Good point, I didn’t make clear what I meant with the last sentence. Would this rephrasing make sense to you?
If people are finding out about “EA buying a castle” from Émile Torres or the New Yorker and we can’t point to any kind of public statement or justification, then we’re probably doing something wrong
I also agree the content of some of these criticisms wouldn’t change even if there were a public post, but I don’t think the same applies to people’s responses to it. If a reasonable person stumbles across Torres or the New Yorker criticizing EA for buying a castle, they would probably be a lot more forgiving towards EA if they can be pointed to a page on CEA’s website that provides an explanation behind the decision, written before any of these criticisms, as opposed to finding a complete lack of records or acknowledgements on (C)EA’s side.
In general, taking reasoning transparency more seriously seems like low hanging fruit for making the communication from EA orgs to both the movement and the public at large more robust, though I might be missing something, in which case I’d love if someone could point it out to me.
I think that the existence of a page would mollify maybe 10% of the people who liked Torres’ post, and it also runs the risk of sparking additional attention (maybe drawing in people to attack EV for running so many events or providing material for people to quote-tweet derisively).
I believe in reasoning transparency and try to write up my own decisions in a lot of detail. I think this is a good thing to do for the sake of the people who like and care about your work. But I don’t expect it to help much with motivated critics or the general public.
(One counterpoint: If anyone from the general public cares about long explanatory writeups on the economics of buying an abbey, I’d expect those people to be the types most likely to become interested in EA. But those are also the people I’d expect to not be engaging with Torres, so I don’t know how big the effect is.)
One counterpoint: If anyone from the general public cares about long explanatory writeups on the economics of buying an abbey, I’d expect those people to be the types most likely to become interested in EA. But those are also the people I’d expect to not be engaging with Torres, so I don’t know how big the effect is.
I’m unconvinced by this part—I think that Torres is clearly a bad faith actor, but am sure this isn’t legible to many in their audience. I expect they appeal to different subcultures, but that at least some of their audience would be EA receptive.
Good point, I didn’t make clear what I meant with the last sentence. Would this rephrasing make sense to you?
I also agree the content of some of these criticisms wouldn’t change even if there were a public post, but I don’t think the same applies to people’s responses to it. If a reasonable person stumbles across Torres or the New Yorker criticizing EA for buying a castle, they would probably be a lot more forgiving towards EA if they can be pointed to a page on CEA’s website that provides an explanation behind the decision, written before any of these criticisms, as opposed to finding a complete lack of records or acknowledgements on (C)EA’s side.
In general, taking reasoning transparency more seriously seems like low hanging fruit for making the communication from EA orgs to both the movement and the public at large more robust, though I might be missing something, in which case I’d love if someone could point it out to me.
I think that the existence of a page would mollify maybe 10% of the people who liked Torres’ post, and it also runs the risk of sparking additional attention (maybe drawing in people to attack EV for running so many events or providing material for people to quote-tweet derisively).
I believe in reasoning transparency and try to write up my own decisions in a lot of detail. I think this is a good thing to do for the sake of the people who like and care about your work. But I don’t expect it to help much with motivated critics or the general public.
(One counterpoint: If anyone from the general public cares about long explanatory writeups on the economics of buying an abbey, I’d expect those people to be the types most likely to become interested in EA. But those are also the people I’d expect to not be engaging with Torres, so I don’t know how big the effect is.)
I think that sort of long writeup can help signal thoughtfulness even if people aren’t actually going to read through it
I’m unconvinced by this part—I think that Torres is clearly a bad faith actor, but am sure this isn’t legible to many in their audience. I expect they appeal to different subcultures, but that at least some of their audience would be EA receptive.
FYI: I added a brief explanation of why we hadn’t posted publicly about it before now to the end of my answer.