Your example of the janitor interrupting the scientist is a good demonstration of my point. I’ve organized over a hundred cybersecurity events featuring over a thousand speakers and I’ve never had a single janitor interrupt a talk. On the other hand, I’ve had numerous “experts” attempt to pass off fiction as fact, draw assumptions from faulty data, and generally behave far worse than any janitor might due to their inflated egos.
Based on my conversations with computer science and philosophy professors who aren’t EA-affiliated, and several who are, their posts are frequently down-voted simply because they represent opposite viewpoints.
Do the moderators of this forum do regular assessments to see how they can make improvements in the online culture so that there’s more diversity in perspective?
can’t comment on moderators, since I’m not one, but I’d be curious to see links you think were received worse than is justified and see if I can learn from them
I’m echoing other commenters somewhat, but—personally—I do not see people being down-voted simply for having different viewpoints. I’m very sympathetic to people trying to genuinely argue against “prevailing” attitudes or simply trying to foster a better general understanding. (E.g. I appreciate Matthew Barnett’s presence, even though I very much disagree with his conclusions and find him overconfident).
Now, of course, the fact that I don’t notice the kind of posts you say are being down-voted may be because they are sufficiently filtered out, which indeed would be undesirable from my perspective and good to know.
Your example of the janitor interrupting the scientist is a good demonstration of my point. I’ve organized over a hundred cybersecurity events featuring over a thousand speakers and I’ve never had a single janitor interrupt a talk. On the other hand, I’ve had numerous “experts” attempt to pass off fiction as fact, draw assumptions from faulty data, and generally behave far worse than any janitor might due to their inflated egos.
Based on my conversations with computer science and philosophy professors who aren’t EA-affiliated, and several who are, their posts are frequently down-voted simply because they represent opposite viewpoints.
Do the moderators of this forum do regular assessments to see how they can make improvements in the online culture so that there’s more diversity in perspective?
can’t comment on moderators, since I’m not one, but I’d be curious to see links you think were received worse than is justified and see if I can learn from them
I’m echoing other commenters somewhat, but—personally—I do not see people being down-voted simply for having different viewpoints. I’m very sympathetic to people trying to genuinely argue against “prevailing” attitudes or simply trying to foster a better general understanding. (E.g. I appreciate Matthew Barnett’s presence, even though I very much disagree with his conclusions and find him overconfident). Now, of course, the fact that I don’t notice the kind of posts you say are being down-voted may be because they are sufficiently filtered out, which indeed would be undesirable from my perspective and good to know.