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I wonder what can be done to make people more comfortable praising powerful people in EA without feeling like sycophants.
A while ago I saw Dustin Moskovitz commenting on the EA Forum. I thought about expressing my positive impressions of his presence and how incredible it was that he even engaged. I didn't do that because it felt like sycophancy. The next day he deleted his account. I don't think my comment would have changed anything in that instance, but I still regretted not commenting.
In general, writing criticism feels more virtuous than writing praise. I used to avoid praising people who had power over me, but now that attitude seems misguided to me. While I'm glad that EA provided an environment where I could feel comfortable criticising the leadership, I'm unhappy about ending up in a situation where occupying leadership positions in EA feels like a curse to potential candidates.
Many community members agree that there is a leadership vacuum in EA. That should lead us to believe people in leadership positions should be rewarded more than they currently are. Part of that reward could be encouragement and I am personally committing to comment on things I like about EA more often.
In general, writing criticism feels more virtuous than writing praise.
FWIW it feels the opposite to me. Writing praise feels good; writing criticism feels bad.
(I guess you could say that it's virtuous to push through those bad feelings and write the criticism anyway? I don't get any positive feelings or self-image from following that supposed virtue, though.)
Beside the point, Dustin Moskovitz deleting his account seems somewhat important, any idea what is going on there? Of course he is a free person and has every right to do that.
Quickly:
1. I agree that this is tricky! I think it can be quite tough to be critical, but as you point out, it can also be quite tough to be positive.
2. One challenge with being positive to those in power is that people can have a hard time believing it. Like, you might just be wanting to be liked. Of course, I assume most people would still recommend you being honest, its just can be hard for others to know how to trust it. Also, the situation obviously changes when you're complementing people without power. (i.e. emerging/local leaders)
I think using an anonymous account helps a bit with that, especially when writing praise feels cringy
The UK offers better access as a conference location for international participants compared to the US or the EU.
I'm being invited to conferences in different parts of the world as a Turkish citizen, and visa processes for the US and the EU have gotten a lot more difficult lately. I'm unable to even get a visa appointment for several European countries, and my appointment for the US visa was scheduled 16 months out. I believe the situation is similar for visa applicants from other countries. The UK currently offers the smoothest process with timelines of only a few weeks. Conference organizers that seek applications from all over the world could choose the UK over other options.
I find it emotionally draining when heated topics become battlegrounds for social proofing through mass use of agreement vote/karma. It makes me feel like people are trying to manipulate me by illegitimate means and I'm a target of aggression. I don't have any good solutions here but I wanted to offer feedback on my experience.
by illegitimate means and I'm a target of aggression
Can you give example of that? Not saying you are not right, but not sure I can easily picture what falls into these categories. Pls ignore if this would drain you more.
You should be familiar with this from activism, people use "like"s and mass comments in social media to make bystanders more likely to believe in an idea or have certain attitudes just through social proof effect. I feel a similar vibe with discussions under heated posts.
Does requiring ex-ante Pareto superiority incentivise information suppression?
Assume I emit x kg of carbon dioxide. Later on, I donate to offset 2x kg of carbon dioxide emissions. The combination of these two actions seems to make everyone better off in expectation. It’s ex-ante Pareto superior. Even though we know that my act of emitting carbon and offsetting it will cause the deaths of different individuals due to different extreme weather events compared to not emitting at all, climate scientists report that higher carbon emissions will make the severity of climate change worse overall. Since our forecasts are not granular enough and nobody is made foreseeably worse off by reducing emissions, it’s morally permissible to reduce the total amount of emissions.
This position seems to incentivise information suppression.
Assume a climate scientist creates a reliable and sophisticated climate model that can forecast specific weather events caused by different levels of carbon emissions. Such a model would allow us to infer that reducing emissions by a specific amount would make a specific village in Argentina worse off. The villagers from there could complain to a politician that “your offsetting/reduction policy foreseeably causes severe drought in my region, therefore it makes us foreseeably worse off”.
Policy makers who want to act permissibly would have incentives to prevent such a detailed climate model if ex-ante Pareto superiority were a sound condition for permissibility.
Interesting!
Fleurbaey and Voorhoeve wrote a related paper: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199931392.003.0009
FWIW, GPT said the greenhouse effect is not stronger locally to the emissions. So, I would guess that if you can offset and emit the same kind of greenhouse gas molecules roughly simultaneously, it would be very unlikely we'd be able to predict which regions are made worse off by this than neither emitting nor offsetting.
FWIW it feels the opposite to me. Writing praise feels good; writing criticism feels bad.
(I guess you could say that it's virtuous to push through those bad feelings and write the criticism anyway? I don't get any positive feelings or self-image from following that supposed virtue, though.)