As both a member of the EA community and a retired mediocre stand-up act, I appreciate that you took the time to write this. You rightly highlight that some light-heartedness has benefited some writers within the EA community, and outside of it. My intuition is that the level of humour we can see being used is, give or take, the right level given the goals the community has. A lot of effort and money has been spent on making the community, along with many job opportunities within it, seem professional in the hope that capable individuals will infer that we mean business and consider EA on those terms.
A concept I referred to a lot when planning comedic performances, and public speaking occasions in general, is that an audience (dependent on the context and their reasons for being there) will have a given threshold for the humour they expect to find in your communication. To be funny, you must go beyond this threshold. Some way above that threshold is another boundary, a humour ceiling, defined by the social norms of the setting beyond which you no longer seem funny. Instead, you signal that you donât understand the social norms around communication in that context. In stand-up, the humour threshold is really high, so itâs hard to qualify as funny at all, but nigh on impossible to be too funny. In presenting a dry subject to your boss and colleagues, the humour threshold is low and anyone could exceed it with a bit of practice, but landing safely between this threshold and the marginally greater humour ceiling is genuinely hard. You will too easily be too funny and seem a liability. When reading an obituary at a funeral, the threshold is set at essentially zero and the ceiling is coincident with it, only allowing the exemption of jokes told to highlight the cherished memories you have of the deceased.
I explain this because it seems to me untenably hard to commit to using humour all-out, or anywhere close to that, as a communicative and persuasive aid for EA without signalling that we do not âmean businessâ. Stick man illustrations and starchy acronyms, used sparingly, fall within the threshold-ceiling window for the work MacAskill and Karnofsky are trying to publicise, so these gags play out well. I donât think theyâve got that much overhead clearance before readers would infer a lack of appreciation for the aesthetics of academic writing, and thus that they shouldnât be taken seriously.
Since the advent of democracy and ancient Greek plays using jokes to point out the mistakes made by politicians of the day, comedy has proven a very effective method for poking holes in bad ideas and forcing people to change them, lest they be further laughed at. This seems to be the running theme of the cases you mention from John Oliverâs career. Much harder, I think, to propose an idea of your own that you wish people to believe is good and use humour to enhance that perception.
Thanks so much for your insights. Canât really argue with what you say here: I think you articulated the idea of subtlety and the importance of correct application with humor far better than I did. Admittedly, John Oliver is an extreme example of humor, perhaps so extreme as to be unhelpful as a model for EA. Overall, maybe my use of the word âhumorâ in this post was too strong. I really liked Tiger Lava Lampâs comment below on âmicrohumor,â which Scott Alexander describes as âthings that arenât a joke in the laugh-out-loud told-by-a-comedian sense, but still put the tiniest ghost of a smile on your readerâs face while theyâre skimming through them.â This seems to be a more accurate description of the MacAskill and Karnosfky examples I gave. It seems like we both have a sense that something like Alexanderâs microhumor can fall within EAâs humor threshold and be an effective tool for EA to an extent.
AgreedâScott Alexander does this very well, as does Yudkowsky in Rationality: A-Z. Both of these also benefit from being blogs of their own creation, where they can dictate a lot of the norms, and so I expect to have a fair bit more slack in how high the ceiling is.
As both a member of the EA community and a retired mediocre stand-up act, I appreciate that you took the time to write this. You rightly highlight that some light-heartedness has benefited some writers within the EA community, and outside of it. My intuition is that the level of humour we can see being used is, give or take, the right level given the goals the community has. A lot of effort and money has been spent on making the community, along with many job opportunities within it, seem professional in the hope that capable individuals will infer that we mean business and consider EA on those terms.
A concept I referred to a lot when planning comedic performances, and public speaking occasions in general, is that an audience (dependent on the context and their reasons for being there) will have a given threshold for the humour they expect to find in your communication. To be funny, you must go beyond this threshold. Some way above that threshold is another boundary, a humour ceiling, defined by the social norms of the setting beyond which you no longer seem funny. Instead, you signal that you donât understand the social norms around communication in that context. In stand-up, the humour threshold is really high, so itâs hard to qualify as funny at all, but nigh on impossible to be too funny. In presenting a dry subject to your boss and colleagues, the humour threshold is low and anyone could exceed it with a bit of practice, but landing safely between this threshold and the marginally greater humour ceiling is genuinely hard. You will too easily be too funny and seem a liability. When reading an obituary at a funeral, the threshold is set at essentially zero and the ceiling is coincident with it, only allowing the exemption of jokes told to highlight the cherished memories you have of the deceased.
I explain this because it seems to me untenably hard to commit to using humour all-out, or anywhere close to that, as a communicative and persuasive aid for EA without signalling that we do not âmean businessâ. Stick man illustrations and starchy acronyms, used sparingly, fall within the threshold-ceiling window for the work MacAskill and Karnofsky are trying to publicise, so these gags play out well. I donât think theyâve got that much overhead clearance before readers would infer a lack of appreciation for the aesthetics of academic writing, and thus that they shouldnât be taken seriously.
Since the advent of democracy and ancient Greek plays using jokes to point out the mistakes made by politicians of the day, comedy has proven a very effective method for poking holes in bad ideas and forcing people to change them, lest they be further laughed at. This seems to be the running theme of the cases you mention from John Oliverâs career. Much harder, I think, to propose an idea of your own that you wish people to believe is good and use humour to enhance that perception.
Thanks so much for your insights. Canât really argue with what you say here: I think you articulated the idea of subtlety and the importance of correct application with humor far better than I did. Admittedly, John Oliver is an extreme example of humor, perhaps so extreme as to be unhelpful as a model for EA. Overall, maybe my use of the word âhumorâ in this post was too strong. I really liked Tiger Lava Lampâs comment below on âmicrohumor,â which Scott Alexander describes as âthings that arenât a joke in the laugh-out-loud told-by-a-comedian sense, but still put the tiniest ghost of a smile on your readerâs face while theyâre skimming through them.â This seems to be a more accurate description of the MacAskill and Karnosfky examples I gave. It seems like we both have a sense that something like Alexanderâs microhumor can fall within EAâs humor threshold and be an effective tool for EA to an extent.
AgreedâScott Alexander does this very well, as does Yudkowsky in Rationality: A-Z. Both of these also benefit from being blogs of their own creation, where they can dictate a lot of the norms, and so I expect to have a fair bit more slack in how high the ceiling is.