People don’t communicate openly their takes on things.
This leads to significant misunderstanding.
This leads to distrust of each other and assumptions of poor intent.
This leads to parties doing more zero-sum or adversarial actions to each other.
When any communication does happen, it’s inspected with a magnifying glass (because of how rare it is). It’s misunderstood (because of how little communication there has been).
The communicators then think, “What’s the point? My communication is misunderstood and treated with hostility.” So they communicate less.
Not tracking being scrupulously truth-telling out of a desire to get less criticism
Blog posts on the EA Forum outlining the incentives and reasons for such a heated environment
Did a pass at this: [Shortform here]
Features that contribute to heated discussion on the forum
Interpersonal and Emotional
Fear, on all sides
Political backlash
What other EAs will think of you
Just sometimes the experience of being on the forum
Trying to protect colleagues or friends
Speed as a reaction to having strong opinions, or worrying that others will jump on you
Frustration at having to rehash arguments / protect things that should go without saying
Desire to gain approval / goodwill from people you’d like to hire/fund/etc you in the future
Desire to sound smart
Desire to gain approval / goodwill from your friends, or people you respect
Pattern matching (correctly or not) to conversations you’ve had before and porting over the emotional baggage from them
Sometimes it helps to assume the people you’re talking to are still trying to win their last argument with someone else
Low trust environment
Surprise that something is even a question
I think there’s a nasty feedback loop in tense situations with low trust. (This section by Ozzie Gooen)
People don’t communicate openly their takes on things.
This leads to significant misunderstanding.
This leads to distrust of each other and assumptions of poor intent.
This leads to parties doing more zero-sum or adversarial actions to each other.
When any communication does happen, it’s inspected with a magnifying glass (because of how rare it is). It’s misunderstood (because of how little communication there has been).
The communicators then think, “What’s the point? My communication is misunderstood and treated with hostility.” So they communicate less.
Not tracking being scrupulously truth-telling out of a desire to get less criticism
Not feeling like part of the decision making process, opaqueness of the reasoning of EA leadership
Not understanding how and why decisions that affect you are made
Feeling misunderstood by the public, sometimes feeling wilfully misunderstood
Something to protect / Politics
Trying to protect a norm you think matters
Trying to protect other people you think are being treated unfairly
Trying to create the EA you want by fiat / speech actions
Power / game theoretical desires to have power shift in EA towards preferred distribution
Speed—a sense that the conversation will get away from you otherwise
Organizational politics
An interest in understanding the internals of organizations you’re not part of
An interest in not-sharing the internals of organizations you are part of