For most people, the benefit that accrues to you from signing your real name to a controversial post seems pretty minimal. Using one’s name creates some increase in author credibility, and thus effectiveness—although less so on certain types of posts, and where the author doesn’t have much of a reputation either way. Otherwise, there seems to be little incentive to do it if you think your post may be unfavorably received by a significant number of people. So even if you assign only a small probability to “postings of the sort I am making will have adverse career effects for me,” the decision of whether to sign your post is likely to be EV-negative to you.
(There’s also the Google effect, although that can be solved with the use of a consistent psuedonym that is not publicly linked to one’s name.)
I disagree, I think that making controversial posts under your real name can improve your reputation in the EA community in ways that help your ability to do good. For example, I think I’ve personally benefited a lot from saying things that were controversial under my real name over the years (including before I worked at EA orgs).
Yes, but you’ve usually been arguing in favour of (or at least widening the overton window around) elite EA views vs the views of the EA masses, have been very close to EA leadership, and are super disagreeable—you are unrepresentative on many relevant axes.
From deontic perspective, there is a coordination problem, where “at least consistent handle” posts can be somewhat costly for the poster, but an atmosphere of an earnest discussion of real people has large social benefits. Vice versa, discussion with a large fraction of anonymous accounts—in particular if they are sniping at real people and each other—decreases trust, and is vulnerable to manipulation by sock puppets and nefarious players.
Also, I think there are some virtue ethics costs associated with anonymous posts, roughly in the direction of transparency and integrity.
For example, if I imagine myself anonymously posting something critical received unfavourably by someone, and later, meeting that someone in person, or collaborating on something relevant, I would find it integrity-decreasing to continue hiding the authorship. And if I’d be happy to reveal my identity to the people upset … why not reveal it directly?
While I don’t think these considerations add up to “never post anonymously”, I think they are pretty large, and usually much larger than e.g. “small probability of adverse career effects in the EA ecosystem”.
For most people, the benefit that accrues to you from signing your real name to a controversial post seems pretty minimal. Using one’s name creates some increase in author credibility, and thus effectiveness—although less so on certain types of posts, and where the author doesn’t have much of a reputation either way. Otherwise, there seems to be little incentive to do it if you think your post may be unfavorably received by a significant number of people. So even if you assign only a small probability to “postings of the sort I am making will have adverse career effects for me,” the decision of whether to sign your post is likely to be EV-negative to you.
(There’s also the Google effect, although that can be solved with the use of a consistent psuedonym that is not publicly linked to one’s name.)
I disagree, I think that making controversial posts under your real name can improve your reputation in the EA community in ways that help your ability to do good. For example, I think I’ve personally benefited a lot from saying things that were controversial under my real name over the years (including before I worked at EA orgs).
Yes, but you’ve usually been arguing in favour of (or at least widening the overton window around) elite EA views vs the views of the EA masses, have been very close to EA leadership, and are super disagreeable—you are unrepresentative on many relevant axes.
In my view this is an example of a mistake in bounded/local consequentialism
From deontic perspective, there is a coordination problem, where “at least consistent handle” posts can be somewhat costly for the poster, but an atmosphere of an earnest discussion of real people has large social benefits. Vice versa, discussion with a large fraction of anonymous accounts—in particular if they are sniping at real people and each other—decreases trust, and is vulnerable to manipulation by sock puppets and nefarious players.
Also, I think there are some virtue ethics costs associated with anonymous posts, roughly in the direction of transparency and integrity.
For example, if I imagine myself anonymously posting something critical received unfavourably by someone, and later, meeting that someone in person, or collaborating on something relevant, I would find it integrity-decreasing to continue hiding the authorship. And if I’d be happy to reveal my identity to the people upset … why not reveal it directly?
While I don’t think these considerations add up to “never post anonymously”, I think they are pretty large, and usually much larger than e.g. “small probability of adverse career effects in the EA ecosystem”.