Point taken about the frontpage placement, although my comment mostly intended to point at a lost opportunity for meaningful engagement, self-reflection, and stepping outside the internal logic of groupthink, rationalizing, and defensiveness (which are the phenomena I have observed on previous posts of this nature) – not just the house metric of clicks.
My worry is that the EA mentality is capable of absorbing information publicly revealing increasingly puerile forms of abuse and using the high-level thinking so important to the valorization of the ideology as a tool to obfuscate the real, problematic power dynamics within the ranks of its movement. The article does explicitly address this.
This seems to be one of the most major pieces yet about EA for a mass audience, so I’m hoping it’s taken with a sense of gravity and thoughtfulness. I see no one else has commented, unfortunately. The account I’m replying to has now made accusations of journalistic dishonesty and bias, though, about which I’m interested to hear more.
I have made no such comment about marginalized groups, so I’m not sure what the warning was for.
Yes, my guess is that ParetoPrinciple was adorably kind in that they didn’t realize that EugenicsAdjacent was actually just making an extremely rude dig at EAs. Frankly it is unacceptable to come onto a free forum made available for the benefit of all and maintained through the sweat off the brows of wellmeaning EAs, and use one of the features (username) to shit on insult and typecast this large, diverse, wellmeaning community in such an empistemically sneaky way (because usernames aren’t even a topic of conversation, the dig was hard to address. It’s basically In my mind it is akin to anti-EA grafitti now being permanently hosted on the EA Forum). Absolutely unconscionable and monstrously illmannered. Again, I claim it is unthinkably rude, and I hope to set precedent that we should not stand for it. Can’t believe someone like that I’m also aghast that someone likely doing that would presume to write as though they have the upper hand in judging civilized behavior, and I encourage them to think more carefully about their own behavior before trying to take the moral high ground.
This comment was reported as needlessly unkind and assuming bad faith, which goes against forum norms, and on a second read I agree.
Accusing someone of “shitting on” the community, producing “anti-EA graffiti”, and being “unconscionable and monstrously ill-mannered” is a lot, especially based on a username that might have been intended as sarcastic rather than offensive.
Especially in particularly sensitive threads, please aim for a much higher standard before accusing someone of bad faith (including in this other comment).
I’m not questioning this decision on a whole regarding Ivy’s comment, and accept that this is a sensitive thread so stricter norms will apply, but I think the original user’s name—“Eugenics-Adjacent”, should at least raise some eyebrows.
I find it unlikely that it would be a coincidence that they happened to choose a name which plays on the “I’m not an EA, I’m EA-adjacent” trope, and the “Eugenics” seems to relate to the Bostrom letter. Taken together, “Eugenics-Adjacent” seems easily interpretable as a shot at the entire EA movement for being exactly this.
The OP also posted the first comment on this thread iirc, and set the tone off by saying:
...stories like this are lost on the devoted EA crowd here. We’re likely to see another round of rationalizing, distancing, downvoting, and flooding the forum with posts to drown out the stories of power being abused
Which includes a direct accusation the EAs will ‘flood the forum’ with posts after controversial issues like this intentionally in order to bury this issue.
Tl;dr: Not commenting on the whole of Ivy’s comment being unkind/assuming bad faith, but I think one can also be sceptical of the original poster’s motives
I agree with @Lorenzo Buonanno that people in EA culture should think I addressed it pretty poorly. I think that myself now, and knew that it was far from ideal at the time.
My explanation here (not excuse) is that I don’t always have the energy to call things out in the best way. In those cases it’s often best to stay quiet but not always. In this case I honestly did not expect anyone would do the calling out instead? Yet I messed up egregiously. I just find it so incredibly draining to face the fact that people disrespect EA that much and that casually. It really breaks me tbh thinking it’s that far gone, unjustly I’d say, so I fight against that reality. Sometimes I do think “it is so pointless, we will never stem the flow of incorrect misleading criticism” even if I don’t really think that, I feel that. So anger is what helped me get over that feeling to write a clapback I thought was worth trying.
I wish I could trust that others would also call out bad behavior and make it clear that EAs deserve respect as much as anyone. But I think what I expect more from EAs is ignoring disrespect, explaining it, steelmanning it, or politely requesting for better (which like, we are talking about a proven-rude person here so they can just brush that right off their shoulders?).
I am very sorry for writing it as harshly worded as I did though. This was a particularly egregious fuckup of mine and I want to do better. FWIW I considered deleting the comment yesterday but kinda thought that would be epistemically dishonest or something, as I didn’t want to retract the whole thing, but again I didnt have the energy to fix it. Now I will try to fix it with liberal strikethroughs
One of the comments Ivy was responding to there began “I am encouraging you to try to exercise your empathetic muscles and understand...”
And the comment thread we are in by someone who named this burner account of theirs “Eugenics-Adjacent” began “Sadly I fear stories like this are lost on the devoted EA crowd here...”
I agree that posts on the EA forum should be kind and assume good faith.
To be clear, I would not have commented on the other comment by itself. Still, I do think there’s a general pattern on the forum where some threads by default tend to spiral out by commenters gradually modeling each other as more and more adversarial, unless we make a significant active effort in assuming good faith and being kind[1], and I think that thread might have become an example of that.
I agree that there’s an important difference between calling someone disingenuous and mentioning that a comment reads to you as disingenuous, but I still think that discussing things on the object level (like you mostly do in the rest of the comment) is kinder and helps to prevent such spirals.
Point taken about the frontpage placement, although my comment mostly intended to point at a lost opportunity for meaningful engagement, self-reflection, and stepping outside the internal logic of groupthink, rationalizing, and defensiveness (which are the phenomena I have observed on previous posts of this nature) – not just the house metric of clicks.
My worry is that the EA mentality is capable of absorbing information publicly revealing increasingly puerile forms of abuse and using the high-level thinking so important to the valorization of the ideology as a tool to obfuscate the real, problematic power dynamics within the ranks of its movement. The article does explicitly address this.
This seems to be one of the most major pieces yet about EA for a mass audience, so I’m hoping it’s taken with a sense of gravity and thoughtfulness. I see no one else has commented, unfortunately. The account I’m replying to has now made accusations of journalistic dishonesty and bias, though, about which I’m interested to hear more.
I have made no such comment about marginalized groups, so I’m not sure what the warning was for.
I guess it was because your username is “eugenics-adjacent” though I guess that is sarcastic.
Yes, my guess is that ParetoPrinciple was adorably kind in that they didn’t realize that EugenicsAdjacent was actually just making an extremely rude dig at EAs. Frankly it is unacceptable to come onto a free forum made available for the benefit of all and maintained through the sweat off the brows of wellmeaning EAs, and use one of the features (username) to
shit oninsult and typecast this large, diverse, wellmeaning community in such an empistemically sneaky way (because usernames aren’t even a topic of conversation, the dig was hard to address.It’s basicallyIn my mind it is akin to anti-EA grafitti now being permanently hosted on the EA Forum).Absolutely unconscionable and monstrously illmannered.Again, I claim it is unthinkably rude, and I hope to set precedent that we should not stand for it.Can’t believe someone like thatI’m also aghast that someone likely doing that would presume to write as though they have the upper hand in judging civilized behavior, and I encourage them to think more carefully about their own behavior before trying to take the moral high ground.Hi Ivy,
This comment was reported as needlessly unkind and assuming bad faith, which goes against forum norms, and on a second read I agree.
Accusing someone of “shitting on” the community, producing “anti-EA graffiti”, and being “unconscionable and monstrously ill-mannered” is a lot, especially based on a username that might have been intended as sarcastic rather than offensive.
Especially in particularly sensitive threads, please aim for a much higher standard before accusing someone of bad faith (including in this other comment).
I’m not questioning this decision on a whole regarding Ivy’s comment, and accept that this is a sensitive thread so stricter norms will apply, but I think the original user’s name—“Eugenics-Adjacent”, should at least raise some eyebrows.
I find it unlikely that it would be a coincidence that they happened to choose a name which plays on the “I’m not an EA, I’m EA-adjacent” trope, and the “Eugenics” seems to relate to the Bostrom letter. Taken together, “Eugenics-Adjacent” seems easily interpretable as a shot at the entire EA movement for being exactly this.
The OP also posted the first comment on this thread iirc, and set the tone off by saying:
Which includes a direct accusation the EAs will ‘flood the forum’ with posts after controversial issues like this intentionally in order to bury this issue.
Tl;dr: Not commenting on the whole of Ivy’s comment being unkind/assuming bad faith, but I think one can also be sceptical of the original poster’s motives
Thank you for noting this.
I agree with @Lorenzo Buonanno that people in EA culture should think I addressed it pretty poorly. I think that myself now, and knew that it was far from ideal at the time.
My explanation here (not excuse) is that I don’t always have the energy to call things out in the best way. In those cases it’s often best to stay quiet but not always. In this case I honestly did not expect anyone would do the calling out instead? Yet I messed up egregiously. I just find it so incredibly draining to face the fact that people disrespect EA that much and that casually. It really breaks me tbh thinking it’s that far gone, unjustly I’d say, so I fight against that reality. Sometimes I do think “it is so pointless, we will never stem the flow of incorrect misleading criticism” even if I don’t really think that, I feel that. So anger is what helped me get over that feeling to write a clapback I thought was worth trying.
I wish I could trust that others would also call out bad behavior and make it clear that EAs deserve respect as much as anyone. But I think what I expect more from EAs is ignoring disrespect, explaining it, steelmanning it, or politely requesting for better (which like, we are talking about a proven-rude person here so they can just brush that right off their shoulders?).
I am very sorry for writing it as harshly worded as I did though. This was a particularly egregious fuckup of mine and I want to do better. FWIW I considered deleting the comment yesterday but kinda thought that would be epistemically dishonest or something, as I didn’t want to retract the whole thing, but again I didnt have the energy to fix it. Now I will try to fix it with liberal
strikethroughsOne of the comments Ivy was responding to there began “I am encouraging you to try to exercise your empathetic muscles and understand...”
And the comment thread we are in by someone who named this burner account of theirs “Eugenics-Adjacent” began “Sadly I fear stories like this are lost on the devoted EA crowd here...”
I agree that posts on the EA forum should be kind and assume good faith.
Okay fair about this comment.
I want to push back on your linking the other comment though. I said FYI that their comment was reading to me a certain way.… isn’t that forum norms?
To be clear, I would not have commented on the other comment by itself. Still, I do think there’s a general pattern on the forum where some threads by default tend to spiral out by commenters gradually modeling each other as more and more adversarial, unless we make a significant active effort in assuming good faith and being kind[1], and I think that thread might have become an example of that.
I agree that there’s an important difference between calling someone disingenuous and mentioning that a comment reads to you as disingenuous, but I still think that discussing things on the object level (like you mostly do in the rest of the comment) is kinder and helps to prevent such spirals.
Someone wrote somewhere that discussion norms are ectotherms: need to constantly receive energy to survive, I’ve found it a helpful metaphor.
Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah you are right, and the ectotherm thing is a good analogy.