Re 3, ‘There is anticorrelation between the amount of time people have to post on EA Forum and the quality of person.’ - this makes me wince. A language point is that I think talking about how ‘good quality’ people are overall is unkind and leads to people feeling bad about themselves for not having such-and-such an attribute. An object level point is I don’t think there is an anticorrelation—I think being a busy EA org person does make it more likely that they’ll have valuable takes, but not being a busy-EA-org-person doesn’t make it less likely—there aren’t that many busy-EA-org-person jobs, and some people aren’t a good fit for busy jobs (eg because of their health or family commitments) but they still have interesting ideas.
Re 7: I’m literally working on a post with someone about how lots of people feel too intimidated to post on the Forum because of its perceived high standards! So I think though the Forum team are trying to make people feel welcome, it’s not true that it’s (yet) optimized for this, imo.
There’s a kind of general problem whereby any messaging or mechanism that’s designed to dissuade people from posting low-quality things will (a) just not work on some people—some people just have a lot of confidence in their not-very-good opinions, shrug, and (b) dissuade people who would post high-quality things, but who have impostor syndrome or are perfectionist or over self-critical. I think the number of people that the mechanism works as intended on—ie people who would have posted a low quality post but are now dissuaded from it—is probably pretty low. Since there are lots of people in EA with impostor syndrome/perfectionism/over-scrupulosity, I’m pretty in favour of the Forum having a ‘welcoming’ vibe over a We Are Very Serious and Important vibe.… because I’d rather have more good takes and more bad takes, than get rid of the bad takes and also get rid of good takes from impostors.
I broadly agree with 5 and 6.
Re 3, ‘There is anticorrelation between the amount of time people have to post on EA Forum and the quality of person.’ - this makes me wince. A language point is that I think talking about how ‘good quality’ people are overall is unkind and leads to people feeling bad about themselves for not having such-and-such an attribute. An object level point is I don’t think there is an anticorrelation—I think being a busy EA org person does make it more likely that they’ll have valuable takes, but not being a busy-EA-org-person doesn’t make it less likely—there aren’t that many busy-EA-org-person jobs, and some people aren’t a good fit for busy jobs (eg because of their health or family commitments) but they still have interesting ideas.
Re 7: I’m literally working on a post with someone about how lots of people feel too intimidated to post on the Forum because of its perceived high standards! So I think though the Forum team are trying to make people feel welcome, it’s not true that it’s (yet) optimized for this, imo.
There’s a kind of general problem whereby any messaging or mechanism that’s designed to dissuade people from posting low-quality things will (a) just not work on some people—some people just have a lot of confidence in their not-very-good opinions, shrug, and (b) dissuade people who would post high-quality things, but who have impostor syndrome or are perfectionist or over self-critical. I think the number of people that the mechanism works as intended on—ie people who would have posted a low quality post but are now dissuaded from it—is probably pretty low. Since there are lots of people in EA with impostor syndrome/perfectionism/over-scrupulosity, I’m pretty in favour of the Forum having a ‘welcoming’ vibe over a We Are Very Serious and Important vibe.… because I’d rather have more good takes and more bad takes, than get rid of the bad takes and also get rid of good takes from impostors.