Interesting that you don’t think the post acknowledged your second collection of points. I thought it mostly did. 1. The post did say it was not suggesting to shut down existing initiatives. So where people disagree on (for example) which evals to do, they can just do the ones they think are important and then both kinds get done. I think the post was identifying a third set of things we can do together, and this was not specific evals, but more about big narrative alliance when influencing large/important audiences. The post also suggested some other areas of collaboration, on policy and regulation, and some of these may relate to evals so there could be room for collaboration there, but I’d guess that more demand, funding, infrastructure for evals helps both kinds of evals. 2. Again I think the post addresses this issue: it talks about how there is this specific set of things the two groups can work on together that is both in their interest to do. It doesn’t mean that all people from each group will only work on this new third thing (coalition building), but if a substantial number do, it’ll help. I don’t think the OP was suggesting a full merger of the groups. They acknowledge the ‘personal and ethical problems with one another; [and say] that needn’t translate to political issues’. The call is specifically for political coalition building. 3. Again I don’t think the OP is calling for a merger of the groups. They are calling for collaborating on something. 4. OK the post didn’t do this that much, but I don’t think every post needs to and I personally really liked that this one made its point so clearly. I would read a post which responds to this with some counterarguments with interest so maybe that implies I think it’d benefit from one too, but I wouldn’t want a rule/social expectation that every post lists counterarguments as that can raise the barrier to entry for posting and people are free to comment in disagreements and write counter posts.
On evals, I think it is good for us to be doing as much evals as possible, firstly because both sorts of evaluations are important, but also more (even self imposed) regulatory hurdles to jump through, the better. Slow it down and bring the companies under control.
Indeed, the call is a broader political coalition building. Not everyone, not all the time, not on everything. But on substantially more than we currently are.
Yes
There are a number of counterarguments to this post, but I didn’t include them because a) I probably can’t give the strongest counterarguments to my own beliefs b) This post was already very long, and I had to cut out sections already on Actor-Network Theory and Agency and something else I can’t remember c) I felt it might muddle the case I’m trying to make here if it was intersperced with counterarguments. One quick point on counterarguments is I think a counterargument would need to be strong enough to not just prove that the extreme end result is bad ( a lot more coalition building would be bad ) , but probably that the post is directionally bad (some more coalition building would be bad).
Interesting that you don’t think the post acknowledged your second collection of points. I thought it mostly did.
1. The post did say it was not suggesting to shut down existing initiatives. So where people disagree on (for example) which evals to do, they can just do the ones they think are important and then both kinds get done. I think the post was identifying a third set of things we can do together, and this was not specific evals, but more about big narrative alliance when influencing large/important audiences. The post also suggested some other areas of collaboration, on policy and regulation, and some of these may relate to evals so there could be room for collaboration there, but I’d guess that more demand, funding, infrastructure for evals helps both kinds of evals.
2. Again I think the post addresses this issue: it talks about how there is this specific set of things the two groups can work on together that is both in their interest to do. It doesn’t mean that all people from each group will only work on this new third thing (coalition building), but if a substantial number do, it’ll help. I don’t think the OP was suggesting a full merger of the groups. They acknowledge the ‘personal and ethical problems with one another; [and say] that needn’t translate to political issues’. The call is specifically for political coalition building.
3. Again I don’t think the OP is calling for a merger of the groups. They are calling for collaborating on something.
4. OK the post didn’t do this that much, but I don’t think every post needs to and I personally really liked that this one made its point so clearly. I would read a post which responds to this with some counterarguments with interest so maybe that implies I think it’d benefit from one too, but I wouldn’t want a rule/social expectation that every post lists counterarguments as that can raise the barrier to entry for posting and people are free to comment in disagreements and write counter posts.
Ye I basically agree with this.
On evals, I think it is good for us to be doing as much evals as possible, firstly because both sorts of evaluations are important, but also more (even self imposed) regulatory hurdles to jump through, the better. Slow it down and bring the companies under control.
Indeed, the call is a broader political coalition building. Not everyone, not all the time, not on everything. But on substantially more than we currently are.
Yes
There are a number of counterarguments to this post, but I didn’t include them because a) I probably can’t give the strongest counterarguments to my own beliefs b) This post was already very long, and I had to cut out sections already on Actor-Network Theory and Agency and something else I can’t remember c) I felt it might muddle the case I’m trying to make here if it was intersperced with counterarguments. One quick point on counterarguments is I think a counterargument would need to be strong enough to not just prove that the extreme end result is bad ( a lot more coalition building would be bad ) , but probably that the post is directionally bad (some more coalition building would be bad).