I’ll add that EAs seem particularly bad at steelmanning criticisms.
(eg—if a criticism doesn’t explicitly frame ideas on a spectrum and discuss trade offs, the comments tend to view the ideas as black and white and reject the criticisms because they don’t like the other extreme of the spectrum)
The only other communities I know well are socialist + centre left political communities, who I think are worse than EA at engaging with criticism.
So I’d say EA is better than all communities that I know of at engaging with criticism, and is still pretty bad at it.
In terms of actionable suggestions, I’d say tone police a bit less, make sure you’re not making isolated demands for rigour, and make sure you’re steelmanning criticisms as you read, particularly via asking whether you’d sympathise with a weaker version of the claim, and via the reversal test.
Sorry yes, essentially “EAs are bad, but so are most communities.” But importantly we shouldn’t just settle for being bad, if we want to approximately do the most good possible, we should aim to be approximately perfect at things, not just better than others.
I think EA is better than most movements at self criticism and engaging with criticism.
I think many EAs mistake this for meaning that EA is “good” at engaging with criticism.
I think EA is still very bad at engaging with criticism, but other movements are just worse.
I’ll add that EAs seem particularly bad at steelmanning criticisms.
(eg—if a criticism doesn’t explicitly frame ideas on a spectrum and discuss trade offs, the comments tend to view the ideas as black and white and reject the criticisms because they don’t like the other extreme of the spectrum)
By chance, can you suggest any communities that you think do a good job here?
I’m curious who we could learn from.
Or is it like, “EAs are bad, but so are most communities.” (This is my current guess at what I believe)
Good question.
The only other communities I know well are socialist + centre left political communities, who I think are worse than EA at engaging with criticism.
So I’d say EA is better than all communities that I know of at engaging with criticism, and is still pretty bad at it.
In terms of actionable suggestions, I’d say tone police a bit less, make sure you’re not making isolated demands for rigour, and make sure you’re steelmanning criticisms as you read, particularly via asking whether you’d sympathise with a weaker version of the claim, and via the reversal test.
Sorry yes, essentially “EAs are bad, but so are most communities.” But importantly we shouldn’t just settle for being bad, if we want to approximately do the most good possible, we should aim to be approximately perfect at things, not just better than others.
Thanks! I definitely agree that improvement would be really great.
If others reading this have suggestions of other community examples, that would also be appreciated!