“Compared to a Ponzi scheme” seems like a pretty unfortunate compression of what I actually wrote. Better would be to say that I claimed that a large share of ventures, including a large subset of EA, and the US government, have substantial structural similarities to Ponzi schemes.
Maybe my criticism would have been better received if I’d left out the part that seems to be hard for people to understand; but then it would have been different and less important criticism.
Summary: Reading comments in this thread which are similar reactions I’ve seen you or other rationality bloggers receive from effective altruists on critical posts regarding EA, I think there is a pattern to how rationalists may tend to write on important topics that doesn’t gel with the typical EA mindset. Consequentially, it seems the pragmatic thing for us to do would be to figure out how to alter how we write to get our message across to a broader audience.
“Compared to a Ponzi scheme” seems like a pretty unfortunate compression of what I actually wrote. Better would be to say that I claimed that a large share of ventures, including a large subset of EA, and the US government, have substantial structural similarities to Ponzi schemes.
Upvoted.
I don’t if you’ve read some of the other comments in this thread. But some of the most upvoted ones are about how I need to change up my writing style. So unfortunate compressions of what I actually write aren’t new to me, either. I’m sorry I compressed what you actually wrote. But even an accurate compression of what you actually wrote might make my comments too long for what most users prefer on the EA Forum. If I just linked to your original post, it would be too long for us to read.
I spend more of my time on EA projects. If there were more promising projects coming out of the rationality community, I’d spend more time on them relative to how much time I dedicate to EA projects. But I go where the action is. Socially, I’m as if not more socially involved with the rationality community than I am with EA.
From my inside view, here is how I’d describe the common problem with my writing on the EA Forum: I came here from LessWrong. Relative to LW, I haven’t found how or what I write on the EA Forum to be too long. But that’s because I’m anchoring off EA discourse looking like SSC 100% of the time. But since the majority of EAs don’t self-identify as rationalists, and the movement is so intellectually diverse, the expectation is the EA Forum won’t be formatted on any discourse style common to the rationalist diaspora.
I’ve touched upon this issue with Ray Arnold before. Zvi has touched on it too in some of his blog posts about EA. A crude rationalist impression might be the problem with discourse on the EA Forum is it isn’t LW. In terms of genres of creative non-fiction writing, the EA Forum is less tolerant of diversity than LW. That’s fine. Thinking about this consequentially, I think rationalists who want their message heard by EA more don’t need to learn to write better, but write different.
“Compared to a Ponzi scheme” seems like a pretty unfortunate compression of what I actually wrote. Better would be to say that I claimed that a large share of ventures, including a large subset of EA, and the US government, have substantial structural similarities to Ponzi schemes.
Maybe my criticism would have been better received if I’d left out the part that seems to be hard for people to understand; but then it would have been different and less important criticism.
[epistemic status: meta]
Summary: Reading comments in this thread which are similar reactions I’ve seen you or other rationality bloggers receive from effective altruists on critical posts regarding EA, I think there is a pattern to how rationalists may tend to write on important topics that doesn’t gel with the typical EA mindset. Consequentially, it seems the pragmatic thing for us to do would be to figure out how to alter how we write to get our message across to a broader audience.
Upvoted.
I don’t if you’ve read some of the other comments in this thread. But some of the most upvoted ones are about how I need to change up my writing style. So unfortunate compressions of what I actually write aren’t new to me, either. I’m sorry I compressed what you actually wrote. But even an accurate compression of what you actually wrote might make my comments too long for what most users prefer on the EA Forum. If I just linked to your original post, it would be too long for us to read.
I spend more of my time on EA projects. If there were more promising projects coming out of the rationality community, I’d spend more time on them relative to how much time I dedicate to EA projects. But I go where the action is. Socially, I’m as if not more socially involved with the rationality community than I am with EA.
From my inside view, here is how I’d describe the common problem with my writing on the EA Forum: I came here from LessWrong. Relative to LW, I haven’t found how or what I write on the EA Forum to be too long. But that’s because I’m anchoring off EA discourse looking like SSC 100% of the time. But since the majority of EAs don’t self-identify as rationalists, and the movement is so intellectually diverse, the expectation is the EA Forum won’t be formatted on any discourse style common to the rationalist diaspora.
I’ve touched upon this issue with Ray Arnold before. Zvi has touched on it too in some of his blog posts about EA. A crude rationalist impression might be the problem with discourse on the EA Forum is it isn’t LW. In terms of genres of creative non-fiction writing, the EA Forum is less tolerant of diversity than LW. That’s fine. Thinking about this consequentially, I think rationalists who want their message heard by EA more don’t need to learn to write better, but write different.