Firstly, I expect people who’s criticisms I’d most want to hear to be very busy, I hope the contest will consider lower effort but insightful or impactful submissions to account for this?
Secondly, I’d expect people with the most valuable critiques to be more outside EA since I would expect to find blindspots in the particular way of thinking, arguing and knowing EA uses. What will the panelists do to ensure they can access pieces using a very different style of argument? Have you considered having non-EA panelists to aid with this?
Thirdly, criticisms from outside of EA might also contain mistakes about the movement but nonetheless make valid arguments. I hope this can be taken into account and such pieces not just dismissed.
Fourthly, I would also expect criticisms from people who have been heavily involved in EA over the years to be valuable but, if drawing on their experience, hard to write fully anonymously. What reassurances can you offer and safeguards do you have in place beyond trusting the panelists and administrators that pieces would be fairly assessed? What plans do you have in place to help prevent and mitigate backlash, especially given that many decisions within EA are network based and thus even with the best of intentions criticism is likely to have some costs to relationships.
I hope the contest will consider lower effort but insightful or impactful submissions to account for this?
Yes, very short submissions count. And so should “low effort” posts, in the sense of “I have a criticism I’ve thought through, but I don’t have time to put together a meticulous writeup, so I can either write something short/scrappy, or nothing at all.” I’d much rather see unpolished ideas than nothing at all.
Secondly, I’d expect people with the most valuable critiques to be more outside EA since I would expect to find blindspots in the particular way of thinking, arguing and knowing EA uses. What will the panelists do to ensure they can access pieces using a very different style of argument? Have you considered having non-EA panelists to aid with this?
Thanks, I think this is important.
We (co-posters) are proactively sharing this contest with non-EA circles (e.g.), and others should feel welcome and encouraged to do the same.
Note the incentives for referring posts from outside the Forum. This can and should include writing that was not written with this contest in mind. It could also include writing aimed at some idea associated with EA that doesn’t itself mention “effective altruism”.
It obviously shouldn’t be a requirement that submissions use EA jargon.
I do think writing a post roughly in line with the Forum guidelines (e.g. trying to be clear and transparent in your reasoning) means the post will be more likely to get understood and acted on. As such, I do think it makes sense to encourage this manner of writing where possible, but it’s not a hard requirement.
To this end, one idea might be to speak to someone who is more ‘fluent’ in modes of thinking associated with effective altruism, and to frame the submission as a dialogue or collaboration.
But that shouldn’t be a requirement either. In cases where the style of argument is unfamiliar, but the argument itself seems potentially really good, we’ll make the effort — such as by reaching out to the author for clarifications or a call. I hope there are few really important points that cannot be communicated through just having a conversation!
I’m curious which non-EA judges you would have liked to see! We went with EA judges (i) to credibly show that representatives for big EA stakeholders are invested in this, and (ii) because people with a lot of context on specific parts of EA seem best placed to spot which critiques are most underrated. I’m also not confident that every member of the panel would strongly identify as an “effective altruist”, though I appreciate connection to EA comes in degrees.
Thirdly, criticisms from outside of EA might also contain mistakes about the movement but nonetheless make valid arguments. I hope this can be taken into account and such pieces not just dismissed.
Yes. We’ll try to be charitable in looking for important insights, and and forgiving of innacuracies from missing context where they don’t affect the main argument.
That said, it does seem straightforwardly useful to avoid factual errors that can easily be resolved with public information, because that’s good practice in general.
What plans do you have in place to help prevent and mitigate backlash[?]
My guess is that the best plan is going to be very context specific. If you have concerns in this direction, you can email criticism-contest@effectivealtruism.com, and we will consider steps to help, such as by liaising with the community health team at CEA. I can also imagine cases where you just want to communicate a criticism privately and directly to someone. Let us know, and we can arrange for that to happen also (“we” meaning myself, Lizka, or Joshua).
I can’t speak for everyone, but will quickly offer my own thoughts as a panelist: 1. Short and/or informally written submissions are fine. I would happily award a tweet thread it if was good enough. But I’m hesitant to say “low effort is fine”, because I’m not sure what else that implies. 2. It might sound trite, but I think the point of this contest (or at least the reason I’m excited about it) is to improve EA. So if a submission is totally illegible to EA people, it is unlikely to have that impact. On “style of argument” I’ll just point to my own backlog of very non-EA writing on mostly non-EA topics. 3. I wouldn’t hold it against a submission as a personal matter, and wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand, but it’s definitely a negative if there are substantive mistakes that could have been avoided using only public information.
A few questions, suggestions and concerns.
Firstly, I expect people who’s criticisms I’d most want to hear to be very busy, I hope the contest will consider lower effort but insightful or impactful submissions to account for this?
Secondly, I’d expect people with the most valuable critiques to be more outside EA since I would expect to find blindspots in the particular way of thinking, arguing and knowing EA uses. What will the panelists do to ensure they can access pieces using a very different style of argument? Have you considered having non-EA panelists to aid with this?
Thirdly, criticisms from outside of EA might also contain mistakes about the movement but nonetheless make valid arguments. I hope this can be taken into account and such pieces not just dismissed.
Fourthly, I would also expect criticisms from people who have been heavily involved in EA over the years to be valuable but, if drawing on their experience, hard to write fully anonymously. What reassurances can you offer and safeguards do you have in place beyond trusting the panelists and administrators that pieces would be fairly assessed? What plans do you have in place to help prevent and mitigate backlash, especially given that many decisions within EA are network based and thus even with the best of intentions criticism is likely to have some costs to relationships.
Replying in personal capacity:
Yes, very short submissions count. And so should “low effort” posts, in the sense of “I have a criticism I’ve thought through, but I don’t have time to put together a meticulous writeup, so I can either write something short/scrappy, or nothing at all.” I’d much rather see unpolished ideas than nothing at all.
Thanks, I think this is important.
We (co-posters) are proactively sharing this contest with non-EA circles (e.g.), and others should feel welcome and encouraged to do the same.
Note the incentives for referring posts from outside the Forum. This can and should include writing that was not written with this contest in mind. It could also include writing aimed at some idea associated with EA that doesn’t itself mention “effective altruism”.
It obviously shouldn’t be a requirement that submissions use EA jargon.
I do think writing a post roughly in line with the Forum guidelines (e.g. trying to be clear and transparent in your reasoning) means the post will be more likely to get understood and acted on. As such, I do think it makes sense to encourage this manner of writing where possible, but it’s not a hard requirement.
To this end, one idea might be to speak to someone who is more ‘fluent’ in modes of thinking associated with effective altruism, and to frame the submission as a dialogue or collaboration.
But that shouldn’t be a requirement either. In cases where the style of argument is unfamiliar, but the argument itself seems potentially really good, we’ll make the effort — such as by reaching out to the author for clarifications or a call. I hope there are few really important points that cannot be communicated through just having a conversation!
I’m curious which non-EA judges you would have liked to see! We went with EA judges (i) to credibly show that representatives for big EA stakeholders are invested in this, and (ii) because people with a lot of context on specific parts of EA seem best placed to spot which critiques are most underrated. I’m also not confident that every member of the panel would strongly identify as an “effective altruist”, though I appreciate connection to EA comes in degrees.
Yes. We’ll try to be charitable in looking for important insights, and and forgiving of innacuracies from missing context where they don’t affect the main argument.
That said, it does seem straightforwardly useful to avoid factual errors that can easily be resolved with public information, because that’s good practice in general.
My guess is that the best plan is going to be very context specific. If you have concerns in this direction, you can email criticism-contest@effectivealtruism.com, and we will consider steps to help, such as by liaising with the community health team at CEA. I can also imagine cases where you just want to communicate a criticism privately and directly to someone. Let us know, and we can arrange for that to happen also (“we” meaning myself, Lizka, or Joshua).
I can’t speak for everyone, but will quickly offer my own thoughts as a panelist:
1. Short and/or informally written submissions are fine. I would happily award a tweet thread it if was good enough. But I’m hesitant to say “low effort is fine”, because I’m not sure what else that implies.
2. It might sound trite, but I think the point of this contest (or at least the reason I’m excited about it) is to improve EA. So if a submission is totally illegible to EA people, it is unlikely to have that impact. On “style of argument” I’ll just point to my own backlog of very non-EA writing on mostly non-EA topics.
3. I wouldn’t hold it against a submission as a personal matter, and wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand, but it’s definitely a negative if there are substantive mistakes that could have been avoided using only public information.