This post is about criticism of EA organizations, so it doesn’t apply to OpenAI or the U.S. government.
I take this to be the case as well, but I think it would be worth making this explicit.
I interpreted this post as mostly being about charities with a small number of employees and relatively small budgets that either actively associate themselves with EA or that fall into a cause area EA generally supports, such as animal welfare or global poverty.
I think this is a fairly reasonable heuristic, I myself personally think the concept of punching up vs punching down is helpful in terms of calibrating criticism, but I don’t think this means there should be a norm that one must reach out to orgs before criticizing or that a right of reply is required. I think we can judge criticisms on their reasonableness, and the individual critic should be responsible for navigating these factors and others and deciding when these things (reaching out, allowing a reply) would be appropriate and make sense.
Most commentary I have read on the EA forum about this includes what is essentially a bad faith exception. That if you are worried about the org your are criticizing acting in bad faith, retaliating in some way, etc. that you don’t need to do these things. I think that probably applies to small orgs just as much as large orgs. This seems to suggest there is no general requirement to do these things for small orgs, just maybe you should have a lower bar in your reasonableness calculation for small orgs vs large ones.
If you wanted to criticize Good Ventures, Open Philanthropy, GiveWell, GiveDirectly, or the Against Malaria Foundation, then I think you could send them a courtesy email if you wanted, but they have so much funding and — in the case of Open Philanthropy at least — a large staff. They’re also already the subject of media attention and public discourse.
Part of my interest here is in understanding what the actual norm is that people intend to apply. If the norm is that large orgs aren’t included, I think it would be worth having that stated explicitly. I’m somewhat doubtful that is what is intended in the OP, but if so it would be good to know.
individual critic should be responsible for navigating these factors and others and deciding when these things (reaching out, allowing a reply) would be appropriate and make sense.
I think that’s half complete. No one is having their posts deleted for not reaching out, so the choice is ultimately up to the critic. But the community also has a role to play here. If community members believe the critic failed to provide appropriate advance notice, and has not demonstrated sufficient cause for doing so, they can elect to:
Downvote the criticism, and/or
Decline to engage with the criticism, at least until the organization has had a reasonable amount of time to reply (even though they may not remember to come back to it later).
I agree people should downvote criticism based on whether the person reached out based on their own judgements. I might have a different assessment of any given case compared to the typical EA forum voter, but people should be allowed to vote based on their own views.
I also agree that an organization has no obligation to respond to any given criticism, even if the critic did reach out in advance.
No one is having their posts deleted for not reaching out, so the choice is ultimately up to the critic.
I would distinguish between a few things:
What the moderation team considers norm-violating
What the community considers norm-violating
What the community considers ideal vs sub-optimal (but norm-compliant) criticism
I think you can downvote something that is sub-optimal but not norm-violating, although I think its debatable exactly what the balance should be, so I can see an argument that 2 and 3 kind of bleed together.
On the other hand, I think its pretty fair to want to distinguish 1 from 2⁄3, and that it is reasonable to expect a reasonable degree of clarity on 1. I think its reasonable to want to understand what the moderators consider a norm even if they won’t remove posts for violating that norm. I understand moderators can’t give 100% exact standards because then people would abuse that by tip-toeing up to the line, but I believe my questions above go to pretty fundamental aspects of the issue, they aren’t just random nitpicks.
I would also like to understand to what degree the norm in question respects some version of viewpoint neutrality. The OP to me seems to portray the ask as essentially viewpoint neutral (with-in the category of “criticism” anyway). I’m not so sure this would be the case if we really ran down the answers to my questions above. I have no problem with people up and downvoting based on non-viewpoint neutral considerations (it would be kind of crazy to do otherwise). I think moderation being highly dependent on viewpoint could be more of an issue.
I take this to be the case as well, but I think it would be worth making this explicit.
I think this is a fairly reasonable heuristic, I myself personally think the concept of punching up vs punching down is helpful in terms of calibrating criticism, but I don’t think this means there should be a norm that one must reach out to orgs before criticizing or that a right of reply is required. I think we can judge criticisms on their reasonableness, and the individual critic should be responsible for navigating these factors and others and deciding when these things (reaching out, allowing a reply) would be appropriate and make sense.
Most commentary I have read on the EA forum about this includes what is essentially a bad faith exception. That if you are worried about the org your are criticizing acting in bad faith, retaliating in some way, etc. that you don’t need to do these things. I think that probably applies to small orgs just as much as large orgs. This seems to suggest there is no general requirement to do these things for small orgs, just maybe you should have a lower bar in your reasonableness calculation for small orgs vs large ones.
Part of my interest here is in understanding what the actual norm is that people intend to apply. If the norm is that large orgs aren’t included, I think it would be worth having that stated explicitly. I’m somewhat doubtful that is what is intended in the OP, but if so it would be good to know.
I think that’s half complete. No one is having their posts deleted for not reaching out, so the choice is ultimately up to the critic. But the community also has a role to play here. If community members believe the critic failed to provide appropriate advance notice, and has not demonstrated sufficient cause for doing so, they can elect to:
Downvote the criticism, and/or
Decline to engage with the criticism, at least until the organization has had a reasonable amount of time to reply (even though they may not remember to come back to it later).
I agree people should downvote criticism based on whether the person reached out based on their own judgements. I might have a different assessment of any given case compared to the typical EA forum voter, but people should be allowed to vote based on their own views.
I also agree that an organization has no obligation to respond to any given criticism, even if the critic did reach out in advance.
I would distinguish between a few things:
What the moderation team considers norm-violating
What the community considers norm-violating
What the community considers ideal vs sub-optimal (but norm-compliant) criticism
I think you can downvote something that is sub-optimal but not norm-violating, although I think its debatable exactly what the balance should be, so I can see an argument that 2 and 3 kind of bleed together.
On the other hand, I think its pretty fair to want to distinguish 1 from 2⁄3, and that it is reasonable to expect a reasonable degree of clarity on 1. I think its reasonable to want to understand what the moderators consider a norm even if they won’t remove posts for violating that norm. I understand moderators can’t give 100% exact standards because then people would abuse that by tip-toeing up to the line, but I believe my questions above go to pretty fundamental aspects of the issue, they aren’t just random nitpicks.
I would also like to understand to what degree the norm in question respects some version of viewpoint neutrality. The OP to me seems to portray the ask as essentially viewpoint neutral (with-in the category of “criticism” anyway). I’m not so sure this would be the case if we really ran down the answers to my questions above. I have no problem with people up and downvoting based on non-viewpoint neutral considerations (it would be kind of crazy to do otherwise). I think moderation being highly dependent on viewpoint could be more of an issue.