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 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.