I asked whether EA has any rational, written debate methodology and whether rational debate aimed at reaching conclusions is available from the EA community. The answer I received, in summary, was “no”. (If that answer is incorrect, please respond to my original question with a better answer.)
So I have a second question. Does EA have any alternative to rational debate methods to use instead? In other words, does it have a different solution to the same problem?
The underlying problem which rational debate methods are meant to solve is how to rationally resolve disagreements. Suppose that someone thinks he knows about some EA error. He’d like to help out and share his knowledge. What happens next? If EA has rational debate available following written policies, then he could use that to correct EA. If EA has no such debate available, then what is the alternative?
I hope I will not be told that informal, unorganized discussion is an adequate alternative. There are many well know problems with that like people quitting without explanation when they start to lose a debate, people being biased and hiding it due to no policies for accountability or transparency, and people or ideas with low social status being ignored or treated badly. For sharing error corrections to work well, one option is having some written policies which can be used that help prevent some of these failure modes. I haven’t seen that from EA so I asked and no one said EA has it. (And also no one said “Wow, great idea, we should have that!”). So what, if anything, does EA have instead that works well?
Note: I’m aware that other groups (and individuals) also lack rational debate policies. This is not a way that EA is worse than competitors. I’m trying to speak to EA about this rather than speaking to some other group because I have more respect for EA, not less.
Thank you for raising this issue. I appreciate the chance the address it rather than have people think I’m doing something wrong without telling me what.
Although I do have some suggestions, I think sharing them now is a bad idea. They would distract from the conceptual issue I’m trying to discuss: Is there a problem here that needs a solution? Does EA have a solution?
I guess your perspective is that of course this is an important problem, and EA isn’t already solving it in some really great way because it’s really hard. In that context, mentioning the problem doesn’t add value, and proposing solutions is an appropriate next step. But I suspect that is not the typical perspective here.
I think most people would deny it’s an important problem and aren’t looking to solve it. In that context, I don’t want to propose a solution to what people consider a non-problem. Instead, I’d rather encourage people to care about the problem. I think people should try to understand the problem well before trying to solve it (because it is pretty hard) so I’d rather talk about the nature of the problem first. I think the EA community should make this an active research area. If they do, I’ll be happy to contribute some ideas. But as long as its not an active research area, I think it’s important to investigate why not and try to address whatever is going on there. (Note that EA has other active research areas regarding very hard problems with no solutions in sight. EA is willing to work on hard problems, which is something I like about EA.)
I also wouldn’t want to suggest some solutions, which turn out to be incorrect, at which point people don’t work on better solutions. It would be logically invalid to dismiss the problem because my solutions were wrong; but it also strikes me as a likely possibility. Even if my solutions were good, they unfortunately aren’t of the “easy to understand, easy to use, no downsides” variety. So unless people care about the problem, they won’t want to bother with solutions that take much effort to understand.
I think those ideas are fine. I’ve tried some of them too. However, if EA was currently doing all of them, I’d still have asked the same questions. I don’t see them as adequate to address the problem I’m trying to raise. Reiterating: If EA is wrong about something important, how can EA be corrected? (The question is seeking reasonable, realistic, practical ways of correcting errors, not just theoretically possible ways or really problematic ways like “climb the social hierarchy then offer the correction from the top”.)