One thing that comes to mind is that this seems like a topic a lot of people care about, and there’s a lot of upvotes & agreements, but there also seemed to be a surprising lack of comments, overall.
I’ve heard from others elsewhere that they were nervous about giving their takes, because it’s a sensitive topic.
Obviously I’m really curious about what, if anything, could be done, to facilitate more discussion on these sorts of issues. I think they’re important to grapple with, and would hate it if they just weren’t talked about due to awkwardness.
One obvious failure mode is that I think these discussions can get heated and occasionally result in really bad conversation. But having incredibly little discussion seems almost more unnerving to me.
I imagine we want environments where: - People feel safe posing what they believe - Conversation doesn’t spiral out-of-control
As some of you may know, I post a fair bit on Facebook, and did make some posts there about some of these topics. Many of these are private to my network, and some get a fair bit of conversation that’s not on the EA Forum—often it’s clear that many people find this more comfortable. But obviously this particular setup doesn’t scale very well.
Hey Ozzie, a few quick notes on why I react but try not to comment on community based stuff these days:
I try to limit how many meta-level comments I make. In general I’d like to see more object-level discussion of things and so I’m trying (to mixed success) to comment mostly about cause areas directly.
Partly it’s a vote for the person I’d like to be. If I talk about community stuff, part of my headspace will be thinking about it for the next few days. (I fully realize the irony of making this comment.)
It’s emotionally tricky since I feel responsibility for how others react. I know how loaded this topic was for a younger me, and I feel an obligation to make younger me feel welcome
These conversations often feel aspirational and repetitive. Like “there should be more X” is too simple. Whereas something like “there should be more X. Y org should be responsible for it. Tradeoffs may be Z. Failure modes are A, B, and C.” is concrete enough to get somewhere.
I’ve been trying to process the conversation in this thread:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mopsmd3JELJRyTTty/ozzie-gooen-s-shortform?commentId=o9rEBRmKoTvjNMHF7
One thing that comes to mind is that this seems like a topic a lot of people care about, and there’s a lot of upvotes & agreements, but there also seemed to be a surprising lack of comments, overall.
I’ve heard from others elsewhere that they were nervous about giving their takes, because it’s a sensitive topic.
Obviously I’m really curious about what, if anything, could be done, to facilitate more discussion on these sorts of issues. I think they’re important to grapple with, and would hate it if they just weren’t talked about due to awkwardness.
One obvious failure mode is that I think these discussions can get heated and occasionally result in really bad conversation. But having incredibly little discussion seems almost more unnerving to me.
I imagine we want environments where:
- People feel safe posing what they believe
- Conversation doesn’t spiral out-of-control
As some of you may know, I post a fair bit on Facebook, and did make some posts there about some of these topics. Many of these are private to my network, and some get a fair bit of conversation that’s not on the EA Forum—often it’s clear that many people find this more comfortable. But obviously this particular setup doesn’t scale very well.
Hey Ozzie, a few quick notes on why I react but try not to comment on community based stuff these days:
I try to limit how many meta-level comments I make. In general I’d like to see more object-level discussion of things and so I’m trying (to mixed success) to comment mostly about cause areas directly.
Partly it’s a vote for the person I’d like to be. If I talk about community stuff, part of my headspace will be thinking about it for the next few days. (I fully realize the irony of making this comment.)
It’s emotionally tricky since I feel responsibility for how others react. I know how loaded this topic was for a younger me, and I feel an obligation to make younger me feel welcome
These conversations often feel aspirational and repetitive. Like “there should be more X” is too simple. Whereas something like “there should be more X. Y org should be responsible for it. Tradeoffs may be Z. Failure modes are A, B, and C.” is concrete enough to get somewhere.