I’m watching a few EAG videos now and repeatedly witness the word ‘need’ get used for things. Like, “our industry needs people to research topic X”, or “we need more money to field X”.
I’m still not sure what need actually means, but have found that when it’s used it’s often essentially a logical fallacy. For instance, compare the phrase,
“we need people to research topic X”,
with the phrase,
“we believe there’s a level of cost-effective opportunity for research topic X”.
“Need” is not really a falsifiable or arguable word and generally makes things seem more important than they actually are.
There’s a lot of BS that goes on in the typical conference circuit. The EA events bring in speakers of other events who bring in a lot of this with them. I would propose that we shouldn’t allow this to be an excuse for poor thinking, and should instead act as encouragement to these people to be more honest, at least for EA events. It could also help as a reminder for how dishonest other events are.
I could also imagine one way of dealing with this ban while also not requiring revisions by people with standard talks, would be to have different classes of talks. Talks given by EAs, and talks given by people who do not agree with the main set of EA principles. At least this would make it obvious and get the same point across.
A ban on misused words like ‘need’ (in talks)
I’m watching a few EAG videos now and repeatedly witness the word ‘need’ get used for things. Like, “our industry needs people to research topic X”, or “we need more money to field X”.
I’m still not sure what need actually means, but have found that when it’s used it’s often essentially a logical fallacy. For instance, compare the phrase, “we need people to research topic X”, with the phrase, “we believe there’s a level of cost-effective opportunity for research topic X”.
“Need” is not really a falsifiable or arguable word and generally makes things seem more important than they actually are.
There’s a lot of BS that goes on in the typical conference circuit. The EA events bring in speakers of other events who bring in a lot of this with them. I would propose that we shouldn’t allow this to be an excuse for poor thinking, and should instead act as encouragement to these people to be more honest, at least for EA events. It could also help as a reminder for how dishonest other events are.
Wait, where do you watch the EAG videos? They’re old ones I presume?
A few are on fora.tv http://library.fora.tv/2016/08/07/past_present_and_future_of_ea
I could also imagine one way of dealing with this ban while also not requiring revisions by people with standard talks, would be to have different classes of talks. Talks given by EAs, and talks given by people who do not agree with the main set of EA principles. At least this would make it obvious and get the same point across.