I think it’s really easy to make a case that funding the rationality community is a good thing to do. It’s much harder to make a case that it’s better to fund the rationality community than competing organizations. I’m sympathetic to your concerns, but I’m surprised that the reaction to this post is so much less critical than other “new cause area” posts. What have I missed?
I don’t think you’ve missed anything in particular. But there is a difference between reaction to a post being “not critical” and being “enthusiastic”.
My read on the comments so far is that people are generally “not critical” because the post makes few specific claims that could be proven wrong, but that people aren’t very “enthusiastic” about the post itself; instead, people are using the comments to make their own suggestions on the original topic.
That said, it seems perfectly reasonable if the main result of a post is to kick off a discussion between people who have more information/more concrete suggestions!
I think it’s really easy to make a case that funding the rationality community is a good thing to do. It’s much harder to make a case that it’s better to fund the rationality community than competing organizations. I’m sympathetic to your concerns, but I’m surprised that the reaction to this post is so much less critical than other “new cause area” posts. What have I missed?
I don’t think you’ve missed anything in particular. But there is a difference between reaction to a post being “not critical” and being “enthusiastic”.
My read on the comments so far is that people are generally “not critical” because the post makes few specific claims that could be proven wrong, but that people aren’t very “enthusiastic” about the post itself; instead, people are using the comments to make their own suggestions on the original topic.
That said, it seems perfectly reasonable if the main result of a post is to kick off a discussion between people who have more information/more concrete suggestions!