I very much agree with the sentiment that our community should aim to be both honest and kind, and that thisforum is a good place to discuss how we can work together to better embody those ideals. But this post strikes me as being itself deeply unkind. It engages with a blog post written in 2007 in a way which will predictably lead readers to infer that as far as public evidence goes, this is still Holden’s view / style. On the contrary, GiveWell’s and OpenPhil’s styles are now wildly different from this post. The helpful points in your post could surely have been made without going back to a nearly 15 year old blog post to call it disingenuous, unkind, condescending and unprofessional, amongst other things.
I think part of being kind in feedback is being somewhat sparing with it. It seems preferable to critique people for mistakes they still seem to be making and can fix going forward, rather than ones made many years ago which they’re likely already aware of as mistakes.
Don’t you think asking GiveWell to either add a disclaimer to posts they disagree with or take them down is a reasonable thing to ask for? I think that could be pretty useful, personally.
EDIT: Also I didn’t infer that this is still Holden’s style because Sanjay says it’s not in the first paragraph.
Yes, these seem like reasonable things to ask for (though I don’t know feel like I have enough information to know if they’d be right to comply with the request) - emailing GW about them seem like sensible things to do. It seems like quite an escalation of the request to write a blog post in this vein though.
Yeah, that makes sense. I think I’ve seen this post referenced twice in the last few weeks as justification for people’s poor behaviour on the Forum, so I think it’s really important that there’s a clear message that people shouldn’t be really blunt and call others “crybabies” if they’re uncomfortable, but there may have been even kinder ways to approach it.
I think this conversation shows that unkind feedback is no longer welcome in the EA community though, which is a good signal to send!
I assume one of the references you mentioned is in this comment. Do you happen to remember where else it was brought up?
If I could see that comment, I’d want to leave a reply to push against it, since I think the crybaby article is terrible and not a mindset the Forum should encourage at all.
I very much agree with the sentiment that our community should aim to be both honest and kind, and that this forum is a good place to discuss how we can work together to better embody those ideals. But this post strikes me as being itself deeply unkind. It engages with a blog post written in 2007 in a way which will predictably lead readers to infer that as far as public evidence goes, this is still Holden’s view / style. On the contrary, GiveWell’s and OpenPhil’s styles are now wildly different from this post. The helpful points in your post could surely have been made without going back to a nearly 15 year old blog post to call it disingenuous, unkind, condescending and unprofessional, amongst other things.
I think part of being kind in feedback is being somewhat sparing with it. It seems preferable to critique people for mistakes they still seem to be making and can fix going forward, rather than ones made many years ago which they’re likely already aware of as mistakes.
Don’t you think asking GiveWell to either add a disclaimer to posts they disagree with or take them down is a reasonable thing to ask for? I think that could be pretty useful, personally.
EDIT: Also I didn’t infer that this is still Holden’s style because Sanjay says it’s not in the first paragraph.
Yes, these seem like reasonable things to ask for (though I don’t know feel like I have enough information to know if they’d be right to comply with the request) - emailing GW about them seem like sensible things to do. It seems like quite an escalation of the request to write a blog post in this vein though.
Yeah, that makes sense. I think I’ve seen this post referenced twice in the last few weeks as justification for people’s poor behaviour on the Forum, so I think it’s really important that there’s a clear message that people shouldn’t be really blunt and call others “crybabies” if they’re uncomfortable, but there may have been even kinder ways to approach it.
I think this conversation shows that unkind feedback is no longer welcome in the EA community though, which is a good signal to send!
I assume one of the references you mentioned is in this comment. Do you happen to remember where else it was brought up?
If I could see that comment, I’d want to leave a reply to push against it, since I think the crybaby article is terrible and not a mindset the Forum should encourage at all.
Yes, that was one! I thought there might have been another on the Robin Hanson thread but I don’t see it with a quick skim so maybe not