Just want to note that I’m sorta disappointed by CFAR’s response here.
Dan responded very quickly to my initial post (very quick = within 30 minutes), pointing to CFAR’s 2015 impact assessment. (I didn’t know about the 2015 assessment and was grateful to be pointed to it.)
But as far as I can tell, no one affiliated with CFAR engaged with the discussion that followed. A bunch of follow-up questions fell out of that discussion; I’m sad that no one from CFAR fielded them.
I’m parsing the very quick initial response + lack of follow-on engagement as CFAR acting defensively, rather than engaging in open discourse. This is disappointing.
Also this is the internet – I’m open to the possibility that I’m misinterpreting things here.
I’m parsing the very quick initial response + lack of follow-on engagement as CFAR acting defensively, rather than engaging in open discourse. This is disappointing.
Note: I think it should be very clear that responding to a LessWrong comment does not commit you to hours of discussion that you might or might not find valuable. If every comment I make is a commitment to LessWrong to spend multiple hours on follow-up comments, then I would not participate in commenting.
I definitely reserve the right to disengage from any thread if I don’t expect further commenting to be valuable, and strongly encourage others to do the same.
Normal explanation for these things is simply that people are busy, and good communication takes a lot of time. Of course, with this being the internet, it’s also the case that responses get easily misinterpreted which means you have to put in more time, further disincentivising response.
Added: Note that LW isn’t a project any of the CFAR team work on so they wouldn’t naturally be checking LW or something or be trying to use the platform to talk about their research, in case you were confused and expecting them to be actively interested in discussion. They’ve got jobs and public discussion mostly isn’t one of them right now, I think.
Eh, I think good communication takes time, but not an inordinate amount of time.
For a consumer-facing organization like CFAR, being able to clearly articulate why you’re doing what you’re doing is a core competency, so I’d expect them to bring that to bear in a place like LessWrong, where a lot of CFAR stakeholders hang out.
LW isn’t a project any of the CFAR team work on so they wouldn’t naturally be checking LW or something or be trying to use the platform to talk about their research...
Sure, but they replied within a half hour of me posting.
The fast response + lack of follow-up feels more defensive than if they hadn’t replied at all.
“A quick, short response that mostly consists of a link, followed by delayed/no response when asked follow-up questions that would require a more time-consuming answer” is exactly the pattern I would expect from someone who was somewhat interested in answering but was busy.
If there’s a question that you can address in two minutes by just giving a link, then you will do that. But then you don’t have the time for anything more elaborate so you either do it later or forget about it entirely (either intentionally because it doesn’t seem like a high priority or unintentionally because you just had too many other things on your mind).
...is exactly the pattern I would expect from someone who was somewhat interested in answering but was busy.
Agreed.
It’s also the pattern I’d expect from someone who wasn’t interested in engaging, but wanted to give the impression that they’ve got it covered / already thought about this / have good reasons for doing what they’re doing.
It’s also the pattern I’d expect from someone who wasn’t interested in engaging,
“Uninterested in engaging” and “defensive” feel very different to me. “Defensive” implies that you’re motivated to prove something, either to yourself or others. But you can be uninterested in engaging despite being confident that you’re doing the right thing, simply because it doesn’t feel like you’d get a lot of value in explaining yourself in this particular discussion. There’s a lot of things that employees for organizations like CFAR could be doing; getting into long online discussions may not be the best use of their time, even if they had perfectly good answers.
Just want to note that I’m sorta disappointed by CFAR’s response here.
Dan responded very quickly to my initial post (very quick = within 30 minutes), pointing to CFAR’s 2015 impact assessment. (I didn’t know about the 2015 assessment and was grateful to be pointed to it.)
But as far as I can tell, no one affiliated with CFAR engaged with the discussion that followed. A bunch of follow-up questions fell out of that discussion; I’m sad that no one from CFAR fielded them.
I’m parsing the very quick initial response + lack of follow-on engagement as CFAR acting defensively, rather than engaging in open discourse. This is disappointing.
Also this is the internet – I’m open to the possibility that I’m misinterpreting things here.
Note: I think it should be very clear that responding to a LessWrong comment does not commit you to hours of discussion that you might or might not find valuable. If every comment I make is a commitment to LessWrong to spend multiple hours on follow-up comments, then I would not participate in commenting.
I definitely reserve the right to disengage from any thread if I don’t expect further commenting to be valuable, and strongly encourage others to do the same.
Makes sense – there’s really no commitment mechanism at play here.
I still find it disappointing though.
Normal explanation for these things is simply that people are busy, and good communication takes a lot of time. Of course, with this being the internet, it’s also the case that responses get easily misinterpreted which means you have to put in more time, further disincentivising response.
Added: Note that LW isn’t a project any of the CFAR team work on so they wouldn’t naturally be checking LW or something or be trying to use the platform to talk about their research, in case you were confused and expecting them to be actively interested in discussion. They’ve got jobs and public discussion mostly isn’t one of them right now, I think.
Eh, I think good communication takes time, but not an inordinate amount of time.
For a consumer-facing organization like CFAR, being able to clearly articulate why you’re doing what you’re doing is a core competency, so I’d expect them to bring that to bear in a place like LessWrong, where a lot of CFAR stakeholders hang out.
Sure, but they replied within a half hour of me posting.
The fast response + lack of follow-up feels more defensive than if they hadn’t replied at all.
“A quick, short response that mostly consists of a link, followed by delayed/no response when asked follow-up questions that would require a more time-consuming answer” is exactly the pattern I would expect from someone who was somewhat interested in answering but was busy.
If there’s a question that you can address in two minutes by just giving a link, then you will do that. But then you don’t have the time for anything more elaborate so you either do it later or forget about it entirely (either intentionally because it doesn’t seem like a high priority or unintentionally because you just had too many other things on your mind).
Agreed.
It’s also the pattern I’d expect from someone who wasn’t interested in engaging, but wanted to give the impression that they’ve got it covered / already thought about this / have good reasons for doing what they’re doing.
I’m not sure which is closer to the truth here.
“Uninterested in engaging” and “defensive” feel very different to me. “Defensive” implies that you’re motivated to prove something, either to yourself or others. But you can be uninterested in engaging despite being confident that you’re doing the right thing, simply because it doesn’t feel like you’d get a lot of value in explaining yourself in this particular discussion. There’s a lot of things that employees for organizations like CFAR could be doing; getting into long online discussions may not be the best use of their time, even if they had perfectly good answers.
The word “defensively” usually maps to active behavior. I think it’s a stretch to use it for talking about low engagement.