Hey! I just saw your edited text and wanted to jot down a response:
Edit: I’ll be honest, after thinking about it for longer, the only reason I can think of why you would take down the data is because it makes CEA and EA look less on an upwards trajectory. But this seems so crazy. How can I trust data coming out of CEA if you have a policy of retracting data that doesn’t align with the story you want to tell about CEA and EA? The whole point of sharing raw data is to allow other people to come to their own conclusions. This really seems like such a dumb move from a trust perspective.
I’m sorry this feels bad to you. I care about being truth seeking and care about the empirical question of “what’s happening with EA growth?”. Part of my motivation in getting this dashboard published in the first place was to contribute to the epistemic commons on this question.
I also disagree that CEA retracts data that doesn’t align with “the right story on growth”. E.g. here’s a post I wrote in mid 2023 where the bottom line conclusion was that growth in meta EA projects was down in 2023 v 2022. It also publishes data on several cases where CEA programs grew slower in 2023 or shrank. TBH I also think of this as CEA contributing to the epistemic commons here — it took us a long time to coordinate and then get permission from people to publish this. And I’m glad we did it!
On the specific call here, I’m not really sure what else to tell you re: my motivations other than what I’ve already said. I’m going to commit to not responding further to protect my attention, but I thought I’d respond at least once :)
I would currently be quite surprised if you had taken the same action if I was instead making an inference that positively reflects on CEA or EA. I might of course be wrong, but you did do it right after I wrote something critical of EA and CEA, and did not do it the many other times it was linked in the past year. Sadly your institution has a long history of being pretty shady with data and public comms this way, and so my priors are not very positively inclined.
I continue to think that it would make sense to at least leave the data up that CEA did feel comfortable linking in the last 1.5 years. By my norms invalidating links like this, especially if the underlying page happens to be unscrapeable by the internet archive, is really very bad form.
Hey! I just saw your edited text and wanted to jot down a response:
I’m sorry this feels bad to you. I care about being truth seeking and care about the empirical question of “what’s happening with EA growth?”. Part of my motivation in getting this dashboard published in the first place was to contribute to the epistemic commons on this question.
I also disagree that CEA retracts data that doesn’t align with “the right story on growth”. E.g. here’s a post I wrote in mid 2023 where the bottom line conclusion was that growth in meta EA projects was down in 2023 v 2022. It also publishes data on several cases where CEA programs grew slower in 2023 or shrank. TBH I also think of this as CEA contributing to the epistemic commons here — it took us a long time to coordinate and then get permission from people to publish this. And I’m glad we did it!
On the specific call here, I’m not really sure what else to tell you re: my motivations other than what I’ve already said. I’m going to commit to not responding further to protect my attention, but I thought I’d respond at least once :)
I would currently be quite surprised if you had taken the same action if I was instead making an inference that positively reflects on CEA or EA. I might of course be wrong, but you did do it right after I wrote something critical of EA and CEA, and did not do it the many other times it was linked in the past year. Sadly your institution has a long history of being pretty shady with data and public comms this way, and so my priors are not very positively inclined.
I continue to think that it would make sense to at least leave the data up that CEA did feel comfortable linking in the last 1.5 years. By my norms invalidating links like this, especially if the underlying page happens to be unscrapeable by the internet archive, is really very bad form.
I did really appreciate your mid 2023 post!