This was a poorly phrased line, and it is helpful to point that out. While I can’t and shouldn’t speak for the OP, I’m confident that the OP didn’t mean it in an “ordering people from best to worst” way, especially knowing the tremendous respect that people working and volunteering in X-risk have for Seth himself, and for GCRI’s work. I would note that the entire point of this post (and the AMA which the OP has organised) was to highlight GCRI’s excellent work and bring it to the attention of more people in the community. However, I can also see how the line might be taken to mean things it wasn’t at all intended to do.
Hence, I’d like to take this opportunity to appeal for a charitable reading of posts of this nature—ones that are clearly intended to promote and highlight good work in LW’s areas of interest—especially in “within community” spaces like this. One of the really inspiring things about working in this area is the number of people putting in great work and long hours alongside their full-time commitments—like Ryan and many others. And those working fulltime in Xrisk/EA often put in far in excess of standard hours. This sometimes means that people are working under a lot of time pressure or fatigue, and phrase things badly (or don’t recognise that something could easily be misread). That may or may not be the case here, but I know it’s a concern I often have about my own engagements, especially when it’s gone past the ’12 hours in the office’ stage.
With that said, please do tell us when it looks like we’re expressing things badly, or in a way that might be taken to be less than positive. It’s a tremendously helpful learning experience about the mistakes we can make in how we write (particularly in cases where people might be tired/under pressure and thus less attentive to such things).
If funding were available, the Centre for Effective Altruism would consider hiring someone to work closely with Prof
Nick Bostrom to provide anything and everything he needs to be more productive.
Really?
An appeal to charity in the reading of “public-facing, external communication” is a little odd. Public-facing means you can’t beg off on social incompetence, being overworked, etc. You have to convince the public of something, and they don’t owe you charity in how they read your message. They will retreat to their prejudices and gut instincts right away. It is in the job description of public-facing communication to deal with this.
This was a poorly phrased line, and it is helpful to point that out. While I can’t and shouldn’t speak for the OP, I’m confident that the OP didn’t mean it in an “ordering people from best to worst” way, especially knowing the tremendous respect that people working and volunteering in X-risk have for Seth himself, and for GCRI’s work. I would note that the entire point of this post (and the AMA which the OP has organised) was to highlight GCRI’s excellent work and bring it to the attention of more people in the community. However, I can also see how the line might be taken to mean things it wasn’t at all intended to do.
Hence, I’d like to take this opportunity to appeal for a charitable reading of posts of this nature—ones that are clearly intended to promote and highlight good work in LW’s areas of interest—especially in “within community” spaces like this. One of the really inspiring things about working in this area is the number of people putting in great work and long hours alongside their full-time commitments—like Ryan and many others. And those working fulltime in Xrisk/EA often put in far in excess of standard hours. This sometimes means that people are working under a lot of time pressure or fatigue, and phrase things badly (or don’t recognise that something could easily be misread). That may or may not be the case here, but I know it’s a concern I often have about my own engagements, especially when it’s gone past the ’12 hours in the office’ stage.
With that said, please do tell us when it looks like we’re expressing things badly, or in a way that might be taken to be less than positive. It’s a tremendously helpful learning experience about the mistakes we can make in how we write (particularly in cases where people might be tired/under pressure and thus less attentive to such things).
Duly noted, thanks. This kind of tone deafness seems to be a pattern here in the LW-sphere, however. For instance, look at this:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/lco/could_you_be_prof_nick_bostroms_sidekick/
Really?
An appeal to charity in the reading of “public-facing, external communication” is a little odd. Public-facing means you can’t beg off on social incompetence, being overworked, etc. You have to convince the public of something, and they don’t owe you charity in how they read your message. They will retreat to their prejudices and gut instincts right away. It is in the job description of public-facing communication to deal with this.
This is reasonable.