By “unpleasant” I don’t mean “the authors are behaving rudely”, I mean “the content/framing seems not very useful and I am sad about the effect it has on the discourse”.
I picked that post because it happened to have a good critical comment that I agreed with; I have analogous disagreements with some of your other posts (including the one you linked).
Thanks for your offer to receive critical feedback.
“the content/framing seems not very useful and I am sad about the effect it has on the discourse”
I think we very strongly disagree on this. I think critical posts like this have a very positive effect on discourse (in EA and elsewhere) and am happy with the framing of this post and a fair amount (although by no means all) of the content.
I think my belief here is routed in quite strong lifetime experiences in favour of epistemic humility, human overconfidence especially in the domain of doing good, positive experiences of learning from good faith criticisms, and academic evidence that more views in decision making leading to better decisions. (I also think there have been some positive changes made as a result of recent criticism contests.)
I think it would be extremely hard to change my mind on this. I can think of a few specific cases (to support your views) where I am very glad criticisms were dismissed (e.g. the effective animal advocacy movement not truly engaging with abolitionist animal advocate arguments) but this seems to be more the exception than the norm. Maybe if my mind was changed on this it would be though more such case studies of people doing good really effectively without investing in the kind of learning that comes from well-meaning criticisms.
Also, I wonder if we should try (if we can find the time) cowriting a post on giving and receiving critical feedback on EA. Maybe we diverge in views too much and it would be a train wreck of a post but it could be an interesting exercise to try, maybe try to pull out toc. I do agree there are things that both I think I and the OP authors (and those responding to the OP) could do better
By “unpleasant” I don’t mean “the authors are behaving rudely”, I mean “the content/framing seems not very useful and I am sad about the effect it has on the discourse”.
I picked that post because it happened to have a good critical comment that I agreed with; I have analogous disagreements with some of your other posts (including the one you linked).
Thanks for your offer to receive critical feedback.
Thank you Buck that makes sense :-)
I think we very strongly disagree on this. I think critical posts like this have a very positive effect on discourse (in EA and elsewhere) and am happy with the framing of this post and a fair amount (although by no means all) of the content.
I think my belief here is routed in quite strong lifetime experiences in favour of epistemic humility, human overconfidence especially in the domain of doing good, positive experiences of learning from good faith criticisms, and academic evidence that more views in decision making leading to better decisions. (I also think there have been some positive changes made as a result of recent criticism contests.)
I think it would be extremely hard to change my mind on this. I can think of a few specific cases (to support your views) where I am very glad criticisms were dismissed (e.g. the effective animal advocacy movement not truly engaging with abolitionist animal advocate arguments) but this seems to be more the exception than the norm. Maybe if my mind was changed on this it would be though more such case studies of people doing good really effectively without investing in the kind of learning that comes from well-meaning criticisms.
Also, I wonder if we should try (if we can find the time) cowriting a post on giving and receiving critical feedback on EA. Maybe we diverge in views too much and it would be a train wreck of a post but it could be an interesting exercise to try, maybe try to pull out toc. I do agree there are things that both I think I and the OP authors (and those responding to the OP) could do better