I’ve mostly lived in Oxford and London, and these claims fit with my experience of the hubs there as well. I’ve perhaps experienced Oxford as having a little less focus on AI than #2 indicates.
While I agree the claims should be interrogated and that the ‘influential leaders’ are very fallible, I think the only way to interrogate them properly is to be able to publicly acknowledge that these are indeed background assumptions held by a lot of the people with power/influence in the community. I don’t see this post as stating ‘these are background claims which you should hold without interrogation’ but rather ‘these are in fact largely treated as background claims within the EA communities at the core hubs in the Bay, London and Oxford etc.’. This seems very important for people not in these hubs to know, so they can accurately decide e.g. whether they are interested in participating more in the the movement, whether to follow the advice coming from these places, or what frames to use when applying for funding. Ideally I’d like to see a much longer list of background assumptions like this, because I think there are many more that are difficult to spot if you have not been in a hub.
However, the post seemed less self-aware to me than you are implying. My impression from interacting with undergraduates especially, many of whom read this forum, is that “these cool people believe this” is often read as “you should believe this.” (Edit: by this paragraph I don’t mean that this post is trying to say this, rather that it doesn’t seem aware of how it could play into that dynamic.)
Thus I think it’s always good practice for these sorts of posts to remind readers of the sort of thing that I commented, especially when using terms like “influential leaders” and “background claims.” Not because it invalidates the information value of the post, but because not including it risks contributing to a real problem.
I didn’t personally feel the post did that, hence my comment.
In addition, I do wish it were more specific about particularly which people it’s referring to, rather than some amorphous and ill-defined group.
I’ve mostly lived in Oxford and London, and these claims fit with my experience of the hubs there as well. I’ve perhaps experienced Oxford as having a little less focus on AI than #2 indicates.
While I agree the claims should be interrogated and that the ‘influential leaders’ are very fallible, I think the only way to interrogate them properly is to be able to publicly acknowledge that these are indeed background assumptions held by a lot of the people with power/influence in the community. I don’t see this post as stating ‘these are background claims which you should hold without interrogation’ but rather ‘these are in fact largely treated as background claims within the EA communities at the core hubs in the Bay, London and Oxford etc.’. This seems very important for people not in these hubs to know, so they can accurately decide e.g. whether they are interested in participating more in the the movement, whether to follow the advice coming from these places, or what frames to use when applying for funding. Ideally I’d like to see a much longer list of background assumptions like this, because I think there are many more that are difficult to spot if you have not been in a hub.
I agree with most of what you are saying.
However, the post seemed less self-aware to me than you are implying. My impression from interacting with undergraduates especially, many of whom read this forum, is that “these cool people believe this” is often read as “you should believe this.” (Edit: by this paragraph I don’t mean that this post is trying to say this, rather that it doesn’t seem aware of how it could play into that dynamic.)
Thus I think it’s always good practice for these sorts of posts to remind readers of the sort of thing that I commented, especially when using terms like “influential leaders” and “background claims.” Not because it invalidates the information value of the post, but because not including it risks contributing to a real problem.
I didn’t personally feel the post did that, hence my comment.
In addition, I do wish it were more specific about particularly which people it’s referring to, rather than some amorphous and ill-defined group.