It encourages some form of “enlightened immobilism”, where anyone proposing doing anything differently from the status quo gets instantly shut down.
I think telling people to critique less is a suboptimal solution for this. At least in theory, it’s more ideal for people to be willing to do things despite getting critiques.
Someone can write a critique for anything. Instead of checking if there’s a critique, you could check “does a neutral party think this critique is stronger than average for a random EA project” or something like that. (If the project is weaker than average in light of the critique, that suggests resources should perhaps be reallocated.)
Downside risk is everywhere, and its mere existence shouldn’t be sufficient to cause inaction.
I think telling people to critique less is a suboptimal solution for this. At least in theory, it’s more ideal for people to be willing to do things despite getting critiques.
Someone can write a critique for anything. Instead of checking if there’s a critique, you could check “does a neutral party think this critique is stronger than average for a random EA project” or something like that. (If the project is weaker than average in light of the critique, that suggests resources should perhaps be reallocated.)
Downside risk is everywhere, and its mere existence shouldn’t be sufficient to cause inaction.