He recently described something to me as ‘too EA’. When I pushed him to elaborate, what he meant was something like ‘has the appearance of inviting you to make your own choice but is not-so-subtly trying to push you in a specific direction’.
This reminds me of Bible Study groups where there where discussion was encouraged but never approved of, some of which I led (badly). I have empathy for those leading these.
As a leader, it is a genuinely hard to balance:
allowing discussion
staying on topic
pointing out the best answers
allowing a safe space for disagreement
I agree with the author on criticisms but I have let a lot of group discussions and I do find it really hard.
My suggestion here is to have 2 people leading the group, one who will take the role of moderator—to ask questions and move the group on. And one who will argue the EA point of view, and at times be shut down by the moderator.
There’s a joke that whatever the question is in Bible Study, the correct answer is always ‘God’, ‘Jesus’, or ‘The Bible’. I think it would be bad if the EA equivalent to that became ‘AI’, ‘Existential risk’ and ‘Randomised controlled trials’ .
On the other hand, discussion relies on people having a shared pool of information, and I think it’s very easy to overestimate how much common information people share. I’ve found in group discussions it’s common that someone who’s not an regular to the discussions will bring a whole set of talking points, articles, authors, ideas etc that I had no idea even existed till then. Which is great, except I don’t know what to say in response except ‘uh, what was the name of that? I’ll have to read into it’ .
Yeah, I recall my university organizing days and the awkwardness/difficulty of trying to balance “tell me about the careers you are interested in and why” and “here are the careers that seem highly impactful according to research/analysis.”
I frequently thought things like “I’d like for people to have a way for people to share their perspective without feeling obligated to defend it, but I also don’t want to blanket-validate everyone’s perspectives by simply not being critical.”
This reminds me of Bible Study groups where there where discussion was encouraged but never approved of, some of which I led (badly). I have empathy for those leading these.
As a leader, it is a genuinely hard to balance:
allowing discussion
staying on topic
pointing out the best answers
allowing a safe space for disagreement
I agree with the author on criticisms but I have let a lot of group discussions and I do find it really hard.
My suggestion here is to have 2 people leading the group, one who will take the role of moderator—to ask questions and move the group on. And one who will argue the EA point of view, and at times be shut down by the moderator.
There’s a joke that whatever the question is in Bible Study, the correct answer is always ‘God’, ‘Jesus’, or ‘The Bible’. I think it would be bad if the EA equivalent to that became ‘AI’, ‘Existential risk’ and ‘Randomised controlled trials’ .
On the other hand, discussion relies on people having a shared pool of information, and I think it’s very easy to overestimate how much common information people share. I’ve found in group discussions it’s common that someone who’s not an regular to the discussions will bring a whole set of talking points, articles, authors, ideas etc that I had no idea even existed till then. Which is great, except I don’t know what to say in response except ‘uh, what was the name of that? I’ll have to read into it’ .
Yeah, I recall my university organizing days and the awkwardness/difficulty of trying to balance “tell me about the careers you are interested in and why” and “here are the careers that seem highly impactful according to research/analysis.”
I frequently thought things like “I’d like for people to have a way for people to share their perspective without feeling obligated to defend it, but I also don’t want to blanket-validate everyone’s perspectives by simply not being critical.”