I agree with what you say about public discourse as an “advertisement” and “critical first step,” and allude to this somewhat in the post. And we plan to continue a level of participation of public discourse that seems appropriate for that goal—which is distinct from the level of public discourse that would make it feasible for readers to understand the full thinking behind the many decisions we make.
I don’t so much agree that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit to be had in terms of getting more potentially helpful criticism from the outside. We have published lists of questions and asked for help thinking about them (see this series from 2015 as well as this recent post; another recent example is the Worldview Diversification post, which ended with an explicit call for more ideas, somewhat along the lines you suggest). We do generally thank people for their input, make changes when warranted, and let people know when we’ve made changes (recent example from GiveWell).
And the issue isn’t that we’ve gotten no input, or that all the input we’ve gotten has been low-quality. I’ve seen and had many discussions about our work with many very sharp people, including via phone and in-person research discussions. I’ve found these discussions helpful in the sense of focusing my thoughts on the most controversial premises, understanding where others are coming from, etc. But I’ve become fairly convinced—through these discussions and through simply reflecting on what kind of feedback I would be giving groups like GiveWell and Open Phil, if I still worked in finance and only engaged with their work occasionally—that it’s unrealistic to expect many novel considerations to be raised by people without a great deal of context.
Even if there isn’t low-hanging fruit, there might still be “high-hanging fruit.” It’s possible that if we put enough effort and creative thinking in, we could find a way to get a dramatic increase in the quantity and quality of feedback via public discourse. But we don’t currently have any ideas for this that seem highly promising; my overall model of the world (as discussed in the previous paragraph) predicts that it would be very difficult; and the opportunity cost of such a project is higher than it used to be.
Hi John, thanks for the thoughts.
I agree with what you say about public discourse as an “advertisement” and “critical first step,” and allude to this somewhat in the post. And we plan to continue a level of participation of public discourse that seems appropriate for that goal—which is distinct from the level of public discourse that would make it feasible for readers to understand the full thinking behind the many decisions we make.
I don’t so much agree that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit to be had in terms of getting more potentially helpful criticism from the outside. We have published lists of questions and asked for help thinking about them (see this series from 2015 as well as this recent post; another recent example is the Worldview Diversification post, which ended with an explicit call for more ideas, somewhat along the lines you suggest). We do generally thank people for their input, make changes when warranted, and let people know when we’ve made changes (recent example from GiveWell).
And the issue isn’t that we’ve gotten no input, or that all the input we’ve gotten has been low-quality. I’ve seen and had many discussions about our work with many very sharp people, including via phone and in-person research discussions. I’ve found these discussions helpful in the sense of focusing my thoughts on the most controversial premises, understanding where others are coming from, etc. But I’ve become fairly convinced—through these discussions and through simply reflecting on what kind of feedback I would be giving groups like GiveWell and Open Phil, if I still worked in finance and only engaged with their work occasionally—that it’s unrealistic to expect many novel considerations to be raised by people without a great deal of context.
Even if there isn’t low-hanging fruit, there might still be “high-hanging fruit.” It’s possible that if we put enough effort and creative thinking in, we could find a way to get a dramatic increase in the quantity and quality of feedback via public discourse. But we don’t currently have any ideas for this that seem highly promising; my overall model of the world (as discussed in the previous paragraph) predicts that it would be very difficult; and the opportunity cost of such a project is higher than it used to be.