Nodding profusely while reading; thanks for the rant.
I’m unsure if there’s much disagreement left to unpack here, so I’ll just note this:
If Will was in fact not being fully honest about the implications of his own views, then I doubt pretty strongly that this could be worth any potential benefit. (I also doubt there’d be much upside anyway given what’s already in the book.)
If the claim is purely about framing, I can see very plausible stories for costs regarding people entering the EA community, but I can also see stories for the benefits I mentioned before. I find it non-obvious that a lack of prioritisation/quantification in WWOTF leads to a notably lower-quality EA community as misconceptions may be largely corrected when people try to engage with the existing community. Though I could very easily change my mind on this; e.g., it would worry me to see lots of new members with similar misconceptions enter at the same time. The magnitude of the pros and cons of the framing seems like an interestingly tough empirical question.
Roughly agree with both of these bullet points! I want to be very clear that I have no reason to believe that Will wasn’t being honest and on the contrary believe he very likely was, my concerns are about framing. And I agree the balance of costs and benefits regarding framing aren’t super obvious but I am pretty concerned about the possible costs.
Nodding profusely while reading; thanks for the rant.
I’m unsure if there’s much disagreement left to unpack here, so I’ll just note this:
If Will was in fact not being fully honest about the implications of his own views, then I doubt pretty strongly that this could be worth any potential benefit. (I also doubt there’d be much upside anyway given what’s already in the book.)
If the claim is purely about framing, I can see very plausible stories for costs regarding people entering the EA community, but I can also see stories for the benefits I mentioned before. I find it non-obvious that a lack of prioritisation/quantification in WWOTF leads to a notably lower-quality EA community as misconceptions may be largely corrected when people try to engage with the existing community. Though I could very easily change my mind on this; e.g., it would worry me to see lots of new members with similar misconceptions enter at the same time. The magnitude of the pros and cons of the framing seems like an interestingly tough empirical question.
Roughly agree with both of these bullet points! I want to be very clear that I have no reason to believe that Will wasn’t being honest and on the contrary believe he very likely was, my concerns are about framing. And I agree the balance of costs and benefits regarding framing aren’t super obvious but I am pretty concerned about the possible costs.