Thanks for writing this post, Carla and Luke. I am sorry to hear about your experiences, that sounds very challenging.
I also understand why people would object to your work, as many may have had high confidence in it having negative expected value.
It was surely a very difficult situation for all parties.
I am glad you are voicing concerns, I like posts like this.
At the same time, what occurred mostly sounded reasonable to me, even if it was unpleasant. Strong opinions were expressed, concerns were made salient, people may have been defensive or acted with some self-interest, but no one was forced to do anything. Now the paper and your comments are out, and we can read and react to them. I have heard much worse in other academic and professional settings.
I think that it’s unavoidable that there will be a lot of strong disagreement in the EA community. It seems unavoidable in any group of diverse individuals who are passionately working together towards important goals. Of course, we should try to handle conflict well, but we shouldn’t expect that it can ever be avoided or be completely pleasant.
I also understand why people don’t express criticism publicly, both in EA and outside. It’s probably not ideal, but it’s a pretty reasonable failing for a community to have some sacred values/views and for people in that community to be hesitant about challenging them. It’s something I’d like to see improve, but not something that I see as a major issue in the EA community. I seek out criticism of EA all the time and then read it when I find it and update. I have had much worse experience in other communities.
Finally, I read the paper. Thank you for caring enough about us and our future to write and publish it. I look forward to seeing the response and having further updates.
[Edit: I want to communicate that I am uncertain in the views I expressed above. I would welcome push back—maybe I am missing something.]
At the same time, what occurred mostly sounded reasonable to me, even if it was unpleasant. Strong opinions were expressed, concerns were made salient, people may have been defensive or acted with some self-interest, but no one was forced to do anything. Now the paper and your comments are out, and we can read and react to them. I have heard much worse in other academic and professional settings.
I don’t think “the work got published, so the censorship couldn’t have been that bad” really makes sense as a reaction to claims of censorship. You won’t see work that doesn’t get published, so this is basically a catch-22 (either it gets published, in which cases there isn’t censorship, or it doesn’t get published, in which case no one ever hears about it).
Also, most censorship is soft rather than hard, and comes via chilling effects.
(I’m not intending this response to make any further object-level claims about the current situation, just that the quoted argument is not a good argument.)
I agree with most of what you say other than it being reasonable for some people to have acted in self-interest.
While I do think it is unavoidable that there will be attempts to shut down certain ideas and arguments out of the self-interest of some EAs, I think it’s important that we have a very low tolerance of this.
I agree with most of what you say other than it being reasonable for some people to have acted in self-interest.
I intended to present the-self interest part as bad, sorry.
While I do think it is unavoidable that there will be attempts to shut down certain ideas and arguments out of the self-interest of some EAs, I think it’s important that we have a very low tolerance of this.
I agree, but I don’t see this as ‘shutting down’ arguments. Can I just check that I am not misreading what happened?
We were told by some that our critique is invalid because the community is already very cognitively diverse and in fact welcomes criticism. They also told us that there is no TUA, and if the approach does exist then it certainly isn’t dominant. It was these same people that then tried to prevent this paper from being published. They did so largely out of fear that publishing might offend key funders who are aligned with the TUA.
These individuals—often senior scholars within the field—told us in private that they were concerned that any critique of central figures in EA would result in an inability to secure funding from EA sources, such as OpenPhilanthropy. We don’t know if these concerns are warranted. Nonetheless, any field that operates under such a chilling effect is neither free nor fair. Having a handful of wealthy donors and their advisors dictate the evolution of an entire field is bad epistemics at best and corruption at worst.
The greatest predictor of how negatively a reviewer would react to the paper was their personal identification with EA. Writing a critical piece should not incur negative consequences on one’s career options, personal life, and social connections in a community that is supposedly great at inviting and accepting criticism.
My interpretation from this was that they were strongly discouraged from publishing the paper by people who disagreed with what the paper was claiming (who may or may not have also been self-interested in maintaining their funding) and/or predicted negative outcomes from the work.
They were still able to publish the paper and participate in the community. No-one was ‘shut down’ in the sense that someone forced them not to publish it (though they may have strongly advised against it). Is this correct? Maybe I misunderstand what “prevent this paper from being published” actually entailed.
I think I interpreted this as ‘pressure’ to not publish, and my definition of ‘shutting down ideas’ includes pressure / strong advice against publishing them, while yours is restricted to forcing people not to publish them.
Quick thoughts from my phone:
Thanks for writing this post, Carla and Luke. I am sorry to hear about your experiences, that sounds very challenging.
I also understand why people would object to your work, as many may have had high confidence in it having negative expected value.
It was surely a very difficult situation for all parties.
I am glad you are voicing concerns, I like posts like this.
At the same time, what occurred mostly sounded reasonable to me, even if it was unpleasant. Strong opinions were expressed, concerns were made salient, people may have been defensive or acted with some self-interest, but no one was forced to do anything. Now the paper and your comments are out, and we can read and react to them. I have heard much worse in other academic and professional settings.
I think that it’s unavoidable that there will be a lot of strong disagreement in the EA community. It seems unavoidable in any group of diverse individuals who are passionately working together towards important goals. Of course, we should try to handle conflict well, but we shouldn’t expect that it can ever be avoided or be completely pleasant.
I also understand why people don’t express criticism publicly, both in EA and outside. It’s probably not ideal, but it’s a pretty reasonable failing for a community to have some sacred values/views and for people in that community to be hesitant about challenging them. It’s something I’d like to see improve, but not something that I see as a major issue in the EA community. I seek out criticism of EA all the time and then read it when I find it and update. I have had much worse experience in other communities.
Finally, I read the paper. Thank you for caring enough about us and our future to write and publish it. I look forward to seeing the response and having further updates.
[Edit: I want to communicate that I am uncertain in the views I expressed above. I would welcome push back—maybe I am missing something.]
I don’t think “the work got published, so the censorship couldn’t have been that bad” really makes sense as a reaction to claims of censorship. You won’t see work that doesn’t get published, so this is basically a catch-22 (either it gets published, in which cases there isn’t censorship, or it doesn’t get published, in which case no one ever hears about it).
Also, most censorship is soft rather than hard, and comes via chilling effects.
(I’m not intending this response to make any further object-level claims about the current situation, just that the quoted argument is not a good argument.)
I agree with most of what you say other than it being reasonable for some people to have acted in self-interest.
While I do think it is unavoidable that there will be attempts to shut down certain ideas and arguments out of the self-interest of some EAs, I think it’s important that we have a very low tolerance of this.
Thanks for commenting :)
I intended to present the-self interest part as bad, sorry.
I agree, but I don’t see this as ‘shutting down’ arguments. Can I just check that I am not misreading what happened?
My interpretation from this was that they were strongly discouraged from publishing the paper by people who disagreed with what the paper was claiming (who may or may not have also been self-interested in maintaining their funding) and/or predicted negative outcomes from the work.
They were still able to publish the paper and participate in the community. No-one was ‘shut down’ in the sense that someone forced them not to publish it (though they may have strongly advised against it). Is this correct? Maybe I misunderstand what “prevent this paper from being published” actually entailed.
Ah okay.
I think I interpreted this as ‘pressure’ to not publish, and my definition of ‘shutting down ideas’ includes pressure / strong advice against publishing them, while yours is restricted to forcing people not to publish them.