>Also, I really don’t see how the persons below have contributed more or are more relevant to effective altruism than Pearce
I tried to outline some criteria in an earlier comment. Chalmers and Hassabis fall under the category of “people who have attained eminence in their fields and who are connected to EA to a significant degree”. Drexler, and perhaps also Chalmers, fall under the category of “academics who have conducted research of clear EA relevance”. Matthews doesn’t fall under any of the categories listed, though he strikes me as someone worth including given his leading role at Future Perfect—the only explicitly EA project in mainstream journalism—and his long-standing involvement with the EA movement.
As the example of Matthews shows, the categories I identified aren’t exhaustive. That was just my attempt to retroactively make sense of the tactic criterion I had followed in selecting these particular people. Despite still not having a super clear sense of the underlying categories, I felt reasonably confident that Pearce didn’t qualify because (1) it seemed that there was no other potential category he could fall under besides that of “EA core figure” and (2) he is not, in my opinion, a core figure in EA. Perhaps the closest situation is that of Aubrey de Grey, who is also a leading figure in an adjacent movement, has had some involvement with the EA movement, but isn’t really central to EA (and is, for that reason, also excluded).
With that said, I’m open to criticism for my selection, and in retrospect I am not confident in all the choices I made. For instance, it now seems to me debatable whether we should have an article on Bryan Caplan. We also don’t have articles on some individuals who some may argue, probably with justification, that deserve one, such as Robin Hanson or Nick Beckstead. I’d be happy to reconsider my decisions in these and other cases. In the case of Pearce (or de Grey), I trust my judgment more, though of course there’s still room for reasonable disagreement.
>May I ask why five days since the last comment were deemed enough for proceeding to the deletion? Is this part of the wiki’s rules?
I wasn’t following an explicit rule: I just got the impression that the discussion had come to an end. Pearce’s entry was online for almost two weeks, so after a five-day period of inactivity I thought it was appropriate to make a decision. I am considering ways to make the process of resolving disputes more structured and less opaque (feedback welcome). If there are any further comments that you would like to make, I am happy to reopen the discussion and consider your arguments.
FWIW, I agree that Hassabis and Drexler meet your proposed criteria and warrant entries, and that Chalmers and Caplan probably do (along with Hanson and Beckstead). But Matthews does seem roughly on par with Pearce to me. (Though I don’t know that much about either of their work.)
I also agree that Pearce seems to be a similar case to de Grey, so we might apply a similar principle to both.
Maybe it’d be useful to try switching briefly from the discussion of specific entries and criteria to instead consider: What are the pros and cons of having more or much more entries (and especially entries on people)? And roughly how many entries on people do we ultimately want? This would be similar to the inclusionism debate on Wikipedia, I believe. If we have reason to want to avoid going beyond like 50 or 100 or 200 or whatever entries on people, or we have reason to be quite careful about adding less prominent or central people to the wiki, or if we don’t, then that could inform how high a “bar” we set.
Chalmers and Hassabis fall under the category of “people who have attained eminence in their fields and who are connected to EA to a significant degree”. Drexler, and perhaps also Chalmers, fall under the category of “academics who have conducted research of clear EA relevance”.
First, I want to make it clear that I don’t question that any of the persons I listed in my previous comment should be removed from the wiki. I just disagree that not including Pearce is justified.
Again, I honestly don’t think that it is true that Chalmers and Drexler are “connected to EA to a significant degree” while Pearce isn’t. Especially Chalmers: from what I know, he isn’t engaged w/ effective altruism, besides once agreeing for being interviewed at the 80,000 Hours podcast.
As for the “attained eminence in their fields” condition, I do see that it may be harder to resolve for Pearce’s case since he isn’t an academic but rather an independent philosopher, writer, and advocate. But if Pearce’s field as suffering abolitionism, then the “attained eminence in their fields” condition does hold, in my view: he both is the founder of the “abolitionist project” and has written extensively on why’s and how’s of the project.
Also, as I mentioned in the original comment proposing the entry, Pearce’s work has inspired many EAs, including Brain Tomasik, the Qualia Research Institute’s Andrés Gómez Emilsson, and the Center for Reducing Suffering’s Magnus Vinding, and the nascent field of welfare/compassionate biology. Also, Invincible Wellbeing research group has been inspired by Pearce’s work as well.
I don’t have any new arguments to make, and I don’t expect anyone involved to change their minds anyway. I only hope it may be worth time of others to contribute their perspectives on the dispute.
And as Michael suggests above, it may be more productive at this point to consider how many entries on EA-relevant persons are desirable in the first place.
Chalmers was involved with EA in various ways over the years, e.g. by publishing a paper on the intelligence explosion and then discussing it at one of the Singularity Summits, briefly participating in LessWrong discussions, writing about mind uploading, interacting (I believe) with Luke Muehlhauser and Buck Shlegeris about their illusionist account of consciousness, etc.
In any case, I agree with you (and Michael) that it may be more productive to consider the underlying reasons for restricting the number of entries on individual people. I generally favor an inclusionist stance, and the main reason for taking an exclusionist line with entries for individuals is that I fear things will get out of control if we adopt a more relaxed approach. I’m happy, for instance, with having entries for basically any proposed organization, as long as there is some reasonable link to EA, but it would look kind of weird if we allowed any EA to have their own entry.
An alternative is to take an intermediate position where we require a certain degree of notability, but the bar is set lower, so as to include people like Pearce, de Grey, and others. We could, for instance, automatically accept anyone who already has their own Wikipedia entry, as long as they have a meaningful connection to EA (of roughly the same strength as we currently demand for EA orgs). Pearce would definitely meet this bar.
I personally feel that the proposal would allow for the inclusion of a number of people (not Pearce) who intuitively should not have their own Wiki entry, so I’m somewhat reluctant to adopt it. More generally, an advantage of having a more exclusionist approach for individuals is that the class of borderline cases is narrower, and so is therefore the expected number of discussions concerning whether a particular person should or should not be included. Other things equal, I would prefer to have few of these discussions, since it can be tricky to explicitly address whether someone deserves an entry (and the unpleasantness associated with having to justify an exclusionist position specifically—which may be perceived as expressing a negative opinion of the person whose entry is being considered—may unduly bias the discussion in an inclusionist direction).
Perhaps voting on cases where there is a disagreement could achieve a wider inclusiveness or at least less controversy? Voters would be e.g. the moderators (w/ an option to abstain) and several persons who are familiar w/ the work of a proposed person.
It may also help if inclusion criteria are more specific and are not hidden until a dispute arises.
I think discussion will probably usually be sufficient. Using upvotes and downvotes as info seems useful, but probably not letting them be decisive.
It may also help if inclusion criteria are more specific and are not hidden until a dispute arises.
This might just be a case where written communication on the internet makes the tone seem off, but “hidden” sounds to me unfair and harsh. That seems to imply Pablo already knew what the inclusion criteria should be, and was set on them, but deliberately withheld them. This seems extremely unlikely.
I think it’s more like the wiki is only a few months old, and there’s (I think) only one person paid to put substantial time into it, so we’re still figuring out a lot of policies as we go—I think Pablo just had fuzzier ideas, and then was prompted by this conversation to make them more explicit, and then was still clearly open to feedback on those criteria themselves (rather than them already being set).
I do agree that it will help now that we have possible inclusion criteria written up, and it would be even better to have them shown more prominently somewhere (though with it still being clear that they’re tentative and open to revision). Maybe this is all you meant?
I didn’t have in mind to sound harsh. Thanks for pointing this out: it now seems obvious to me that that part sounds uncharitable. I do appologise, belatedly :(
What I meant is that currently these new, evolving inclusion criteria are difficult to find. And if they are used in dispute resolutions (from this case onwards), perhaps they should be referenced for contributors as part of the introduction text, for example.
Thanks for the feedback. I have made a note to update the Wiki FAQ, or if necessary create a new document. Feel free to ping me if you don’t see any updates within the next week or so.
Thanks, Pablo. The criteria will help to avoid some future long disputes (and thus save time for more important things), although it wouldn’t have prevented my creating the entry for David Pearce, for he does fit the second condition, I think. (We disagree, I know.)
[Just responding to one specific thing, which isn’t central to what you’re saying anyway. No need to respond to this.]
Again, I honestly don’t think that it is true that Chalmers and Drexler are “connected to EA to a significant degree” while Pearce isn’t. Especially Chalmers [...]
For what it’s worth, I think I agree with you re Chalmers (I think Pearce may be more connected to EA than Chalmers is), but not Drexler. E.g., Drexler has worked at FHI for a while, and the FHI office is also shared by GovAI (part of FHI, but worth listing separately), GPI, CEA, and I think Forethought. So that’s pretty EA-y.
Plus he originated some ideas that are quite important for a lot of EAs, e.g. related to nanotech, CAIS, and Paretotopia.
(I’m writing quickly and thus leaning on acronyms and jargon, sorry.)
I should have been more clear about Drexler: I don’t dispute that he is “connected to EA to a significant degree”. But so is Pearce, in my view, for the reasons outlined in this thread.
(I think it’s weird and probably bad that this comment of nil’s has negative karma. nil is just clarifying what they were saying, and what they’re saying is within the realm of reason, and this was said politely.)
>Also, I really don’t see how the persons below have contributed more or are more relevant to effective altruism than Pearce
I tried to outline some criteria in an earlier comment. Chalmers and Hassabis fall under the category of “people who have attained eminence in their fields and who are connected to EA to a significant degree”. Drexler, and perhaps also Chalmers, fall under the category of “academics who have conducted research of clear EA relevance”. Matthews doesn’t fall under any of the categories listed, though he strikes me as someone worth including given his leading role at Future Perfect—the only explicitly EA project in mainstream journalism—and his long-standing involvement with the EA movement.
As the example of Matthews shows, the categories I identified aren’t exhaustive. That was just my attempt to retroactively make sense of the tactic criterion I had followed in selecting these particular people. Despite still not having a super clear sense of the underlying categories, I felt reasonably confident that Pearce didn’t qualify because (1) it seemed that there was no other potential category he could fall under besides that of “EA core figure” and (2) he is not, in my opinion, a core figure in EA. Perhaps the closest situation is that of Aubrey de Grey, who is also a leading figure in an adjacent movement, has had some involvement with the EA movement, but isn’t really central to EA (and is, for that reason, also excluded).
With that said, I’m open to criticism for my selection, and in retrospect I am not confident in all the choices I made. For instance, it now seems to me debatable whether we should have an article on Bryan Caplan. We also don’t have articles on some individuals who some may argue, probably with justification, that deserve one, such as Robin Hanson or Nick Beckstead. I’d be happy to reconsider my decisions in these and other cases. In the case of Pearce (or de Grey), I trust my judgment more, though of course there’s still room for reasonable disagreement.
>May I ask why five days since the last comment were deemed enough for proceeding to the deletion? Is this part of the wiki’s rules?
I wasn’t following an explicit rule: I just got the impression that the discussion had come to an end. Pearce’s entry was online for almost two weeks, so after a five-day period of inactivity I thought it was appropriate to make a decision. I am considering ways to make the process of resolving disputes more structured and less opaque (feedback welcome). If there are any further comments that you would like to make, I am happy to reopen the discussion and consider your arguments.
FWIW, I agree that Hassabis and Drexler meet your proposed criteria and warrant entries, and that Chalmers and Caplan probably do (along with Hanson and Beckstead). But Matthews does seem roughly on par with Pearce to me. (Though I don’t know that much about either of their work.)
I also agree that Pearce seems to be a similar case to de Grey, so we might apply a similar principle to both.
Maybe it’d be useful to try switching briefly from the discussion of specific entries and criteria to instead consider: What are the pros and cons of having more or much more entries (and especially entries on people)? And roughly how many entries on people do we ultimately want? This would be similar to the inclusionism debate on Wikipedia, I believe. If we have reason to want to avoid going beyond like 50 or 100 or 200 or whatever entries on people, or we have reason to be quite careful about adding less prominent or central people to the wiki, or if we don’t, then that could inform how high a “bar” we set.
First, I want to make it clear that I don’t question that any of the persons I listed in my previous comment should be removed from the wiki. I just disagree that not including Pearce is justified.
Again, I honestly don’t think that it is true that Chalmers and Drexler are “connected to EA to a significant degree” while Pearce isn’t. Especially Chalmers: from what I know, he isn’t engaged w/ effective altruism, besides once agreeing for being interviewed at the 80,000 Hours podcast.
As for the “attained eminence in their fields” condition, I do see that it may be harder to resolve for Pearce’s case since he isn’t an academic but rather an independent philosopher, writer, and advocate. But if Pearce’s field as suffering abolitionism, then the “attained eminence in their fields” condition does hold, in my view: he both is the founder of the “abolitionist project” and has written extensively on why’s and how’s of the project.
Also, as I mentioned in the original comment proposing the entry, Pearce’s work has inspired many EAs, including Brain Tomasik, the Qualia Research Institute’s Andrés Gómez Emilsson, and the Center for Reducing Suffering’s Magnus Vinding, and the nascent field of welfare/compassionate biology. Also, Invincible Wellbeing research group has been inspired by Pearce’s work as well.
I don’t have any new arguments to make, and I don’t expect anyone involved to change their minds anyway. I only hope it may be worth time of others to contribute their perspectives on the dispute.
And as Michael suggests above, it may be more productive at this point to consider how many entries on EA-relevant persons are desirable in the first place.
Best regards,
nil
Hey nil,
Chalmers was involved with EA in various ways over the years, e.g. by publishing a paper on the intelligence explosion and then discussing it at one of the Singularity Summits, briefly participating in LessWrong discussions, writing about mind uploading, interacting (I believe) with Luke Muehlhauser and Buck Shlegeris about their illusionist account of consciousness, etc.
In any case, I agree with you (and Michael) that it may be more productive to consider the underlying reasons for restricting the number of entries on individual people. I generally favor an inclusionist stance, and the main reason for taking an exclusionist line with entries for individuals is that I fear things will get out of control if we adopt a more relaxed approach. I’m happy, for instance, with having entries for basically any proposed organization, as long as there is some reasonable link to EA, but it would look kind of weird if we allowed any EA to have their own entry.
An alternative is to take an intermediate position where we require a certain degree of notability, but the bar is set lower, so as to include people like Pearce, de Grey, and others. We could, for instance, automatically accept anyone who already has their own Wikipedia entry, as long as they have a meaningful connection to EA (of roughly the same strength as we currently demand for EA orgs). Pearce would definitely meet this bar.
How do others feel about this proposal?
I personally feel that the proposal would allow for the inclusion of a number of people (not Pearce) who intuitively should not have their own Wiki entry, so I’m somewhat reluctant to adopt it. More generally, an advantage of having a more exclusionist approach for individuals is that the class of borderline cases is narrower, and so is therefore the expected number of discussions concerning whether a particular person should or should not be included. Other things equal, I would prefer to have few of these discussions, since it can be tricky to explicitly address whether someone deserves an entry (and the unpleasantness associated with having to justify an exclusionist position specifically—which may be perceived as expressing a negative opinion of the person whose entry is being considered—may unduly bias the discussion in an inclusionist direction).
Perhaps voting on cases where there is a disagreement could achieve a wider inclusiveness or at least less controversy? Voters would be e.g. the moderators (w/ an option to abstain) and several persons who are familiar w/ the work of a proposed person.
It may also help if inclusion criteria are more specific and are not hidden until a dispute arises.
I think discussion will probably usually be sufficient. Using upvotes and downvotes as info seems useful, but probably not letting them be decisive.
This might just be a case where written communication on the internet makes the tone seem off, but “hidden” sounds to me unfair and harsh. That seems to imply Pablo already knew what the inclusion criteria should be, and was set on them, but deliberately withheld them. This seems extremely unlikely.
I think it’s more like the wiki is only a few months old, and there’s (I think) only one person paid to put substantial time into it, so we’re still figuring out a lot of policies as we go—I think Pablo just had fuzzier ideas, and then was prompted by this conversation to make them more explicit, and then was still clearly open to feedback on those criteria themselves (rather than them already being set).
I do agree that it will help now that we have possible inclusion criteria written up, and it would be even better to have them shown more prominently somewhere (though with it still being clear that they’re tentative and open to revision). Maybe this is all you meant?
I didn’t have in mind to sound harsh. Thanks for pointing this out: it now seems obvious to me that that part sounds uncharitable. I do appologise, belatedly :(
What I meant is that currently these new, evolving inclusion criteria are difficult to find. And if they are used in dispute resolutions (from this case onwards), perhaps they should be referenced for contributors as part of the introduction text, for example.
Thanks for the feedback. I have made a note to update the Wiki FAQ, or if necessary create a new document. Feel free to ping me if you don’t see any updates within the next week or so.
Hi nil,
I’ve edited the FAQ to make our inclusion criteria more explicit.
Thanks, Pablo. The criteria will help to avoid some future long disputes (and thus save time for more important things), although it wouldn’t have prevented my creating the entry for David Pearce, for he does fit the second condition, I think. (We disagree, I know.)
[Just responding to one specific thing, which isn’t central to what you’re saying anyway. No need to respond to this.]
For what it’s worth, I think I agree with you re Chalmers (I think Pearce may be more connected to EA than Chalmers is), but not Drexler. E.g., Drexler has worked at FHI for a while, and the FHI office is also shared by GovAI (part of FHI, but worth listing separately), GPI, CEA, and I think Forethought. So that’s pretty EA-y.
Plus he originated some ideas that are quite important for a lot of EAs, e.g. related to nanotech, CAIS, and Paretotopia.
(I’m writing quickly and thus leaning on acronyms and jargon, sorry.)
I should have been more clear about Drexler: I don’t dispute that he is “connected to EA to a significant degree”. But so is Pearce, in my view, for the reasons outlined in this thread.
(I think it’s weird and probably bad that this comment of nil’s has negative karma. nil is just clarifying what they were saying, and what they’re saying is within the realm of reason, and this was said politely.)
+1