I think, trying to introspect on the creepies, that a big part of the problem is something like:
“Here I am, in substantial disagreement/criticism of a subculture, but I don’t want my large and fairly crucial disagreement attached to my name because if people understood my *true* beliefs they might not want to hire me at their org.”
Hm, I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but I guess that is a little weird.
I tend to like people being able to weigh in on stuff anonymously, as long as it doesn’t dominate the discussion. (If there are tons of anons in a discussion, I start to worry more about sockpuppetry.)
And, e.g., if you’re writing a sweeping critique of medical culture while trying to start a career in medicine, it makes sense that you might want to post pseudonymously because of the potential career repercussions.
But I guess it’s a little odd to write a sweeping critique of EA culture, and hide your identity in the hope of working at an EA org? Getting an EA job is an altruistic goal, where the quality of the mission and strategy presumably matters a great deal for where you want to work.
If EA is unresponsive to your awesome critique, then if the critique is important enough, I’d think that’s a reason to not want to end up working within EA (or within that part of EA). Doubly so if EA is the sort of place that would use your true view as a reason to reject you.
And if other EAs do agree with you, knowing who you are is a great way for you to serve as a sort of beacon within EA and gather more and more people who share the same perspective.
Or, really, whether this beacon happens within “EA” or outside of “EA” is beside the point. If you have cool stuff you want to do to improve the world, and lots of people disagree with you, then I suspect it’s often a good idea to attach a stable name to your arguments (at the very least a pseudonym) so you can team up with like-minded people. (And specifically avoid ending up on teams with people who are mistaken and not interested in working with people they disagree with on this dimension.)
I don’t think people are thinking of it as “muhaha, now I can infiltrate EA orgs who don’t know my real views on anything”, I’m guessing it’s more that some people (a) haven’t thought through the upside of loudly signaling their views (to spark useful debates, and find like-minded EAs to team up with), or (b) haven’t thought through the downside of working at an EA org where you have to keep your real views about lots of important EA things a secret.
Thinking about it more, I could imagine a thing here like ‘EAs wanting to put their best foot forward’. Maybe you endorse a post you wrote, but you don’t think it reflects your very best work, so you’re wary of it being the first thing people see from you. Whereas once you’ve already proven yourself to someone, you might feel more comfortable sharing your full thinking with them; there’s plenty of middle ground between “wanting critique X to be the first thing everyone hears about you” and “wanting to hide critique X from your co-workers”.
Or they might indeed think that their critique isn’t that important, such that it’s not the specific hill they want to die on; if their post doesn’t get a really positive reception on their first attempt, it may be something they’d rather drop than keep fighting for, while also being too minor for them to want to use it as a filter for which projects they’d like to work at.
Hm, I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but I guess that is a little weird.
I tend to like people being able to weigh in on stuff anonymously, as long as it doesn’t dominate the discussion. (If there are tons of anons in a discussion, I start to worry more about sockpuppetry.)
And, e.g., if you’re writing a sweeping critique of medical culture while trying to start a career in medicine, it makes sense that you might want to post pseudonymously because of the potential career repercussions.
But I guess it’s a little odd to write a sweeping critique of EA culture, and hide your identity in the hope of working at an EA org? Getting an EA job is an altruistic goal, where the quality of the mission and strategy presumably matters a great deal for where you want to work.
If EA is unresponsive to your awesome critique, then if the critique is important enough, I’d think that’s a reason to not want to end up working within EA (or within that part of EA). Doubly so if EA is the sort of place that would use your true view as a reason to reject you.
And if other EAs do agree with you, knowing who you are is a great way for you to serve as a sort of beacon within EA and gather more and more people who share the same perspective.
Or, really, whether this beacon happens within “EA” or outside of “EA” is beside the point. If you have cool stuff you want to do to improve the world, and lots of people disagree with you, then I suspect it’s often a good idea to attach a stable name to your arguments (at the very least a pseudonym) so you can team up with like-minded people. (And specifically avoid ending up on teams with people who are mistaken and not interested in working with people they disagree with on this dimension.)
I don’t think people are thinking of it as “muhaha, now I can infiltrate EA orgs who don’t know my real views on anything”, I’m guessing it’s more that some people (a) haven’t thought through the upside of loudly signaling their views (to spark useful debates, and find like-minded EAs to team up with), or (b) haven’t thought through the downside of working at an EA org where you have to keep your real views about lots of important EA things a secret.
Thinking about it more, I could imagine a thing here like ‘EAs wanting to put their best foot forward’. Maybe you endorse a post you wrote, but you don’t think it reflects your very best work, so you’re wary of it being the first thing people see from you. Whereas once you’ve already proven yourself to someone, you might feel more comfortable sharing your full thinking with them; there’s plenty of middle ground between “wanting critique X to be the first thing everyone hears about you” and “wanting to hide critique X from your co-workers”.
Or they might indeed think that their critique isn’t that important, such that it’s not the specific hill they want to die on; if their post doesn’t get a really positive reception on their first attempt, it may be something they’d rather drop than keep fighting for, while also being too minor for them to want to use it as a filter for which projects they’d like to work at.