EA is producing a ton of thoughtful writing, but the majority takes place in internal discussions and private documents. For some discussions, this would be the only sensible way to have them. But having other discussions in public should help to raise the salience of EA in the broader discourse and bring more people in. It could also help spark new ideas.
Any thoughts about making some of this discussion available to bloggers so they can popularize it? Asking bloggers unconnected to the EA network to reinvent or equal the level of discourse that the top people have among themselves sounds much harder than figuring out a way to get the originals to the public.
I agree that this would be very valuable. I work at an EA org and even I miss out on a lot of discussions that happen between top people, on googledocs or over lunch. Things must be much worse for people not at EA orgs.
It would be useful if some of the top people could share why they prefer not to make these discussions public. I would guess that one reason is that people don’t want arguments which they haven’t backed up in formal ways to be classed as “the official view of EA leaders”. Creating a forum for posts with shakier epistemic status seems valuable
I imagine often context is missing that would be effortful to add, e.g.
„this is only my private believe“
things coming off as slightly crazy and anti-social, like seemingly failing to appreciate the value of individual lives when doing cold-blooded Utilitarian analysis
Communication is often tailored to an audience and if the potential audience includes random people on the internet and future employers you will automatically invest the context.
In some cases the discussions contain plausibly sensitive info, eg about individual people or about stuff that might cause problems when public.
The first two issues are the whole point of laundering your opinions through bloggers.
I don’t mean the bloggers should post the documents publicly, or even a play-by-play of the documents (“First Will MacAskill said, then Peter Singer said...”) . I mean the bloggers should read the documents, understand the arguments, and post the key points/conclusions, perhaps with a “thanks to some anonymous people who helped me develop these ideas”.
I agree the last issue is important, but this could be solved by good channels of communication and explanation about what should/shouldn’t be posted.
Perhaps an enterprising blogger could start an interview-format blog, where they interview EA authors of those “internal discussions and private documents” and ask them to elucidate their ideas in a way suitable for a general audience. I think that would make for a pretty neat and high-value blog!
Any thoughts about making some of this discussion available to bloggers so they can popularize it? Asking bloggers unconnected to the EA network to reinvent or equal the level of discourse that the top people have among themselves sounds much harder than figuring out a way to get the originals to the public.
I agree that this would be very valuable. I work at an EA org and even I miss out on a lot of discussions that happen between top people, on googledocs or over lunch. Things must be much worse for people not at EA orgs.
It would be useful if some of the top people could share why they prefer not to make these discussions public. I would guess that one reason is that people don’t want arguments which they haven’t backed up in formal ways to be classed as “the official view of EA leaders”. Creating a forum for posts with shakier epistemic status seems valuable
I imagine often context is missing that would be effortful to add, e.g.
„this is only my private believe“
things coming off as slightly crazy and anti-social, like seemingly failing to appreciate the value of individual lives when doing cold-blooded Utilitarian analysis Communication is often tailored to an audience and if the potential audience includes random people on the internet and future employers you will automatically invest the context.
In some cases the discussions contain plausibly sensitive info, eg about individual people or about stuff that might cause problems when public.
The first two issues are the whole point of laundering your opinions through bloggers.
I don’t mean the bloggers should post the documents publicly, or even a play-by-play of the documents (“First Will MacAskill said, then Peter Singer said...”) . I mean the bloggers should read the documents, understand the arguments, and post the key points/conclusions, perhaps with a “thanks to some anonymous people who helped me develop these ideas”.
I agree the last issue is important, but this could be solved by good channels of communication and explanation about what should/shouldn’t be posted.
Perhaps an enterprising blogger could start an interview-format blog, where they interview EA authors of those “internal discussions and private documents” and ask them to elucidate their ideas in a way suitable for a general audience. I think that would make for a pretty neat and high-value blog!