I like your analysis of the situation as a prisoner’s dilemma! I think this is basically right. At least, there generally seems to be some community cost (or more generally: negative externality) to not being transparent about one’s affiliation with EA. And, as per usual with externalities, I expect these to be underappreciated by individuals when making decisions. So even if this externality is not always decisive since the cost of disclosing one’s EA affiliation might be larger in some cases, it is important to be reminded of this externality – and the reminder might be especially valuable since EAs tend to be altruistically motivated!
I wonder if you have any further thoughts on what the positive effects of transparency are in this case? Are there important effects beyond indicating diversity and avoiding tokenization? Perhaps there also more ‘inside-directed’ effects that directly affect the community and not only via how it seems to outsiders?
I think people tend to trust you more if they notice your transparency and sincerity, especially over time. I think transparency has high long-term rewards. There is also a great deal of better sense-making: you can connect the dots that this bad thing happened but you know someone that was outspoken about an affiliated thing—how do those two things make sense together? is there some misunderstanding that one can gain clarity on?
A bit is captured here:
I’d guess their trust in the org is high particularly because they have always been transparent about something that is “courageous” to own. And they wanted to understand why people they trust still stand by something that seems so controversial.
I like your analysis of the situation as a prisoner’s dilemma! I think this is basically right. At least, there generally seems to be some community cost (or more generally: negative externality) to not being transparent about one’s affiliation with EA. And, as per usual with externalities, I expect these to be underappreciated by individuals when making decisions. So even if this externality is not always decisive since the cost of disclosing one’s EA affiliation might be larger in some cases, it is important to be reminded of this externality – and the reminder might be especially valuable since EAs tend to be altruistically motivated!
I wonder if you have any further thoughts on what the positive effects of transparency are in this case? Are there important effects beyond indicating diversity and avoiding tokenization? Perhaps there also more ‘inside-directed’ effects that directly affect the community and not only via how it seems to outsiders?
Thank you!
I think people tend to trust you more if they notice your transparency and sincerity, especially over time. I think transparency has high long-term rewards. There is also a great deal of better sense-making: you can connect the dots that this bad thing happened but you know someone that was outspoken about an affiliated thing—how do those two things make sense together? is there some misunderstanding that one can gain clarity on?
A bit is captured here:
Does that help?