current best guesses at my cruxes (i can probably expand on these with less metaphorical language if somebody’s serious about the discussion):
1) I will be eaten by piranhas. 2) The comments will cause me to want to disappear into the forest and never talk to another human ever again. 3) It would be better to light the EA forum on fire than to expose myself to it in the hopes of causing an incremental improvement.
a) before, I would have expected many more people to be scared of being eaten by piranhas on LessWrong and not the EA Forum than vice versa. In fact, I didn’t even consider that people could find the EA Forum more scary than LessWrong. (well, before FTX anyway)
b) my current read of the EA Forum (and this has been the case for a while) is that forum people like when you say something like “People should value things other than impact (more)” and that you’re more likely to be eaten by piranhas for saying “People should value impact more” than vice versa.
Take this a slight nudge towards posting on the EA Forum perhaps, although I don’t really have an opinion on whether 2) and 3) might still be true.
The specific things you said about the EA forum seem true but it also seems to me to be a hellscape of vicious social punishment and conformity and suspicion. The existence of a number of people pushing back against that doesn’t quite suffice for feelings of safety, at least according to my own intuitions.
There’s a lot of criticism of EA on the forum, arguably too much (or at least it’s misdirected), so I don’t think you’ll be eaten by piranhas or whatever in the comments, although if you have your reasons-for-~wanting-the-EA-forum-to-burn written up somewhere I’d like to read them
I model 1) as meaning people have high expectations and are mean in comments criticizing things ? I am unsure about what your reasons for 2) are—Is it close to “the comments will be so low quality I’ll be ashamed of having seen them and that other humans are like that” ? I expect 3) to be about your model of how difficult it is to improve the EA forum, and meaning that you think it’s not worth investing time in trying to make it better ?
As an open question, I’m curious about what you’ve previously seen on EA Forum which makes you expect bad thing from it. Hostile behaviour ? Bad epistemics ?
Have you considered cross-posting this to the EA forum? (There’s an option under Edit → Options → Crosspost.)
I have yes but I do not want to do that.
Nothing stopping somebody else from making a link post though, I guess.
I’m also open to being convinced.
IShouldNotTouchTheEAForumWithATenFootPoleChangeMyMind.gif
current best guesses at my cruxes (i can probably expand on these with less metaphorical language if somebody’s serious about the discussion):
1) I will be eaten by piranhas.
2) The comments will cause me to want to disappear into the forest and never talk to another human ever again.
3) It would be better to light the EA forum on fire than to expose myself to it in the hopes of causing an incremental improvement.
I find this comment super interesting because
a) before, I would have expected many more people to be scared of being eaten by piranhas on LessWrong and not the EA Forum than vice versa. In fact, I didn’t even consider that people could find the EA Forum more scary than LessWrong. (well, before FTX anyway)
b) my current read of the EA Forum (and this has been the case for a while) is that forum people like when you say something like “People should value things other than impact (more)” and that you’re more likely to be eaten by piranhas for saying “People should value impact more” than vice versa.
Take this a slight nudge towards posting on the EA Forum perhaps, although I don’t really have an opinion on whether 2) and 3) might still be true.
The specific things you said about the EA forum seem true but it also seems to me to be a hellscape of vicious social punishment and conformity and suspicion. The existence of a number of people pushing back against that doesn’t quite suffice for feelings of safety, at least according to my own intuitions.
I’m kinda new here, so where all this EAF fear comes from?
There’s a lot of criticism of EA on the forum, arguably too much (or at least it’s misdirected), so I don’t think you’ll be eaten by piranhas or whatever in the comments, although if you have your reasons-for-~wanting-the-EA-forum-to-burn written up somewhere I’d like to read them
I model 1) as meaning people have high expectations and are mean in comments criticizing things ?
I am unsure about what your reasons for 2) are—Is it close to “the comments will be so low quality I’ll be ashamed of having seen them and that other humans are like that” ?
I expect 3) to be about your model of how difficult it is to improve the EA forum, and meaning that you think it’s not worth investing time in trying to make it better ?
As an open question, I’m curious about what you’ve previously seen on EA Forum which makes you expect bad thing from it. Hostile behaviour ? Bad epistemics ?