Edit: the OP has removed the link I’m complaining about.
I think it’s quite bad to link to that piece. The piece makes extremely aggressive accusations and presents very little evidence to back them up; it was extensively criticised in the comments. I think that that piece isn’t an example of people being legitimately concerned, it was an example of someone behaving extremely badly.
Another edit: I am 80% confident that the author of that piece is not actually a current member of the EA community, and I am more than 50% confident that the piece was written mostly with an intention of harming EA. This is a lot of why I think it’s bad to link to it. I didn’t say this in my initial comment, sorry.
I don’t have strong views on this, but I’m curious why you think linking to instances of bad behavior is bad. All the reasons I can think of don’t seem to apply here—e.g. the link clearly isn’t an endorsement, and it’s not providing resources e.g. through increased ad revenues or increasing page rank.
By contrast, I found the link to the post useful because it’s evidence about community health and people’s reactions: the fact that someone wrote that post updated me toward being more worried (though I think I’m still much less worried than the OP, and for somewhat different reasons). And I don’t think I could have made the same update without skimming the actual post. I.e. simply reading a brief description like “someone made a post saying X in a way I think was bad” wouldn’t have been as epistemically useful.
I would guess this upside applies to most readers. So I’m wondering which countervailing downsides would recommend a policy of not linking to such posts.
I have two complaints: linking to a post which I think was made in bad faith in an attempt to harm EA, and seeming to endorse it by using it as an example of a perspective that some EAs have.
I think you shouldn’t update much on what EAs think based on that post, because I think it was probably written in an attempt to harm EA by starting flamewars.
EDIT: Also, I kind of think of that post as trying to start nasty rumors about someone; I think we should generally avoid signal boosting that type of thing.
Thanks for explaining. This all makes some sense to me, but I still favor linking on balance.
(I don’t think this depends on what the post tells us about “what EAs think”. Whether the author of the post is an EA accurately stating their views, or a non-EA trying to harm EA, or whatever—in any case the post seems relevant for assessing how worried we should be about the impacts of certain discussions / social dynamics / political climate on the EA community.)
I do agree that it seems bad to signal boost that post indiscriminately. E.g. I think it would be bad to share without context on Facebook. But in a discussion on how worried we should beabout certain social dynamics I think it’s sufficiently important to look at examples of these dynamics.
EDIT: I do agree that the OP could have done more to avoid any suggestion of endorsement. (I thought there was no implied endorsement anyway, but based on your stated reaction and on a closer second reading I think there is room to make this even clearer.) Or perhaps it would have been best to explicitly raise the issue of whether that post was written with the intent to cause harm, and what this might imply for how worried we should be. Still, linking in the right way seems clearly better to me than not linking at all.
I’m still pretty sceptical that the post in question was deliberately made with conscious intention to cause harm. In any case, I know of at least a couple of other EAs who have good-faith worries in that direction, so at worst it’s exacerbating a problem that was already there, not creating a new one.
(Also worth noting that at this point we’re probably Streisanding this dispute into irrelevance anyway.)
I agree that post was very bad (I left a long comment explaining part of why I strong-downvoted it). But I think there’s a version of that post, that is phrased more moderately and tries harder to be charitable to its opponents, that I think would get a lot more sympathy from the left of EA. (I expect I would still disagree with it quite strongly.)
I think there’s a reasonable policy one could advocate, something like “don’t link to heavily-downvoted posts you disagree with, because doing so undermines the filtering function of the karma system”. I’m not sure I agree with that in all cases; in this case, it would have been hard for me to write this post without referencing that one, I think the things I say here need saying, and I ran this post by several people I respect before publishing it.
I could probably be persuaded to change that part given some more voices/arguments in opposition, here or in private.
(It’s also worth noting that I expect there are a number of people here who think comparisons of the current situation to the Cultural Revolution are quite bad, see e.g. here.)
I agree that comparisons to the Cultural Revolution are bad. As someone with family members who were alive during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (one of whom died because of it), I’m pretty unsympathetic to people saying cancel culture is the new cultural revolution.
Many other people who are personally connected to the Chinese Cultural Revolution are the people making the comparisons, though. Eg the EA who I see posting the most about this (who I don’t think would want to be named here) is Chinese.
Yes, I’ve spoken in depth with one. I don’t believe he shouldn’t be able to make the comparison, but we agreed the comparison has no predictive power and is one of many comparisons that could be made (eg you could probably just as easily compare the current situation to witch hunts which is a more common analogy in Western circles).
We also agreed there are dissimilarities (eg in this situation in America there’s no state backing of anyone being targeted; in fact, social justice protestors are much more likely to be injured or killed by the state than the people they oppose)
Edit: the OP has removed the link I’m complaining about.
I think it’s quite bad to link to that piece. The piece makes extremely aggressive accusations and presents very little evidence to back them up; it was extensively criticised in the comments. I think that that piece isn’t an example of people being legitimately concerned, it was an example of someone behaving extremely badly.
Another edit: I am 80% confident that the author of that piece is not actually a current member of the EA community, and I am more than 50% confident that the piece was written mostly with an intention of harming EA. This is a lot of why I think it’s bad to link to it. I didn’t say this in my initial comment, sorry.
I don’t have strong views on this, but I’m curious why you think linking to instances of bad behavior is bad. All the reasons I can think of don’t seem to apply here—e.g. the link clearly isn’t an endorsement, and it’s not providing resources e.g. through increased ad revenues or increasing page rank.
By contrast, I found the link to the post useful because it’s evidence about community health and people’s reactions: the fact that someone wrote that post updated me toward being more worried (though I think I’m still much less worried than the OP, and for somewhat different reasons). And I don’t think I could have made the same update without skimming the actual post. I.e. simply reading a brief description like “someone made a post saying X in a way I think was bad” wouldn’t have been as epistemically useful.
I would guess this upside applies to most readers. So I’m wondering which countervailing downsides would recommend a policy of not linking to such posts.
I have two complaints: linking to a post which I think was made in bad faith in an attempt to harm EA, and seeming to endorse it by using it as an example of a perspective that some EAs have.
I think you shouldn’t update much on what EAs think based on that post, because I think it was probably written in an attempt to harm EA by starting flamewars.
EDIT: Also, I kind of think of that post as trying to start nasty rumors about someone; I think we should generally avoid signal boosting that type of thing.
Thanks for explaining. This all makes some sense to me, but I still favor linking on balance.
(I don’t think this depends on what the post tells us about “what EAs think”. Whether the author of the post is an EA accurately stating their views, or a non-EA trying to harm EA, or whatever—in any case the post seems relevant for assessing how worried we should be about the impacts of certain discussions / social dynamics / political climate on the EA community.)
I do agree that it seems bad to signal boost that post indiscriminately. E.g. I think it would be bad to share without context on Facebook. But in a discussion on how worried we should be about certain social dynamics I think it’s sufficiently important to look at examples of these dynamics.
EDIT: I do agree that the OP could have done more to avoid any suggestion of endorsement. (I thought there was no implied endorsement anyway, but based on your stated reaction and on a closer second reading I think there is room to make this even clearer.) Or perhaps it would have been best to explicitly raise the issue of whether that post was written with the intent to cause harm, and what this might imply for how worried we should be. Still, linking in the right way seems clearly better to me than not linking at all.
I’m still pretty sceptical that the post in question was deliberately made with conscious intention to cause harm. In any case, I know of at least a couple of other EAs who have good-faith worries in that direction, so at worst it’s exacerbating a problem that was already there, not creating a new one.
(Also worth noting that at this point we’re probably Streisanding this dispute into irrelevance anyway.)
I agree that post was very bad (I left a long comment explaining part of why I strong-downvoted it). But I think there’s a version of that post, that is phrased more moderately and tries harder to be charitable to its opponents, that I think would get a lot more sympathy from the left of EA. (I expect I would still disagree with it quite strongly.)
I think there’s a reasonable policy one could advocate, something like “don’t link to heavily-downvoted posts you disagree with, because doing so undermines the filtering function of the karma system”. I’m not sure I agree with that in all cases; in this case, it would have been hard for me to write this post without referencing that one, I think the things I say here need saying, and I ran this post by several people I respect before publishing it.
I could probably be persuaded to change that part given some more voices/arguments in opposition, here or in private.
(It’s also worth noting that I expect there are a number of people here who think comparisons of the current situation to the Cultural Revolution are quite bad, see e.g. here.)
I think that both the Cultural Revolution comparisons and the complaints about Cultural Revolution comparisons are way less bad than that post.
I agree that comparisons to the Cultural Revolution are bad. As someone with family members who were alive during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (one of whom died because of it), I’m pretty unsympathetic to people saying cancel culture is the new cultural revolution.
Many other people who are personally connected to the Chinese Cultural Revolution are the people making the comparisons, though. Eg the EA who I see posting the most about this (who I don’t think would want to be named here) is Chinese.
Yes, I’ve spoken in depth with one. I don’t believe he shouldn’t be able to make the comparison, but we agreed the comparison has no predictive power and is one of many comparisons that could be made (eg you could probably just as easily compare the current situation to witch hunts which is a more common analogy in Western circles).
We also agreed there are dissimilarities (eg in this situation in America there’s no state backing of anyone being targeted; in fact, social justice protestors are much more likely to be injured or killed by the state than the people they oppose)
(I have now cut the link.)