I guess it depends on the specifics of the situation, but, to me, the case described, of a board member making one or two incorrect claims (in a comment that presumably also had a bunch of accurate and helpful content) that they needed to walk back sounds… not that bad? Like, it seems only marginally worse than their comment being fully accurate the first time round...
I agree that it depends on the situation, but I think this would often be quite a lot worse in real, non-ideal situations. In ideal communicative situations, mistaken information can simply be corrected at minimal cost. But in non-ideal situations, I think one will often see things like:
Mistaken information gets shared and people spend time debating or being confused about the false information
Many people never notice or forget that the mistaken information got corrected and it keeps getting believed and shared
Some people speculate that the mistaken claims weren’t innocently shared, but that the board member was being evasive/dishonest
People conclude that the organization / board is incompetent and chaotic because they can’t even get basic facts right
Fwiw, I think different views about this ideal/non-ideal distinction underlie a lot of disagreements about communicative norms in EA.
I agree that it depends on the situation, but I think this would often be quite a lot worse in real, non-ideal situations. In ideal communicative situations, mistaken information can simply be corrected at minimal cost. But in non-ideal situations, I think one will often see things like:
Mistaken information gets shared and people spend time debating or being confused about the false information
Many people never notice or forget that the mistaken information got corrected and it keeps getting believed and shared
Some people speculate that the mistaken claims weren’t innocently shared, but that the board member was being evasive/dishonest
People conclude that the organization / board is incompetent and chaotic because they can’t even get basic facts right
Fwiw, I think different views about this ideal/non-ideal distinction underlie a lot of disagreements about communicative norms in EA.