I donât think itâs obvious that less chance of criticism implies a higher chance of starting a project. There are many things in the world that are prestigious precisely because they have a high quality bar.
Iâm a huge fan of having high standards. Posts that are like âwe reproduced this published output and think they made these concrete errorsâ are often great. But I notice much more âthese people did a bad job or spent too much moneyâ takes often from people who afaict havenât done a bunch of stuff themselves so arenât very calibrated, and donât seem very scope sensitive. If people saw their projects being critiqued and were then motivated to go and do more things more quickly Iâd think that was great (or were encouraged to do more things more quickly from âfearâ of critiques) I think weâd be in a better equilibrium.
For example people often point out that LW and the forum are somewhat expensive per user as evidence they are being mismanaged and imo this is a bad take which is rarely made by people who have built or maintained popular software projects/âforums or used the internet enough to know that discussion of the kind in these venues is really quite rare and special.
To be clear, I think the âbut have they actually done stuffâ critique should also be levelled at grantmakers. Iâm sympathetic to grantmakers who are like âthe world is burning and I just need to do a leveraged thing right nowâ but my guess is that if more grantmakers had run projects in the reference class of things they want to fund (or founded any complicated or unusual and ambitious projects) weâd be in a better position. I think this general take is very common in YC/âVC spaces, which perform a similar function to grantmaking for their ecosystem.
Many examples of criticism in replies, are high quality posts that I think improve standards. I may spend an hour going through the criticism tag and sorting them into posts I think are useful/âanti-useful to check.
Iâm not quite as convinced of the much greater cost of âbad criticismâ over âgood criticismâ. Iâm optimistic that discussions on the forum tend to come to a reflective equilibrium that agrees with valid criticism and disregards invalid criticism. Iâll give some examples (but pre-committing to not rehashing these too much):
I think HLI is a good example of long-discussion-that-ends-up-agreeing-with-valid-criticism, and as discussed by other people in this thread this probably led to capital + mind share being allocated more efficiently.
I think the recent back and forth between VettedCauses and Sinergia is a good example of the other side. Setting aside the remaining points of contention, I think commenters on the original post did a good job of clocking the fact that there was room for the reported flaws to have a harmless explanation. And then Carolina from Sinergia did a good job of providing a concrete explanation of most of the supposed issues[1].
Itâs possible that HLI and Sinergia came away equally discouraged, but if so I think that would be a misapprehension on Sinergiaâs part. Personally I went from having no preconceptions about them to having mildly positive sentiment towards them.
Perhaps we could do some work to promote the meme that âreasonably-successfully defending yourself against criticism is generally good for your reputation not badâ.
(Stopped writing here to post something rather than nothing, I may respond to some other points later)
You could also argue that not everyone has time to read through the details of these discussions, and so people go away with a negative impression. I donât think thatâs right because on a quick skim you can sort of pick up the sentiment of the comment section, and most things like this donât escape the confines of the forum.
I donât think itâs obvious that less chance of criticism implies a higher chance of starting a project. There are many things in the world that are prestigious precisely because they have a high quality bar.
Iâm a huge fan of having high standards. Posts that are like âwe reproduced this published output and think they made these concrete errorsâ are often great. But I notice much more âthese people did a bad job or spent too much moneyâ takes often from people who afaict havenât done a bunch of stuff themselves so arenât very calibrated, and donât seem very scope sensitive. If people saw their projects being critiqued and were then motivated to go and do more things more quickly Iâd think that was great (or were encouraged to do more things more quickly from âfearâ of critiques) I think weâd be in a better equilibrium.
For example people often point out that LW and the forum are somewhat expensive per user as evidence they are being mismanaged and imo this is a bad take which is rarely made by people who have built or maintained popular software projects/âforums or used the internet enough to know that discussion of the kind in these venues is really quite rare and special.
To be clear, I think the âbut have they actually done stuffâ critique should also be levelled at grantmakers. Iâm sympathetic to grantmakers who are like âthe world is burning and I just need to do a leveraged thing right nowâ but my guess is that if more grantmakers had run projects in the reference class of things they want to fund (or founded any complicated or unusual and ambitious projects) weâd be in a better position. I think this general take is very common in YC/âVC spaces, which perform a similar function to grantmaking for their ecosystem.
Many examples of criticism in replies, are high quality posts that I think improve standards. I may spend an hour going through the criticism tag and sorting them into posts I think are useful/âanti-useful to check.
Iâm not quite as convinced of the much greater cost of âbad criticismâ over âgood criticismâ. Iâm optimistic that discussions on the forum tend to come to a reflective equilibrium that agrees with valid criticism and disregards invalid criticism. Iâll give some examples (but pre-committing to not rehashing these too much):
I think HLI is a good example of long-discussion-that-ends-up-agreeing-with-valid-criticism, and as discussed by other people in this thread this probably led to capital + mind share being allocated more efficiently.
I think the recent back and forth between VettedCauses and Sinergia is a good example of the other side. Setting aside the remaining points of contention, I think commenters on the original post did a good job of clocking the fact that there was room for the reported flaws to have a harmless explanation. And then Carolina from Sinergia did a good job of providing a concrete explanation of most of the supposed issues[1].
Itâs possible that HLI and Sinergia came away equally discouraged, but if so I think that would be a misapprehension on Sinergiaâs part. Personally I went from having no preconceptions about them to having mildly positive sentiment towards them.
Perhaps we could do some work to promote the meme that âreasonably-successfully defending yourself against criticism is generally good for your reputation not badâ.
(Stopped writing here to post something rather than nothing, I may respond to some other points later)
You could also argue that not everyone has time to read through the details of these discussions, and so people go away with a negative impression. I donât think thatâs right because on a quick skim you can sort of pick up the sentiment of the comment section, and most things like this donât escape the confines of the forum.