It is unclear whether the author has put thought into the downsides, all we know is that the author did not emphasize potential downsides in the writeup.
I don’t think the person doesn’t have to put any thought into whether publishing a post like this is a good idea or not, only that they don’t have to put significant effort into publicly making a case for the benefits outweighing the cost. The burden of making that case is much larger than the burden of just thinking about it, and would be large enough to get rid of most people just asking honest questions of others in public.
They have a section on ‘why do this?’ and don’t discuss any of the obvious risks which suggests they haven’t thought properly about the issue. I think a good norm to propagate would be—people put a lot of thought into whether they should publish posts that could potentially damage the movement. Do you agree?
Suppose I am going to run a poll on ‘what’s the most offensive thing you believe—anonymous public poll for effective altruists’. (1) do you think I should have to publicly explain why I am doing this? (2) do you think I should run this poll and publish the results?
I do indeed generally think that whether their writings will “damage the movement” should not be particularly high in their list of considerations to think about when asking other people questions, or writing up their thoughts. I think being overly concerned with reputation has a long history of squashing intellectual generativity, and I very explicitly would not want people to feel like they have to think about how every sentence of theirs might reflect on the movement from the perspective of an uncharitable observer.
I prefer people first thinking about all the following type of considerations, and if the stakes seem high-enough, maybe also add reputation concerns, though the vast majority of time the author in question shouldn’t get that far down the list (and I also note that you are advocating for a policy that is in direct conflict with at least one item on this list, which I consider to be much more important than short-term reputation concerns):
Are you personally actually interested in the point you are making or the question you are asking?
Does the answer to the question you are asking, or answering, likely matter a lot in the big picture?
Is the thing that you are saying true?
Are you being personally honest about your behavior and actions?
Are you making it easier for other people to model you and to accurately predict your behavior in the future?
Does your question or answer address a felt need that you yourself, or someone you closely interacted, with actually has?
Are you propagating any actually dangerous technological insights, or other information hazards?
I would strongly object to the norm “before you post to the forum, think very hard about whether this will damage the reputation of the movement”, which I am quite confident would ensure that very little of interest would be said on this forum, since almost all interesting ideas that have come out of EA are quite controversial to many people, and also tended to have started out in their least polished and most-repugnant form.
I also remember the closing talk of EAG 2017, with the theme being “stay weird”, that explicitly advocated for being open and welcoming to people who say things that might sound strange or unpopular. I think that reflected an understanding that it is essential for EA to be very welcoming of ideas that sound off putting and heretical at first, in particular if they are otherwise likely to be punished or disincentivized by most of society.
But I got a chance to talk to [Will MacAskill] – just for a few minutes, before he had to run off and achieve something – and I was shocked at how much he knew about all the weirdest aspects of the community, and how protective he felt of them. And in his closing speech, he urged the attendees to “keep EA weird”, giving examples of times when seemingly bizarre ideas won out and became accepted by the mainstream.
I think a key example in this space would be a lot of the work by Brian Tomasik, whose writing I think is highly repugnant to large fractions of society, but has strongly influenced me in my thinking, and is what I consider to be one of the most valuable bodies of work to come out of the community (and to embody its core spirit, of taking ethical ideas seriously and seeing where they lead you), even though I strongly disagree with him on almost every one of his conclusions.
So no, I don’t think this is a good norm, and would strongly advise against elevating that consideration to the short list of things that people actually have the mental energy for to do when posting here. Maybe when you are writing an article about EA in a major newspaper, but definitely not for this forum, the most private space for public discourse that we have, and the primary space in which we can evaluate and engage with ideas in their early stages.
I think an anonymous poll of that type is probably fine, though just asking for offensive ideas is probably less likely to get valuable responses than the OP, so I feel less strongly about people being able to make that type of poll happen.
I do however still think that knowing the answers to that poll would be reasonably useful, and I still expect this to help me and others build better models of what others believe, and also think there is a good chance that a poll like this can break an equilibrium in which a silent majority is unwilling to speak up, which I think happens quite a bit and is usually bad.
So yeah, I think it would be fine to organize that poll. It’s a bit of a weird filter, so I would have some preference for the person adding an explicit disclaimer that this is an anonymous internet poll and ultimately this is primarily a tool for hypothesis generation, not a representative survey, but with that it seems likely reasonably positive to me. I don’t feel like that survey is as important as the type of survey that the OP organized, but I wouldn’t want to punish a person for organizing it, or filling it out.
It is unclear whether the author has put thought into the downsides, all we know is that the author did not emphasize potential downsides in the writeup.
I don’t think the person doesn’t have to put any thought into whether publishing a post like this is a good idea or not, only that they don’t have to put significant effort into publicly making a case for the benefits outweighing the cost. The burden of making that case is much larger than the burden of just thinking about it, and would be large enough to get rid of most people just asking honest questions of others in public.
They have a section on ‘why do this?’ and don’t discuss any of the obvious risks which suggests they haven’t thought properly about the issue. I think a good norm to propagate would be—people put a lot of thought into whether they should publish posts that could potentially damage the movement. Do you agree?
Suppose I am going to run a poll on ‘what’s the most offensive thing you believe—anonymous public poll for effective altruists’. (1) do you think I should have to publicly explain why I am doing this? (2) do you think I should run this poll and publish the results?
I do indeed generally think that whether their writings will “damage the movement” should not be particularly high in their list of considerations to think about when asking other people questions, or writing up their thoughts. I think being overly concerned with reputation has a long history of squashing intellectual generativity, and I very explicitly would not want people to feel like they have to think about how every sentence of theirs might reflect on the movement from the perspective of an uncharitable observer.
I prefer people first thinking about all the following type of considerations, and if the stakes seem high-enough, maybe also add reputation concerns, though the vast majority of time the author in question shouldn’t get that far down the list (and I also note that you are advocating for a policy that is in direct conflict with at least one item on this list, which I consider to be much more important than short-term reputation concerns):
Are you personally actually interested in the point you are making or the question you are asking?
Does the answer to the question you are asking, or answering, likely matter a lot in the big picture?
Is the thing that you are saying true?
Are you being personally honest about your behavior and actions?
Are you making it easier for other people to model you and to accurately predict your behavior in the future?
Does your question or answer address a felt need that you yourself, or someone you closely interacted, with actually has?
Are you propagating any actually dangerous technological insights, or other information hazards?
I would strongly object to the norm “before you post to the forum, think very hard about whether this will damage the reputation of the movement”, which I am quite confident would ensure that very little of interest would be said on this forum, since almost all interesting ideas that have come out of EA are quite controversial to many people, and also tended to have started out in their least polished and most-repugnant form.
I also remember the closing talk of EAG 2017, with the theme being “stay weird”, that explicitly advocated for being open and welcoming to people who say things that might sound strange or unpopular. I think that reflected an understanding that it is essential for EA to be very welcoming of ideas that sound off putting and heretical at first, in particular if they are otherwise likely to be punished or disincentivized by most of society.
From a blogpost by Scott Alexander:
I think a key example in this space would be a lot of the work by Brian Tomasik, whose writing I think is highly repugnant to large fractions of society, but has strongly influenced me in my thinking, and is what I consider to be one of the most valuable bodies of work to come out of the community (and to embody its core spirit, of taking ethical ideas seriously and seeing where they lead you), even though I strongly disagree with him on almost every one of his conclusions.
So no, I don’t think this is a good norm, and would strongly advise against elevating that consideration to the short list of things that people actually have the mental energy for to do when posting here. Maybe when you are writing an article about EA in a major newspaper, but definitely not for this forum, the most private space for public discourse that we have, and the primary space in which we can evaluate and engage with ideas in their early stages.
What do you make of my ‘offensive beliefs’ poll idea and questions?
I think an anonymous poll of that type is probably fine, though just asking for offensive ideas is probably less likely to get valuable responses than the OP, so I feel less strongly about people being able to make that type of poll happen.
I do however still think that knowing the answers to that poll would be reasonably useful, and I still expect this to help me and others build better models of what others believe, and also think there is a good chance that a poll like this can break an equilibrium in which a silent majority is unwilling to speak up, which I think happens quite a bit and is usually bad.
So yeah, I think it would be fine to organize that poll. It’s a bit of a weird filter, so I would have some preference for the person adding an explicit disclaimer that this is an anonymous internet poll and ultimately this is primarily a tool for hypothesis generation, not a representative survey, but with that it seems likely reasonably positive to me. I don’t feel like that survey is as important as the type of survey that the OP organized, but I wouldn’t want to punish a person for organizing it, or filling it out.
ok cheers. I disagree with that but feel we have reached the end of productive argument
*nods* seems good.