I believe you when you say that you don’t benefit much from feedback from people not already deeply engaged with your work.
There’s something really noticeable to me about the manner in which you’ve publicly engaged with the EA community through writing for the past while. You mention that you put lots of care into your writing, and what’s most noticeable about this for me is that I can’t find anything that you’ve written here that anyone interested in engaging with you might feel threatened or put down by. This might sound like faint praise, but it really isn’t meant to be; I find that writing in such a way is actually somewhat resource intensive in terms of both time, and something roughly like mental energy.
(I find it’s generally easier to develop a felt sense for when someone else is paying sufficient attention to conversational nuances regarding civility than it is to point out specific examples, but your discussion of how you feel about receiving criticism is a good example of this sort of civility).
As you and James mention, public writeups can be valuable to readers, and I think this is true to a strong extent.
I’d also say that, just as importantly, writing this kind of well thought out post which uses healthy and civil conversational norms creates value from a leadership/coordination point of view. Leadership in terms of teaching skills and knowledge is important too, but I guess I’m used to thinking of those as separate from leadership in terms of exemplifying civility and openness to sharing information. If it were more common for people and foundations to write frequently and openly, and communicate with empathy towards their audiences when they did, I think the world would be the better for it. You and other senior Open Phil and GiveWell staff are very much respected in our community, and I think it’s wonderful when people are happy to set a positive example for others.
(Apologies if I’ve conflated civility with openness to sharing information; these behaviors feel quite similar to me on a gut level—possibly because they both take some effort to do, but also nudge social norms in the right direction while helping the audience.).
I believe you when you say that you don’t benefit much from feedback from people not already deeply engaged with your work.
There’s something really noticeable to me about the manner in which you’ve publicly engaged with the EA community through writing for the past while. You mention that you put lots of care into your writing, and what’s most noticeable about this for me is that I can’t find anything that you’ve written here that anyone interested in engaging with you might feel threatened or put down by. This might sound like faint praise, but it really isn’t meant to be; I find that writing in such a way is actually somewhat resource intensive in terms of both time, and something roughly like mental energy.
(I find it’s generally easier to develop a felt sense for when someone else is paying sufficient attention to conversational nuances regarding civility than it is to point out specific examples, but your discussion of how you feel about receiving criticism is a good example of this sort of civility).
As you and James mention, public writeups can be valuable to readers, and I think this is true to a strong extent.
I’d also say that, just as importantly, writing this kind of well thought out post which uses healthy and civil conversational norms creates value from a leadership/coordination point of view. Leadership in terms of teaching skills and knowledge is important too, but I guess I’m used to thinking of those as separate from leadership in terms of exemplifying civility and openness to sharing information. If it were more common for people and foundations to write frequently and openly, and communicate with empathy towards their audiences when they did, I think the world would be the better for it. You and other senior Open Phil and GiveWell staff are very much respected in our community, and I think it’s wonderful when people are happy to set a positive example for others.
(Apologies if I’ve conflated civility with openness to sharing information; these behaviors feel quite similar to me on a gut level—possibly because they both take some effort to do, but also nudge social norms in the right direction while helping the audience.).