I am one of those people who, having seen the Twitter post with the letter, scanned the Forum home page for the letter and didn’t see it! And regardless of what you think of the letter, I think the discussion in the comments here is useful; I am glad I did not miss it. So I agree with what others have said—there are real downsides to downvoting things just because you disagree with them; I would encourage people not to do this. (And if you downvoted this because you don’t think a Stanford professor making a sincere effort to engage with EA ideas is valuable/warrants engagement then… yeah, I just disagree. But I would be eager to hear downvoters’ best defense of doing this.)
Regarding the letter itself: one thing I am struck by is the number of claims in this letter that go without citations. This is frustrating to me, especially given the letter repeatedly appeals to academic authority. As just one example, claims like “It has lots of premises that GiveWell says depend on guesswork, and it runs against some of the literature in fields like development economics” warrant a citation—what literature in development economics?
Two separate points:
I am one of those people who, having seen the Twitter post with the letter, scanned the Forum home page for the letter and didn’t see it! And regardless of what you think of the letter, I think the discussion in the comments here is useful; I am glad I did not miss it. So I agree with what others have said—there are real downsides to downvoting things just because you disagree with them; I would encourage people not to do this. (And if you downvoted this because you don’t think a Stanford professor making a sincere effort to engage with EA ideas is valuable/warrants engagement then… yeah, I just disagree. But I would be eager to hear downvoters’ best defense of doing this.)
Regarding the letter itself: one thing I am struck by is the number of claims in this letter that go without citations. This is frustrating to me, especially given the letter repeatedly appeals to academic authority. As just one example, claims like “It has lots of premises that GiveWell says depend on guesswork, and it runs against some of the literature in fields like development economics” warrant a citation—what literature in development economics?