If this dynamic leads you to put less “trust” in our decisions, I think that’s a good thing!
I will push back a bit on this as well. I think it’s very healthy for the community to be skeptical of Open Philanthropy’s reasoning ability, and to be vigilant about trying to point out errors.
On the other hand, I don’t think it’s great if we have a dynamic where the community is skeptical of Open Philanthropy’s intentions. Basically, there’s a big difference between “OP made a mistake because they over/underrated X” and “OP made a mistake because they were politically or PR motivated and intentionally made sub-optimal grants.”
Basically, there’s a big difference between “OP made a mistake because they over/underrated X” and “OP made a mistake because they were politically or PR motivated and intentionally made sub-optimal grants.”
The synthesis position might be something like “some subset of OP made a mistake because they were subconsciously politically or PR motivated and unintentionally made sub-optimal grants.”
I think this is a reasonable candidate hypothesis, and should not be that much of a surprise, all things considered. We’re all human.
FWIW I would be surprised to see you, Linch, make a suboptimal grant out of PR motivation. I think Open Phil is capable of being in a place where it can avoid making noticeably-suboptimal grants due to bad subconscious motivations.
I agree that there’s a difference in the social dynamics of being vigilant about mistakes vs being vigilant about intentions. I agree with your point in the sense that worlds in which the community is skeptical of OP’s intentions tend to have worse social dynamics than worlds in which it isn’t. But you seem to be implying something beyond that; that people should be less skeptical of OP’s intentions given the evidence we see right now, and/or that people should be more hesitant to express that skepticism. Am I understanding you correctly, and what’s your reasoning here?
My intuition is that a norm against expressing skepticism of orgs’ intentions wouldn’t usefully reduce community skepticism, because community members can just see this norm and infer that there’s probably some private skepticism (just like I update when reading your comment and the tone of the rest of the thread). And without open communication, community members’ level of skepticism will be noisier (for example, Nuño starting out much more trusting and deferential than the EA average before he started looking into this).
I agree with you, but unfortunately I think it’s inevitable that people doubt the intentions of any privately-managed organisation. This is perhaps an argument for more democratic funding (though one could counter-argue about the motivations of democratically chosen representatives).
I will push back a bit on this as well. I think it’s very healthy for the community to be skeptical of Open Philanthropy’s reasoning ability, and to be vigilant about trying to point out errors.
On the other hand, I don’t think it’s great if we have a dynamic where the community is skeptical of Open Philanthropy’s intentions. Basically, there’s a big difference between “OP made a mistake because they over/underrated X” and “OP made a mistake because they were politically or PR motivated and intentionally made sub-optimal grants.”
The synthesis position might be something like “some subset of OP made a mistake because they were subconsciously politically or PR motivated and unintentionally made sub-optimal grants.”
I think this is a reasonable candidate hypothesis, and should not be that much of a surprise, all things considered. We’re all human.
FWIW I would be surprised to see you, Linch, make a suboptimal grant out of PR motivation. I think Open Phil is capable of being in a place where it can avoid making noticeably-suboptimal grants due to bad subconscious motivations.
I agree that there’s a difference in the social dynamics of being vigilant about mistakes vs being vigilant about intentions. I agree with your point in the sense that worlds in which the community is skeptical of OP’s intentions tend to have worse social dynamics than worlds in which it isn’t.
But you seem to be implying something beyond that; that people should be less skeptical of OP’s intentions given the evidence we see right now, and/or that people should be more hesitant to express that skepticism. Am I understanding you correctly, and what’s your reasoning here?
My intuition is that a norm against expressing skepticism of orgs’ intentions wouldn’t usefully reduce community skepticism, because community members can just see this norm and infer that there’s probably some private skepticism (just like I update when reading your comment and the tone of the rest of the thread). And without open communication, community members’ level of skepticism will be noisier (for example, Nuño starting out much more trusting and deferential than the EA average before he started looking into this).
I agree with you, but unfortunately I think it’s inevitable that people doubt the intentions of any privately-managed organisation. This is perhaps an argument for more democratic funding (though one could counter-argue about the motivations of democratically chosen representatives).