On worrying too much about the impact of a certain EA Forum post:
I am the Forumâs lead moderator, but I donât mean to write this with my âmodâ hat on â these are personal concerns, from someone who cares a lot about this space.
Some people thought this could have bad side effects. The phrase âecho chamberâ came up multiple times:
These titles should not become even more canonical in the EA community than they already are (I fear this might lead to an echo chamber)
And:
I agree with Hauke that this risks increasing the extent to which EA is an echo chamber.
I could appreciate some commentersâ object-level concerns about the list (e.g. the authors werenât very diverse). But the âecho chamberâ concern felt⌠way off.
Reasons I donât think this concern made much sense:
The post wasnât especially popular. I donât know how much karma it had when the âecho chamberâ comments were made, but it finished with 70 (as I write this), outside the top 10 posts for February.
The author wasnât famous. If Will MacAskill published a list of book ratings, I could understand this kind of concern (though I still think we should generally trust people not to immediately adopt Willâs opinions). Michael Aird is a fantastic Forum contributor, but he doesnât have the same kind of influence.
Michael included an explicit caveat that he was not making recommendations, and that he didnât mean to make claims about how useful other people would find the books. If anything, this pushes against the idea of EA as an echo chamber.
If this post has any impact on EA as an entire movement, Iâd guess that impact will be⌠minimal, so minimal as to be nigh-untraceable.
Meanwhile, it seems like it could introduce a few people to books theyâll find useful â a positive development, and a good reason to share a book list!
*****
More broadly:
There is a sense in which every Forum post plays a role in shaping the culture of EA. But I think that almost every post plays a very small role.
I often hear from people who are anxious about sharing their views because theyâre afraid that theyâll somehow harm EA culture in a way they canât anticipate.
I hear this more frequently from authors in groups that are already underrepresented in EA, which makes me especially nervous about the message spreading further.
While concerns about cultural shifts are sometimes warranted, I think they are sometimes brought up in cases where they donât apply. They seem especially misplaced when an author isnât making a claim about EA culture and is instead sharing a personal experience.
Iâd like EAâs culture to be open and resilient â capable of considering and incorporating new ideas without suffering permanent damage. The EA Forum should, with rare exceptions, be a place where people can share their thoughts, and discussion can help us make progress.
Downvoting and critical comments have a useful role in this discussion. But this specific type of criticism â âyou shouldnât have shared this at all, because it might have some tiny negative impact on EA cultureâ â often feels like it cuts against openness and resilience.
I think these are good points, and the points made in the second half of your shortform are things I hadnât considered.
The rest of this comment says relatively unimportant things which relate only to the first half of your shortform.
---
If people read only this shortform, without reading my post or the comments there, there are two things I think they should know to help explain the perspective of the critical commenter(s):
It wasnât just âa list of EA-related books [Iâd] readâ but a numbered, ranked list.
That seems more able to produce echo-chamber-like effects than merely a list, or a list with my reviews/âcommentary but without a numbered ranking
See also 80,000 Hoursâ discussion of their observation that people have sometimes overly focused on the handful of priorities paths 80,000 Hours explicitly highlight, relative to figuring out additional paths using the principles and methodologies 80,000 Hours
I donât immediately recall the best link for this, but can find one if someone is interested
âthe authors werenât very [demographically] diverseâ seems like an understatement; in fact, all 50+ of them (some books had coauthors) were male, and I think all were white and from WEIRD societies.
And I hadnât explicitly noticed that before the commenters pointed that out
I add âdemographicallyâ because I think thereâs a substantial amount of diversity among the authors in terms of things like worldviews, but thatâs not the focus for this specific conversation
I think itâs also worth highlighting that a numbered list has a certain attention-grabbing, clickbait-y quality, which I think slightly increases the âriskâ of it having undue influence.
All that said, I do agree with you that the post (a) seems less likely to be remembered and have a large influence that a couple critical commenters seemed to expect, and (b) seems less likely to cause a net increase in ideological homogeneity (or things like that) than those commenters seemed to expect.
I donât know how much karma it had when the âecho chamberâ comments were made, but it finished with 70 (as I write this), outside the top 10 posts for February.
Interestingly, the strong downvote was one of the first handful of votes on the post (so it was at relatively low karma then), and the comment came around then. Though the I guess what was more relevant is how much karma/âattention itâd ultimately get. But even then, I think the best guess at that point wouldâve been something like 30-90 karma (based in part on only 1 of my previous posts exceeding 90 karma).
If Will MacAskill published a list of book ratings, I could understand this kind of concern (though I still think we should generally trust people not to immediately adopt Willâs opinions). Michael Aird is a fantastic Forum contributor, but he doesnât have the same kind of influence.
Fingers crossed Iâll someday reach Willâs heights of community-destruction powers! (Using them only for good-as-defined-unilaterally-by-me, of course.)
On worrying too much about the impact of a certain EA Forum post:
I am the Forumâs lead moderator, but I donât mean to write this with my âmodâ hat on â these are personal concerns, from someone who cares a lot about this space.
Michael Aird recently published a list of EA-related books heâd read.
Some people thought this could have bad side effects. The phrase âecho chamberâ came up multiple times:
And:
I could appreciate some commentersâ object-level concerns about the list (e.g. the authors werenât very diverse). But the âecho chamberâ concern felt⌠way off.
Reasons I donât think this concern made much sense:
The post wasnât especially popular. I donât know how much karma it had when the âecho chamberâ comments were made, but it finished with 70 (as I write this), outside the top 10 posts for February.
The author wasnât famous. If Will MacAskill published a list of book ratings, I could understand this kind of concern (though I still think we should generally trust people not to immediately adopt Willâs opinions). Michael Aird is a fantastic Forum contributor, but he doesnât have the same kind of influence.
Michael included an explicit caveat that he was not making recommendations, and that he didnât mean to make claims about how useful other people would find the books. If anything, this pushes against the idea of EA as an echo chamber.
If this post has any impact on EA as an entire movement, Iâd guess that impact will be⌠minimal, so minimal as to be nigh-untraceable.
Meanwhile, it seems like it could introduce a few people to books theyâll find useful â a positive development, and a good reason to share a book list!
*****
More broadly:
There is a sense in which every Forum post plays a role in shaping the culture of EA. But I think that almost every post plays a very small role.
I often hear from people who are anxious about sharing their views because theyâre afraid that theyâll somehow harm EA culture in a way they canât anticipate.
I hear this more frequently from authors in groups that are already underrepresented in EA, which makes me especially nervous about the message spreading further.
While concerns about cultural shifts are sometimes warranted, I think they are sometimes brought up in cases where they donât apply. They seem especially misplaced when an author isnât making a claim about EA culture and is instead sharing a personal experience.
Iâd like EAâs culture to be open and resilient â capable of considering and incorporating new ideas without suffering permanent damage. The EA Forum should, with rare exceptions, be a place where people can share their thoughts, and discussion can help us make progress.
Downvoting and critical comments have a useful role in this discussion. But this specific type of criticism â âyou shouldnât have shared this at all, because it might have some tiny negative impact on EA cultureâ â often feels like it cuts against openness and resilience.
I think these are good points, and the points made in the second half of your shortform are things I hadnât considered.
The rest of this comment says relatively unimportant things which relate only to the first half of your shortform.
---
If people read only this shortform, without reading my post or the comments there, there are two things I think they should know to help explain the perspective of the critical commenter(s):
It wasnât just âa list of EA-related books [Iâd] readâ but a numbered, ranked list.
That seems more able to produce echo-chamber-like effects than merely a list, or a list with my reviews/âcommentary but without a numbered ranking
See also 80,000 Hoursâ discussion of their observation that people have sometimes overly focused on the handful of priorities paths 80,000 Hours explicitly highlight, relative to figuring out additional paths using the principles and methodologies 80,000 Hours
I donât immediately recall the best link for this, but can find one if someone is interested
âthe authors werenât very [demographically] diverseâ seems like an understatement; in fact, all 50+ of them (some books had coauthors) were male, and I think all were white and from WEIRD societies.
And I hadnât explicitly noticed that before the commenters pointed that out
I add âdemographicallyâ because I think thereâs a substantial amount of diversity among the authors in terms of things like worldviews, but thatâs not the focus for this specific conversation
I think itâs also worth highlighting that a numbered list has a certain attention-grabbing, clickbait-y quality, which I think slightly increases the âriskâ of it having undue influence.
All that said, I do agree with you that the post (a) seems less likely to be remembered and have a large influence that a couple critical commenters seemed to expect, and (b) seems less likely to cause a net increase in ideological homogeneity (or things like that) than those commenters seemed to expect.
[Some additional, even less important remarks:]
Interestingly, the strong downvote was one of the first handful of votes on the post (so it was at relatively low karma then), and the comment came around then. Though the I guess what was more relevant is how much karma/âattention itâd ultimately get. But even then, I think the best guess at that point wouldâve been something like 30-90 karma (based in part on only 1 of my previous posts exceeding 90 karma).
Fingers crossed Iâll someday reach Willâs heights of community-destruction powers! (Using them only for good-as-defined-unilaterally-by-me, of course.)