Ok—however, while this is better, this list is still very long, and quite daunting. It’s good as an index, but not as a “here’s the top priority stuff”.
I think a question you should ask yourself is “If I can only have a limited number of exchanges with people, and they have a limited time, what do I want them to learn?”. And then just mention a few things that are the best/most useful stuff you have in store.
This way people get a sample of what you can offer, and then they may be like “oh ok this might be useful, maybe I’ll dig more into that”.
Mentioning “read the entire work of this guy” or “check my entire forum” is probably not something people will readily use- because from the outside I have no way of knowing if this is a good use of my time. It would take too much effort just to check. So I need a sample that tells me “hey, that’s interesting” that pushes me to go onward.
So having a list of 1) Actionable advice 2) with the list with the best stuff to redirect people too would be useful.
You can also look at experts whether they respond to criticisms of their work
Same question—how do I check that ? There’s no under “answer section” under scientific papers or books, except some are ones. They could have answered the criticism in the - how do I check that quickly ?
For instance, from what I read, Nate Hagens did take into account the classic points put forward against the claims of Malthus (although he didn’t really quote many names). But it’s all over the book—so there’s no quick way of checking that.
I think the debate policy could become important, widespread and influential in a few years if it had a few thousand initial supporters. [...] I think the reason that doesn’t happen is that most people don’t actually seem to want it, like it or care, so getting to even 100 supporters of the idea is very hard. The issue IMO is the masses resisting, rejecting or not caring about the idea (of the few who see it, most dislike or ignore it), including at EA, for reasons I don’t understand well enough.
I think one reason most people are not interested is that they don’t feel concerned by the idea. I don’t feel concerned by it. It feels it could work for public intellectuals, but everybody else has no use for it (maybe they’re wrong, but it doesn’t feel like it). And public intellectuals are a hard to reach public.
It’s also not obvious what the benefits of the idea would be. I understand there are benefits, but there’s no visible result you can see for them, which makes it less attractive. And even if there were debates following this policy, it’s not guaranteed this would change the state of the debate: many papers have been shown as non-replicable, but they are still widely cited since the rebuttals have not publicized as much.
I get that this would be really useful if many prominent experts used that—because you could reach to them and they’d have to answer.
I think I’m going to have to quit writing anything substantive at EA due to the license change, so if you want to keep discussing with me I think you’ll have to join my forum. That sucks but I don’t see a better option.
Ok—I subscribed to the forum but I don’t know how to answer to the comment you linked to.
I’ll answer here.
Why should anyone believe me about the quality or importance of anything I say, or be interested to keep going past reading one or two things? Because they can’t point out any errors so far.
Interesting, but I don’t know if this is the right criteria. One thing is, I can’t point out to an error you made because I can’t evaluate your claims. Our discussion was on abstract points of methodology, not facts or stuff you can verify—so of course I can’t point out to an error, because there is no real result to check.
Now I know I should keep an open mind, which I do, especially since I can’t point to errors in the reasoning itself. But it’s hard to believe things I can’t verify and see by myself.
Which is why I keep asking for stuff like examples and concrete things. It’s easier to grasp these and to verify them.
If you get ideas from public intellectuals who are doing rationality wrong, then you are in trouble too, not just them. You need to do rationality things right yourself and/or find thought leaders who are doing things right. So it is each individual’s problem even if they aren’t a public intellectual.
It’s really not obvious to anyone that “not having a debate policy” is “doing rationality wrong”. Especially when the concept itself is so uncommon. If this is the criteria I really don’t know who is doing rationality right (but then again, I don’t really know who is doing rationality right). Then again, most people do not get challenged into debates. Even EAs. So it makes sense that they think such a concept is not for them.
Just to test, you’ll be happy to know I adopted a debate policy ! We’ll see what results that provides in 10 years.
I’m more interested in enabling someone to become a great thinker by a large effort, not in offering some quick wins.
Ah, ok. I see where we differ here.
I try to have the most impact I can in the world, so I judge what I do by “what positive impact did this have?” As such, quick wins that can target a larger public have a larger impact, and a higher chance of changing things, so I decided on that. Which is why this seems more important to me.
But it appears that you have a different goal in mind—you seek high-level discussions with like-minded individuals. I can understand that.
Same for the CC BY license. I know I’d have less impact if I left the forum, and what I write is there with the goal of being shared anyway, so I don’t really care about that.
Same for the CC BY license. I know I’d have less impact if I left the forum, and what I write is there with the goal of being shared anyway, so I don’t really care about that.
I have more drafts to go through so there will be more posts soon.
If you or anyone else thinks that any of them should be on the EA forum, you can post them at EA as link posts. In general, I don’t plan to link post my own stuff at EA going forward, for several reasons, but if even one person thinks it would add much value to EA, they are welcome to do it.
Ok—I subscribed to the forum but I don’t know how to answer to the comment you linked to.
To post on my forum, you have to pay $20 (once, not recurring). I know the communication on this isn’t amazing (Discourse has limited options) though there should be a banner and some info about it in a few places, but I know sometimes people still don’t see it. There’s a subscribe button on the home page but it’s in a menu on mobile instead of directly visible. It takes you to https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/s and then the payment flow is with a standard plugin that uses Stripe.
If it’s a financial burden for you, I can give you free access.
If you can afford it, then I’ll have to ask you to pay, because my general policy is if people value a discussion with me less than $20 then I shouldn’t talk with them. I skip that policy when I go participate at other communities, but I’m quitting the EA forum now.
Ok—I though the $20 were for making posts, I didn’t think it was for answering.
I don’t think I will pay $20 because all the money I earn beyond my basic needs is going to charities.
I can understand the CC BY issue, if you’ve had problems with it in the past. If you think you can have more impact by retaining property over what you write, then this is what you should do.
I don’t think I will pay $20 because all the money I earn beyond my basic needs is going to charities.
If $20 got you even a 1% chance to find out that much of your money and effort is going to the wrong charities and causes, wouldn’t that be a good deal? Error correction is high value.
I think what EA is doing by getting people to donate that much (all above basic needs) is extremely harmful to people like you. I’d believe that even if I didn’t also believe that the majority of EA causes and efforts were counter-productive.
There’s something really problematic about thinking a cause is so important that you’ll make large personal sacrifices for it, but not being willing to do much to pursue potential error correction. EA has a lot of people who will go to great lengths to help their causes – they just are so sure they’re right(?) that they don’t seem to think debating critics is very important. It’s weird. If you think every dollar you donate is a big deal, you should also think every tiny bit of risk reduction and error correction is a big deal. Those things are scarcer than dollars and can easily have larger impacts. But I come here and say I think EA is wrong about important issues, and I want to debate, and I ask if EA has any organized debate methods or even just individuals who’d be happy to debate much. And the answer was no and also no one seems to think that’s very bad or risky. That shows a widespread lack of respect for the risk of being wrong about causes that people are investing all their money above basic needs in, and a disinterest in criticism.
Anyway, if you find my ideas implausible and not worth pursuing or debating, or still don’t really value my time more than the time of the next guy you could talk with instead, then we should part ways.
Sorry—I exagerated a bit. I do not donate everything above my basic needs—still quite a good chunk but not everything.
I try to spend quite some time on error correction (and sometimes buy books instead of getting them from a library) - but in this realm I am still weighting that against, say, the impact I could obtain by donating to an animal charity instead. But I’m ready to do some spending if I feel there’s a good chance to know more and improve.
The problem here is rather that I am not sure subscribing to this forum will really allow me to improve.
I absolutely agree to your claim that EA has a lack of organized debate method, and could improve on fighting against bias. I could probably improve on that too, I think. I can agree with the “lacking methodology”.
However, to actually improve, I need practical advice on how to improve. Or an example: for instance, seeing a debate where I see that a specific claim very important in EA is not impactful (for instance, that donating to charities that do corporate outreach in factory farming), and seeing the methodology that led to this claim.
I want to point out that criticism of what exists currently is important but not enough—the way I personally work is that I need to see something better in order to update correctly. Then I can be inspired by that better approach.
For instance, I read your criticism of The Scout Mindset—it’s interesting, there are good points, for instance that the examples she gives could be really biased. But what would add even more value to your post is recommending a book which does the same thing but better (so basically, a book about how to get better at updating how we view the world, written in a clear, streamlined way, with examples and practical advice—just more rigorous).
I really like to improve. But I need practical stuff for that—and I asked for it and still feel you didn’t answer that (besides taking up a debate policy—you also made a list of actions but with no links to go deeper).
I fear it could prove difficult for you to spread your ideas even further without a greater focus on that part.
But I come here and say I think EA is wrong about important issues
By the way, have you issued claims about EA being wrong on its list of priorities ? You have done so on methodology—which is important, but not the most engaging topic, so few people interacted with it (which is too bad). But have tried to make more specific claims, like “EA is wrong about putting effort on factory farming” ?
Oh, I had wrote a full answer in your curi.us debate space, but it says I need an account (it’s weird that the “post public answer” box appears if it doesn’t even if I don’t have an account).
I think I’ll take up your offer to have an access to the forum just for a few months, please.
Oh, and thanks for the concern you’re showing me, that’s kind :)
OK, I gave CF forum posting access to your account.
You’re right that I should make the curi.us comment section clearer than the current small-print note. If you lost the text of what you wrote, I should be able to retrieve it for you from logs.
Ok—however, while this is better, this list is still very long, and quite daunting. It’s good as an index, but not as a “here’s the top priority stuff”.
I think a question you should ask yourself is “If I can only have a limited number of exchanges with people, and they have a limited time, what do I want them to learn?”. And then just mention a few things that are the best/most useful stuff you have in store.
This way people get a sample of what you can offer, and then they may be like “oh ok this might be useful, maybe I’ll dig more into that”.
Mentioning “read the entire work of this guy” or “check my entire forum” is probably not something people will readily use- because from the outside I have no way of knowing if this is a good use of my time. It would take too much effort just to check. So I need a sample that tells me “hey, that’s interesting” that pushes me to go onward.
So having a list of 1) Actionable advice 2) with the list with the best stuff to redirect people too would be useful.
Same question—how do I check that ? There’s no under “answer section” under scientific papers or books, except some are ones. They could have answered the criticism in the - how do I check that quickly ?
For instance, from what I read, Nate Hagens did take into account the classic points put forward against the claims of Malthus (although he didn’t really quote many names). But it’s all over the book—so there’s no quick way of checking that.
I think one reason most people are not interested is that they don’t feel concerned by the idea. I don’t feel concerned by it. It feels it could work for public intellectuals, but everybody else has no use for it (maybe they’re wrong, but it doesn’t feel like it). And public intellectuals are a hard to reach public.
It’s also not obvious what the benefits of the idea would be. I understand there are benefits, but there’s no visible result you can see for them, which makes it less attractive. And even if there were debates following this policy, it’s not guaranteed this would change the state of the debate: many papers have been shown as non-replicable, but they are still widely cited since the rebuttals have not publicized as much.
I get that this would be really useful if many prominent experts used that—because you could reach to them and they’d have to answer.
I replied but I deleted it after finding out about the new CC BY license requirement. You can read my reply where I’d mirrored it at https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/rational-debate-methodology-at-effective-altruism/1510/40?u=elliot
I think I’m going to have to quit writing anything substantive at EA due to the license change, so if you want to keep discussing with me I think you’ll have to join my forum. That sucks but I don’t see a better option.
Ok—I subscribed to the forum but I don’t know how to answer to the comment you linked to.
I’ll answer here.
Interesting, but I don’t know if this is the right criteria. One thing is, I can’t point out to an error you made because I can’t evaluate your claims. Our discussion was on abstract points of methodology, not facts or stuff you can verify—so of course I can’t point out to an error, because there is no real result to check.
Now I know I should keep an open mind, which I do, especially since I can’t point to errors in the reasoning itself. But it’s hard to believe things I can’t verify and see by myself.
Which is why I keep asking for stuff like examples and concrete things. It’s easier to grasp these and to verify them.
It’s really not obvious to anyone that “not having a debate policy” is “doing rationality wrong”. Especially when the concept itself is so uncommon. If this is the criteria I really don’t know who is doing rationality right (but then again, I don’t really know who is doing rationality right).
Then again, most people do not get challenged into debates. Even EAs. So it makes sense that they think such a concept is not for them.
Just to test, you’ll be happy to know I adopted a debate policy ! We’ll see what results that provides in 10 years.
Ah, ok. I see where we differ here.
I try to have the most impact I can in the world, so I judge what I do by “what positive impact did this have?” As such, quick wins that can target a larger public have a larger impact, and a higher chance of changing things, so I decided on that. Which is why this seems more important to me.
But it appears that you have a different goal in mind—you seek high-level discussions with like-minded individuals. I can understand that.
Same for the CC BY license. I know I’d have less impact if I left the forum, and what I write is there with the goal of being shared anyway, so I don’t really care about that.
I just put up 7 more EA-related articles at https://curi.us The best way to find all my EA related articles is https://curi.us/2529-effective-altruism-related-articles
I have more drafts to go through so there will be more posts soon.
If you or anyone else thinks that any of them should be on the EA forum, you can post them at EA as link posts. In general, I don’t plan to link post my own stuff at EA going forward, for several reasons, but if even one person thinks it would add much value to EA, they are welcome to do it.
To post on my forum, you have to pay $20 (once, not recurring). I know the communication on this isn’t amazing (Discourse has limited options) though there should be a banner and some info about it in a few places, but I know sometimes people still don’t see it. There’s a subscribe button on the home page but it’s in a menu on mobile instead of directly visible. It takes you to https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/s and then the payment flow is with a standard plugin that uses Stripe.
If it’s a financial burden for you, I can give you free access.
If you can afford it, then I’ll have to ask you to pay, because my general policy is if people value a discussion with me less than $20 then I shouldn’t talk with them. I skip that policy when I go participate at other communities, but I’m quitting the EA forum now.
I also just wrote more about my issues with the CC BY license at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WEAXu8yTt5XbKq4wJ/ignoring-small-errors?commentId=Z7Nh36x3brvzC3Jpm
Ok—I though the $20 were for making posts, I didn’t think it was for answering.
I don’t think I will pay $20 because all the money I earn beyond my basic needs is going to charities.
I can understand the CC BY issue, if you’ve had problems with it in the past. If you think you can have more impact by retaining property over what you write, then this is what you should do.
If $20 got you even a 1% chance to find out that much of your money and effort is going to the wrong charities and causes, wouldn’t that be a good deal? Error correction is high value.
I think what EA is doing by getting people to donate that much (all above basic needs) is extremely harmful to people like you. I’d believe that even if I didn’t also believe that the majority of EA causes and efforts were counter-productive.
There’s something really problematic about thinking a cause is so important that you’ll make large personal sacrifices for it, but not being willing to do much to pursue potential error correction. EA has a lot of people who will go to great lengths to help their causes – they just are so sure they’re right(?) that they don’t seem to think debating critics is very important. It’s weird. If you think every dollar you donate is a big deal, you should also think every tiny bit of risk reduction and error correction is a big deal. Those things are scarcer than dollars and can easily have larger impacts. But I come here and say I think EA is wrong about important issues, and I want to debate, and I ask if EA has any organized debate methods or even just individuals who’d be happy to debate much. And the answer was no and also no one seems to think that’s very bad or risky. That shows a widespread lack of respect for the risk of being wrong about causes that people are investing all their money above basic needs in, and a disinterest in criticism.
Anyway, if you find my ideas implausible and not worth pursuing or debating, or still don’t really value my time more than the time of the next guy you could talk with instead, then we should part ways.
Sorry—I exagerated a bit. I do not donate everything above my basic needs—still quite a good chunk but not everything.
I try to spend quite some time on error correction (and sometimes buy books instead of getting them from a library) - but in this realm I am still weighting that against, say, the impact I could obtain by donating to an animal charity instead. But I’m ready to do some spending if I feel there’s a good chance to know more and improve.
The problem here is rather that I am not sure subscribing to this forum will really allow me to improve.
I absolutely agree to your claim that EA has a lack of organized debate method, and could improve on fighting against bias. I could probably improve on that too, I think. I can agree with the “lacking methodology”.
However, to actually improve, I need practical advice on how to improve. Or an example: for instance, seeing a debate where I see that a specific claim very important in EA is not impactful (for instance, that donating to charities that do corporate outreach in factory farming), and seeing the methodology that led to this claim.
I want to point out that criticism of what exists currently is important but not enough—the way I personally work is that I need to see something better in order to update correctly. Then I can be inspired by that better approach.
For instance, I read your criticism of The Scout Mindset—it’s interesting, there are good points, for instance that the examples she gives could be really biased. But what would add even more value to your post is recommending a book which does the same thing but better (so basically, a book about how to get better at updating how we view the world, written in a clear, streamlined way, with examples and practical advice—just more rigorous).
I really like to improve. But I need practical stuff for that—and I asked for it and still feel you didn’t answer that (besides taking up a debate policy—you also made a list of actions but with no links to go deeper).
I fear it could prove difficult for you to spread your ideas even further without a greater focus on that part.
By the way, have you issued claims about EA being wrong on its list of priorities ? You have done so on methodology—which is important, but not the most engaging topic, so few people interacted with it (which is too bad). But have tried to make more specific claims, like “EA is wrong about putting effort on factory farming” ?
I don’t want to CC BY license my replies, so here are links. I don’t want to reply this way in general and may not do it again.
https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/elliot-temple-and-corentin-biteau-discussion/1543/5?u=elliot
https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/elliot-temple-and-corentin-biteau-discussion/1543/6?u=elliot
Oh, I had wrote a full answer in your curi.us debate space, but it says I need an account (it’s weird that the “post public answer” box appears if it doesn’t even if I don’t have an account).
I think I’ll take up your offer to have an access to the forum just for a few months, please.
Oh, and thanks for the concern you’re showing me, that’s kind :)
OK, I gave CF forum posting access to your account.
You’re right that I should make the curi.us comment section clearer than the current small-print note. If you lost the text of what you wrote, I should be able to retrieve it for you from logs.