It’s hard to see what is going on and this is producing a lot of heat and speculation. I want to present an account or framing below. I want to see if this matches with your beliefs and experiences.
I like to point out the below this isn’t favorable to you, basically, but I don’t have any further deliberate goal and little knowledge in this space.
Firstly, to try to reduce the heat, I will change the situation to the cause area of global health:
Basically, Acemoglu believes the randomista approaches used in EA could be net negative for human welfare because it supplants health institutions, reduces the functionality of the state and slows economic development. It’s also hard to measure. I don’t agree and most EA don’t agree.
The account begins: imagine with dramatically increased funding, Givewell expands and hires a bunch of researchers. GiveWell is more confident and hires less orthodox researchers that seem passionate and talented.
One year later, the very first paper of one of the newly hired researchers makes a strong negative view of the randomista approach and directly criticizes GiveWell’s work.
The paper says EA global health and development is misguided and gives plausible reasons, but these closely follow Acemoglu and randomista critics. The paper makes statements that many aligned EAs find disagreeable, such as saying AMF’s work is unmeasurable. There are also direct criticisms of senior EAs that seem uncharitable.
However, there isn’t a lot of original research or claims in the paper. Also, while not stated, the paper implies the need to restructure and change the fundamental work of GiveWell, including deleting several major programs.
Accompanying the paper, the new researcher also states they had very negative experiences when pushing out the paper, including getting heavily pressured to self-censor. They state people had suggested they had bad intentions, low scholarship ability, and that people said future funding might be pulled.
They state this too on the EA Forum.
Publicly, we never hear any more substantive details about the above. This is because people don’t want to commit to writing when it’s easy to misrepresent the facts on either side, and certain claims make the benign appeal to authority and norms unworkable.
However, the truth of what happened is prosaic:
When the researcher was getting reviews, peer and senior EAs in the space pointed out that the researcher joined GiveWell knowing full well its mission and approaches, and their paper seemed mainly political, simply drawing in and recasting existing outside arguments. Given this, some explicitly questioned the intent and motivation of the researcher.
The director of Givewell research hired the researcher because the director herself wanted to push the frontier of EA global health and development into new policy approaches, maybe even make inroads to people doing work advanced by Acemoglu. Now, her newly hired researcher seems to be a wild activist. It is a nightmare communicating with them. Frustrated, the director loses sleep and doubts herself, was this her fault and incompetence?
The director knows that saying things to the researcher, like they seem unable to do original research, have no value alignment to EA approaches, or that the researcher’s path has no future in GiveWell, seem true to the director, but can make her a lifelong enemy.
The director is also unwilling or unable to be a domineering boss over an underling.
So the director punts by saying that GiveWell’s funding is dependent on executing it’s current mission, and papers directly undermining the current mission will undermine funding too.
This all happens over many meetings and days, where both sides are heated and highly emotional, and many things are said.
The researcher is a true believer against randomista, and think that millions of lives are at stake, and definitely don’t think they are unaligned (it is GiveWell that is). The researcher views all the above as hostile, a reaction of the establishment.
Question: Doyou find my account above plausible, or unfair and wildly distorted? Can you give any details or characterizations of how it differs?
What on Earth is this thinly-veiled attempt at character assassination? Do you actually have any substantive evidence that your “account” is accurate (your disclaimer at the start suggests not), or are you just fishing for a reaction?
Honestly, what did you hope to gain from this? You think this researcher is just gonna respond and say “Yep, you’re right, I’m ill-fit for my job and incapable of good academic work!” “Not favorable to you” is the understatement of the century. Not to mention your change of the area concerned in no way lowers the temperature. It just functions as CYA to avoid making forthright accusations that this researcher’s actual boss might then be called upon to publicly refute. This is one of the slimiest posts I’ve ever seen, to be perfectly honest.
Edit: I would love to see anyone who has downvoted this post explain why they think the above is defensible and how they’d react if someone did it to them.
I don’t agree with your comment on its merits, or the practice of confronting this way with an anonymous throwaway.
(It’s unclear, but it may be unwise and worthwhile for me to think about the consequent effects of this attitude) but it seems justifiable that throwaways that begin this quality sort of debate (the quality being a matter of perspective that you won’t agree upon) can be treated really dismissively.
If you want, you can write with your real name (or PM me) and I will respond, if that’s what you really want.
Also, the downvote(s) on your comment(s) are mine.
I would be more worried about making comments of the kind that you produced above under my real name. Your comment was full of highly negative accusations about a named poster’s professional life and academic capabilities, veiled under utterly transparent hypotheticals, made in public. You offered no evidence whatsoever for any of these accusations nor did you even attempt to justify why that sort of engagement was warranted. Airing such negative judgments publicly and about a named person is an extremely serious matter whether you have evidence or not. I don’t think that you treated it with a fraction of the seriousness it deserves.
I honestly have negative interest in telling you my real name after seeing how you treat others in public, much less making an account here with my real name attached to it. I would prefer to limit your ability to do reputational damage (to me or others) on spurious or non-existent grounds as far as possible. I am honestly extremely curious as to why you thought what you did above was remotely acceptable, but I am not willing to put myself in the line of fire to find out.
Well, thanks for that. Admittedly, the downvotes seemed like good evidence to the contrary.
Unfortunately, I also couldn’t really give you my real name even if I wanted to, because the name of this account shares the name of my online persona elsewhere and I place a very high premium on anonymity. If I had thought to give it a different name, then I’d probably just PM you my real name. But I didn’t think that far ahead.
Anyway, whatever else may be, I’m sorry that I came in so hot. Sometimes I just see something that really sets me off and I consequently approach things too aggressively for my own (and others’) good.
Many of the comments in this comment chain, including the original narrative I wrote, which I view as closer to reality (as opposed to the implicit, difficult, narrative I see in the OP, which seems highly motivated and for which I find evidence that it is contradicted in the subsequent comments by the OP) has been visited by likely a single person, who has made strong downvotes and strong upvotes, of magnitude 9.
So probably a single person has come in and used a strong upvote or downvote of magnitude 9.
While I am totally petty and vain, I don’t usually comment on upvotes or downvotes, because it seems sort of unseemly (unless it is hilarious to do so).
In this case, because of the way strong upvotes are designed, there appears to be literally only 4 accounts who could have this ability, and their judgement is well respected.
So I address you directly: If you have information about this, especially object level information about the underlying situation relative to my original narrative, it would be great to discuss.
The underlying motivation is that truth is a thing, and in some sense having the recent commentor come in and stir this up, was useful.
In an even deeper sense, as we all agree, EA isn’t a social club for people who got here first. EA doesn’t belong to you or me, or even a large subset of the original founders (to be clear, for all intents and purposes, all reasonable paths will include their leadership and guidance for a long time).
Importantly, I think some good operationalizations of the above perspective, combined with awareness of all the possible instantiations of EA, and the composition of people and attitudes, would rationalize a different tone and culture than exists.
So, RE: “I would be more worried about making comments of the kind that you produced above under my real name.” I think could be exactly, perfectly, the opposite of what is true, yet is one of the comments you strong upvoted.
To be even more direct I suspect, but I am unsure, that the culture of discussion in EA has accumulated defects that are costly to effectiveness and truth (under the direct tenure of one of the four people who could have voted +/-9 by the way).
So the most important topic here might not be about the OP at all, which I view as just one instance of an ongoing issue—in a deep sense, it was really about the very person who came in and strong voted!
I’m not sure you see this (or that I see this fully either).
From the very beginning, I specifically constructed this account and persona to interrogate whether this is true, or something.
Circling back to the original topic. The above perspective, the related hysteresis, the consequent effects, implies that the existence of my narrative in this thread, or myself, should be challenged or removed if it’s wrong.
But I can’t really elaborate on my narrative. I can’t defend myself, because it slags the OP, which isn’t appropriate and opens wounds, which is unfair and harmful to everyone involved (but I sort of hoped the new commentor was the OP or a friend, which would have waived this and that’s why I wanted their identity).
But you, the strong downvoter/upvoter, +9 dude, this is a really promising line of discussion. So come and reply?
So, there is some normal sense where I might have a reason to want to them “legitimize” their criticism by identifying themselves (this reason is debatable, it could be weak or very strong).
But the first comments from this person aren’t just vitriolic and a personal attack, they are adamant demands for a significant amount of writing—they disagree greatly with me and so the explanation needed to bridge the opinion could be very long.
The content of this writing has consequences, which is hidden to people without the explanation.
Here, I have special additional reasons to know their identity, because the best way to communicate the underlying events and what my comment meant, depend on who they are.
Some explanations or accounts will be inflammatory, and others useless. For example, the person could be entirely new to EA, or be the OP themselves. Certain explanations, justification or “evidence”, could be hurtful and stir up wounds. Others won’t make sense at all.
In this situation, it’s reasonable to see the commenters demands impose the further, additional burdens on me of having to weigh this harm (just to defend my comment), which is hidden from them. Separately and additionally, I probably view this as particularly unfair, as from my perspective, I think the very reason/issue why I commented and why things are so problematic/sensitive, was because the original environment around the post was inflammatory and hard to approach by design.
Hmm I think I have some different ideas about discussion norms but not sure if I understand them coherently myself/think it’s worth going into. I agree it’s often worthwhile to not engage.
I think the very reason/issue why I commented and why things are so problematic/sensitive, was because the original environment around the post was inflammatory and hard to approach by design.
It’s hard to see what is going on and this is producing a lot of heat and speculation. I want to present an account or framing below. I want to see if this matches with your beliefs and experiences.
I like to point out the below this isn’t favorable to you, basically, but I don’t have any further deliberate goal and little knowledge in this space.
Firstly, to try to reduce the heat, I will change the situation to the cause area of global health:
For background, note that Daron Acemoglu, who is really formidable, has criticized EA global health and development.
Basically, Acemoglu believes the randomista approaches used in EA could be net negative for human welfare because it supplants health institutions, reduces the functionality of the state and slows economic development. It’s also hard to measure. I don’t agree and most EA don’t agree.
The account begins: imagine with dramatically increased funding, Givewell expands and hires a bunch of researchers. GiveWell is more confident and hires less orthodox researchers that seem passionate and talented.
One year later, the very first paper of one of the newly hired researchers makes a strong negative view of the randomista approach and directly criticizes GiveWell’s work.
The paper says EA global health and development is misguided and gives plausible reasons, but these closely follow Acemoglu and randomista critics. The paper makes statements that many aligned EAs find disagreeable, such as saying AMF’s work is unmeasurable. There are also direct criticisms of senior EAs that seem uncharitable.
However, there isn’t a lot of original research or claims in the paper. Also, while not stated, the paper implies the need to restructure and change the fundamental work of GiveWell, including deleting several major programs.
Accompanying the paper, the new researcher also states they had very negative experiences when pushing out the paper, including getting heavily pressured to self-censor. They state people had suggested they had bad intentions, low scholarship ability, and that people said future funding might be pulled.
They state this too on the EA Forum.
Publicly, we never hear any more substantive details about the above. This is because people don’t want to commit to writing when it’s easy to misrepresent the facts on either side, and certain claims make the benign appeal to authority and norms unworkable.
However, the truth of what happened is prosaic:
When the researcher was getting reviews, peer and senior EAs in the space pointed out that the researcher joined GiveWell knowing full well its mission and approaches, and their paper seemed mainly political, simply drawing in and recasting existing outside arguments. Given this, some explicitly questioned the intent and motivation of the researcher.
The director of Givewell research hired the researcher because the director herself wanted to push the frontier of EA global health and development into new policy approaches, maybe even make inroads to people doing work advanced by Acemoglu. Now, her newly hired researcher seems to be a wild activist. It is a nightmare communicating with them. Frustrated, the director loses sleep and doubts herself, was this her fault and incompetence?
The director knows that saying things to the researcher, like they seem unable to do original research, have no value alignment to EA approaches, or that the researcher’s path has no future in GiveWell, seem true to the director, but can make her a lifelong enemy.
The director is also unwilling or unable to be a domineering boss over an underling.
So the director punts by saying that GiveWell’s funding is dependent on executing it’s current mission, and papers directly undermining the current mission will undermine funding too.
This all happens over many meetings and days, where both sides are heated and highly emotional, and many things are said.
The researcher is a true believer against randomista, and think that millions of lives are at stake, and definitely don’t think they are unaligned (it is GiveWell that is). The researcher views all the above as hostile, a reaction of the establishment.
Question: Do you find my account above plausible, or unfair and wildly distorted? Can you give any details or characterizations of how it differs?
What on Earth is this thinly-veiled attempt at character assassination? Do you actually have any substantive evidence that your “account” is accurate (your disclaimer at the start suggests not), or are you just fishing for a reaction?
Honestly, what did you hope to gain from this? You think this researcher is just gonna respond and say “Yep, you’re right, I’m ill-fit for my job and incapable of good academic work!” “Not favorable to you” is the understatement of the century. Not to mention your change of the area concerned in no way lowers the temperature. It just functions as CYA to avoid making forthright accusations that this researcher’s actual boss might then be called upon to publicly refute. This is one of the slimiest posts I’ve ever seen, to be perfectly honest.
Edit: I would love to see anyone who has downvoted this post explain why they think the above is defensible and how they’d react if someone did it to them.
Nah
Nah what? Nah you don’t have any evidence? That would confirm my prior.
Now why don’t you explain what you hoped to get out of that comment besides being grossly insulting to someone you don’t know on no evidential basis.
I don’t agree with your comment on its merits, or the practice of confronting this way with an anonymous throwaway.
(It’s unclear, but it may be unwise and worthwhile for me to think about the consequent effects of this attitude) but it seems justifiable that throwaways that begin this quality sort of debate (the quality being a matter of perspective that you won’t agree upon) can be treated really dismissively.
If you want, you can write with your real name (or PM me) and I will respond, if that’s what you really want.
Also, the downvote(s) on your comment(s) are mine.
I would be more worried about making comments of the kind that you produced above under my real name. Your comment was full of highly negative accusations about a named poster’s professional life and academic capabilities, veiled under utterly transparent hypotheticals, made in public. You offered no evidence whatsoever for any of these accusations nor did you even attempt to justify why that sort of engagement was warranted. Airing such negative judgments publicly and about a named person is an extremely serious matter whether you have evidence or not. I don’t think that you treated it with a fraction of the seriousness it deserves.
I honestly have negative interest in telling you my real name after seeing how you treat others in public, much less making an account here with my real name attached to it. I would prefer to limit your ability to do reputational damage (to me or others) on spurious or non-existent grounds as far as possible. I am honestly extremely curious as to why you thought what you did above was remotely acceptable, but I am not willing to put myself in the line of fire to find out.
I think that you think I don’t like your comments, but this isn’t close to true.
I really hope you will put your real name so I can give a real response.
(I wouldn’t share your name and generally wouldn’t use PII if you PMed me.)
Well, thanks for that. Admittedly, the downvotes seemed like good evidence to the contrary.
Unfortunately, I also couldn’t really give you my real name even if I wanted to, because the name of this account shares the name of my online persona elsewhere and I place a very high premium on anonymity. If I had thought to give it a different name, then I’d probably just PM you my real name. But I didn’t think that far ahead.
Anyway, whatever else may be, I’m sorry that I came in so hot. Sometimes I just see something that really sets me off and I consequently approach things too aggressively for my own (and others’) good.
Many of the comments in this comment chain, including the original narrative I wrote, which I view as closer to reality (as opposed to the implicit, difficult, narrative I see in the OP, which seems highly motivated and for which I find evidence that it is contradicted in the subsequent comments by the OP) has been visited by likely a single person, who has made strong downvotes and strong upvotes, of magnitude 9.
So probably a single person has come in and used a strong upvote or downvote of magnitude 9.
While I am totally petty and vain, I don’t usually comment on upvotes or downvotes, because it seems sort of unseemly (unless it is hilarious to do so).
In this case, because of the way strong upvotes are designed, there appears to be literally only 4 accounts who could have this ability, and their judgement is well respected.
So I address you directly: If you have information about this, especially object level information about the underlying situation relative to my original narrative, it would be great to discuss.
The underlying motivation is that truth is a thing, and in some sense having the recent commentor come in and stir this up, was useful.
In an even deeper sense, as we all agree, EA isn’t a social club for people who got here first. EA doesn’t belong to you or me, or even a large subset of the original founders (to be clear, for all intents and purposes, all reasonable paths will include their leadership and guidance for a long time).
Importantly, I think some good operationalizations of the above perspective, combined with awareness of all the possible instantiations of EA, and the composition of people and attitudes, would rationalize a different tone and culture than exists.
So, RE: “I would be more worried about making comments of the kind that you produced above under my real name.” I think could be exactly, perfectly, the opposite of what is true, yet is one of the comments you strong upvoted.
To be even more direct I suspect, but I am unsure, that the culture of discussion in EA has accumulated defects that are costly to effectiveness and truth (under the direct tenure of one of the four people who could have voted +/-9 by the way).
So the most important topic here might not be about the OP at all, which I view as just one instance of an ongoing issue—in a deep sense, it was really about the very person who came in and strong voted!
I’m not sure you see this (or that I see this fully either).
From the very beginning, I specifically constructed this account and persona to interrogate whether this is true, or something.
Circling back to the original topic. The above perspective, the related hysteresis, the consequent effects, implies that the existence of my narrative in this thread, or myself, should be challenged or removed if it’s wrong.
But I can’t really elaborate on my narrative. I can’t defend myself, because it slags the OP, which isn’t appropriate and opens wounds, which is unfair and harmful to everyone involved (but I sort of hoped the new commentor was the OP or a friend, which would have waived this and that’s why I wanted their identity).
But you, the strong downvoter/upvoter, +9 dude, this is a really promising line of discussion. So come and reply?
I think it’s reasonable to not want to respond to an anonymous throwaway, but not reasonable to ask them to PM you their real name.
So, there is some normal sense where I might have a reason to want to them “legitimize” their criticism by identifying themselves (this reason is debatable, it could be weak or very strong).
But the first comments from this person aren’t just vitriolic and a personal attack, they are adamant demands for a significant amount of writing—they disagree greatly with me and so the explanation needed to bridge the opinion could be very long.
The content of this writing has consequences, which is hidden to people without the explanation.
Here, I have special additional reasons to know their identity, because the best way to communicate the underlying events and what my comment meant, depend on who they are.
Some explanations or accounts will be inflammatory, and others useless. For example, the person could be entirely new to EA, or be the OP themselves. Certain explanations, justification or “evidence”, could be hurtful and stir up wounds. Others won’t make sense at all.
In this situation, it’s reasonable to see the commenters demands impose the further, additional burdens on me of having to weigh this harm (just to defend my comment), which is hidden from them. Separately and additionally, I probably view this as particularly unfair, as from my perspective, I think the very reason/issue why I commented and why things are so problematic/sensitive, was because the original environment around the post was inflammatory and hard to approach by design.
Hmm I think I have some different ideas about discussion norms but not sure if I understand them coherently myself/think it’s worth going into. I agree it’s often worthwhile to not engage.
I agree with this.