I’m not fully persuaded, because I think we’re dealing with heterogeneous sub-populations.
Consider the statement “As a non-EA, I believe that EA funders don’t allocate enough capital to funding development econ research”. I don’t think we can conclude from this statement that the opposite is true, and EA funders allocate too much capital to development econ research.
The heterogeneous subpopulations perspective suggests that people who think development econ research is the most promising cause may be self-selecting out of the “dedicated EA” subpopulation. I think criticism can be helpful in mitigating self-selection effects of this kind.
Of course, we can’t conclude that people who self-select out of EA on the basis of some disagreement are taking the correct side of that disagreement. The point is that criticism allows us to hear their perspective even if they’re not heavily involved.
BTW, I thought the outline format was fine for this post. Some individual sentences were choppy, but that was fine after I decided to read less thoroughly because it was a draft.
Interesting argument!
I’m not fully persuaded, because I think we’re dealing with heterogeneous sub-populations.
Consider the statement “As a non-EA, I believe that EA funders don’t allocate enough capital to funding development econ research”. I don’t think we can conclude from this statement that the opposite is true, and EA funders allocate too much capital to development econ research.
The heterogeneous subpopulations perspective suggests that people who think development econ research is the most promising cause may be self-selecting out of the “dedicated EA” subpopulation. I think criticism can be helpful in mitigating self-selection effects of this kind.
Of course, we can’t conclude that people who self-select out of EA on the basis of some disagreement are taking the correct side of that disagreement. The point is that criticism allows us to hear their perspective even if they’re not heavily involved.
BTW, I thought the outline format was fine for this post. Some individual sentences were choppy, but that was fine after I decided to read less thoroughly because it was a draft.