To the extent that any media backlash is the result of Americans making assumptions about other countries they don’t know much about, I’m a lot less sympathetic to the claim that CEA (a UK-based charity buying a venue in the UK!) should make otherwise-suboptimal purchasing decisions in order to avoid it.
(EDITed to tone down unnecessarily hurtful language.)
As someone who is neither American nor from the UK I think manor vs castle is a distinction without difference. It’s an extremely ostentatious purchase in any case and claiming that not being well versed in the nuances of palatial UK buildings is ignorant or offensive is at best severely off putting.
My point isn’t really whether it’s a castle or not. Sometimes I use words interchangeably, like calling a turkey a chicken. I think my point was about media perception or something… yeah sorry if I’m not super smart.
It’s not really nice to call people ignorant and presumptuous, and doesn’t lead to super great dialogue. I don’t think it really becomes EA to look down on other people, call them ignorant and presumptuous because they didn’t use the right words. A lot of people upvoted your comment, which makes me question whether I want to engage with EA more.
Yeah I might be ignorant. The people who hear about this manor house and are turned off from EA might be ignorant. So *** them right? They suck! But then EA is just sort of doomed to be this irrelevant movement that nobody wants to be part of because it is critical of other people and doesn’t care about what anybody else thinks or feels.
I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. I wrote my comment quickly before leaving my computer and didn’t put enough thought into my phrasing.
I do think there’s something real I’m gesturing at here—something like “Americans should be more humble in judging the offensiveness of things done in other cultures”. But I also think you’re probably pointing at a real dynamic affecting the conversation around this purchase, that is useful to have in our models, and I’m grateful that you did that.
It’s not just you. Before I wrote a reply sort of calling out the insults, your post had way more upvotes than any of my comments. I think there’s something systemic about the EA forum which doesn’t encourage good dialogue (I’m suspicious of the numbers at the top of comments, for starters).
I totally agreed with you when you pointed out that Americans and people from the UK might have different perspectives on this topic. So yeah, there’s something real you’re gesturing at. It’s a cultural difference. People from different economic backgrounds probably also look at this purchase differently.
That said, I don’t think this purchase was particularly frugal in any cultural context. Even Owen Cotton-Barratt, who played a big role in getting the manor house purchased, said (in the comment above) he thought the beautiful surroundings would be inspiring and it wasn’t done as a cost saving sort of thing.
And yeah, I know I was making a useful point about the real dynamic affecting the conversation! What I wrote wasn’t written perfectly, but the fact remains it’s a big fancy mansion. I made the comment that the average person reading a headline isn’t going to think “hey it was actually only $10 million, not $15 million,” they’re just going to think “hey that’s a big fancy mansion where a bunch of rich people stayed, purchased by a charity”—and we’ve already seen this in headlines (so yeah, of course it’s a valid point, however poorly worded) and the fact that my comment was corrected in some ways which largely ignored the main thing I was arguing, and then the comment correcting me was upvoted 27 times compared to my upvote of 7, really says a lot about the lack of this platform for good dialogue and listening to others. I am just saying, it’s not you, you don’t need to feel bad, but I’m kind of venting that this platform isn’t great for dialogue and I wonder who thought that copying reddit (with the upvote, downvote thing) would lead to a good format for intellectual dialogue and an exchange of ideas. Feel free to ignore this paragraph (or whatever you want) but I’m just sort of venting at this point. I mean the counter-argument is that the people who read my comment might have agreed if it had been worded better, but I have a hard time believing that because in addition how much your comment was originally upvoted. I think people just had an opinion, and then read something they agreed with, and then upvoted that, just like they do on every damn forum on the internet, and your comment was no different, and that’s cool man I mean lots of people get upset and write mean things on the internet, you shouldn’t feel bad, but let’s just all go ahead and admit that this forum isn’t enlightened or a great place for dialogue or any of that, and it’s maybe 20% better than the YouTube comment section, which is the absolute asshole of the earth in terms of intelligent dialogue. Okay, sorry, done with my complete rant.
Your comment made false claims, and these false claims substantially exaggerated the issue (which isn’t to say there isn’t a serious issue left worth addressing after the claims are corrected and the exaggerated removed). I assumed (and still assume) this was just a well-intentioned mistake on your end.
I pointed out that these claims were false. This wasn’t intended as an attack on you (people can go back and look at the comment and judge for themselves whether it was appropriate). Because I assumed (and still assume) you are interested in the truth, my assumption was that you would reply with something like, “Oh, that’s my bad. I’ve edited accordingly”, before turning back to discuss the substantive issue.
Had you done that, I think that people would have moved on to discussing the substance of your concern (I doubt that anyone much cares about this discussion of clarifications, in and of itself).
Instead, your response felt to me fairly dismissive. It did not feel to me like you truly acknowledged that you’d made a mistake here. I think this choice on your end was well intentioned, and I can see where you were coming from: I think you were just trying to drag people’s attention back to what you see as the core issue.
Unfortunately, I think that not simply acknowledging the mistake can be misinterpreted as you not really being interested in the truth and as instead just trying to score points. It is somewhat natural that this might make people uninterested in engaging with you, because you might not look to them like a good faith actor.
I think the EA Forum is far from perfect, in many ways (perhaps including some that you point to), but I do think you’re underestimating how much this is a reaction to what looks like a failure to acknowledge misrepresentation.
By the way, I’m not sure whether it will come across this way, but the fact that I’m writing this message reflects the fact that I do genuinely believe you’re a good faith actor, and also reflects the fact that I think you deserve an attempt at an explanation. I hope that my genuine desire for productive conversation comes across, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I have communicated poorly at some point in this message. If so, I apologise.
You could be right that people argued against my point because I wrote “castle” instead of “manor house” and “owned” instead of “stayed at”. To me, those felt like details that are kind of incidental to the main point, even if they did exaggerate the point, and so correcting them was this way to undermine my argument without really engaging with me.
I think we definitely had different opinions. On the whole yeah of course we’re both acting in our best faith haha. I’m just a guy who doesn’t keep track of details as much as long as the meaning is the same (like mixing up “chicken” with “turkey”) and you’re someone who places a high value on factual correctness, even when the facts don’t change the underlying argument. Are you someone who corrects friends when they’re talking? Everyone has a different personality, and yeah we’re definitely all acting in good faith.
Kind of regardless of all this I do think that people on the internet upvote what they already believe in, regardless of misuse of words. You haven’t totally convinced me there, but you’re right I think that misuse of words played some part. It’s just that if people (such as you) wanted to engage me in a good faith manner I’d hope they say “hey I understand your point here and here, but you used the terms here and here incorrectly”, but instead you corrected me (without addressing my point) and another guy called me pompous and ignorant.
Last thing I do just want to say we both have good intentions and we both felt each other’s comments were dismissive. Perhaps we would both rewrite things if we could go back in time. We’re not writing books here, we probably aren’t proofreading, and we probably just have different ways of looking at the world. I disagree that people are neutral in what they upvote and write online, and I still think that people upvote what they agree with, without giving things substantive thought. You haven’t changed my mind on that. But yeah you’re right it didn’t exactly help things that I used the wrong words.
Let’s just move on. Thanks for your thoughts! We both have a lot of effective altruisming to do and I’m not sure this is it.
edit: I think there’s also potentially a trend on this forum to be positive about EA, regardless of all the talk about red teaming. So it’s very possible that one explanation of why everyone in disagreement to this and other comments I’ve written is that they go against EA decisions somehow. There’s also a lot of comments here which support the decision to buy the manor house. Honestly, when I compare this to my experience on reddit.com/r/effectivealtruism where everyone was like WTF this purchase is terrible and the one negative comment I made there, someone else agreed with me. So yeah overall just seems a bit of dogpiling and cliquish, which isn’t too surprising because that’s how the internet works. I think upvoting and downvoting is a terrible terrible idea for listening to others and having independent thoughts.
I’d be curious about why you think my comment about optics was also heavily downvoted (well, first it was upvoted, then downvoted). There weren’t any word mixups in that case. So to me it seems like there’s some explanation besides word mixups, which you are claiming is the main reason. (Indeed I think that may have been your main reason for not agreeing with my comment, but there isn’t much evidence that it’s the reason for negative reaction in general to that comment. I mean even in your comment you said you think that’s why, but don’t provide much evidence (other than people upvoting your comment, again, but it’s sort of weird to think that the evidence for why people are reacting on a forum would be how they react to ideas about why they react a certain way)).
It’s a little disappointing that one of the main things you got out of my response was a potential personal attack. Definitely wasn’t meant that way. Yeah this conversation isn’t really helping either of us. Take care.
To the extent that any media backlash is the result of Americans making assumptions about other countries they don’t know much about, I’m a lot less sympathetic to the claim that CEA (a UK-based charity buying a venue in the UK!) should make otherwise-suboptimal purchasing decisions in order to avoid it.
(EDITed to tone down unnecessarily hurtful language.)
As someone who is neither American nor from the UK I think manor vs castle is a distinction without difference. It’s an extremely ostentatious purchase in any case and claiming that not being well versed in the nuances of palatial UK buildings is ignorant or offensive is at best severely off putting.
My point isn’t really whether it’s a castle or not. Sometimes I use words interchangeably, like calling a turkey a chicken. I think my point was about media perception or something… yeah sorry if I’m not super smart.
It’s not really nice to call people ignorant and presumptuous, and doesn’t lead to super great dialogue. I don’t think it really becomes EA to look down on other people, call them ignorant and presumptuous because they didn’t use the right words. A lot of people upvoted your comment, which makes me question whether I want to engage with EA more.
Yeah I might be ignorant. The people who hear about this manor house and are turned off from EA might be ignorant. So *** them right? They suck! But then EA is just sort of doomed to be this irrelevant movement that nobody wants to be part of because it is critical of other people and doesn’t care about what anybody else thinks or feels.
I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. I wrote my comment quickly before leaving my computer and didn’t put enough thought into my phrasing.
I do think there’s something real I’m gesturing at here—something like “Americans should be more humble in judging the offensiveness of things done in other cultures”. But I also think you’re probably pointing at a real dynamic affecting the conversation around this purchase, that is useful to have in our models, and I’m grateful that you did that.
It’s not just you. Before I wrote a reply sort of calling out the insults, your post had way more upvotes than any of my comments. I think there’s something systemic about the EA forum which doesn’t encourage good dialogue (I’m suspicious of the numbers at the top of comments, for starters).
I totally agreed with you when you pointed out that Americans and people from the UK might have different perspectives on this topic. So yeah, there’s something real you’re gesturing at. It’s a cultural difference. People from different economic backgrounds probably also look at this purchase differently.
That said, I don’t think this purchase was particularly frugal in any cultural context. Even Owen Cotton-Barratt, who played a big role in getting the manor house purchased, said (in the comment above) he thought the beautiful surroundings would be inspiring and it wasn’t done as a cost saving sort of thing.
And yeah, I know I was making a useful point about the real dynamic affecting the conversation! What I wrote wasn’t written perfectly, but the fact remains it’s a big fancy mansion.
I made the comment that the average person reading a headline isn’t going to think “hey it was actually only $10 million, not $15 million,” they’re just going to think “hey that’s a big fancy mansion where a bunch of rich people stayed, purchased by a charity”—and we’ve already seen this in headlines (so yeah, of course it’s a valid point, however poorly worded) and the fact that my comment was corrected in some ways which largely ignored the main thing I was arguing, and then the comment correcting me was upvoted 27 times compared to my upvote of 7, really says a lot about the lack of this platform for good dialogue and listening to others. I am just saying, it’s not you, you don’t need to feel bad, but I’m kind of venting that this platform isn’t great for dialogue and I wonder who thought that copying reddit (with the upvote, downvote thing) would lead to a good format for intellectual dialogue and an exchange of ideas. Feel free to ignore this paragraph (or whatever you want) but I’m just sort of venting at this point. I mean the counter-argument is that the people who read my comment might have agreed if it had been worded better, but I have a hard time believing that because in addition how much your comment was originally upvoted. I think people just had an opinion, and then read something they agreed with, and then upvoted that, just like they do on every damn forum on the internet, and your comment was no different, and that’s cool man I mean lots of people get upset and write mean things on the internet, you shouldn’t feel bad, but let’s just all go ahead and admit that this forum isn’t enlightened or a great place for dialogue or any of that, and it’s maybe 20% better than the YouTube comment section, which is the absolute asshole of the earth in terms of intelligent dialogue. Okay, sorry, done with my complete rant.
Your comment made false claims, and these false claims substantially exaggerated the issue (which isn’t to say there isn’t a serious issue left worth addressing after the claims are corrected and the exaggerated removed). I assumed (and still assume) this was just a well-intentioned mistake on your end.
I pointed out that these claims were false. This wasn’t intended as an attack on you (people can go back and look at the comment and judge for themselves whether it was appropriate). Because I assumed (and still assume) you are interested in the truth, my assumption was that you would reply with something like, “Oh, that’s my bad. I’ve edited accordingly”, before turning back to discuss the substantive issue.
Had you done that, I think that people would have moved on to discussing the substance of your concern (I doubt that anyone much cares about this discussion of clarifications, in and of itself).
Instead, your response felt to me fairly dismissive. It did not feel to me like you truly acknowledged that you’d made a mistake here. I think this choice on your end was well intentioned, and I can see where you were coming from: I think you were just trying to drag people’s attention back to what you see as the core issue.
Unfortunately, I think that not simply acknowledging the mistake can be misinterpreted as you not really being interested in the truth and as instead just trying to score points. It is somewhat natural that this might make people uninterested in engaging with you, because you might not look to them like a good faith actor.
I think the EA Forum is far from perfect, in many ways (perhaps including some that you point to), but I do think you’re underestimating how much this is a reaction to what looks like a failure to acknowledge misrepresentation.
By the way, I’m not sure whether it will come across this way, but the fact that I’m writing this message reflects the fact that I do genuinely believe you’re a good faith actor, and also reflects the fact that I think you deserve an attempt at an explanation. I hope that my genuine desire for productive conversation comes across, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I have communicated poorly at some point in this message. If so, I apologise.
Thanks for your perspective.
You could be right that people argued against my point because I wrote “castle” instead of “manor house” and “owned” instead of “stayed at”. To me, those felt like details that are kind of incidental to the main point, even if they did exaggerate the point, and so correcting them was this way to undermine my argument without really engaging with me.
I think we definitely had different opinions. On the whole yeah of course we’re both acting in our best faith haha. I’m just a guy who doesn’t keep track of details as much as long as the meaning is the same (like mixing up “chicken” with “turkey”) and you’re someone who places a high value on factual correctness, even when the facts don’t change the underlying argument. Are you someone who corrects friends when they’re talking? Everyone has a different personality, and yeah we’re definitely all acting in good faith.
Kind of regardless of all this I do think that people on the internet upvote what they already believe in, regardless of misuse of words. You haven’t totally convinced me there, but you’re right I think that misuse of words played some part. It’s just that if people (such as you) wanted to engage me in a good faith manner I’d hope they say “hey I understand your point here and here, but you used the terms here and here incorrectly”, but instead you corrected me (without addressing my point) and another guy called me pompous and ignorant.
Last thing I do just want to say we both have good intentions and we both felt each other’s comments were dismissive. Perhaps we would both rewrite things if we could go back in time. We’re not writing books here, we probably aren’t proofreading, and we probably just have different ways of looking at the world. I disagree that people are neutral in what they upvote and write online, and I still think that people upvote what they agree with, without giving things substantive thought. You haven’t changed my mind on that. But yeah you’re right it didn’t exactly help things that I used the wrong words.
Let’s just move on. Thanks for your thoughts! We both have a lot of effective altruisming to do and I’m not sure this is it.
edit: I think there’s also potentially a trend on this forum to be positive about EA, regardless of all the talk about red teaming. So it’s very possible that one explanation of why everyone in disagreement to this and other comments I’ve written is that they go against EA decisions somehow. There’s also a lot of comments here which support the decision to buy the manor house. Honestly, when I compare this to my experience on reddit.com/r/effectivealtruism where everyone was like WTF this purchase is terrible and the one negative comment I made there, someone else agreed with me. So yeah overall just seems a bit of dogpiling and cliquish, which isn’t too surprising because that’s how the internet works. I think upvoting and downvoting is a terrible terrible idea for listening to others and having independent thoughts.
I’d be curious about why you think my comment about optics was also heavily downvoted (well, first it was upvoted, then downvoted). There weren’t any word mixups in that case. So to me it seems like there’s some explanation besides word mixups, which you are claiming is the main reason. (Indeed I think that may have been your main reason for not agreeing with my comment, but there isn’t much evidence that it’s the reason for negative reaction in general to that comment. I mean even in your comment you said you think that’s why, but don’t provide much evidence (other than people upvoting your comment, again, but it’s sort of weird to think that the evidence for why people are reacting on a forum would be how they react to ideas about why they react a certain way)).
It’s a little disappointing that one of the main things you got out of my response was a potential personal attack. Definitely wasn’t meant that way. Yeah this conversation isn’t really helping either of us. Take care.
I think you’re the first native(?) English speaker I’ve met who uses “turkey” and “chicken” interchangeably fwiw.
Yeah my point was that I personally mix up words sometimes. Did I not write that clearly? I didn’t mean that everyone does it.