Kudos for commenting here, and in the rest of this thread!
Just fyi, I find your comments in threads like these a lot more informative than blog posts like the one you linked to.
I think that blog post is reasonable, but it is fairly high-level, and I find that the devil is typically in the details. I feel like I’ve seen other people, both good and bad, post high-level epistemic takes that seemed good to me, so I’m just not how much I can take away from posts like that specifically.
But comments to questions explaining specific decisions is something I find quite useful!
I’m not detailing specific decisions for the same reason I want to invest in fewer focus areas: additional information is used as additional attack surface area. The attitude in EA communities is “give an inch, fight a mile”. So I’ll choose to be less legible instead.
> The attitude in EA communities is “give an inch, fight a mile”. So I’ll choose to be less legible instead.
I assume you meant that EAs are the ones fighting OP, with things like poor comments?[1]
If you feel that way, that seems intensely bad, for both you and the rest of the community.
I’m obviously saddened that reactions from this community seem to have been so frustrating. It also generally seems unhealthy to have an epistemic environment like this.
I’m really curious about ways to make these communications go better. My impression is that: 1. Communication is very important. 2. Most (though not all) people in OP+EA are very reasonable and altruistic. 3. It is often the case that posting important content on the EA Forum is unpleasant. Sometimes the most upset people might respond, for instance, and upvotes/downvotes can be scary. I know a lot of people who very much avoid this.
This doesn’t seem like it should be an impossible knot to me. Even if it cost $10M+ to hire some professional business coaches or something, that seems very likely worth it to me. We could move key conversations to any possible platforms that might be smoother. (Conversations, podcasts, AMAs, private or public, etc).
I’m not sure if I could be useful here, but definitely happy to help if there are ideas. If there are suggestions you have for me or community members to make things go better, I’d be eager.
I personally strongly care about communication between these parties feeling open and not adversarial—I like and value both these groups (OP + EA) a lot, and it really seems like a pity (a huge amount of EV lost) if communication is seriously strained.
[1](It could also mean external journalists anti-EA doing the fighting, with blog posts)
I wrote at length about my views on epistemic confidence here https://medium.com/@moskov/works-in-progress-the-long-journey-to-doing-good-better-9dfb68e50868
Kudos for commenting here, and in the rest of this thread!
Just fyi, I find your comments in threads like these a lot more informative than blog posts like the one you linked to.
I think that blog post is reasonable, but it is fairly high-level, and I find that the devil is typically in the details. I feel like I’ve seen other people, both good and bad, post high-level epistemic takes that seemed good to me, so I’m just not how much I can take away from posts like that specifically.
But comments to questions explaining specific decisions is something I find quite useful!
I’m not detailing specific decisions for the same reason I want to invest in fewer focus areas: additional information is used as additional attack surface area. The attitude in EA communities is “give an inch, fight a mile”. So I’ll choose to be less legible instead.
Thanks for explaining your position here!
(Again, feel free to stop this at any time)
> The attitude in EA communities is “give an inch, fight a mile”. So I’ll choose to be less legible instead.
I assume you meant that EAs are the ones fighting OP, with things like poor comments?[1]
If you feel that way, that seems intensely bad, for both you and the rest of the community.
I’m obviously saddened that reactions from this community seem to have been so frustrating. It also generally seems unhealthy to have an epistemic environment like this.
I’m really curious about ways to make these communications go better. My impression is that:
1. Communication is very important.
2. Most (though not all) people in OP+EA are very reasonable and altruistic.
3. It is often the case that posting important content on the EA Forum is unpleasant. Sometimes the most upset people might respond, for instance, and upvotes/downvotes can be scary. I know a lot of people who very much avoid this.
This doesn’t seem like it should be an impossible knot to me. Even if it cost $10M+ to hire some professional business coaches or something, that seems very likely worth it to me. We could move key conversations to any possible platforms that might be smoother. (Conversations, podcasts, AMAs, private or public, etc).
I’m not sure if I could be useful here, but definitely happy to help if there are ideas. If there are suggestions you have for me or community members to make things go better, I’d be eager.
I personally strongly care about communication between these parties feeling open and not adversarial—I like and value both these groups (OP + EA) a lot, and it really seems like a pity (a huge amount of EV lost) if communication is seriously strained.
[1](It could also mean external journalists anti-EA doing the fighting, with blog posts)