There were contests in the recent past. They haven’t affected much practical change. My impression within effective altruism is that they were appreciated as an intellectual exercise but that they’re isn’t faith that another contest like that will provoke the desired reforms.
Some of the public criticism of EA I saw a few months ago was that the criticism contest was meant only to attract the kind of criticism the leadership of EA would want to hear. That criticisms of EA on a fundamental level were relegated to outside media was taken as a sign EA-sponsored self-criticism was a form of controlled and paid opposition. I’m personally ambivalent about that perception though, suffice to say, the criticism contest with prizes hasn’t appeared too shift much outside perception there isn’t much of a chance that EA as a movement will reform in the face of criticism.
To host competitions like that was worth a try. Yet this event is worth a try as well. Many of the individuals participating in this event have a role at the CEA or another organization affiliated with it. I’ve noticed there are 5-10 other leading figures with roles at EA-affiliated organizations that have agreed to participate in this event but also haven’t commented. That means they were privately invited to participate before this event was publicly announced.
I imagine several leaders of various, leading EA-affiliated organizations (e.g., Joey Savoie, Oliver Habryka, Peter Wildeford & Marcus Davis, etc.) that already had annual budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year wouldn’t have the time, the need for extra hard-to-come-by funds, nor an elevated platform to get attention from other leaders. They already had the means to have their criticisms taken seriously without the need to participate in a contest. That’s why they wouldn’t have bothered to participate in the criticism contest before.
Yet they’ve agreed to participate in this event after they were personally and privately invited. I assume they wouldn’t have agreed in this event if they felt like there wasn’t any significant change in EA strategy could be provoked.
One interesting aspect of this experiment is that it isn’t a competition and there are no prizes
There were contests in the recent past. They haven’t affected much practical change. My impression within effective altruism is that they were appreciated as an intellectual exercise but that they’re isn’t faith that another contest like that will provoke the desired reforms.
Some of the public criticism of EA I saw a few months ago was that the criticism contest was meant only to attract the kind of criticism the leadership of EA would want to hear. That criticisms of EA on a fundamental level were relegated to outside media was taken as a sign EA-sponsored self-criticism was a form of controlled and paid opposition. I’m personally ambivalent about that perception though, suffice to say, the criticism contest with prizes hasn’t appeared too shift much outside perception there isn’t much of a chance that EA as a movement will reform in the face of criticism.
To host competitions like that was worth a try. Yet this event is worth a try as well. Many of the individuals participating in this event have a role at the CEA or another organization affiliated with it. I’ve noticed there are 5-10 other leading figures with roles at EA-affiliated organizations that have agreed to participate in this event but also haven’t commented. That means they were privately invited to participate before this event was publicly announced.
I imagine several leaders of various, leading EA-affiliated organizations (e.g., Joey Savoie, Oliver Habryka, Peter Wildeford & Marcus Davis, etc.) that already had annual budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year wouldn’t have the time, the need for extra hard-to-come-by funds, nor an elevated platform to get attention from other leaders. They already had the means to have their criticisms taken seriously without the need to participate in a contest. That’s why they wouldn’t have bothered to participate in the criticism contest before.
Yet they’ve agreed to participate in this event after they were personally and privately invited. I assume they wouldn’t have agreed in this event if they felt like there wasn’t any significant change in EA strategy could be provoked.
I hadn’t thought about that before, I think this is a great point!