Thanks for asking this. I can chime in, although obviously I can’t speak for all the organizations listed, or for “EA leadership.” Also, I’m writing as myself — not a representative of my organization (although I mention the work that my team does).
I think the Forum team takes this worry seriously, and we hope that the Forum contributes to making the EA community more truth-seeking in a way that disregards status or similar phenomena (as much as possible). One of the goals for the Forum is to improve community norms and epistemics, and this (criticism of established ideas and entities) is a relevant dimension; we want to find out the truth, regardless of whether it’s inconvenient to leadership. We also try to make it easy for people to share concerns anonymously, which I think makes it easier to overcome these barriers.
I personally haven’t encountered this problem (that there are reasons to be afraid of criticizing leadership or established norms) — no one ever hinted at this, and I’ve never encountered repercussions for encouraging criticism, writing some myself, etc. I think it’s possible that this happens, though, and I also think it’s a problem even if people in the community only think it’s a problem, as that can still silence useful criticism.
I can’t speak about funding structures, but we did run the criticism contest in part to encourage criticism of the most established organizations and norms, and we explicitly encouraged criticism of the most important of those.
Thanks for asking this. I can chime in, although obviously I can’t speak for all the organizations listed, or for “EA leadership.” Also, I’m writing as myself — not a representative of my organization (although I mention the work that my team does).
I think the Forum team takes this worry seriously, and we hope that the Forum contributes to making the EA community more truth-seeking in a way that disregards status or similar phenomena (as much as possible). One of the goals for the Forum is to improve community norms and epistemics, and this (criticism of established ideas and entities) is a relevant dimension; we want to find out the truth, regardless of whether it’s inconvenient to leadership. We also try to make it easy for people to share concerns anonymously, which I think makes it easier to overcome these barriers.
I personally haven’t encountered this problem (that there are reasons to be afraid of criticizing leadership or established norms) — no one ever hinted at this, and I’ve never encountered repercussions for encouraging criticism, writing some myself, etc. I think it’s possible that this happens, though, and I also think it’s a problem even if people in the community only think it’s a problem, as that can still silence useful criticism.
I can’t speak about funding structures, but we did run the criticism contest in part to encourage criticism of the most established organizations and norms, and we explicitly encouraged criticism of the most important of those.
I think lots of organizations have “mistakes” pages, and Ben linked to a question asking for examples of this kind of thing. Off the top of my head, I don’t know of much else — this could be a good project for someone to undertake!