I don’t like the idea of using jargon to protect oneself. I worry that this protects the author not only from unfair ‘out of context’ critique, but also from critiques from anyone who can’t already understand the jargon (or isn’t able to invest the time in deciphering it). Why should you want such critiques? Because people who already know the niche jargon of your field are more likely to agree with you, or at least to agree with you on the big picture.
If you are criticizing an EA organization because they did something wrong, a journalist who writes the next “EA is bad” article might quote you. They might add something to the critique, but it’s likely not what you want.
Because people fear saying things that are bad for EA’s PR they are engaging in less public criticism of the actions of EA organizations.
If you are talking about a topic that touches partisan politics but wants to discuss it from an EA perspective, you don’t want your post to turn into a magnet for partisan political discussion. If there would be a lot of partisan political discussion that would be bad for the EA forum.
Criminal Justice Reform, Immigration Policy, Land Use Reform, and Macroeconomic Stabilization Policy are at the moment cause areas for OpenPhil. I see relatively little discussion on the EA forum about how those cause areas. I would expect that one of the major reasons for this is that people fear that those discussions would be too partisan politic.
I think it would be good if there would be more EA exchange over those cause areas given that EA money if flowing into them. At the same time I believe it’s good to have those discussions in a way that doesn’t make it easy for new users who browse the EA forum and who like partisan politic discussions to just jump in.
I don’t like the idea of using jargon to protect oneself. I worry that this protects the author not only from unfair ‘out of context’ critique, but also from critiques from anyone who can’t already understand the jargon (or isn’t able to invest the time in deciphering it). Why should you want such critiques? Because people who already know the niche jargon of your field are more likely to agree with you, or at least to agree with you on the big picture.
If you are criticizing an EA organization because they did something wrong, a journalist who writes the next “EA is bad” article might quote you. They might add something to the critique, but it’s likely not what you want.
Because people fear saying things that are bad for EA’s PR they are engaging in less public criticism of the actions of EA organizations.
If you are talking about a topic that touches partisan politics but wants to discuss it from an EA perspective, you don’t want your post to turn into a magnet for partisan political discussion. If there would be a lot of partisan political discussion that would be bad for the EA forum.
Criminal Justice Reform, Immigration Policy, Land Use Reform, and Macroeconomic Stabilization Policy are at the moment cause areas for OpenPhil. I see relatively little discussion on the EA forum about how those cause areas. I would expect that one of the major reasons for this is that people fear that those discussions would be too partisan politic.
I think it would be good if there would be more EA exchange over those cause areas given that EA money if flowing into them. At the same time I believe it’s good to have those discussions in a way that doesn’t make it easy for new users who browse the EA forum and who like partisan politic discussions to just jump in.