One additional risk: if done poorly, harsh criticism of someone else’s blog post from several years ago could be pretty unpleasant and make the EA community seem less friendly.
I’m actually super excited about this idea though—let’s set some courtesy norms around contacting the author privately before red-teaming their paper and then get going!
One additional risk: if done poorly, harsh criticism of someone else’s blog post from several years ago could be pretty unpleasant and make the EA community seem less friendly.
I think I agree this is a concern. But just so we’re on the same page here, what’s your threat model? Are you more worried about
The EA community feeling less pleasant and friendly to existing established EAs, so we’ll have more retention issues with people disengaging?
The EA community feeling less pleasant and friendly to newcomers, so we have more issues with recruitment and people getting excited to join novel projects?
Criticism makes being open about your work less pleasant, and open Red Teaming about EA projects makes EA move even further in the direction of being less open than we used to be. See also Responsible Transparency Consumption.
I’m actually super excited about this idea though—let’s set some courtesy norms around contacting the author privately before red-teaming their paper and then get going!
Thanks for the excitement! I agree that contacting someone ahead of time might be good (so at least someone doesn’t learn about their project being red teamed until social media blows up), but I feel like it might not mitigate most of the potential unpleasantness/harshness. Like I don’t see a good cultural way to both incentivize Red Teaming and allow a face-saving way to refuse to let your papers be Red Teamed.
Like if Red Teaming is opt-in by default, I’d worry a lot about this not taking off the ground, while if Red Teaming is opt-out by default I’d just find it very suss for anybody to refuse (speaking for myself, I can’t imagine ever refusing Red Teaming even if I would rather it not happen).
One additional risk: if done poorly, harsh criticism of someone else’s blog post from several years ago could be pretty unpleasant and make the EA community seem less friendly.
I’m actually super excited about this idea though—let’s set some courtesy norms around contacting the author privately before red-teaming their paper and then get going!
I think I agree this is a concern. But just so we’re on the same page here, what’s your threat model? Are you more worried about
The EA community feeling less pleasant and friendly to existing established EAs, so we’ll have more retention issues with people disengaging?
The EA community feeling less pleasant and friendly to newcomers, so we have more issues with recruitment and people getting excited to join novel projects?
Criticism makes being open about your work less pleasant, and open Red Teaming about EA projects makes EA move even further in the direction of being less open than we used to be. See also Responsible Transparency Consumption.
Something else?
It’s actually a bit of numbers 1-3; I’m imagining decreased engagement generally, especially sharing ideas transparently.
Thanks for the excitement! I agree that contacting someone ahead of time might be good (so at least someone doesn’t learn about their project being red teamed until social media blows up), but I feel like it might not mitigate most of the potential unpleasantness/harshness. Like I don’t see a good cultural way to both incentivize Red Teaming and allow a face-saving way to refuse to let your papers be Red Teamed.
Like if Red Teaming is opt-in by default, I’d worry a lot about this not taking off the ground, while if Red Teaming is opt-out by default I’d just find it very suss for anybody to refuse (speaking for myself, I can’t imagine ever refusing Red Teaming even if I would rather it not happen).