I’d also like to see targeted interaction and outreach to the academic research community.
GiveWell has a good model of validating and checking intuitions against prominent people in development, but seems to opt for public intellectuals over less famous experts in the field who’s thinking those public intellectuals may defer to.
In the EA community, I feel this has lead to such confidence in deworming, when deworming is actually one of if not the most controversial topics in academic impact evaluation (nicknamed worm wars. And DALY’s are the pariah outside of specific subcommunities of impact analysis looking to the future, not immediate use.
There may be many similar misunderstandings in the rationality community which are taken for granted. But unlike the EA community, the rationalist community seems to be less transparent. MIRI technical research agenda is still secret, amongst other things..
By contrasts, I can go on GiveWell, which in some ways isn’t part of the EA community so much as the inspiration for it, and see how they think they think and motivating influences cleanly laid out, without even going into their methodology. Be warmed, ordinary readers, I’m playing the critic here. MIRI is much more technically complicated that GiveWell, I’m just trying to give criticism to be constructive. Path dependence and novelty of MIRI’s agenda, amongst other things, are obvious barriers to doing things the EA way in the rationalist community.
Btw, I think you’ve misspelled ‘community’. Some members of the community seem really neurotic about that sort of thing and it would be shame if you were downvoted or missed upvotes for something as trivial as that.
Grammar is the mind-killer. Once you know which spelling is correct, you must attack all words that appear incorrect; otherwise it’s like stabbing your teachers in the back—providing aid and comfort to the uneducated.
People go funny in the head when talking about grammar. The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, spelling was a matter of life and death. And sex, and wealth, and allies, and reputation… Writing “execute not, release!” as “execute, not release!” could let you kill your hated rival!
If you want to make a point about science, or rationality, then my advice is to not choose a contemporary language, if you can possibly avoid it. If your point is inherently verbal, then use French language from the Louis XVI’s era. Language is an important domain to which we should individually apply our rationality—but it’s a terrible tool to learn rationality, or discuss rationality, unless all the discussants are already rational.
If you use French language from the Louis XVI era, nobody will understand you. It isn’t clear that avoiding politics will lead to a similar lack of understanding.
I’d also like to see targeted interaction and outreach to the academic research community.
GiveWell has a good model of validating and checking intuitions against prominent people in development, but seems to opt for public intellectuals over less famous experts in the field who’s thinking those public intellectuals may defer to. In the EA community, I feel this has lead to such confidence in deworming, when deworming is actually one of if not the most controversial topics in academic impact evaluation (nicknamed worm wars. And DALY’s are the pariah outside of specific subcommunities of impact analysis looking to the future, not immediate use.
There may be many similar misunderstandings in the rationality community which are taken for granted. But unlike the EA community, the rationalist community seems to be less transparent. MIRI technical research agenda is still secret, amongst other things..
By contrasts, I can go on GiveWell, which in some ways isn’t part of the EA community so much as the inspiration for it, and see how they think they think and motivating influences cleanly laid out, without even going into their methodology. Be warmed, ordinary readers, I’m playing the critic here. MIRI is much more technically complicated that GiveWell, I’m just trying to give criticism to be constructive. Path dependence and novelty of MIRI’s agenda, amongst other things, are obvious barriers to doing things the EA way in the rationalist community.
Btw, I think you’ve misspelled ‘community’. Some members of the community seem really neurotic about that sort of thing and it would be shame if you were downvoted or missed upvotes for something as trivial as that.
Thanks for the warning. I forgot to check the title. Grammar-Nazis always lurk for that fresh non-native-speaker flesh.
Grammar is the mind-killer. Once you know which spelling is correct, you must attack all words that appear incorrect; otherwise it’s like stabbing your teachers in the back—providing aid and comfort to the uneducated.
People go funny in the head when talking about grammar. The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, spelling was a matter of life and death. And sex, and wealth, and allies, and reputation… Writing “execute not, release!” as “execute, not release!” could let you kill your hated rival!
If you want to make a point about science, or rationality, then my advice is to not choose a contemporary language, if you can possibly avoid it. If your point is inherently verbal, then use French language from the Louis XVI’s era. Language is an important domain to which we should individually apply our rationality—but it’s a terrible tool to learn rationality, or discuss rationality, unless all the discussants are already rational.
/s
If you use French language from the Louis XVI era, nobody will understand you. It isn’t clear that avoiding politics will lead to a similar lack of understanding.