I thought this was a relatively balanced piece actually as far as criticisms go. The author is clearly not a fan, but I feel like she resisted the temptation to straw-man a lot more than most critics—good on her (...or good on The Economist if this is their general style?).
I think this phrasing is unfortunate though:
Cremer and Kemp were told that they and their institutions might lose funding because of it, and were advised not to publish at all.
I imagine this will be interpreted by most readers as a threat from funders. Whereas my understanding was that this was a case of other community members looking out for Cremer and Kemp, telling them they were worried that this might happen. From their post:
These individuals—often senior scholars within the field—told us in private that they were concerned that any critique of central figures in EA would result in an inability to secure funding from EA sources, such as OpenPhilanthropy. We don’t know if these concerns are warranted.
(By the way, the free link has an extra comma at the end which needs removing for the link to work.)
I thought this was a relatively balanced piece actually as far as criticisms go. The author is clearly not a fan, but I feel like she resisted the temptation to straw-man a lot more than most critics—good on her (...or good on The Economist if this is their general style?).
I think this phrasing is unfortunate though:
I imagine this will be interpreted by most readers as a threat from funders. Whereas my understanding was that this was a case of other community members looking out for Cremer and Kemp, telling them they were worried that this might happen. From their post:
(By the way, the free link has an extra comma at the end which needs removing for the link to work.)
Thanks for clarifying this! I really had interpreted it as a threat from funders.