The number of burner accounts is too damn high

I'm concerned that there's an information cascade going on. That is, some claims were made about people being negatively affected by having posted public criticism; as a result some people made critical posts anonymously; that reinforces the perception that the original claim is true; more people post anonymously; the cycle continues.

But I just roll to disbelieve that people facing bad consequences for posting criticism is a serious problem. I can totally believe that it has happened at some point, but I'd be very surprised if it's widespread. Especially given how mild some of the stuff that's getting anonymously posted is!

So I think there's a risk that we meme ourselves into thinking there's an object level problem when there actually isn't. I would love to know what if any actual examples we have of this happening.

I find some of the comments here a bit implausible and unrealistic.

What people write online will often affect their reputation, positively or negatively. It may not necessarily mean they, e.g. have no chance of getting an EA job, but there are many other reputational consequences. 

I also don't think that updating one's views of someone based on what they write on the EA Forum is necessarily always wrong (even though there are no doubt many updates that are unfair or unwarranted).

Here's my take for why this might not be a serious issue:

• It's very common in other forums I'm a part of for literally everyone except me to be various levels of pseudonymous and I find it pretty rare that people use their real name, especially for giving spicy takes that people disagree with. I'm actually pretty pleasantly surprised by the number of people in EA who give spicy takes with their real name attached.

• Likewise, I think it's pretty natural to want to be able to speak unfiltered without having to worry about how what you say will affect your reputation, either rightly or wrongly. Especially given how bad tail risks to your reputation can be, I understand the fear to use a real name to challenge the status quo and I'm super glad people still have an outlet to give critical spicy feedback. Jeff Kaufman writes about Responsible Transparency Consumption - plus what Holden said - and this is a norm I very much value and I think is higher in EA than elsewhere, but still not a guarantee.

That being said, I am definitely super duper concerned by the number of people who say something literally like "posting anonymously because I don't want to lose out on jobs or tank my career" because the view that EA employers are so fragile as to deny job opportunities based on EA Forum hot takes is hopefully greatly exaggerated and very disturbing if not. (At Rethink Priorities, we don't take people's EA Forum user history into account at all when hiring and several of the EA Forum users with the highest total karma work at RP.)

Also obviously the fact that there is so much stuff right now that people feel the need to strongly but anonymously criticize - the object-level stuff is very concerning and a serious issue.

I have been using a burner account recently as opposed to my account with my real name following the Bostrom controversy. That decision is not motivated by any fear of reprisal within EA communities; at my local EA group, I am perfectly happy to espouse the beliefs that I'd want anonymity for on here.

The reasons for doing so are as follows:

Potential Costs: EA seems to be under a microscope in the current landscape (See Bostrom, FTX, recent Time article on SA). This forum is not viewed only by people with beliefs in charitable understanding and respect for evidence-driven conclusions. If I say something "controversial" to an EA and provide sufficient evidence, I have much more confidence that, even if they disagree, they will be understanding of my thought process. I have no fear of social costs among EAs; not so with journalists trawling for someone to quote as a "eugenicist" or other pejorative. This and showing up as a Google result could have severe costs to my reputation and life outcomes.

Lack of Potential Benefits: Because of EAs high decoupling norms, I don't think that attaching my real name to posts provides much marginal value. In my experience and viewing others', people are judging the content of posts on their merits. I don't think my posts would receive significantly different attention, provided the content remained the same.

Unresolved Area of Potentially High Cost: The experience of discourse with a group of high-decouplers who grant charitable understanding to beliefs, such as I experience in my local EA group, is amazing, and I want more of it. I know that if I used my real name, posted more often and earnestly, I could cultivate a larger group for this kind of activity. I may benefit from adopting a consistent pseudonym across online profiles that would allow this sort of connection. However, I am, in my current position, unwilling to risk potential reputational damage outside EA circles. 

In summation, I don't believe this is an EA problem. I believe it is a problem outside of EA from which the EA Forum cannot shelter its users.

Holden Karnofsky on evaluating people based on public discourse:

I think it's good and important to form views about people's strengths, weaknesses, values and character. However, I am generally against forming negative views of people (on any of these dimensions) based on seemingly incorrect, poorly reasoned, or seemingly bad-values-driven public statements. When a public statement is not misleading or tangibly harmful, I generally am open to treating it as a positive update on the person making the statement, but not to treating it as worse news about them than if they had simply said nothing.

The basic reasons for this attitude are:

• I think it is very easy to be wrong about the implications of someone's public statement. It could be that their statement was poorly expressed, or aimed at another audience; that the reader is failing to understand subtleties of it; or that the statement is in fact wrong, but that it merely reflects that the person who made it hasn't been sufficiently reflective or knowledgeable on the topic yet (and could become so later).
• I think public discourse would be less costly and more productive for everyone if the attitude I take were more common. I think that one of the best ways to learn is to share one's impressions, even (especially) when they might be badly wrong. I wish that public discourse could include more low-caution exploration, without the risks that currently come with such things.
• I generally believe in evaluating people based on what they've accomplished and what they've had the opportunity to accomplish, plus any tangible harm (including misinformation) they've caused. I think this approach works well for identifying people who are promising and people whom I should steer clear of; I think other methods add little of value and mostly add noise.

I update negatively on people who mislead (including expressing great confidence while being wrong, and especially including avoidable mischaracterizations of others' views); people who do tangible damage (usually by misleading); and people who create little of value despite large amounts of opportunity and time investment. But if someone is simply expressing a view and being open about their reasons for holding it, I try (largely successfully, I think) not to make any negative updates simply based on the substance.

FWIW I'm somewhat more judgemental than Holden, but I think the position Holden advocates is not that unusual for seniorish EAs.

I think there's two separate dynamics at play here:

I think we could do more to avoid punishing opinions perceived wrong. An example of punishing behavior at play is my own comment two days ago. I made it while being too upset for my own good and lashed out at someone for making a completely reasonable point.

I don't blame the user I replied to for wanting an anonymous account when that is the response they can expect. 

Secondly, I suspect that people are vastly overrating just how much anybody cares about who says what on the forum.

While I understand why someone making a direct attack on some organization or person might want to stay anonymous, most things I see posted from anonymous accounts seem to just be regular opinions that are phrased with more hostility than the mean.

It's a bit weird to me why somebody would think that a few comments on the EA forum would do all that much to ones reputation. At ea globals, at most, I've had a few people say "oh you are the one who wrote that snakebite post? Cool!" and that's about it.

It all feels very paranoid to me. I'm way too busy worrying about whether I look fat in this t-shirt to notice or care that somebody wrote a comment that was too woke/anti-woke.

Maybe there's a bunch of people smarter than me who think my opinions are mid and now think less of me, but like, they were going to realize that after speaking to me for five minutes anyways.

I have had an influential senior EA explicitly deny support for my project because they didn't like my opinions and decided on my behalf that I wasn't going to suitably change them (obviously I can't be very specific, not least because they didn't tell me which opinions were unacceptable, so I can't say much to show whether this might have been justified in my case. But for the record, I'm not into justifying oppression, harassing people, defrauding people, or any of the classic reasons to kick someone out of an EA party)

I would be a lot more comfortable putting my name and more details to this anecdote if the general attitude of senior EA staff was more 'shit, all these anecdotes should strongly update us towards the belief that this happens. We should actively try to find out about such cases and do something about them' rather than 'we polled each other and everyone said they hadn't done this, so I guess it doesn't happen'. 

Maybe there's nothing more they could actually do; but until they figure something out I will feel compelled to use a burner account for certain criticisms.

I think as this place becomes a place that gets quoted in external publications more it will be harder to speak freely as a named account without a lot of practice, a very thick skin. I don't really know what to do here. 

I have spent so long on twitter that I red team almost everything I say for "being able to be taken out of context" even while trying to be very honest and straightforward. If one hasn't done this work, then it seems easy to avoid the anxiety of being quoted as "a forum commenter, Adam Parsons thought" by saying things anonymously.

Something to note is that by posting my opinions I do in fact reveal how dumb I am. I mean, in terms of size to wrongness ratio, I've got to be doing pretty well :P. I think commenting under your real name does have real costs, people message me and go "no that was dumb" about twice a week across various media. 

Probably if I wanted better job prospects I would hide this better. I have literally been rejected from jobs before for saying "I'm concerned that I might do a bad job here" and them being like "we didn't feel like you wanted it". But I guess I take honesty (I was genuinely uncertain) over "get the best jobs you can". You're welcome.

For most people, the benefit that accrues to you from signing your real name to a controversial post seems pretty minimal. Using one's name creates some increase in author credibility, and thus effectiveness -- although less so on certain types of posts, and where the author doesn't have much of a reputation either way.  Otherwise, there seems to be little incentive to do it if you think your post may be unfavorably received by a significant number of people. So even if you assign only a small probability to "postings of the sort I am making will have adverse career effects for me," the decision of whether to sign your post is likely to be EV-negative to you.

(There's also the Google effect, although that can be solved with the use of a consistent psuedonym that is not publicly linked to one's name.)

I think posting under pseudonyms makes sense for EAs who are young^[1], who are unsure what they want to do with their lives, and/or people who have a decent chance of wanting jobs that require discretion in the future, e.g. jobs in politics or government. 

I know at least some governance people who likely regret being openly tied with Future Fund and adjacent entities after the recent debacle. 

Also in general I'm confused about how the tides of what's "permissible internet dirt to dig up on people" will change in the future. Things might get either better or much worse, and in the worse worlds there's some option value left in making sure our movement doesn't unintentionally taint the futures of some extremely smart, well-meaning, and agentic young people.

That said, I personally prefer pseudonymous account names with a continued history like Larks or AppliedDivinityStudies^[2], rather than anonymous accounts that draw attention to their anonymity, like whistleblower1984. 

1. ^{^}

    <22? Maybe <25, I'm not sure. One important factor to keep track of is how likely you are to dramatically change your mind in politically relevant ways, e.g. I think if you're currently a firm Communist it's bad to not tell your voters about it, but plenty of open-minded young people quickly go through phases of Communism then anarcho-capitalism then anarcho-socialism, etc, and depending on how the tides change maybe you don't want your blog musings while 19 to become too tied in your public identity.

2. ^{^}

   A consideration against, and maybe a strong enough consideration to make my whole point moot, is the live possibility of much much better AI stylometry in the next decade.

Quinn -- I agree that over-use of anonymous & burner accounts is becoming a significant problem in EA Forum (and in social media generally).

To put this in the broader  context of cancel culture: there seems to be a common Gen Z/Millennial narrative that says: 'Older established professionals actively seek any possible reason to penalize, ostracize, and harm any younger people who speak up, complain, or criticize any aspect of current practices, systems, and ideas; these older professionals are ruthless, biased, unforgiving, and eager to harm our reputations and careers; they pay enormous attention to everything we say, and they never forget or forgive any criticism; therefore, the only possible response is for us to make our complaints and criticisms from behind the veil of anonymous burner accounts'.

I think that's usually a false, harmful, and self-defeating narrative, and it seems especially inaccurate applied to EA culture. But it's a very useful narrative, because it empowers people to engage in cancel culture, anonymously and self-righteously, hiding behind the moral armor of 'I'm so brave to speak up at all, and look, it's so dangerous to do so that I had to use an anonymous burner account'.  

Then, the anonymity and lack of accountability often leads the burner accounts to make vague smears and third-hand slanders against individuals, organizations, and subcultures -- which is the central source of power in cancel culture.

The harm comes from over-estimating the attentiveness, memory, and vengefulness of older professionals, over-estimating the risks of speaking up using one's own name and voice, and reinforcing the cancel culture narrative that only anonymous complaints are safe -- and that common use of anonymous accounts is self-fulfilling proof that only anonymous complaints are safe. 

Thus, over-use of anonymous and burner accounts leads to a misleading impression that a subculture is much more dangerous, vengeful, and unwelcoming than it really is.

This situation is especially annoying to some of us older established professionals who don't hide behind anonymity, and who have actually suffered decades of ostracism, marginalization, career setbacks, and reputational harm from speaking out about unpopular social, scientific, and political issues. I know literally dozens of academic colleagues who have had the guts to say true and ethical things that happen to fall outside the current Overton window, and who have lost jobs, grants, friends, and many other opportunities as a result. 

If EAs can't cultivate the courage to say what we really think, to each other, using our own names and accounts, how will we maintain the courage to say what we really think to the general public, or to donors, legislators, or future employers?

A few relevant thoughts from a Facebook thread of mine yesterday:

Man, I feel *super* creeped out by how many posts and comments I'm seeing on the EA forum from anonymous this, burneraccount that, groupofnamelessconcernedcitizens, etc.

Seems like a sign of *something* real bad, even though I haven't quite put my finger on what, and doesn't seem to me like "the light as people come out of the tunnel" in the sense that it doesn't feel to me like a precursor to something good, or people finally overcoming coordination challenges in a bad environment, or whatever.

I wonder if there's a Bizarro Duncan out there who's, like, super stoked to see so many people choosing to anonymously share their heretical thoughts or whatever.

.

I think, trying to introspect on the creepies, that a big part of the problem is something like:

"Here I am, in substantial disagreement/criticism of a subculture, but I don't want my large and fairly crucial disagreement attached to my name because if people understood my *true* beliefs they might not want to hire me at their org."

.

To be clear, I think [things like] Chatham room [are] amazing; I think that it's quite good/important to have *clearly defined contexts* in which people can be anonymous.

I would not at all mind a single, promoted, pinned/stickied top-level post that was, like, this is the thread for anonymous posting of things you think are true; mods will moderate for discourse norms and like Actual Dangerous Or Crazy Stuff but otherwise let's make room for people to Say Stuff.

But like. It seems that the tide is turning toward "oh, flooding the EA forum with anonymous sniping from the sidelines is the Cool And Correct Thing To Do Now" and that seems like two or three distinct kinds of bad.

There's always a tension between assimilating into a preexisting culture, and attempting to change that culture, and I just generally think that the incentives are better *overall* when people have common-knowledge skin in the game; it's just *so easy* for bad stuff to proliferate when it becomes open-season on anonymous chime-ins, and the EA forum over the past week has felt like it was moving in that direction.

Speaking only for ConcernedEAs, we are likely to continue remaining anonymous until costly signals are sent that making deep critiques in public will not damage one's career/funding/social prospects within EA.

We go into more detail in Doing EA Better, most notably here:

Prominent funders have said that they value moderation and pluralism, and thus people (like the writers of this post) should feel comfortable sharing their real views when they apply for funding, no matter how critical they are of orthodoxy.

This is admirable, and we are sure that they are being truthful about their beliefs. Regardless, it is difficult to trust that the promise will be kept when one, for instance:

• Observes the types of projects (and people) that succeed (or fail) at acquiring funding
  • i.e. few, if any, deep critiques or otherwise heterodox/“heretical” works
• Looks into the backgrounds of grantmakers and sees how they appear to have very similar backgrounds and opinions (i.e they are highly orthodox)
• Experiences the generally claustrophobic epistemic atmosphere of EA
• Hears of people facing (soft) censorship from their superiors because they wrote deep critiques of the ideas of prominent EAs
  • Zoe Cremer and Luke Kemp lost “sleep, time, friends, collaborators, and mentors” as a result of writing Democratising Risk, a paper which was critical of some EA approaches to existential risk.^[23] Multiple senior figures in the field attempted to prevent the paper from being published, largely out of fear that it would offend powerful funders. This saga caused significant conflict within CSER throughout much of 2021.
• Sees the revolving door and close social connections between key donors and main scholars in the field
• Witnesses grantmakers dismiss scientific work on the grounds that the people doing it are insufficiently value-aligned
  • If this is what is said in public (which we have witnessed multiple times), what is said in private?
• Etc.

We go into more detail in the post, but the most important step is the radical viewpoint-diversifying of grantmaking and hiring decision-making bodies.

As long as the vast majority of resource-allocation decisions are made by a tiny and homogenous group of highly orthodox people, the anonymity motive will remain.

This is especially true when one of the (sometimes implicit) selection criteria for so many opportunities is percieved "value-alignment" with a very specific package of often questionable views, i.e. EA Orthodoxy.

We appreciate that influential members of the community (e.g. Buck) are concerned about the increasing amounts of anonymity, but unfortunately expressing concern and promising that there is nothing to worry about is not enough.

If we want the problem to be solved, we need to remove the factors that cause it.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qbcuk8WwFnTZcXTd6/thomas-kwa-s-miri-research-experience?commentId=6eveBXGHb5KbyHoDE 

Kurt's comment is shifting my thinking a lot. 

Aside: I also recommend not immediately disabling my account when I comment once, as this creates weird consequent dynamics that are difficult to control.

Obviously, when someone keeps making dummy accounts over and over again to circumvent forum moderation, they should be disabled immediately. (Also, you should stop doing that.)

I've been trying it out for a while now before the posts on why there are burner accounts on the forum during the last few days, though I've been trying out this thing where I've posted lots of stuff most effective altruists may not be willing to post. I cover some of the how and why that is here.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KfwFDkfQFQ4kAurwH/evan_gaensbauer-s-shortform?commentId=EjhBquXGiFEppdecY

I've been meaning to ask if there is anything anyone else thinks I should do with that, so I'm open to suggestions.

Cancel culture needs to be canceled.