Fwiw when I see criticisms of a field, especially in a technical/semi-academic setting, I rarely assume the criticisms are about individuals and generally assume it’s about institutions.
This is possibly epistemically unwise/to our detriment, see Dan Luu’s article, and I do think maybe EA currently pays too much attention to ideas and institutions and not enough to people, at least publicly. But I think at the very least, the broad trend in public conversations is for e.g. a criticism about CEA to be more about the institution than specific individuals in it, or a criticism of the US CDC to be more about the inputs and outputs of their decision-making and less about the personal foible of the director of the US CDC, or specific bureaucrats within it.
Perhaps EA critiques of the bioethics profession shed more heat than light, but that’s a different claim than whether individual bioethicists have good opinions or not.
Fwiw when I see criticisms of a field, especially in a technical/semi-academic setting, I rarely assume the criticisms are about individuals and generally assume it’s about institutions.
This is possibly epistemically unwise/to our detriment, see Dan Luu’s article, and I do think maybe EA currently pays too much attention to ideas and institutions and not enough to people, at least publicly. But I think at the very least, the broad trend in public conversations is for e.g. a criticism about CEA to be more about the institution than specific individuals in it, or a criticism of the US CDC to be more about the inputs and outputs of their decision-making and less about the personal foible of the director of the US CDC, or specific bureaucrats within it.
Perhaps EA critiques of the bioethics profession shed more heat than light, but that’s a different claim than whether individual bioethicists have good opinions or not.
I think there’s a ton to criticize in the institutions, don’t get me wrong, I just disagree that that’s how lots of the criticisms I see come off.