I have been excluded from events and not told why. It sucks. But I feel like explaining to everyone is a big cost. And only explaining to the easy cases makes the hard cases more obvious. In a world where there are too few events (in my view) I would like event organisers to do as they want without me claiming they have broken some big norm. 

But I'm sad exclusions happen, then generally suck, especially for those excluded, but sometimes for the organisers too.

I would like to have some clarity on Community Health's processes:

• How many things are reported of what level of concern?
• Can they give an example case and how it might be handled?
• What are behaviours that might be responded to in different ways.

I think it's reasonable that even if a community doesn't know specific cases, we could know some numbers and a general sense of how things work and what is and isn't acceptable. The fear/inability to have these discussions as a community has, in my view, been a key fracture down the middle of EA for about 5 years. 

This feels like a request for the reader to have a specific opinion on how Community Health behaved. 

It would make it easier for me to judge here if I knew more about the unpaid work claim. Winning in court doesn't hugely convince me without more details, but if the claim was fair this seems bad and and if it wasn't it seems fine. 

Regardless I guess this has been horrible for you. 

Having run lots of events, a sense that someone is going to be a pain is a perfectly reasonable reason to exclude them. I generally like event organisers to be able to invite who they want and not who they don't. 

I guess to speak briefly as a person who has been in a number of sort of inner circle type things (I have been to some really good EA-adjacent parties, some very exclusive group chats, I have had a long public argument with Amanda Askell), it is in fact pretty fun (well except the argument). It seems silly to pretend otherwise. Cool things are cool. 

But I guess it generally moved the needle between 95% and 97% of my cool experiences bar and there are other bars that I want to fill. Do I do good work (kind of)? Do I have a community that likes and respects me (yes, though it has taken a lot of work)? Do I have a romantic relationship that I find satisfying and a family I long for (no)?

I think the above piece is wrong in that it acts as if these things aren't nice or attainable. But I think they are both. But I am not sure they are actually value for effort for most people, especially at this point. Year on year it gets harder to be in the inner circle and staying comes with its own complexity and drama unless one is really fricking great at doing good work (my work is fine, but few think it excellent). And there is always the risk that in trying to be popular one will become a version of oneself that one hates.

So I am not gonna pretend that these things aren't nice (they are) or attainable (they are) but I wonder if they are things you actually want to put most of your effort into attaining. At some point I found something like satisfacton - I wanted to fill other bars rather than ensure I was keeping pace with the cool. 

And do we want there to be status hierarchies? I dunno, yes? Surely we want them as long as they are actually aligned with virtue? I hope that Ryan Greenblatt and Nate Soares are going to the great parties. What are the parties for if not to encourage poeple to do great work or write bestselling books. And yes that kind of sucks for those of us less clever than Ryan and less charismatic than Nate, but we are not in some liberal fantasy, we are in the real world. 

So yes, you can peraps have this if you choose to, but maybe consider if you actually want it. Is it a good system? I dunno, probably? If you do good work, I shall vote for your elections to the halls of the cool people though hopefully your life will already be rich and fun enough as it is. 

My take on your opener:

Somewhere out there, there are the cool, high-impact effective altruists who are really having a positive effect on the world.

Not having a positive effect with certainty, no.

They are all invited to lots of awesome parties with other cool, high-impact effective altruists.

More yes than no. 

They know all kinds of secrets that us normal people don’t know, and they laugh at us for our out-of-touch takes.

I don't think they think about others like that but they do know secrets you'd like to. I know secrets you'd like to, there are a lot of secrets to know. Many of the "cool" people are in fact really fricking fun, though I only know most from a distance. But basically all of the EA big names I have hung out with, have been brilliant, fun people with great chat. 

They can get jobs and grants by having a fifteen-minute conversation with a friend or a friend of a friend.

Probably, though they have earned the trust of grant funders. Would you invest in Zuckerberg if he said he was starting a new business? So yeah, there are some people grant funders would love to give more money. 

They don’t have to slog through endless and dispiriting job applications, throwing out a hundred apps to get nothing back but “we had a very strong pool this time.”

They don't, no. Though many seem to work a lot of hours.

They never sit at home alone on weekends scrolling TikTok and contemplating doing their laundry.

They also do that, though maybe some don’t. The group seems a mix of functional and very dysfuctional. 

They can go to all the coolest co-working spaces AND EA Global.

They can, though sometimes EAGs can be a bit annoying, I hear. 

So basically I think this isn't true. 

It's not like one needs to have spicy views on the impossibility of racial equality (and conformance with the ultraconservative right in most other views)  to be interested in biohacking, markets or altruism ... if anything quite the opposite.

Yeah this feels kind of a solid point. I'll think about it. 

I tend to, on balance, be pretty grateful to community health. I am glad to be part of a community that actually takes responsibility for the things that a reasonable observer would expect them to be responsible for. 

I tend to think many companies and communities are cowardly here. And sure, recently I think EA has acted like women are made of glass and that there is no joy to be had in any kind of romance at all, but at least the team aren't cowards. Any community that is like "we don't take responsibility for what people do at our events" I want to spit them out of my mouth. I am glad that if someone is having a bad time there is a place to report that too while neither do nothing, nor just throw the accused out. 

So thanks folks. 

Sure though I feel like you have generally been weakly pro SBF in the meantime. And doesn't it cause some question of judgement if it took you 3+ years to come to the same conclusion that most people reached in 7 days?