Iām taking a long-term, indefinite hiatus from the EA Forum.
Iāve written enough in posts, quick takes, and comments over the last two months to explain the deep frustrations I have with the effective altruist movement/ācommunity as it exists today. (For one, I think the AGI discourse is completely broken and far off-base. For another, I think people fail to be kind to others in ordinary, important ways.)
But the strongest reason for me to step away is that participating in the EA Forum is just too unpleasant. Iāve had fun writing stuff on the EA Forum. I thank the people who have been warm to me, who have had good humour, and who have said interesting, constructive things.
But negativity bias being what it is (and maybe ābiasā is too biased a word for it; maybe we should call it ānegativity preferenceā), the few people who have been really nasty to me have ruined the whole experience. I find myself trying to remember names, to remember whoās who, so I can avoid clicking on reply notifications from the people who have been nasty. And this is a sign itās time to stop.
Psychological safety is such a vital part of online discussion, or any discussion. Open, public forums can be a wonderful thing, but psychological safety is hard to provide on an open, public forum. I still have some faith in open, public forums, but I tend to think the best safety tool is giving authors the ability to determine who is and isnāt allowed to interact with their posts. There is some risk of people censoring disagreement, sure. But nastiness online is a major threat to everything good. It causes people to self-censor (e.g. by quitting the discussion platform or by withholding opinions) and it has terrible effects on discourse and on peopleās minds.
And private discussions are important too. One of the most precious things you can find in this life is someone you can have good conversations with who will maintain psychological safety, keep your confidences, āyes, andā you, and be constructive. Those are the kind of conversations that loving relationships are built on. If you end up cooking something that the world needs to know about, you can turn it into a blog post or a paper or a podcast or a forum post. (Iāve done it before!) But you donāt have to do the whole process leading up to that end product in public.
The EA Forum is unusually good in some important respects, which is kind of sad, because it shows us a glimpse of what maybe could exist on the Internet, without itself realizing that promise.
If anyone wants to contact me for some reason, you can send me a message via the forum and I should get it as an email. Please put your email address in the message so I can respond to you by email without logging back into the forum.
Iām taking a long-term, indefinite hiatus from the EA Forum.
Iāve written enough in posts, quick takes, and comments over the last two months to explain the deep frustrations I have with the effective altruist movement/ācommunity as it exists today. (For one, I think the AGI discourse is completely broken and far off-base. For another, I think people fail to be kind to others in ordinary, important ways.)
But the strongest reason for me to step away is that participating in the EA Forum is just too unpleasant. Iāve had fun writing stuff on the EA Forum. I thank the people who have been warm to me, who have had good humour, and who have said interesting, constructive things.
But negativity bias being what it is (and maybe ābiasā is too biased a word for it; maybe we should call it ānegativity preferenceā), the few people who have been really nasty to me have ruined the whole experience. I find myself trying to remember names, to remember whoās who, so I can avoid clicking on reply notifications from the people who have been nasty. And this is a sign itās time to stop.
Psychological safety is such a vital part of online discussion, or any discussion. Open, public forums can be a wonderful thing, but psychological safety is hard to provide on an open, public forum. I still have some faith in open, public forums, but I tend to think the best safety tool is giving authors the ability to determine who is and isnāt allowed to interact with their posts. There is some risk of people censoring disagreement, sure. But nastiness online is a major threat to everything good. It causes people to self-censor (e.g. by quitting the discussion platform or by withholding opinions) and it has terrible effects on discourse and on peopleās minds.
And private discussions are important too. One of the most precious things you can find in this life is someone you can have good conversations with who will maintain psychological safety, keep your confidences, āyes, andā you, and be constructive. Those are the kind of conversations that loving relationships are built on. If you end up cooking something that the world needs to know about, you can turn it into a blog post or a paper or a podcast or a forum post. (Iāve done it before!) But you donāt have to do the whole process leading up to that end product in public.
The EA Forum is unusually good in some important respects, which is kind of sad, because it shows us a glimpse of what maybe could exist on the Internet, without itself realizing that promise.
If anyone wants to contact me for some reason, you can send me a message via the forum and I should get it as an email. Please put your email address in the message so I can respond to you by email without logging back into the forum.
Take care, everyone.