I think Lark’s response is reasonably close to my object-level position.
My quick summary of a big part of my disagreement: a major theme of this post suggests that various powerful EAs hand over a bunch of power to people who disagree with them. The advantage of doing that is that it mitigates various echo chamber failure modes. The disadvantage of doing that is that now, people who you disagree with have a lot of your resources, and they might do stuff that you disagree with. For example, consider the proposal “OpenPhil should diversify its grantmaking by giving half its money to a randomly chosen Frenchman”. This probably reduces echo chamber problems in EA, but it also seems to me like a terrible idea.
I don’t think the post properly engages with the question “how ought various powerful people weigh the pros and cons of transferring their power to people they disagree with”. I think this question is very important, and I think about it a fair bit, but I think that this post is a pretty shallow discussion of it that doesn’t contribute much novel insight.
I encourage people to write posts on the topic of “how ought various powerful people weigh the pros and cons of transferring their power to people they disagree with”; perhaps such posts could look at historical examples, or mechanisms via which powerful people can get the echo-chamber-reduction effects without the random-people-now-use-your-resources-to-do-their-random-goals effect.
I think Lark’s response is reasonably close to my object-level position.
My quick summary of a big part of my disagreement: a major theme of this post suggests that various powerful EAs hand over a bunch of power to people who disagree with them. The advantage of doing that is that it mitigates various echo chamber failure modes. The disadvantage of doing that is that now, people who you disagree with have a lot of your resources, and they might do stuff that you disagree with. For example, consider the proposal “OpenPhil should diversify its grantmaking by giving half its money to a randomly chosen Frenchman”. This probably reduces echo chamber problems in EA, but it also seems to me like a terrible idea.
I don’t think the post properly engages with the question “how ought various powerful people weigh the pros and cons of transferring their power to people they disagree with”. I think this question is very important, and I think about it a fair bit, but I think that this post is a pretty shallow discussion of it that doesn’t contribute much novel insight.
I encourage people to write posts on the topic of “how ought various powerful people weigh the pros and cons of transferring their power to people they disagree with”; perhaps such posts could look at historical examples, or mechanisms via which powerful people can get the echo-chamber-reduction effects without the random-people-now-use-your-resources-to-do-their-random-goals effect.