Why did it take someone like me to make the concern public?
I don’t think it did.
On this thread and others, many people expressed similar concerns, before and after you left your own comments. It’s not difficult to find Facebook discussions about similar concerns in a bunch of different EA groups. The first Forum post I remember seeing about this (having been hired by CEA in late 2018, and an infrequent Forum viewer before that) was “The Importance of Truth-Oriented Discussions in EA”.
While you have no official EA affiliations, others who share and express similar views do (Oliver Habryka and Ben Pace come to mind; both are paid by CEA for work they do related to the Forum). Of course, they might worry about being cancelled, but I don’t know either way.
I’ve also seen people freely air similar opinions in internal CEA discussions without (apparently) being worried about what their co-workers would think. If they were people who actually used the Forum in their spare time, I suspect they’d feel comfortable commenting about their views, though I can’t be sure.
I also have direct evidence in the form of EAs contacting me privately to say that they’re worried about EA developing/joining CC, and telling me what they’ve seen to make them worried, and saying that they can’t talk publicly about it.
I’ve gotten similar messages from people with a range of views. Some were concerned about CC, others about anti-SJ views. Most of them, whatever their views, claimed that people with views opposed to theirs dominated online discussion in a way that made it hard to publicly disagree.
My conclusion: people on both sides are afraid to discuss their views because taking any side exposes you to angry people on the other side...
...and because writing for an EA audience about any topic can be intimidating. I’ve had people ask me whether writing about climate change as a serious risk might damage their reputations within EA. Same goes for career choice. And for criticism of EA orgs. And other topics, even if they were completely nonpolitical and people were just worried about looking foolish. Will MacAskill had “literal anxiety dreams” when he wrote a post about longtermism.
As far as I can tell, comments around this issue on the Forum fall all over the spectrum and get upvoted in rough proportion to the fraction of people who make similar comments. I’m not sure whether similar dynamics hold on Facebook/Twitter/Discord, though.
*****
I have seen incidents in the community that worried me. But I haven’t seen a pattern of such incidents; they’ve been scattered over the past few years, and they all seem like poor decisions from individuals or orgs that didn’t cause major damage to the community. But I could have missed things, or been wrong about consequences; please take this as N=1.
I don’t think it did.
On this thread and others, many people expressed similar concerns, before and after you left your own comments. It’s not difficult to find Facebook discussions about similar concerns in a bunch of different EA groups. The first Forum post I remember seeing about this (having been hired by CEA in late 2018, and an infrequent Forum viewer before that) was “The Importance of Truth-Oriented Discussions in EA”.
While you have no official EA affiliations, others who share and express similar views do (Oliver Habryka and Ben Pace come to mind; both are paid by CEA for work they do related to the Forum). Of course, they might worry about being cancelled, but I don’t know either way.
I’ve also seen people freely air similar opinions in internal CEA discussions without (apparently) being worried about what their co-workers would think. If they were people who actually used the Forum in their spare time, I suspect they’d feel comfortable commenting about their views, though I can’t be sure.
I’ve gotten similar messages from people with a range of views. Some were concerned about CC, others about anti-SJ views. Most of them, whatever their views, claimed that people with views opposed to theirs dominated online discussion in a way that made it hard to publicly disagree.
My conclusion: people on both sides are afraid to discuss their views because taking any side exposes you to angry people on the other side...
...and because writing for an EA audience about any topic can be intimidating. I’ve had people ask me whether writing about climate change as a serious risk might damage their reputations within EA. Same goes for career choice. And for criticism of EA orgs. And other topics, even if they were completely nonpolitical and people were just worried about looking foolish. Will MacAskill had “literal anxiety dreams” when he wrote a post about longtermism.
As far as I can tell, comments around this issue on the Forum fall all over the spectrum and get upvoted in rough proportion to the fraction of people who make similar comments. I’m not sure whether similar dynamics hold on Facebook/Twitter/Discord, though.
*****
I have seen incidents in the community that worried me. But I haven’t seen a pattern of such incidents; they’ve been scattered over the past few years, and they all seem like poor decisions from individuals or orgs that didn’t cause major damage to the community. But I could have missed things, or been wrong about consequences; please take this as N=1.