Executive summary: The author argues that effective altruists do an unusually good job engaging with, promoting, and generating criticism, which supports more accurate and less biased group reasoning.
Key points:
The author claims that reasoning is often biased at the individual level but can perform well in groups if they are diverse and allow adversarial disagreement.
The author argues that engaging with critics is essential because it reduces bias and prevents polarization and overconfidence.
The author presents evidence that effective altruists actively engage with critics through discussions, events, and responses to critical work.
The author notes that effective altruists go further by funding and promoting criticism, including contests and grants aimed at red-teaming their own views.
The author highlights that internal criticism within effective altruism is common and often taken seriously, though not always received perfectly.
The author concludes that these practices constitute a strong epistemic norm that helps avoid the failures of homogeneous deliberation.
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Executive summary: The author argues that effective altruists do an unusually good job engaging with, promoting, and generating criticism, which supports more accurate and less biased group reasoning.
Key points:
The author claims that reasoning is often biased at the individual level but can perform well in groups if they are diverse and allow adversarial disagreement.
The author argues that engaging with critics is essential because it reduces bias and prevents polarization and overconfidence.
The author presents evidence that effective altruists actively engage with critics through discussions, events, and responses to critical work.
The author notes that effective altruists go further by funding and promoting criticism, including contests and grants aimed at red-teaming their own views.
The author highlights that internal criticism within effective altruism is common and often taken seriously, though not always received perfectly.
The author concludes that these practices constitute a strong epistemic norm that helps avoid the failures of homogeneous deliberation.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.