Baseline agreement is good, and I think that in general there should be more comments “stating the obvious”, so it is clear that there are things we mostly agree on.
However, “everyone agrees on this” statements will only capture a very small part of the issue. For example, say we ask the question: “what should be EA’s relationship with cryptocurrency in light of FTX?”. It’s a perfectly valid question, and one that sparked a lot of interesting discussion. But given that some people think crypto is the currency of the future and our best insurance against tyranny, and others think it’s a worthless ponzi scam that should be banned outright, you’ll never get a consensus answer. I think that’s fine! The discussion is still valuable, people get more information, and consider more arguments, and are ultimately more informed coming out than in.
Baseline agreement is good, and I think that in general there should be more comments “stating the obvious”, so it is clear that there are things we mostly agree on.
However, “everyone agrees on this” statements will only capture a very small part of the issue. For example, say we ask the question: “what should be EA’s relationship with cryptocurrency in light of FTX?”. It’s a perfectly valid question, and one that sparked a lot of interesting discussion. But given that some people think crypto is the currency of the future and our best insurance against tyranny, and others think it’s a worthless ponzi scam that should be banned outright, you’ll never get a consensus answer. I think that’s fine! The discussion is still valuable, people get more information, and consider more arguments, and are ultimately more informed coming out than in.