Writing very quickly as someone that signed this from EA Italy
I agree that this 12-line letter is not perfect and will not solve racism or sexism, and probably not do much (otherwise, these issues would have already been solved).
There were versions of the above proposal which were not contentless and empty, which stake out clear and specific positions, which I wouldâve been glad to see and enthusiastically supported and considered concrete progress for the community.
If you think itâs important and useful, please do work on this, it might be concrete progress for the community! Or if the versions were already made it might be useful to share them
Similarly, if four-out-of-five signatories of The Anti-Racist Pledge think we should take action X, but four-out-of-five non-signatories think itâs a bad idea for various pragmatic or logistical reasons, itâs pretty easy to imagine that being rounded off to âthe opposition is racist.â
I would be extremelysurprised by this, what % do you give that something like this will happen? If a request to sign reached me I assume it reached hundreds or thousands of people
This is also a bad outcome, though, because it saps momentum for creating and signing useful versions of such a pledge. Itâs saturating the space, and inoculating us against progress of this form; the next time someone tries to make a pledge that actually furthers equity and equality, the audience will be that much less likely to click, and that much less willing to believe that anything useful will result.
I used to share this thinking, and worry a lot about replaceability, but on the current margin it seems to me that the alternative to thing is almost always not better thing but no thing. So I think it would be useful if you had made concrete proposals for how thing could be improved for next time, but not what I perceive as disincentivizing people from generally doing stuff. I wouldnât want Rob Mather not to found the Against Malaria Foundation out of fear of sapping momentum for creating an even better version of a bednet distribution org. I would agree with you if you could share some reason for expecting the counterfactual to be better (e.g. âthere was this other much better letter that I was just about to post, but now I donât want to spam people about this so I will notâ)
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is clearly a good intention. It does not manage to avoid being a pavestone.
Imho the road to anywhere is paved with good intentions, and the most likely counterfactual is standing still, not moving in a better direction, unless you know of some existing and better plans that were hindered by this 12-line letter.
In terms of practical actions, someone from EA Italy (not me) is publishing a Code of Conduct this Sunday instead of in the next weeks, weâre sharing an anonymous form on the website and via other channels, following the advice from EA Philippines (in addition to links to two contact people and the CEA community health team), and weâre going to ask city and university groups to publish these as well.
Would probably have happened anyway, but likely a few weeks later, and itâs nice to have links to resources from other groups while we figure out a strategy. I personally found the advice/âexperience from EA Philippines to be more useful, otherwise we might have just added contact infos but forgotten to add an Italian anonymous form. So I would endorse asking various groups to share what practical actions they are taking, but it doesnât seem to me that this letter sapped momentum from doing it.
Writing very quickly as someone that signed this from EA Italy
I agree that this 12-line letter is not perfect and will not solve racism or sexism, and probably not do much (otherwise, these issues would have already been solved).
If you think itâs important and useful, please do work on this, it might be concrete progress for the community! Or if the versions were already made it might be useful to share them
I would be extremely surprised by this, what % do you give that something like this will happen? If a request to sign reached me I assume it reached hundreds or thousands of people
I used to share this thinking, and worry a lot about replaceability, but on the current margin it seems to me that the alternative to thing is almost always not better thing but no thing. So I think it would be useful if you had made concrete proposals for how thing could be improved for next time, but not what I perceive as disincentivizing people from generally doing stuff.
I wouldnât want Rob Mather not to found the Against Malaria Foundation out of fear of sapping momentum for creating an even better version of a bednet distribution org. I would agree with you if you could share some reason for expecting the counterfactual to be better (e.g. âthere was this other much better letter that I was just about to post, but now I donât want to spam people about this so I will notâ)
Imho the road to anywhere is paved with good intentions, and the most likely counterfactual is standing still, not moving in a better direction, unless you know of some existing and better plans that were hindered by this 12-line letter.
In terms of practical actions, someone from EA Italy (not me) is publishing a Code of Conduct this Sunday instead of in the next weeks, weâre sharing an anonymous form on the website and via other channels, following the advice from EA Philippines (in addition to links to two contact people and the CEA community health team), and weâre going to ask city and university groups to publish these as well.
Would probably have happened anyway, but likely a few weeks later, and itâs nice to have links to resources from other groups while we figure out a strategy. I personally found the advice/âexperience from EA Philippines to be more useful, otherwise we might have just added contact infos but forgotten to add an Italian anonymous form. So I would endorse asking various groups to share what practical actions they are taking, but it doesnât seem to me that this letter sapped momentum from doing it.
Not writing as anything