I see “clearly expressing anger” and “posting when angry” as quite different things.
I endorse the former, but I rarely endorse the latter, especially in contexts like the EA Forum.
Let’s distinguish different stages of anger:
The “hot” kind—when one is not really thinking straight, prone to exaggeration and uncharitable interpretations, etc.
The “cool” kind—where one can think roughly as clearly about the topic as any other.
We could think of “hot” and “cold” anger as a spectrum.
Most people experience hot anger from time to time. But I think EA figures—especially senior figures—should model a norm of only posting on the EA Forum when fairly cool.
My impression is that, during the Bostrom and FLI incidents, several people posted with considerably more hot anger than I would endorse. In these cases, I think the mistake has been quite harmful, and may warrant public and private apologies.
As a positive example: Peter Hurford’s blog post, which he described as “angry”, showed a level of reasonableness and clarity that made it, in my mind, “above the bar” to publish. The text suggests a relatively cool anger. I disagree with some parts of the post, but I am glad he published it. At the meta-level, my impression is that Peter was well within the range of “appropriate states of mind” for a leadership figure to publish a message like that in public.
I’m not sure how I feel about this proposed norm. I probably think that senior EA figures should at least sometimes post when they’re feeling some version of “hot anger”, as opposed to literally never doing this.
The way you defined “cool vs. hot” here is that it’s about thinking straight vs. not thinking straight. Under that framing, I agree that you shouldn’t post comments when you have reason to suspect you might temporarily not be thinking straight. (Or you should find a way to flag this concern in the comment itself, e.g., with an epistemic status disclaimer or NVC-style language.)
But you also call these “different stages of anger”, which suggests a temporal interpretation: hot anger comes first, followed by cool. And the use of the words “hot” and “cool”, to my ear, also suggests something about the character of the feeling itself.
I feel comfortable suggesting that EAs self-censor under the “thinking straight?” interpretation. But if you’re feeling really intense emotion and it’s very close in time to the triggering event, but you think you’re nonetheless thinking straight — or you think you can add appropriate caveats and context so people can correct for the ways in which you’re not thinking straight — then I’m a lot more wary about adding a strong “don’t say what’s on your mind” norm here.
I see “clearly expressing anger” and “posting when angry” as quite different things.
I endorse the former, but I rarely endorse the latter, especially in contexts like the EA Forum.
Let’s distinguish different stages of anger:
We could think of “hot” and “cold” anger as a spectrum.
Most people experience hot anger from time to time. But I think EA figures—especially senior figures—should model a norm of only posting on the EA Forum when fairly cool.
My impression is that, during the Bostrom and FLI incidents, several people posted with considerably more hot anger than I would endorse. In these cases, I think the mistake has been quite harmful, and may warrant public and private apologies.
As a positive example: Peter Hurford’s blog post, which he described as “angry”, showed a level of reasonableness and clarity that made it, in my mind, “above the bar” to publish. The text suggests a relatively cool anger. I disagree with some parts of the post, but I am glad he published it. At the meta-level, my impression is that Peter was well within the range of “appropriate states of mind” for a leadership figure to publish a message like that in public.
I’m not sure how I feel about this proposed norm. I probably think that senior EA figures should at least sometimes post when they’re feeling some version of “hot anger”, as opposed to literally never doing this.
The way you defined “cool vs. hot” here is that it’s about thinking straight vs. not thinking straight. Under that framing, I agree that you shouldn’t post comments when you have reason to suspect you might temporarily not be thinking straight. (Or you should find a way to flag this concern in the comment itself, e.g., with an epistemic status disclaimer or NVC-style language.)
But you also call these “different stages of anger”, which suggests a temporal interpretation: hot anger comes first, followed by cool. And the use of the words “hot” and “cool”, to my ear, also suggests something about the character of the feeling itself.
I feel comfortable suggesting that EAs self-censor under the “thinking straight?” interpretation. But if you’re feeling really intense emotion and it’s very close in time to the triggering event, but you think you’re nonetheless thinking straight — or you think you can add appropriate caveats and context so people can correct for the ways in which you’re not thinking straight — then I’m a lot more wary about adding a strong “don’t say what’s on your mind” norm here.