Perhaps this was unfair of me. I mean as a casual userof EA social media spaces before last week, I came across non-strawman criticisms, or even expressions of personal doubt, quite rarely. Like any movement, I think there’s a hidden pull to virtue-signal (even when this is explicitly recognised as a danger), and it certainly seems like the FTX thing has given more people confidence to air reservations they had been keeping to themselves (and I don’t mean the people saying “I saw this coming and didn’t tell anyone”).
Thanks to pointing me to the red-teaming contest. I read the summaries of the 3 top winners, and I guess I was using the wrong definition of red-teaming in my comment here. I’m interested in fundamental criticisms of EA as a philosophy and as a movement. Not necessarily because I’m looking to disavow EA, but because a) I want to know how best to communicate it to a sceptical audience and b) I think such criticisms can be useful in deciding what to prioritise in meta-EA.
I guess the way I see it, the more intellectually solid a movement is, the more effort it is to produce a solid criticism. So if a movement is intellectually solid, a lot of the criticism on social media will end up being very bad b/c social media pushes towards lower effort than other formats such as the EA forum.
(Another way of putting this: If you’re going to go to all the effort of making a proper critique, why post it on fb vs the EA forum where you’ll geet deeper engagement?).
I’m confused about this. A lot of criticisms and red-teaming occurred during the recent competition. Maybe you could clarify what you meant?
Perhaps this was unfair of me. I mean as a casual user of EA social media spaces before last week, I came across non-strawman criticisms, or even expressions of personal doubt, quite rarely. Like any movement, I think there’s a hidden pull to virtue-signal (even when this is explicitly recognised as a danger), and it certainly seems like the FTX thing has given more people confidence to air reservations they had been keeping to themselves (and I don’t mean the people saying “I saw this coming and didn’t tell anyone”).
Thanks to pointing me to the red-teaming contest. I read the summaries of the 3 top winners, and I guess I was using the wrong definition of red-teaming in my comment here. I’m interested in fundamental criticisms of EA as a philosophy and as a movement. Not necessarily because I’m looking to disavow EA, but because a) I want to know how best to communicate it to a sceptical audience and b) I think such criticisms can be useful in deciding what to prioritise in meta-EA.
I guess the way I see it, the more intellectually solid a movement is, the more effort it is to produce a solid criticism. So if a movement is intellectually solid, a lot of the criticism on social media will end up being very bad b/c social media pushes towards lower effort than other formats such as the EA forum.
(Another way of putting this: If you’re going to go to all the effort of making a proper critique, why post it on fb vs the EA forum where you’ll geet deeper engagement?).