The Neighborhood Culture & Values
This document was written over a weekend in March 2021 for the Archive coliving house by Kanjun Qiu, Michael Lai, Jason Benn, Rose Wang, Taylor Rogalski, Arram Sabeti, Chris Painter, Josh Albrecht, Christina Kim, Michael Andregg, Julia Bossman, Armand Cognetta, Westley Dang, and Matthias Pauthner
We want to take the best parts of science culture, Silicon Valley culture, justice culture, and community culture.
- from science culture:
- incessant curiosity and drive to understand and construct accurate models of the world
- valuing intuition and building on hunches, taking a gold-seeking and constructive instead of evaluative mindset
- seeking intellectual rigor, well-researched viewpoints, citations, credit attribution, accuracy, depth, and independent thinking over hot takes or what’s current
- humility borne of a recognition that we each do not know very much, and not only that, but that humanity as a whole does not yet know very much
- collaboration to develop ideas (e.g. papers often have multiple authors)
- a willingness to share and teach what we know, and desire to learn what others know
- a willingness to update beliefs based on evidence
- writing culture, borne of the understanding that thinking and speaking are vague to a degree we do not realize until we set pen to the page
- from SV culture:
- willingness to question current systems or structures, to reject the status quo
- valuing courage and bold action, especially in the face of the ambiguous or unknowable
- definite optimism, a belief that the future can be better than the past if we are determined
- radical agency; belief that we are capable of having a broad-scale positive impact
- a striving to become wiser and more capable, to reach our potential, to transform ourselves
- believing in the power of small groups to change the world
- resilience in moments of difficulty
- adaptability in moments of opportunity
- from justice culture (as distinct from social justice culture):
- compassion for all forms of suffering and wanting to learn more about suffering
- a recognition that different people experience differing levels of challenge in their lives, and have different opportunities available to them, based on circumstances out of their control
- being proactive, not passive or apathetic about issues of suffering and injustice
- accountability for everyone, with higher accountability for people with more power
- valuing invisible diversity for which oftentimes visible diversity is a correlate, in order to empathize with a greater percentage of the people in the world
- and from community culture:
- valuing relationships and humanity over utility
- the desire to understand each other as whole individuals
- embodying trust, empathy, and love for each other
- valuing vulnerability and support for each other
- ownership mentality over the community, understanding that it is cocreated, not consumed
- serendipity, that unplanned interactions are sufficient to forge strong relationships
- no dark triad: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy; these traits undermine prosocial behavior and make true community impossible
- community requires curation, which necessitates exclusion; good vibes are rare and fragile and a minority of misaligned or unknown actors can upset the feel of a space
- sometimes we will need to put the needs of the group above our own
- psychological safety: It’s okay to disagree, to not be perfect, to be vulnerable at times, etc
- an eschewing of status, elitism, and signaling to the extent possible
- trusting that everyone has a golden nugget inside of them, and it’s your job to find it and build on the best parts of that person, not to judge them
- being a Schelling point for people who resonate with our values / vision