Maintaining that healthy level of debate, disagreement, and skepticism is critical, but harder to do when an idea becomes more popular. I believe most of the early “converts” to AI Safety have carefully weighed the arguments and made a decision based on analysis of the evidence. But as AI Safety becomes a larger portion of EA, the idea will begin to spread for other, more “religious” reasons (e.g., social conformity, $’s, institutionalized recruiting/evangelization, leadership authority).
As an example, I’d put the belief in prediction markets as an EA idea that tends towards the religious. Prediction markets may well be a beneficial innovation, but I personally don’t think we have good evidence one way or the other yet. But due to the idea’s connection to rationality and EA community leaders, it has gained many adherents who probably haven’t closely evaluated the supporting data. Again, maybe the idea is correct and this is a good thing. But I think it is better if EA had fewer of these canonized, insider signals, because it makes reevaluation of the ideas difficult.
Yes, i’m always unsure of what “bad faith” really means. I often see it cited as a main reason to engage or not engage with an argument. But I don’t know why it should matter to me what a writer or journalist intends deep down. I would hope that “good faith” doesn’t just mean aligned on overall goals already.
To be more specific, i keep seeing reference hidden context behind Phil Torres’s pieces. To someone who doesn’t have the time to read through many cryptic old threads, it just makes me skeptical that the bad faith criticism is useful in discounting or not discounting an argument.