I think that the principal problem pointed out by the recent âBad Omensâ post was peer pressure towards conformity in ways that lead to people acting like jerks, and I think that weâre seeing that play out here as well, but involving central people in EA orgs pushing the dynamics, rather than local EA groups. And that seems far more worrying.
What are examples of âpressure toward conformityâ or âacting like jerksâ that you saw among âcentral people in EA orgsâ? Are you counting the people running the campaign as âcentralâ? (I do agree with some of Matthewâs points there.)
I guess you could say that public support for Carrick felt like âpressureâ. But there are many things in EA that have lots of support and also lots of pushback (e.g. community-building strategies, 80K career advice). Lots of people are excited about higher funding levels in EA; lots of people are worried about it; vigorous discussion follows.
Did something about the campaign make it feel different?
*****
Habryka expressed concern that negative evidence on the campaign would be âsystematically filtered outâ. This kind of claim is really hard to disprove. If you donât see strong criticism of X from an EA perspective, this could mean any of:
People are critical, but self-censor for the sake of their reputation or âthe greater goodâ
People are critical, but no one took the time to write up a strong critical case
People arenât critical because they defer too much to non-critical people
People arenât critical because they thought carefully about X and found the pro-X arguments compelling
I think that (2) and (4) are more common, and (1) less common, than many other people seem to think. I do think that (3) is common, and I wish it were less so, but I donât see that as âpressureâ.
If someone had published a post over the last few months titled âThe case against donating to the Flynn campaignâ, and it was reasonably well-written, I think it would have gotten a ton of karma and positive comments â just like this post or this post or this post.
Why did no one write this?
Well, the author would need (a) the time to write a post, (b) good arguments against donating, (c) a motive (improving community epistemics, preventing low-impact donations, getting karma), and (d) comfort with publishing the post (that is, not enough self-censorship to override (c)).
I read Habryka as believing that there are (many?) people who fulfill (a), (b), and (c) but are stopped by (d). My best guess is that for many issues, including the Flynn campaign, no one fulfilled all of (a), (b), and (c), which left (d) irrelevant.
Iâm not sure how to figure out which of us is closer to the truth. But I will note that writing a pseudonymous post mostly gets around (d), and lots of criticism is published that way.
(If you are someone who was stopped by (d), let me know! Thatâs really important evidence. Iâm also curious why you didnât write your post under a pseudonym.)*
I also hope the red-teaming contest will help us figure this out, by providing more people with a reason to conduct and publish critical research. If some major topic gets no entries, that seems like evidence for (b) or (d), though with the election over I donât expect anyone to write about the Flynn campaign anyway.
*Iâve now heard from one person who said that (d) was one factor in why they didnât leave comments â a mix of not wanting to make other commenters angry and not wanting to create community drama (the drama would happen even with a pseudonym).
Given that this response came in soon after I made my comment, Iâve updated moderately toward the importance of (d), though Iâm still unsure what fraction of (d) is about actual Forum comments vs. the authorâs reputation/ârelationships outside of the Forum.
Overall, I agree with Habrykaâs comment that ânegative evidence on the campaign would be âsystematically filtered outââ. Although I maxed out donations to the primary campaign and phone banked a bit for the campaign, I had a number of concerns about the campaign that I never saw mentioned in EA spaces. However, I didnât want to raise these concerns for fear that this would negatively affect Carrickâs chances of winning the election.
Now that Carrickâs campaign is over, I feel more free to write my concerns. These included:
The post claims âThe race seems to be quite tight. According to this poll, Carrick is in second place among likely Democratic voters by 4% (14% of voters favor Flynn, 18% favor Salinas), with a margin of error of +/â- 4 percentage points.â However, it declines to mention that â26 percent of the districtâs voters holding an unfavorable opinion of him, compared to only 7 percent for Salinasâ (The Hill).
At the time the post was written, a significant fraction of voters already had already voted. The claim âthe campaign is especially impactful right nowâ seems misleading when it would have been better to help earlier on.
The campaign already has plenty of TV ads from the Protect the Future PAC, and there are lots of internet comments complaining about receiving mailers every other day and seeing Carrick ads all the time. (Though later I learned that PAC ads arenât able to show Carrick speaking, and Iâve read a few internet comments complaining about how theyâve never heard Carrick speak despite seeing all those ads. So campaign donations could be valuable for ads which do show him speaking.)
Having a lot of people coming out-of-state to volunteer could further the impression among voters that Carrick doesnât have much support from Oregonians.
If you can speak enthusiastically and knowledgeably about the campaign, you can do a better job of phone banking or door-knocking than the average person. However, the campaign already spent $847,000 for door-knockers. While volunteering for the campaign might have been high in expected value, the fact that other people could do door-knocking raises questions about whether itâs in out-of-state EAsâ comparative advantage to do so.
Iâd recommend cross-posting your critiques of the âespecially usefulâ post onto that post â will make it easier for anyone who studies this campaign later (I expect many people will) to learn from you.
Iâm curious about your fear that these comments would negatively affect Carrickâs chances. What was the mechanism you expected? The possibility of reduced donations/âvolunteering from people on the Forum? The media picking up on critical comments?
If âreduced donationsâ were a factor, would you also be concerned about posting criticism of other causes you thought were important for the same reason? Iâm still working out what makes this campaign different from other causes (or maybe there really are similar issues across a bunch of causes).
One thing that comes to mind is time-sensitivity: if you rethink your views on a different cause later, you can encourage more donations to make up for a previous reduction. If you rethink views on a political campaign after Election Day, itâs too late.
If that played a role, I can think of other situations that might exert the same pressure â for example, organizations running out of runway having a strong fundraising advantage if people are worried about dooming them. Not sure what to do about that, and would love to hear ideas (from anyone, this isnât specifically aimed at Michael).
I think I was primarily concerned that negative information about the campaign could get picked up by the media. Thinking it over now though, that motivation doesnât make sense for not posting about highly visible negative news coverage (which the media would have already been aware of) or not posting concerns on a less publicly visible EA platform, such as Slack. Other factors for why I didnât write up my concerns about Carrickâs chances of being elected might have been that:
no other EAs seemed to be posting much negative information about the campaign, and I thought there might have been a good reason for that
aside from the posting of âWhy Helping the Flynn Campaign is especially useful right nowâ, there werenât any events that triggered me to consider writing up my concerns
the negative media coverage was obvious enough that I thought anyone considering volunteering would already know about it, and it had to already have been priced into the election odds estimates on Metaculus and PredictIt, so drawing attention to it might not have been valuable
time-sensitivity, as you mentioned
public critiques might have to be quite well-reasoned, and I might want to check-in with the campaign to make sure that I didnât misunderstand anything, etc. That could be a decent amount of effort on my part and their part and also somewhat awkward given that I was also volunteering for the campaign.
However, if someone privately asked me for my thoughts on how likely the campaign was to succeed or how valuable helping with it was, I would have been happy to share my honest opinion, including any concerns.
The only EA whoâs ever been an asshole to me was an asshole because I supported Flynn, so I donât think there was some hidden anti-donations-to-Flynn movement that self-censored. EAs who opposed the idea were quite loud about it.
Just because some people loudly opposed it, doesnât mean most people who opposed it were loud.
(I imagine there were also a lot of people like me who simply chose not to investigate whether or not they thought this race was competitive with donations elsewhereâin my case because Iâm not American so couldnât donate either way.)
What are examples of âpressure toward conformityâ or âacting like jerksâ that you saw among âcentral people in EA orgsâ? Are you counting the people running the campaign as âcentralâ? (I do agree with some of Matthewâs points there.)
I guess you could say that public support for Carrick felt like âpressureâ. But there are many things in EA that have lots of support and also lots of pushback (e.g. community-building strategies, 80K career advice). Lots of people are excited about higher funding levels in EA; lots of people are worried about it; vigorous discussion follows.
Did something about the campaign make it feel different?
*****
Habryka expressed concern that negative evidence on the campaign would be âsystematically filtered outâ. This kind of claim is really hard to disprove. If you donât see strong criticism of X from an EA perspective, this could mean any of:
People are critical, but self-censor for the sake of their reputation or âthe greater goodâ
People are critical, but no one took the time to write up a strong critical case
People arenât critical because they defer too much to non-critical people
People arenât critical because they thought carefully about X and found the pro-X arguments compelling
I think that (2) and (4) are more common, and (1) less common, than many other people seem to think. I do think that (3) is common, and I wish it were less so, but I donât see that as âpressureâ.
If someone had published a post over the last few months titled âThe case against donating to the Flynn campaignâ, and it was reasonably well-written, I think it would have gotten a ton of karma and positive comments â just like this post or this post or this post.
Why did no one write this?
Well, the author would need (a) the time to write a post, (b) good arguments against donating, (c) a motive (improving community epistemics, preventing low-impact donations, getting karma), and (d) comfort with publishing the post (that is, not enough self-censorship to override (c)).
I read Habryka as believing that there are (many?) people who fulfill (a), (b), and (c) but are stopped by (d). My best guess is that for many issues, including the Flynn campaign, no one fulfilled all of (a), (b), and (c), which left (d) irrelevant.
Iâm not sure how to figure out which of us is closer to the truth. But I will note that writing a pseudonymous post mostly gets around (d), and lots of criticism is published that way.
(If you are someone who was stopped by (d), let me know! Thatâs really important evidence. Iâm also curious why you didnât write your post under a pseudonym.)*
I also hope the red-teaming contest will help us figure this out, by providing more people with a reason to conduct and publish critical research. If some major topic gets no entries, that seems like evidence for (b) or (d), though with the election over I donât expect anyone to write about the Flynn campaign anyway.
*Iâve now heard from one person who said that (d) was one factor in why they didnât leave comments â a mix of not wanting to make other commenters angry and not wanting to create community drama (the drama would happen even with a pseudonym).
Given that this response came in soon after I made my comment, Iâve updated moderately toward the importance of (d), though Iâm still unsure what fraction of (d) is about actual Forum comments vs. the authorâs reputation/ârelationships outside of the Forum.
Overall, I agree with Habrykaâs comment that ânegative evidence on the campaign would be âsystematically filtered outââ. Although I maxed out donations to the primary campaign and phone banked a bit for the campaign, I had a number of concerns about the campaign that I never saw mentioned in EA spaces. However, I didnât want to raise these concerns for fear that this would negatively affect Carrickâs chances of winning the election.
Now that Carrickâs campaign is over, I feel more free to write my concerns. These included:
The vast majority of media coverage was negative from the start. If voters made even a cursory Google of Carrick Flynnâs name, they would be met with plenty of negative headlines like âCarrick Flynn, Crypto-Backed Candidate in New Congressional District, Has Rarely Voted in Oregonâ or âEnvironmental Groups Condemn Congressional Candidate Carrick Flynnâs Comments on Spotted Owls and Timber Unityâ.
The vast majority of comments on Oregon subreddits were also negative.
The campaign seemed to have quite few non-EA donors or volunteers, suggesting a lack of local support.
The campaign seemed to have few volunteers until about a week ago, after Why Helping the Flynn Campaign is especially useful right now was posted.
Even putting aside the issue of crypto funding, Carrick had a notable amount of other controversies such as his comments on spotted owl conservation, the fact that only 2.5% of donations were from Oregon, and that he only voted twice in the past 20 years.
I also have some critiques of the post Why Helping the Flynn Campaign is especially useful right now but I declined to write a comment. These include:
The post claims âThe race seems to be quite tight. According to this poll, Carrick is in second place among likely Democratic voters by 4% (14% of voters favor Flynn, 18% favor Salinas), with a margin of error of +/â- 4 percentage points.â However, it declines to mention that â26 percent of the districtâs voters holding an unfavorable opinion of him, compared to only 7 percent for Salinasâ (The Hill).
At the time the post was written, a significant fraction of voters already had already voted. The claim âthe campaign is especially impactful right nowâ seems misleading when it would have been better to help earlier on.
The campaign already has plenty of TV ads from the Protect the Future PAC, and there are lots of internet comments complaining about receiving mailers every other day and seeing Carrick ads all the time. (Though later I learned that PAC ads arenât able to show Carrick speaking, and Iâve read a few internet comments complaining about how theyâve never heard Carrick speak despite seeing all those ads. So campaign donations could be valuable for ads which do show him speaking.)
Having a lot of people coming out-of-state to volunteer could further the impression among voters that Carrick doesnât have much support from Oregonians.
If you can speak enthusiastically and knowledgeably about the campaign, you can do a better job of phone banking or door-knocking than the average person. However, the campaign already spent $847,000 for door-knockers. While volunteering for the campaign might have been high in expected value, the fact that other people could do door-knocking raises questions about whether itâs in out-of-state EAsâ comparative advantage to do so.
Iâd recommend cross-posting your critiques of the âespecially usefulâ post onto that post â will make it easier for anyone who studies this campaign later (I expect many people will) to learn from you.
Thanks for the suggestion, just copied the critiques of the âespecially usefulâ post over!
Thanks for sharing all of this!
Iâm curious about your fear that these comments would negatively affect Carrickâs chances. What was the mechanism you expected? The possibility of reduced donations/âvolunteering from people on the Forum? The media picking up on critical comments?
If âreduced donationsâ were a factor, would you also be concerned about posting criticism of other causes you thought were important for the same reason? Iâm still working out what makes this campaign different from other causes (or maybe there really are similar issues across a bunch of causes).
One thing that comes to mind is time-sensitivity: if you rethink your views on a different cause later, you can encourage more donations to make up for a previous reduction. If you rethink views on a political campaign after Election Day, itâs too late.
If that played a role, I can think of other situations that might exert the same pressure â for example, organizations running out of runway having a strong fundraising advantage if people are worried about dooming them. Not sure what to do about that, and would love to hear ideas (from anyone, this isnât specifically aimed at Michael).
I think I was primarily concerned that negative information about the campaign could get picked up by the media. Thinking it over now though, that motivation doesnât make sense for not posting about highly visible negative news coverage (which the media would have already been aware of) or not posting concerns on a less publicly visible EA platform, such as Slack. Other factors for why I didnât write up my concerns about Carrickâs chances of being elected might have been that:
no other EAs seemed to be posting much negative information about the campaign, and I thought there might have been a good reason for that
aside from the posting of âWhy Helping the Flynn Campaign is especially useful right nowâ, there werenât any events that triggered me to consider writing up my concerns
the negative media coverage was obvious enough that I thought anyone considering volunteering would already know about it, and it had to already have been priced into the election odds estimates on Metaculus and PredictIt, so drawing attention to it might not have been valuable
time-sensitivity, as you mentioned
public critiques might have to be quite well-reasoned, and I might want to check-in with the campaign to make sure that I didnât misunderstand anything, etc. That could be a decent amount of effort on my part and their part and also somewhat awkward given that I was also volunteering for the campaign.
However, if someone privately asked me for my thoughts on how likely the campaign was to succeed or how valuable helping with it was, I would have been happy to share my honest opinion, including any concerns.
The only EA whoâs ever been an asshole to me was an asshole because I supported Flynn, so I donât think there was some hidden anti-donations-to-Flynn movement that self-censored. EAs who opposed the idea were quite loud about it.
Just because some people loudly opposed it, doesnât mean most people who opposed it were loud.
(I imagine there were also a lot of people like me who simply chose not to investigate whether or not they thought this race was competitive with donations elsewhereâin my case because Iâm not American so couldnât donate either way.)
Iâm sorry someone was an ass to you.