I work for CEA, but the following views are my own. I don’t have any plans to change Forum policy around which topics are permitted, discouraged, etc. This response is just my attempt to think through some considerations other EAs might want to make around this topic.
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Even when there is a cost to participating, someone who considers the topic important enough can choose to bear it.
This isn’t always true, unless you use a circular definition of “important”. As written, it implies that anyone who can’t bear to participate must not consider the topic “important enough”, which is empirically false. Our capacity to do any form of work (physical or mental) is never fully within our control. The way we react to certain stimuli (sights, sounds, ideas) is never fully within our control. If we decided to render all the text on the EA Forum at a 40-degree angle, we’d see our traffic drop, and the people who left wouldn’t just be people who didn’t think EA was sufficiently “important”.
In a similar vein:
The more committed [you are] to a cause, the more you are willing to endure for it. We agree with CEA that committed EAs are several times more valuable than those who are vaguely aligned, so that we should [be] optimising the movement for attracting more committed members.
Again, this is too simplistic. If we could have 100 members who committed 40 hours/week or 1000 members who committed 35 hours/week, we might want to pursue the second option, even if we weren’t “optimizing for attracting more committed members”. (I don’t speak for CEA here, but it seems to me like “optimize the amount of total high-fidelity and productive hours directed at EA work” is closer to what the movement wants, and even that is only partly correlated with “create the best world we can”.)
You could also argue that “better” EAs tend to take ideas more seriously, that having a strong negative reaction to a dangerous idea is a sign of seriousness, and that we should therefore be trying very hard to accommodate people who have reportedly had very negative reactions to particular ideas within EA. This would also be too simplistic, but there’s a kernel of truth there, just as there is in your statement about commitment.
Even if limiting particular discussions would clearly be good, once we’ve decided to limit discussions at all, we’ve opened the door to endless discussion and debate about what is or is not unwelcoming (see Moderator’s Dilemma). And ironically, these kinds of discussions tend to be highly partisan, political and emotional.
The door is already open. There are dozens of preexisting questions about which forms of discussion we should permit within EA, on specifically the EA Forum, within any given EA cause area, and so on. Should we limit fundraising posts? Posts about personal productivity? Posts that use obscene language? Posts written in a non-English language? Posts that give investing advice? Posts with graphic images of dying animals? I see “posts that discuss Idea X” as another set of examples in this very long list. They may be more popular to argue about, but that doesn’t mean we should agree never to limit them just to reduce the incidence of arguments.
We note that such a conclusion would depend on an exceptionally high quantity of alienating discussions, and is prima facie incompatible with the generally high rating for welcomingness reported in the EA survey. We note that there are several possible other theories.
I don’t think the authors of the Making Discussions Inclusive post would disagree. I don’t see any conclusion in that post that alienating discussions are the main factor in the EA gender gap; all I see is the claim, with some evidence from a poll, that alienating discussions are one factor, along with suggestions for reducing the impact of that particular factor.
It is worthwhile considering the example of Atheism Plus, an attempt to insist that atheists also accept the principles of social justice. This was incredibly damaging and destructive to the atheist movement due to the infighting that it led to and was perhaps partly responsible for the movement’s decline.
I don’t have any background on Atheism Plus, but as a more general point: Did the atheism movement actually decline? While the r/atheism subreddit is now ranked #57 by subscriber count (as of 13 March 2019) rather than #38 (4 July 2015), the American atheist population seems to have been fairly flat since 1991, and British irreligion is at an all-time high. Are there particular incidents (organizations shutting down, public figures renouncing, etc.) that back up the “decline” narrative? (I would assume so, I’m just unfamiliar with this topic.)
I work for CEA, but the following views are my own. I don’t have any plans to change Forum policy around which topics are permitted, discouraged, etc. This response is just my attempt to think through some considerations other EAs might want to make around this topic.
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This isn’t always true, unless you use a circular definition of “important”. As written, it implies that anyone who can’t bear to participate must not consider the topic “important enough”, which is empirically false. Our capacity to do any form of work (physical or mental) is never fully within our control. The way we react to certain stimuli (sights, sounds, ideas) is never fully within our control. If we decided to render all the text on the EA Forum at a 40-degree angle, we’d see our traffic drop, and the people who left wouldn’t just be people who didn’t think EA was sufficiently “important”.
In a similar vein:
Again, this is too simplistic. If we could have 100 members who committed 40 hours/week or 1000 members who committed 35 hours/week, we might want to pursue the second option, even if we weren’t “optimizing for attracting more committed members”. (I don’t speak for CEA here, but it seems to me like “optimize the amount of total high-fidelity and productive hours directed at EA work” is closer to what the movement wants, and even that is only partly correlated with “create the best world we can”.)
You could also argue that “better” EAs tend to take ideas more seriously, that having a strong negative reaction to a dangerous idea is a sign of seriousness, and that we should therefore be trying very hard to accommodate people who have reportedly had very negative reactions to particular ideas within EA. This would also be too simplistic, but there’s a kernel of truth there, just as there is in your statement about commitment.
The door is already open. There are dozens of preexisting questions about which forms of discussion we should permit within EA, on specifically the EA Forum, within any given EA cause area, and so on. Should we limit fundraising posts? Posts about personal productivity? Posts that use obscene language? Posts written in a non-English language? Posts that give investing advice? Posts with graphic images of dying animals? I see “posts that discuss Idea X” as another set of examples in this very long list. They may be more popular to argue about, but that doesn’t mean we should agree never to limit them just to reduce the incidence of arguments.
I don’t think the authors of the Making Discussions Inclusive post would disagree. I don’t see any conclusion in that post that alienating discussions are the main factor in the EA gender gap; all I see is the claim, with some evidence from a poll, that alienating discussions are one factor, along with suggestions for reducing the impact of that particular factor.
I don’t have any background on Atheism Plus, but as a more general point: Did the atheism movement actually decline? While the r/atheism subreddit is now ranked #57 by subscriber count (as of 13 March 2019) rather than #38 (4 July 2015), the American atheist population seems to have been fairly flat since 1991, and British irreligion is at an all-time high. Are there particular incidents (organizations shutting down, public figures renouncing, etc.) that back up the “decline” narrative? (I would assume so, I’m just unfamiliar with this topic.)