love this, Thomas, because

1. Your storytelling is so compelling, at least to a fellow university student
2. This idea makes sense: disruptions to one's everyday routine are novel and so, perhaps, more likely to make one open-minded (e.g., to ~weird~ ideas like 'maybe we should work on making sure we don't die because of something that doesn't exist yet')
   1. I am not sure if this is an actual phenomenon or if I'm just combining what I know about mindfulness, habit/inertia, & the way human brains adapt to familiar things
3. I see such synergy with Sydney Von Arx's concept of scene-setting. Like, maybe we could forward-chain to a scene by thinking about historically successful GITV moments for your group, or back-chain from a desired 'scene' to plan GITV moments.
4. This reiterates why welcomingness & demographic representation are important. They're important for socials, generally, but GITV moments probably require even more comfort/welcomingness than other socials.
5. This helps me better understand why UChicago House culture is so compelling and, most importantly, how UChicago EA can compete.

Your caveat about prioritizing programming is completely on-point, so I want to caveat the below by saying - this is a vision of what groups should aspire to, but perhaps only after they've solidified core non-social programming like fellowships.

Anecdote about house culture as examples of non-EA GITV:

UChicago  brands itself as being ~quirky~ which partly manifests through 'house culture.' As a freshman, I really wanted the university experience, and to me that meant seeking the epitome of house culture. I was lucky enough to be placed into the Dodd-Mead house, which has many house traditions.

I also don't consider myself someone who 'does things spontaneously' but somehow, being part of a group of ~20 freshmen who were open to learning about + trying these traditions got me to do some pretty wacky things, like

• Wake up at 5 AM for a straight week, so that we could play games and do exercise together before going to class/the gym at 8 AM. 
  • I also woke OTHER people up at 5 AM for a week
  • I also volunteered to make breakfast for one of those days, which meant waking up even earlier(!)
• Refuse to call an official UChicago event by its official name ('Kuvia'), and instead call it something different ('Kangeiko'). We are the only House that does this, but we correct everybody else because obviously, we are right.
• Worship an obelisk.
• Carry around a squirty toy to try and fake-assassinate others, while avoiding being fake-assassinated
• Espouse the superiority of our dining table. Dodd-Mead is the only House that has a round, not rectangular, table in the Dining Hall. We regularly try to bring non-House friends to this table because it is obviously the best table shape for discussion.
  • We have also petitioned the Dining department to protect our dining table. Preserving our round table is incredibly important to us, even though it is space-inefficient, difficult to maintain, and overall annoying to the Dining department.

Other GITV /Scene-setting similarities:

• These traditions feel unique because they're idiosyncratic, but there are enough of them that you can feel like you can always partake in another or partake next year
  • Yet, each time you participate, it feels slightly different too!
• Traditions evolve and change along with the community, just like scenes might
• It's both incredibly welcoming and incredibly self-selecting
  • Some people are really weirded out by it and won't participate. This always makes more engaged people sad, because it's fun and we want other people to also have fun!
  • But sometimes people will participate later, or only participate in certain traditions, and nobody is ever excluded because they've never participated.
• Discussions veer between really deep and really inane, and both styles feel equally fun. Being serious and being lighthearted are both successful modes in Dodd-Mead!
• General buy-in -> Positive reinforcement: once you've enjoyed some of these traditions, it's way easier to keep engaging in more of them. It feels like everything will be awesome, as long as you're with this group of people. I think  I started getting more involved in EA when I started feeling like this, because I met actual real EAs and thought they were really cool. 

Dodd-Mead historically has experienced great retention, from people staying in the House all four years (very uncommon) to people moving off-campus together, to people getting married!

Also, I can't believe I had to write this comment to recall but, Dodd-Mead was also considered'cult-y.' So maybe I shouldn't be so concerned about EA being considered 'cult-y' : )

I couldn't resist pointing out that Get in the Van is also the title of Henry Rollins' diaries from his time touring as the singer of Black Flag, the seminal hardcore punk band.

Feels particularly appropriate given the story of how Rollins joined the band:

When Black Flag returned to the East Coast in 1981, Rollins [just a fan at the time] attended as many of their concerts as he could. At an impromptu show in a New York bar, Black Flag's vocalist Dez Cadena allowed Rollins to sing "Clocked In", a song Rollins had asked the band to play in light of the fact that he had to drive back to Washington, D.C. to begin work.^[20]

Unbeknownst to Rollins, Cadena wanted to switch to guitar, and the band was looking for a new vocalist.^[20] The band was impressed with Rollins's singing and stage demeanor, and the next day, after a semi-formal audition at Tu Casa Studio in New York City, they asked him to become their permanent vocalist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Rollins#Black_Flag

Despite some doubts, he accepted, due in part to Ian MacKaye's encouragement. Rollins acted as roadie for the remainder of the tour while learning Black Flag's songs during sound checks and encores, while Cadena crafted guitar parts that meshed with Ginn's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Flag_(band)#Rollins_era_(1981%E2%80%931985)

After joining Black Flag in 1981, Rollins quit his job at Häagen-Dazs, sold his car, and moved to Los Angeles. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Rollins got the Black Flag logo tattooed on his left biceps^[18] and also on the back of his neck, chose the stage name of Rollins, a surname he and MacKaye had used as teenagers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Rollins#Black_Flag

A less extreme version of Get In The Van is a heuristic I've often used for events, which is "stay until the very end". When I first got interested in EA and related things (LessWrong, AGI x-risk), I made a point of always staying to the very end of events to maximise what I got out of them. A formative experience in this regard was travelling across the country to go to a talk given by Eliezer Yudkowsky in Oxford in 2011 on "Friendly AI" (the term used then). There was a drinks reception after. Then some of us went to the pub. Then to a late night cafe. Then to the FHI offices, where Nick Bostrom was working late as he often does. I stayed out until about 2am from a talk that started at 6 or 7pm. Met lots of interesting people that I'd only followed / read their writing online previously (not least Eliezer).

Similarly with EA Globals - it's often good to hang out as long as you can after hours to maximise the amount of interesting discussion you have, and connections you make.

I agree with others that this post is excellent.

I was at this Yale EA meeting.  I didn't get in the van.  I hate vans. 

(But like actually I get motion sickness and really do hate vans.)

I never though I would be criticized for that decision 2.5 years later though.  Lol.

In other news, hi Thomas! I hope you're doing well.  The specifics of the horrible machines that are vans aside, I enjoyed the post :)

Speaking of Scott Alexander, I wonder how this vibes with GETTING OUT OF THE CAR 

I always come back to this. I use it for a metaphor in much more than EA

This is a really great post ; I sincerely hope that "GITV moment" makes it into the EA lexicon. Really useful concept in a compact package with a super fun story behind it. Thanks for taking the time to write this up!

Really enjoyed this post– thanks for writing it!