I interpreted Buck’s comment differently. His comment reads to me, not so much like “playing the man,” and more like “telling the man that he might be better off playing a different game.” If someone doesn’t have the time to write out an in-depth response to a post that takes 84 minutes to read, but they take the time to (I’d guess largely correctly) suggest to the authors how they might better succeed at accomplishing their own goals, that seems to me like a helpful form of engagement.
Maybe your correct, and that’s definitely how I interpreted it initially, but Buck’s response to me gave a different impression. Maybe I’m wrong, but it just strikes me as a little strange if Buck feels they have considered these ideas and basically rejects them, why they would want to suggest to these bunch of concerned EAs how to go about trying to push for the ideas that Buck disagrees with better. Maybe I’m wrong or have misinterpreted something though, I wouldn’t be surprised
why they would want to suggest to these bunch of concerned EAs how to go about trying to push for the ideas that Buck disagrees with better
My guess was that Buck was hopeful that, if the post authors focus their criticisms on the cruxes of disagreement, that would help reveal flaws in his and others’ thinking (“inasmuch as I’m wrong it would be great if you proved me wrong”). In other words, I’d guess he was like, “I think you’re probably mistaken, but in case you’re right, it’d be in both of our interests for you to convince me of that, and you’ll only be able to do that if you take a different approach.”
[Edit: This is less clear to me now—see Gideon’s reply pointing out a more recent comment.]
I guess I’m a bit skeptical of this, given that Buck has said this to weeatquince “I would prefer an EA Forum without your critical writing on it, because I think your critical writing has similar problems to this post (for similar reasons to the comment Rohin made here), and I think that posts like this/yours are fairly unhelpful, distracting, and unpleasant. In my opinion, it is fair game for me to make truthful comments that cause people to feel less incentivized to write posts like this one (or yours) in future”.
I would prefer an EA Forum without your critical writing on it, because I think your critical writing has similar problems to this post...
I interpret this quote to be saying, “this style of criticism — which seems to lack a ToC and especially fails to engage with the cruxes its critics have, which feels much closer to shouting into the void than making progress on existing disagreements — is bad for the forum discourse by my lights. And it’s fine for me to dissuade people from writing content which hurts discourse”
Buck’s top-level comment is gesturing at a “How to productively criticize EA via a forum post, according to Buck”, and I think it’s noble to explain this to somebody even if you don’t think their proposals are good. I think the discourse around the EA community and criticisms would be significantly better if everybody read Buck’s top level comment, and I plan on making it the reference I send to people on the topic.
Personally I disagree with many of the proposals in this post and I also wish the people writing it had a better ToC, especially one that helps make progress on the disagreement, e.g., by commissioning a research project to better understand a relevant consideration, or by steelmanning existing positions held by people like me, with the intent to identify the best arguments for both sides.
My interpretation of Buck’s comment is that he’s saying that, insofar as he’s read the post, he sees that it’s largely full of ideas that he’s specifically considered and dismissed in the past, although he is not confident that he’s correct in every particular.
I think that the class of arguments in this post deserve to be considered carefully, but I’m personally fine with having considered them in the past and decided that I’m unpersuaded by them...
there are probably some suggestions made in this post that I would overall agree should be prioritized if I spent more time thinking about them
You want him to explain why he dismissed them in the past
I’d be pretty interested in you laying out in depth why you have basically decides to dismiss these very varied and large set of arguments.
And are confused about why he’d encourage other people to champion the ideas he disagrees with
why they would want to suggest to these bunch of concerned EAs how to go about trying to push for the ideas that Buck disagrees with better
I think the explanation is that Buck is pretty pessimistic that these are by and large good ideas, enough not to commit more of his time to considering each one individually more than he has in the past. However, he sees that the authors are thinking about them a lot right now, and is inviting them to compete or collaborate effectively—to put these ideas to a real test of persuasion and execution. That seems far from “poo-poohing” to me. It’s a piece of thoughtful corrective feedback.
You have asked Buck to “lay out in depth” his reasons for rejecting all the content in this post. That seems like a big ask to me, particularly given that he does not think they are good ideas. It would be like asking an evolutionary biologist to “lay out in depth” their reasons for rejecting all the arguments in Of Pandas and People. Or, for a personal example, I went to the AAAS conference right before COVID hit, and got to enjoy the spectacle of a climate change denier getting up and asking in front of the ballroom whether the geoengineering scientist who’d been speaking whether scientists had considered the possibility that the Earth is warming up because it’s getting closer to the sun. His response was “YES WE’VE CONSIDERED IT.”
If that question asker went home, wrote a whole book full of reasons why the Earth might be moving closer to the sun, posted it online, and it got a bunch of upvotes, I don’t think that means that suddenly the scientist needs to consider all of the arguments more closely, revisit the issue, or that rejecting the ideas gives one an obligation to explain all of one’s reasons.
One way you could address this problem is by choosing one specific argument from this post that you find most compelling, and seeing if you can invite Buck into a debate on that topic, or to explain his thinking on it. I often find that to be productive of good conversation. But your comment read to me as an attempt to both mischaracterize the tone of Buck’s comment and and call into question the degree to which he’s thought about these issues. If you are accusing him of not actually having given these ideas as much thought as he claims, I think you should come right out and say it.
I agree with the text of your comment but think it’d be better if you chose your analogy to be about things that are more contested (rather than clearly false like creationism or AGW denial or whatever).
This avoids the connotation that Buck is clearly right to dismiss such criticisms.
One better analogy that comes to mind is asking Catholic theologians about the implausibility of a virgin birth, but unfortunately, I think religious connotations have their own problems.
I agree that this would have been better, but it was the example that came to mind and I’m going to trust readers to take it as a loose analogy, not a claim about which side is correct in the debate.
Fair! I think having maximally accurate analogies that helps people be truth-seeking is hard, and of course the opportunity costs of maximally cooperative writing is high.
I interpreted Buck’s comment differently. His comment reads to me, not so much like “playing the man,” and more like “telling the man that he might be better off playing a different game.” If someone doesn’t have the time to write out an in-depth response to a post that takes 84 minutes to read, but they take the time to (I’d guess largely correctly) suggest to the authors how they might better succeed at accomplishing their own goals, that seems to me like a helpful form of engagement.
Maybe your correct, and that’s definitely how I interpreted it initially, but Buck’s response to me gave a different impression. Maybe I’m wrong, but it just strikes me as a little strange if Buck feels they have considered these ideas and basically rejects them, why they would want to suggest to these bunch of concerned EAs how to go about trying to push for the ideas that Buck disagrees with better. Maybe I’m wrong or have misinterpreted something though, I wouldn’t be surprised
My guess was that Buck was hopeful that, if the post authors focus their criticisms on the cruxes of disagreement, that would help reveal flaws in his and others’ thinking (“inasmuch as I’m wrong it would be great if you proved me wrong”). In other words, I’d guess he was like, “I think you’re probably mistaken, but in case you’re right, it’d be in both of our interests for you to convince me of that, and you’ll only be able to do that if you take a different approach.”
[Edit: This is less clear to me now—see Gideon’s reply pointing out a more recent comment.]
I guess I’m a bit skeptical of this, given that Buck has said this to weeatquince “I would prefer an EA Forum without your critical writing on it, because I think your critical writing has similar problems to this post (for similar reasons to the comment Rohin made here), and I think that posts like this/yours are fairly unhelpful, distracting, and unpleasant. In my opinion, it is fair game for me to make truthful comments that cause people to feel less incentivized to write posts like this one (or yours) in future”.
This evidence doesn’t update me very much.
I interpret this quote to be saying, “this style of criticism — which seems to lack a ToC and especially fails to engage with the cruxes its critics have, which feels much closer to shouting into the void than making progress on existing disagreements — is bad for the forum discourse by my lights. And it’s fine for me to dissuade people from writing content which hurts discourse”
Buck’s top-level comment is gesturing at a “How to productively criticize EA via a forum post, according to Buck”, and I think it’s noble to explain this to somebody even if you don’t think their proposals are good. I think the discourse around the EA community and criticisms would be significantly better if everybody read Buck’s top level comment, and I plan on making it the reference I send to people on the topic.
Personally I disagree with many of the proposals in this post and I also wish the people writing it had a better ToC, especially one that helps make progress on the disagreement, e.g., by commissioning a research project to better understand a relevant consideration, or by steelmanning existing positions held by people like me, with the intent to identify the best arguments for both sides.
My interpretation of Buck’s comment is that he’s saying that, insofar as he’s read the post, he sees that it’s largely full of ideas that he’s specifically considered and dismissed in the past, although he is not confident that he’s correct in every particular.
You want him to explain why he dismissed them in the past
And are confused about why he’d encourage other people to champion the ideas he disagrees with
I think the explanation is that Buck is pretty pessimistic that these are by and large good ideas, enough not to commit more of his time to considering each one individually more than he has in the past. However, he sees that the authors are thinking about them a lot right now, and is inviting them to compete or collaborate effectively—to put these ideas to a real test of persuasion and execution. That seems far from “poo-poohing” to me. It’s a piece of thoughtful corrective feedback.
You have asked Buck to “lay out in depth” his reasons for rejecting all the content in this post. That seems like a big ask to me, particularly given that he does not think they are good ideas. It would be like asking an evolutionary biologist to “lay out in depth” their reasons for rejecting all the arguments in Of Pandas and People. Or, for a personal example, I went to the AAAS conference right before COVID hit, and got to enjoy the spectacle of a climate change denier getting up and asking in front of the ballroom whether the geoengineering scientist who’d been speaking whether scientists had considered the possibility that the Earth is warming up because it’s getting closer to the sun. His response was “YES WE’VE CONSIDERED IT.”
If that question asker went home, wrote a whole book full of reasons why the Earth might be moving closer to the sun, posted it online, and it got a bunch of upvotes, I don’t think that means that suddenly the scientist needs to consider all of the arguments more closely, revisit the issue, or that rejecting the ideas gives one an obligation to explain all of one’s reasons.
One way you could address this problem is by choosing one specific argument from this post that you find most compelling, and seeing if you can invite Buck into a debate on that topic, or to explain his thinking on it. I often find that to be productive of good conversation. But your comment read to me as an attempt to both mischaracterize the tone of Buck’s comment and and call into question the degree to which he’s thought about these issues. If you are accusing him of not actually having given these ideas as much thought as he claims, I think you should come right out and say it.
I agree with the text of your comment but think it’d be better if you chose your analogy to be about things that are more contested (rather than clearly false like creationism or AGW denial or whatever).
This avoids the connotation that Buck is clearly right to dismiss such criticisms.
One better analogy that comes to mind is asking Catholic theologians about the implausibility of a virgin birth, but unfortunately, I think religious connotations have their own problems.
I agree that this would have been better, but it was the example that came to mind and I’m going to trust readers to take it as a loose analogy, not a claim about which side is correct in the debate.
Fair! I think having maximally accurate analogies that helps people be truth-seeking is hard, and of course the opportunity costs of maximally cooperative writing is high.