Yeah, I think that some percentage of this problem is fixable, but I think one issue is that there are lots of important critiques that might be made from a place of privileged information, and filling in a form will be deanonymizing to some extent. I think this is especially true when an actor’s actions diverge from stated values/goals — I think many of the most important critiques of EA that need to be made come from actions diverging from stated values/goals, so this seems hard to navigate. E.g. I think your recent criminal justice reform post is a pretty good example of the kind of critique I’m thinking of, but there are ones like it based on actions that aren’t public or at least aren’t written up anywhere that seem really important to have shared.
Related to this, I feel like a lot of people in EA lately have expressed a sentiment that they have general concerns like the one I outlined here, but can’t point to specific situations. One explanation for this is that their concerns aren’t justified, but another is that people are unwilling to talk about the specifics.
That being said, I think the anonymous submission form is really helpful, and glad it exists.
For what its worth, I’ve privately been contacted more about about this particular critique resonating with people than any other in this post by a large degree, which suggests to me that many people share this view.
Yeah, I think that some percentage of this problem is fixable, but I think one issue is that there are lots of important critiques that might be made from a place of privileged information, and filling in a form will be deanonymizing to some extent. I think this is especially true when an actor’s actions diverge from stated values/goals — I think many of the most important critiques of EA that need to be made come from actions diverging from stated values/goals, so this seems hard to navigate. E.g. I think your recent criminal justice reform post is a pretty good example of the kind of critique I’m thinking of, but there are ones like it based on actions that aren’t public or at least aren’t written up anywhere that seem really important to have shared.
Related to this, I feel like a lot of people in EA lately have expressed a sentiment that they have general concerns like the one I outlined here, but can’t point to specific situations. One explanation for this is that their concerns aren’t justified, but another is that people are unwilling to talk about the specifics.
That being said, I think the anonymous submission form is really helpful, and glad it exists.
For what its worth, I’ve privately been contacted more about about this particular critique resonating with people than any other in this post by a large degree, which suggests to me that many people share this view.
There are multiple examples of EA orgs behaving badly I can’t really discuss in public. The community really does not ask for much ‘openness’.