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.
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.