I downvoted because I found the tone negative and hyperbolic. It won’t kill the forum. I think a good norm the community is to always steelman before criticising. This would make us more welcoming and constructive.
Also there’s now 14 comments debating this issue and 0 comments debating how much funding CEA should get, which is a vastly more important issue. So this comment derailed the thread.
If the CEA is seriously seeking feedback from unaligned EA community members on how much funding the CEA should receive, I have all kinds of thoughts on this I’ll write up as a top-level post when I get the chance.
I agree that, other things equal, we want to encourage critics to be constructive. All things considered, however, I’m not sure we should hold criticism to a higher standard, as we seem to be doing. This would result in higher quality criticism, but also in less total criticism.
In addition, the standard to which criticism is held is often influenced by irrelevant considerations, like the status of the person or organization being criticized. So in practice I would expect such a norm to stifle certain types of criticism more than others, over and above reducing criticism in general.
I think we should hold criticism to a higher standard, because criticism has more costs. Negative things are much more memorable than positive things. People often remember criticism, perhaps just on a gut level, even if it’s shown to be wrong later in the thread.
I downvoted because I found the tone negative and hyperbolic. It won’t kill the forum. I think a good norm the community is to always steelman before criticising. This would make us more welcoming and constructive.
Also there’s now 14 comments debating this issue and 0 comments debating how much funding CEA should get, which is a vastly more important issue. So this comment derailed the thread.
If the CEA is seriously seeking feedback from unaligned EA community members on how much funding the CEA should receive, I have all kinds of thoughts on this I’ll write up as a top-level post when I get the chance.
I agree that, other things equal, we want to encourage critics to be constructive. All things considered, however, I’m not sure we should hold criticism to a higher standard, as we seem to be doing. This would result in higher quality criticism, but also in less total criticism.
In addition, the standard to which criticism is held is often influenced by irrelevant considerations, like the status of the person or organization being criticized. So in practice I would expect such a norm to stifle certain types of criticism more than others, over and above reducing criticism in general.
I think we should hold criticism to a higher standard, because criticism has more costs. Negative things are much more memorable than positive things. People often remember criticism, perhaps just on a gut level, even if it’s shown to be wrong later in the thread.