Who should pay the cost of Googling studies on the EA Forum?
Many EA Forum posts have minimal engagement with relevant academic literature
If you see a Forum post that doesn’t engage with literature you think is relevant, you could make a claim without looking up a citation based on your memory, but there’s a reasonable chance you’ll be wrong.
Many people say they’d rather see an imperfect post or comment than not have it at all.
But people tend to remember an original claim, even if it’s later debunked.
Maybe the best option is to phrase my comment as a question: “Have you looked at the literature on X?”
3. was discussed here. My impression of that discussion is that many of the forum readers thought that it’s important that one familiarises oneself with the literature before commenting. Like I say in my comment, that’s certainly my view.
I agree that too many EA Forum posts fail to appropriately engage with relevant literature.
I’ve always thought there’s a lower bar for commenting than a top-level post, but maybe both should be reasonably high (you should be able to provide some evidence for your claim in a comment, and have some actual engagement with relevant literature in a post, for example)
Who should pay the cost of Googling studies on the EA Forum?
Many EA Forum posts have minimal engagement with relevant academic literature
If you see a Forum post that doesn’t engage with literature you think is relevant, you could make a claim without looking up a citation based on your memory, but there’s a reasonable chance you’ll be wrong.
Many people say they’d rather see an imperfect post or comment than not have it at all.
But people tend to remember an original claim, even if it’s later debunked.
Maybe the best option is to phrase my comment as a question: “Have you looked at the literature on X?”
3. was discussed here. My impression of that discussion is that many of the forum readers thought that it’s important that one familiarises oneself with the literature before commenting. Like I say in my comment, that’s certainly my view.
I agree that too many EA Forum posts fail to appropriately engage with relevant literature.
I’ve always thought there’s a lower bar for commenting than a top-level post, but maybe both should be reasonably high (you should be able to provide some evidence for your claim in a comment, and have some actual engagement with relevant literature in a post, for example)