Appendix 1.[1] Reasons to run criticism past the people whose work you’re criticizing, and reasons to not do it
Please feel free to suggest more!
Reasons to run it past the people whose work you’re criticizing (the “doers”):
The “doers” get a heads-up and don’t have to scramble to pull together a response (explaining where they disagree or how they see things, or just thanking you, etc.), and readers might come away better informed as a result.
The timeliness of responses to public criticism sometimes matters; readers might not see a response posted later. So when criticism is posted without a heads-up, the people who were criticized often drop what they were doing to respond, which often has extra costs.
If the response is delayed and the criticism you’ve shared is even slightly off, readers who don’t see a response posted later might come away with incorrect impressions of the work being criticized.
Responses like this often take time, especially if multiple people need to discuss the response (e.g. because facts are spread out across different people, or if there’s a legal issue).
Scrambling can also be unnecessarily stressful.
You might improve your criticism before you publish it.
It’s pretty easy to accidentally write something incorrect or misleading when criticizing someone’s work.
If they respond, you might discover that:
Your criticism was premised on something incorrect, or missing information. I think it would be interesting to publish a null result in that situation: “I thought that [X bad thing was happening], but it turns out that [something else].”
There’s information you were missing (or other considerations), but you still disagree on something important. Your criticism might become a disagreement about tradeoffs or something else.
Running criticism past the people whose work is criticized supports a more cooperative environment between people writing on the Forum and people doing stuff that could be criticized in EA — and I think that this cooperative environment leads to many other good things.
When you give “doers” a heads up, they might feel more like you’re working with them. When this is the norm, “doers” in EA are less likely to worry that someone might criticize them at any moment based on a misconception or based on how something looks (which is stressful!).
They’re more likely to react positively to criticism in the future.
Readers see that you ran your criticism past the “doers” and see the doers’ response, which can lead to a sense that the criticism is collaborative, and a reframing of the criticism as help for the project that is being criticized, rather than a holistic indictment of the doers. (If that’s the case.)
Reasons to NOT run it past the people whose work you’re criticizing:
If you expect them to try to pressure you into not posting your criticism, you might want to avoid sharing it with them in advance.
If this happens, you might also want to consider getting in touch with someone.
It might add too much work for you.
It will probably delay the publication of your criticism a bit, and that’s a real cost. If your criticism is time-sensitive, you might not want to wait.
You might worry that you’ll get dragged into an extended back-and-forth, and either have to cut it off abruptly in a way that might be stressful, or waste a lot of time and energy.
If you have absolutely no reason to believe that the people whose work you’re criticizing are acting in good faith, you might not bother reaching out to them first.
A strong norm of doing this can have negative effects on the network, and doing it can reinforce the norm.
One of the significant negative effects a nomr like this might have is that people might feel like they have to do this, and if they don’t want to, that might lead to some criticisms never getting published.
I think this is the strongest point against having this as a norm.
There are some other effects. For instance, the definition of “criticism” is pretty vague, and maybe we’d end up with some odd misrepresentations of content if we support this norm. (E.g. people asking insinuating questions instead of straightforwardly criticizing because they don’t want their content to be labeled as criticism.) Or maybe some criticisms get too softened, and readers won’t realize that the author is trying to say that a project is totally counterproductive.
These are pretty rough notes that I pulled out to make the main post easier to use as a guide. The comment format is somewhat awkward, but it might work — I’m curious to hear how people feel about it.
Appendix 1.[1] Reasons to run criticism past the people whose work you’re criticizing, and reasons to not do it
Please feel free to suggest more!
Reasons to run it past the people whose work you’re criticizing (the “doers”):
The “doers” get a heads-up and don’t have to scramble to pull together a response (explaining where they disagree or how they see things, or just thanking you, etc.), and readers might come away better informed as a result.
The timeliness of responses to public criticism sometimes matters; readers might not see a response posted later. So when criticism is posted without a heads-up, the people who were criticized often drop what they were doing to respond, which often has extra costs.
If the response is delayed and the criticism you’ve shared is even slightly off, readers who don’t see a response posted later might come away with incorrect impressions of the work being criticized.
Responses like this often take time, especially if multiple people need to discuss the response (e.g. because facts are spread out across different people, or if there’s a legal issue).
Scrambling can also be unnecessarily stressful.
You might improve your criticism before you publish it.
It’s pretty easy to accidentally write something incorrect or misleading when criticizing someone’s work.
If they respond, you might discover that:
Your criticism was premised on something incorrect, or missing information. I think it would be interesting to publish a null result in that situation: “I thought that [X bad thing was happening], but it turns out that [something else].”
There’s information you were missing (or other considerations), but you still disagree on something important. Your criticism might become a disagreement about tradeoffs or something else.
Running criticism past the people whose work is criticized supports a more cooperative environment between people writing on the Forum and people doing stuff that could be criticized in EA — and I think that this cooperative environment leads to many other good things.
When you give “doers” a heads up, they might feel more like you’re working with them. When this is the norm, “doers” in EA are less likely to worry that someone might criticize them at any moment based on a misconception or based on how something looks (which is stressful!).
They’re less likely to avoid doing things for reasons neither they nor you endorse (see this shortform and a relevant section in my post on invisible impact loss).
They’re more likely to react positively to criticism in the future.
Readers see that you ran your criticism past the “doers” and see the doers’ response, which can lead to a sense that the criticism is collaborative, and a reframing of the criticism as help for the project that is being criticized, rather than a holistic indictment of the doers. (If that’s the case.)
Reasons to NOT run it past the people whose work you’re criticizing:
If you expect them to try to pressure you into not posting your criticism, you might want to avoid sharing it with them in advance.
If this happens, you might also want to consider getting in touch with someone.
It might add too much work for you.
It will probably delay the publication of your criticism a bit, and that’s a real cost. If your criticism is time-sensitive, you might not want to wait.
You might worry that you’ll get dragged into an extended back-and-forth, and either have to cut it off abruptly in a way that might be stressful, or waste a lot of time and energy.
If you have absolutely no reason to believe that the people whose work you’re criticizing are acting in good faith, you might not bother reaching out to them first.
A strong norm of doing this can have negative effects on the network, and doing it can reinforce the norm.
One of the significant negative effects a nomr like this might have is that people might feel like they have to do this, and if they don’t want to, that might lead to some criticisms never getting published.
I think this is the strongest point against having this as a norm.
There are some other effects. For instance, the definition of “criticism” is pretty vague, and maybe we’d end up with some odd misrepresentations of content if we support this norm. (E.g. people asking insinuating questions instead of straightforwardly criticizing because they don’t want their content to be labeled as criticism.) Or maybe some criticisms get too softened, and readers won’t realize that the author is trying to say that a project is totally counterproductive.
You can see my overall take here.
This post has a somewhat similar discussion.
These are pretty rough notes that I pulled out to make the main post easier to use as a guide. The comment format is somewhat awkward, but it might work — I’m curious to hear how people feel about it.