What did people think of this? I fear it may have done more harm than good, and I don’t understand the choice to publish something so controversial now, with a book to promote and a chance to get EA more into the mainstream.
My comment from Facebook:
“It was an ill-advised piece. We should explore general solutions to make sure EAs can get a second opinion on whether or not to publish wacky ideas, starting straight from the top with Will and Amanda!”
The group I started on Facebook is called “effective altruism editing and review”. It’s closed, and it will stay that way. I don’t want to make it secret. I don’t want the role of any secret or utterly private groups to expand. The fewer things effective altruism feels the need to keep secret, the better. The new group I maintain shall remain closed so others will remain publicly aware of its existence and can request to join if they like. Ideally, I’d like a diversity of thoughtful people who are experienced in a variety of writing, fields, and causes. That way, if anyone has a piece they want reviewed before publication, they can field particular expertise from within that group. Right now the group only has nine members, so that doesn’t cover the full spread of people I’d like to have in the group. However, right now, there are folks like Carl Shulman, David Moss, and Ben Henry, who are think are some of the most critical thinkers in the community, so they’re a good start for people who are great for catching mistakes, errors, or misfires in written pieces from effective altruism.
The group need not be secret, because requests for editing and review can be fielded, editors and reviewers can respond, and then the writer can give those people private access to the document. This isn’t a failure to be transparent either. I wouldn’t even call it a secret. If not totally after, then definitely before it’s published, a piece of writing is the sole property of its writers, and they have every right to keep private their ideas before publication. Nobody would hold any other type of writer to that standard. The articles of any self-identified effective altruist don’t represent the views of the whole of effective altruism. Some pieces will be interpreted that way, and the writer may draft a piece with that in mind. However, a piece of writing from a single (set of) author(s) isn’t the collective intellectual property of effective altruism, so it isn’t our collective responsibility for the consequences of the piece either. It is merely supererogatory conscientiousness to be praised when an author from within effective altrusm has the humility and patience to run their pieces by their peers first.
At the EA Global, and elsewhere online, I’ve read suggestions about there being some “Journal of Effective Altruism”, which would be like a peer-reviewed journal. I think it would be more like an online peer-review journal, at least at first, and not carry all the norms and prestige of an institutional academic journal. Submissions to such a journal would likely be the more scholarly submissions to this Forum itself, submissions from individual scholars from both within and outside of this social community, and cross-publications from social science or philosophy journals the editors of an EA peer-review journal would find especially relevant and high-quality. As far as I know, nobody is working on this yet. I think there is enough will someone can or will start working on it. I imagine it’s something we could see before the end of 2015.
This would solve a lot of the problems not even a Facebook group for editing could deal with, though such a journal may not be sufficient for popular journalism such as that from Will MacAskill, or dylan Matthews in Vox.
Thanks Darren and commentators for bringing this up.
I now think that it was a mistake to publish that article, and I’m sorry that I did. I didn’t appreciate how the piece would be presented by Quartz (the framing given by the Quartz headline and quotes (neither of which I got to choose) is quite different than the content), nor how it would then be responded to by others. Unlike with the ice bucket piece and earning to give, which I think were reasonable things to do ex ante (though still learning experiences in different ways), I think I ought to have seen ex ante that this was a mistake.
I think that wild animal suffering is an important moral issue, but sufficiently hard to make progress on, and sufficiently out-there as an idea, that it’s not something that the EA community should push on. So I’d encourage people not to follow in my footsteps with this one!”
William MacAskill and his ex-wife recently published a high profile article on wild animal suffering, using Cecil the Lion as a hook to argue that (given he was a predator) his death may have been a good thing, and that we should perhaps kill all lions: http://qz.com/497675/to-truly-end-animal-suffering-the-most-ethical-choice-is-to-kill-all-predators-especially-cecil-the-lion/
What did people think of this? I fear it may have done more harm than good, and I don’t understand the choice to publish something so controversial now, with a book to promote and a chance to get EA more into the mainstream.
My comment from Facebook: “It was an ill-advised piece. We should explore general solutions to make sure EAs can get a second opinion on whether or not to publish wacky ideas, starting straight from the top with Will and Amanda!”
Possible solutions:
Ask EA friends or acquaintances to review the piece.
Post it in Reducing Wild-Animal Suffering or other relevant Facebook group asking for feedback.
Start a new EA Article Feedback group for people to post articles, presentations, etc. that are relevant to EA and get feedback on them.
I was thinking of doing this. I’ll do this right now.
I don’t know if this is a violation of EA Club rules, but I heard there was an ‘EA Private’ group on FB for this exact purpose
The group I started on Facebook is called “effective altruism editing and review”. It’s closed, and it will stay that way. I don’t want to make it secret. I don’t want the role of any secret or utterly private groups to expand. The fewer things effective altruism feels the need to keep secret, the better. The new group I maintain shall remain closed so others will remain publicly aware of its existence and can request to join if they like. Ideally, I’d like a diversity of thoughtful people who are experienced in a variety of writing, fields, and causes. That way, if anyone has a piece they want reviewed before publication, they can field particular expertise from within that group. Right now the group only has nine members, so that doesn’t cover the full spread of people I’d like to have in the group. However, right now, there are folks like Carl Shulman, David Moss, and Ben Henry, who are think are some of the most critical thinkers in the community, so they’re a good start for people who are great for catching mistakes, errors, or misfires in written pieces from effective altruism.
The group need not be secret, because requests for editing and review can be fielded, editors and reviewers can respond, and then the writer can give those people private access to the document. This isn’t a failure to be transparent either. I wouldn’t even call it a secret. If not totally after, then definitely before it’s published, a piece of writing is the sole property of its writers, and they have every right to keep private their ideas before publication. Nobody would hold any other type of writer to that standard. The articles of any self-identified effective altruist don’t represent the views of the whole of effective altruism. Some pieces will be interpreted that way, and the writer may draft a piece with that in mind. However, a piece of writing from a single (set of) author(s) isn’t the collective intellectual property of effective altruism, so it isn’t our collective responsibility for the consequences of the piece either. It is merely supererogatory conscientiousness to be praised when an author from within effective altrusm has the humility and patience to run their pieces by their peers first.
At the EA Global, and elsewhere online, I’ve read suggestions about there being some “Journal of Effective Altruism”, which would be like a peer-reviewed journal. I think it would be more like an online peer-review journal, at least at first, and not carry all the norms and prestige of an institutional academic journal. Submissions to such a journal would likely be the more scholarly submissions to this Forum itself, submissions from individual scholars from both within and outside of this social community, and cross-publications from social science or philosophy journals the editors of an EA peer-review journal would find especially relevant and high-quality. As far as I know, nobody is working on this yet. I think there is enough will someone can or will start working on it. I imagine it’s something we could see before the end of 2015.
This would solve a lot of the problems not even a Facebook group for editing could deal with, though such a journal may not be sufficient for popular journalism such as that from Will MacAskill, or dylan Matthews in Vox.
Thanks Evan!
Will’s comment from Facebook: “Hi all,
Thanks Darren and commentators for bringing this up.
I now think that it was a mistake to publish that article, and I’m sorry that I did. I didn’t appreciate how the piece would be presented by Quartz (the framing given by the Quartz headline and quotes (neither of which I got to choose) is quite different than the content), nor how it would then be responded to by others. Unlike with the ice bucket piece and earning to give, which I think were reasonable things to do ex ante (though still learning experiences in different ways), I think I ought to have seen ex ante that this was a mistake.
I think that wild animal suffering is an important moral issue, but sufficiently hard to make progress on, and sufficiently out-there as an idea, that it’s not something that the EA community should push on. So I’d encourage people not to follow in my footsteps with this one!”