My notes on what I liked about the post, from the announcement:
This post contains a well-structured argument for addressing a problem that could be dragging down the overall impact of EA work across many different areas. You could summarize the main point in a way that makes it seem obvious (“EA should try to figure things out in a better way than it does now”), but in doing so, you’d be ignoring the details that make the post great:
Pointing out examples of things the community has done that pushed EA in the right direction (e.g. influential criticism, expert surveys) in order to show that we could do even more work along the same lines.
Comparing one reasonable proposal (better institutions) to other reasonable proposals (better norms, other types of institution, focusing on growth over institution-building) without arguing too vociferously in favor of the first proposal. I liked the language “I sketch a few considerations,” where some posts might have used “I show how X is superior to Y and Z.”
If you read this post, I also strongly recommend reading the comments! (This applies to the post above as well.)
This post was awarded an EA Forum Prize; see the prize announcement for more details.
My notes on what I liked about the post, from the announcement: