I run the non-engineering side of the EA Forum (this platform), run the EA Newsletter, and work on some other content-related tasks at CEA. Please feel free to reach out! You can email me. [More about my job.]
Some of my favorite of my own posts:
I finished my undergraduate studies with a double major in mathematics and comparative literature in 2021. I was a research fellow at Rethink Priorities in the summer of 2021 and was then hired by the Events Team at CEA. I've since switched to the Online Team. In the past, I've also done some (math) research and worked at Canada/USA Mathcamp.
Some links I think people should see more frequently:
I can see how all of this can feel related to the discussion about "bad epistemics" or a claim that the community as a whole is overly navel-gazing, etc. Thanks for flagging that you're concerned about this.
To be clear, though, one of the issues here (and use of the term "bike-shedding") is more specific than those broader discussions. I think, given whatever it is that the community cares about (without opining about whether that prioritization is "correct"), the issues described in the post will appear.
Take the example of the Forum itself as a topic that's relevant to building EA and a topic of interest to the EA community.
Within that broad topic, some sub-topics will get more attention than others for reasons that don't track how much the community actually values them (in ~total). Suppose there are two discussions that could (and potentially should) happen: a discussion about the fonts on the site, and a discussion on how to improve fact-checking (or how to improve the Forum experience for newcomers, or how to nurture a culture that welcomes criticism, or something like that). I'd claim that the latter (sub)topic(s) is likely more important to discuss and get right than the former, but, because it's harder, and harder to participate in than a discussion about the font — something everyone interacts with all the time — it might get less attention.
Moreover, posts that are more like "I dislike the font, do you?" will often get more engagement than posts like "the font is bad for people with dyslexia, based on these 5 studies — here are some suggestions and some reasons to doubt the studies," because (likely) fewer people will feel like they can weigh in on the latter kind of post. This is where bike-shedding comes in. I think we can probably do better, but it'll require a bit of testing and tweaking.
[Writing just for myself, not my employer or even my team. I am working on the Forum, and that's probably hard to separate from my views on this topic— but this is a quickly-written comment, not something that I feedback on from the rest of the team, etc.]
Thanks for this comment, Amber!
I'll try to engage with the other things that you said, but I just want to clarify a specific claim first. You write:
I guess a question underlying all of this is 'what is karma for?' An implication of this post seems to be that karma should reflect quality, or how serious people think the issues are, all things considered.
I actually do not believe this. I think the primary/key point of karma is ordering the Frontpage & providing a signal of what to read (and ordering other pages, like when you're exploring posts on a given topic). We don't need to use only karma for ordering the Frontpage — and I really wish that more people used topic filters to customize their Frontpages, etc. — but I do think that's a really important function of karma. This means that karma needs to reflect usefulness-of-reading-something to a certain extent. This post is about correcting one type of issue that arises given this use.
Note that we also correct in other ways. The Frontpage isn't just a list of posts from all time sorted by (inflation-adjusted) karma, largely because people find it useful to read newer content (although not always), we have topic tags, etc.
So I don't directly care about whether a post that's 1000x more net useful than another post has 1000x (or even simply more) karma; I just want people to see the posts that will be most useful for them to engage with. (I think some people care quite a bit about karma correlating strongly with the impact of posts, and don't think this is unreasonable as a desire, but I personally don’t think it’s that important. I do think there are other purposes to karma, like being a feedback mechanism to the authors, a sign of appreciation, etc.)
[Writing just for myself, not my employer or even my team. I am working on the Forum, and that's probably hard to separate from my views on this topic— but this is a quickly-written comment, not something that I feedback on from the rest of the team, etc.]
Thanks for this comment — I agree that tag filtering/following is underused, and we're working on some things that we hope will make it a bit more intuitive and obvious. I like a lot of your suggestions.
Great, thank you! I appreciate this response, it made sense and cleared some things up for me.
Re:
Yeah, I'm with you on being told to exercise. I'm guessing you like this because you're being told to do it, but you know that you have the option to refuse.
I think you might be right, and this is just something like the power of defaults (rather than choices being taken away). Having good defaults is good.
(Also, I'm curating the post; I think more people should see it. Thanks again for sharing!)
I really appreciate this post, thanks for sharing it (and welcome to the Forum)!
Some aspects I want to highlight:
Quick notes on the model — I'd be interested in your answers to some questions in the comments (Jeff's, this one that asks in part about the relationship between economic growth (and growth-supporting work) and this issue, etc.).
I made a sketch to try to explain my worry about the models (and some alternative approaches I've seen) — it's a very rough sketch, but I'd be curious for takes.
Thanks for posting this! I do think lots of people in EA take a more measuring-happiness/preference-satisfaction approach, and it's really useful to offer alternatives that are popular elsewhere.
My notes and questions on the post:
Here's how I understand the main framework of the "capability approach," based mostly on this post, the linked Tweet, and some related resources (including SEP and ChatGPT):[1]
In particular, even if it turns out that someone is content not jogging, them having the ability to jog is still better than them not having this ability.
My understanding of the core arguments of the post, with some questions or concerns I have (corrections or clarifications very much appreciated!):
Three follow-up confusions/uncertainties/questions (beyond the ones embedded in the summary above):
I don't have a philosophy background, or much knowledge of philosophy!
Hi! Just flagging that I've marked this post as a "Personal Blog" post, based on the Forum's policy on politics.
(This means those who've opted in to seeing "Personal Blog" posts on the Frontpage will see it there, while others should only see it in Recent Discussion, on the All Posts page, and on the relevant topic/tag pages.)
Hi! The process for curation is outlined here. In short, some people can suggest curation, and I currently make the final calls.
You can also see a list of other posts that have been curated (you can get to the list by clicking on the star next to a curated post's title).
Thanks for writing this! I'm curating it.
Some things I really appreciate about the post:
One question/disagreement/clarification I have about the statement, "I’m not excited about blasting around hyper-simplified messages."
(I should say that the opinions I'm sharing here are mine, not CEA's. I also think a lot of my opinions here are not very resilient.)
Thanks for these flags about the newcomer experience, both. I agree that these are important considerations.
[Writing just for myself, not my employer or even my team. I am working on the Forum, and that's probably hard to separate from my views on this topic— but this is a quickly-written comment, not something that I feedback on from the rest of the team, etc.]