Hi James, thanks for sharing this. As others have said, it is a difficult thing to do. I’m actually weirdly looking forward to the EA criticisms that will come out of this FTX business. You often hear of the abstract need for criticism and “red-teaming” but not much about the actual criticisms.
I think your story chimes with a bigger difficulty in the EA movement : how small-scale effectiveness measures (ie not talking to junior EAs) end up stymying the movement on a larger scale (being unfriendly and putting people off).
I’m also worried about whether a utilitarian movement really can value integrity, friendliness etc. I can see how it might see the value in appearing to have integrity or appearing to value diversity. But if those things get in the way of effectiveness, won’t they be covertly canned?
I’m a 30y.o. in London and consider myself fairly friendly. If you want to talk about stuff, get in touch.
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?).
Hi James, thanks for sharing this. As others have said, it is a difficult thing to do. I’m actually weirdly looking forward to the EA criticisms that will come out of this FTX business. You often hear of the abstract need for criticism and “red-teaming” but not much about the actual criticisms.
I think your story chimes with a bigger difficulty in the EA movement : how small-scale effectiveness measures (ie not talking to junior EAs) end up stymying the movement on a larger scale (being unfriendly and putting people off).
I’m also worried about whether a utilitarian movement really can value integrity, friendliness etc. I can see how it might see the value in appearing to have integrity or appearing to value diversity. But if those things get in the way of effectiveness, won’t they be covertly canned?
I’m a 30y.o. in London and consider myself fairly friendly. If you want to talk about stuff, get in touch.
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?).