Personally, I disagree strenuously. I’d like to see us say what we believe, and to hell with the consequences. I’m not naive enough to promote this as a strategy we should always use, but this is definitely one of these times. This is a post written by a not highly-influential public figure, on our own forum, and the reason for deleting it is because someone, somewhere might criticise it. If a post like this can’t stay up, what can?
There will always be critics. There are people out there who think the entirety of longtermism is just a smokescreen for us to give ourselves money to pretend to work on AI safety and feel good about ourselves—should we stop posting about AI safety?
If you believe it, stick to your guns. If we start deleting stuff on our own forums because someone, somewhere might disapprove of it, the critics have already won. I find the idea that people are suggesting this post be deleted to be quite alarming, actually. EA’s epistemics are what make us great. It’s more valuable than our large amounts of funding, because that epistemically virtuous approach to doing good is what inspired people to earn to give and give us that funding.
Personally, I disagree strenuously. I’d like to see us say what we believe, and to hell with the consequences. I’m not naive enough to promote this as a strategy we should always use, but this is definitely one of these times. This is a post written by a not highly-influential public figure, on our own forum, and the reason for deleting it is because someone, somewhere might criticise it. If a post like this can’t stay up, what can?
There will always be critics. There are people out there who think the entirety of longtermism is just a smokescreen for us to give ourselves money to pretend to work on AI safety and feel good about ourselves—should we stop posting about AI safety?
If you believe it, stick to your guns. If we start deleting stuff on our own forums because someone, somewhere might disapprove of it, the critics have already won. I find the idea that people are suggesting this post be deleted to be quite alarming, actually. EA’s epistemics are what make us great. It’s more valuable than our large amounts of funding, because that epistemically virtuous approach to doing good is what inspired people to earn to give and give us that funding.