ex-CEA
Minimally passive community building work in Malaysia
It can be hard to parse between what we view as the gradient between reasonable and unreasonable assumptions
Thanks for bringing this up, I think I did significantly update to being a bit more okay with folks being ignorant, or having false assumptions. It's tough! I would probably make the same mistakes too and would want some space to fumble around and correct myself.
I also feel somewhat confused too. I agree that e.g., Black African Americans are probably pretty close to the category of "West". At the time, I was thinking about the trade off between including people who are sort of in the middle of West and non-West, and having a clearer demarcation between West vs non-West to reduce noise.
I don't think I have a lot of strong reasons, but I thought the clearer demarcation is more important. If folks disagree about my decision, happy to hear more!
most prominently transforming LessWrong into something that looks a lot more respectable in a way that I am worried might have shrunk the overton window of what can be discussed there by a lot, and having generally contributed to a bunch of these dynamics
Would you mind sharing a bit more of what you mean here?
I'm not sure I understand how an increase in respectability in LessWrong equates to a shrinking overton window. I would have guessed the opposite -- an increase in respectability would have shifted or expanded the overton window in ways that are more epistemically desirable. But I feel like I'm missing something here.
Also, I feel appreciative that you've shared a bunch of concerns and learnings with us.
Thanks for the comment! Not sure if you've seen this, but there's weak evidence that poor CCIs occur less frequently in EA settings than non-Ea settings.