I can see Jacob’s perspective and how Linch’s statement is very strong. For example, in developmental econ, in just one or two top schools, the set of professors and their post-docs/staff might be larger and more impressive than the entire staff of Rethink Priorities and Open Phil combined. It’s very very far from playpumps. So saying that they are not truth-seeking seems sort of questionable at least.
At the same time, in another perspective I find reasonable, I think I can see how academic work can be swayed by incentives, trends and become arcane and wasteful. Separately and additionally, the phrasing Linch used originally, reduces the aggressive/pejorative tone for me, certainly viewed through “LessWrong” sort of culture/norms. I think I understand and have no trouble with this statement, especially since it seems to be a personal avowal:
I’m probably not phrasing this well, but to give a sense of my priors: I guess my impression is that my interactions with approximately every entity that perceives themself as directly doing good outside of EA* is that they are not seeking truth, and this systematically corrupts them in important ways.
Again, I think there’s two different perspectives here and a reasonable person could both take up both or either.
I think a crux is the personal meaning of the statement being made.
Unfortunately, in his last response I’m replying to, it is now coming off as Jacob is sort of pursuing a point. This is less useful. For example, looking at his responses, it seems like people are just responding to “EA is much more truth seeking than everyone else”, which is generating responses like “Sounds crazy hubristic..”.
Instead, I think Jacob could have ended the discussion at Linch’s comment here or maybe asked for models and examples to get “gears-level” sense for Linch’s beliefs (e.g. what’s wrong with development econ, can you explain?).
I don’t think impressing everyone into a rigid scout mentality is required, but it would have been useful here.
I can see Jacob’s perspective and how Linch’s statement is very strong. For example, in developmental econ, in just one or two top schools, the set of professors and their post-docs/staff might be larger and more impressive than the entire staff of Rethink Priorities and Open Phil combined. It’s very very far from playpumps. So saying that they are not truth-seeking seems sort of questionable at least.
At the same time, in another perspective I find reasonable, I think I can see how academic work can be swayed by incentives, trends and become arcane and wasteful. Separately and additionally, the phrasing Linch used originally, reduces the aggressive/pejorative tone for me, certainly viewed through “LessWrong” sort of culture/norms. I think I understand and have no trouble with this statement, especially since it seems to be a personal avowal:
Again, I think there’s two different perspectives here and a reasonable person could both take up both or either.
I think a crux is the personal meaning of the statement being made.
Unfortunately, in his last response I’m replying to, it is now coming off as Jacob is sort of pursuing a point. This is less useful. For example, looking at his responses, it seems like people are just responding to “EA is much more truth seeking than everyone else”, which is generating responses like “Sounds crazy hubristic..”.
Instead, I think Jacob could have ended the discussion at Linch’s comment here or maybe asked for models and examples to get “gears-level” sense for Linch’s beliefs (e.g. what’s wrong with development econ, can you explain?).
I don’t think impressing everyone into a rigid scout mentality is required, but it would have been useful here.