I like your framing of public/private EAs and pointing out that this differs from the point of switching from pseudonyms (where you could easily find out the real name) to real names. I could see other cases where completely private names might be useful:
You have a stalker and don’t want them to see when you post or what you are currently thinking about
You’re discussing career change without wanting your current employer to know about it
Any kind of whistleblower situation where you’re pointing out bad behaviour
Discussing things that the community is ok with discussing but that have reputational risks outside
In some cases, a separate anonymous account parallel to your public one might be good.
In terms of the points that you raised about politicians and other public figures, I would advocate for real-name usage. Especially as a politician you often visit and engage with many different groups and as long as your message is consistent between the platforms it should not be encouraged to do this anonymously.
In general, we should try to make EA as broad a platform as is feasible given our principles, in order to not be associated with one political party or a few donors. The more different people we have interacting with their real names with us, the better—at least as long we can uphold good discussion norms.
Similarly, if you’re thinking about starting EA 2.0 it would be good to first openly engage with the community here in order to see if there is support for changes from within. If you start EA 2.0 then this should be either consistent with your writing here or you should be able to argue why you changed your mind.
I like your framing of public/private EAs and pointing out that this differs from the point of switching from pseudonyms (where you could easily find out the real name) to real names. I could see other cases where completely private names might be useful:
You have a stalker and don’t want them to see when you post or what you are currently thinking about
You’re discussing career change without wanting your current employer to know about it
Any kind of whistleblower situation where you’re pointing out bad behaviour
Discussing things that the community is ok with discussing but that have reputational risks outside
In some cases, a separate anonymous account parallel to your public one might be good.
In terms of the points that you raised about politicians and other public figures, I would advocate for real-name usage. Especially as a politician you often visit and engage with many different groups and as long as your message is consistent between the platforms it should not be encouraged to do this anonymously.
In general, we should try to make EA as broad a platform as is feasible given our principles, in order to not be associated with one political party or a few donors. The more different people we have interacting with their real names with us, the better—at least as long we can uphold good discussion norms.
Similarly, if you’re thinking about starting EA 2.0 it would be good to first openly engage with the community here in order to see if there is support for changes from within. If you start EA 2.0 then this should be either consistent with your writing here or you should be able to argue why you changed your mind.