Interesting to note that, as it stands, there isn’t a single comment on the debate week banner in favor of Global Health. There are votes for global health (13 in total at time of writing), but no comments backing up the votes. I’m sure this will change, but I still find it interesting.
One possible reason is that the arguments for global health > animal welfare are often speciesist and people don’t really want to admit that they are speciesist—but I’m admittedly not certain of this.
I think we want people to vote, and vote honestly with their beliefs. I don’t think the second paragraph helps with those goals. It puts people who want to vote GH—note that I did not—in a position where they have to defend their votes or feel people are making inferences about their votes. A likely outcome is that they just won’t vote.
Personally I would gain more value from knowing why people would prefer $100m to go to global health over animal welfare (or vice versa) than knowing if people would prefer this. This is partly because it already seems clear that the forum (which isn’t even a representative sample of EAs) has a leaning towards animal welfare over global health.
So if my comment incentivises people to comment more but vote less then that is fine by me. Of course my comment may not incentivise people to comment more in which case I apologise.
Yeah, my guess is that stigmatizing one possible response would additionally risk skewing the responses you do get. People usually have multiple reasons for decisions and are somewhat likely in a non-anonymous discussion to substitute a reason they perceive as socially acceptable for one they perceive as stigmatized by a decent fraction of their community.
Interesting to note that, as it stands, there isn’t a single comment on the debate week banner in favor of Global Health. There are votes for global health (13 in total at time of writing), but no comments backing up the votes. I’m sure this will change, but I still find it interesting.
One possible reason is that the arguments for global health > animal welfare are often speciesist and people don’t really want to admit that they are speciesist—but I’m admittedly not certain of this.
I think we want people to vote, and vote honestly with their beliefs. I don’t think the second paragraph helps with those goals. It puts people who want to vote GH—note that I did not—in a position where they have to defend their votes or feel people are making inferences about their votes. A likely outcome is that they just won’t vote.
Personally I would gain more value from knowing why people would prefer $100m to go to global health over animal welfare (or vice versa) than knowing if people would prefer this. This is partly because it already seems clear that the forum (which isn’t even a representative sample of EAs) has a leaning towards animal welfare over global health.
So if my comment incentivises people to comment more but vote less then that is fine by me. Of course my comment may not incentivise people to comment more in which case I apologise.
Yeah, my guess is that stigmatizing one possible response would additionally risk skewing the responses you do get. People usually have multiple reasons for decisions and are somewhat likely in a non-anonymous discussion to substitute a reason they perceive as socially acceptable for one they perceive as stigmatized by a decent fraction of their community.
I’m not sure how I have stigmatised any particular response.