Thanks for highlighting this potential issue. We’d like to clarify that our intention is to evaluate both the positives and negatives. In retrospect, calling our posts “critiques” may have given the wrong impression: although it’s consistent with historical usage of the word[1] it does tend to carry a negative connotation. Ultimately our evaluation of Conjecture ended up fairly negative, exacerbating this impression: we expect future posts in the series on organizations where we have a more mixed evaluation to have a greater mix of positives and negatives.
You are right that overall we focus more on negatives than positives. We believe this is justified since organizations are already incentivized to make the positive case for themselves, and routinely do so in public announcements as well as private recruitment and funding pitches. By contrast, there is little reward from highlighting negatives. Indeed, we’re publishing this anonymously (foregoing any credit we could get from bringing these issues to attention) in order to protect against retaliation.
Our goal is not to make the EA community more hostile, and we’re certainly sorry that this post made you want to engage less with the community. We would not subject an individual or a small organization to this level of scrutiny. Our series is targeted only at large organizations above a certain bar of funding. With a $10 mn budget and a team of 20+ people, we do not think that Conjecture has will be threatened by a small volunteer group of anonymous individuals. If our arguments are specious, Conjecture would only need to dedicate a small fraction of their resources to rebutting them.
We appreciate your bringing attention to these points, and will be updating out sequence description and the introduction to each post to clarify these points in the next few days.
You are right that overall we focus more on negatives than positives. We believe this is justified since organizations are already incentivized to make the positive case for themselves, and routinely do so in public announcements as well as private recruitment and funding pitches.
As a potential consumer of your critiques/evaluations, I would prefer that you distribute your focus exactly to the degree that you believe it to be warranted in light of your independent impression of the org in question, rather than try to rectify a possible imbalance by deliberately erring in the opposite direction.
Hi Pablo, thanks for you comment. We want to clarify that we aren’t trying to balance the critiques in a certain way, just that it so happens that the organizations that are next on our list will have a greater mix of positives and negatives.
Thanks for highlighting this potential issue. We’d like to clarify that our intention is to evaluate both the positives and negatives. In retrospect, calling our posts “critiques” may have given the wrong impression: although it’s consistent with historical usage of the word[1] it does tend to carry a negative connotation. Ultimately our evaluation of Conjecture ended up fairly negative, exacerbating this impression: we expect future posts in the series on organizations where we have a more mixed evaluation to have a greater mix of positives and negatives.
You are right that overall we focus more on negatives than positives. We believe this is justified since organizations are already incentivized to make the positive case for themselves, and routinely do so in public announcements as well as private recruitment and funding pitches. By contrast, there is little reward from highlighting negatives. Indeed, we’re publishing this anonymously (foregoing any credit we could get from bringing these issues to attention) in order to protect against retaliation.
Our goal is not to make the EA community more hostile, and we’re certainly sorry that this post made you want to engage less with the community. We would not subject an individual or a small organization to this level of scrutiny. Our series is targeted only at large organizations above a certain bar of funding. With a $10 mn budget and a team of 20+ people, we do not think that Conjecture has will be threatened by a small volunteer group of anonymous individuals. If our arguments are specious, Conjecture would only need to dedicate a small fraction of their resources to rebutting them.
We appreciate your bringing attention to these points, and will be updating out sequence description and the introduction to each post to clarify these points in the next few days.
“a report that discusses a situation or the writings or ideas of someone and offers a judgment about them”; Cambridge English Dictionary
As a potential consumer of your critiques/evaluations, I would prefer that you distribute your focus exactly to the degree that you believe it to be warranted in light of your independent impression of the org in question, rather than try to rectify a possible imbalance by deliberately erring in the opposite direction.
Hi Pablo, thanks for you comment. We want to clarify that we aren’t trying to balance the critiques in a certain way, just that it so happens that the organizations that are next on our list will have a greater mix of positives and negatives.