EA - Select Challenges with Criticism and Evaluation Around EA by Ozzie Gooen

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Select Challenges with Criticism & Evaluation Around EA, published by Ozzie Gooen on February 10, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.I think that critique (or sharing uncomfortable information) is very important, difficult, and misunderstood. I've started to notice many specific challenges when dealing with criticism - here's my quick take on some of the important ones. This comes mostly from a mix of books and personal experiences.This post is a bit rambly and rough. I expect much of the content will be self-evident to many readers.A whole lot has been written about criticism, but I've found the literature scattered and not very rationalist-coded (see point # 6). I wouldn't be surprised if there were better related lists out there that would apply to EA, please do leave comments if you know of them.1. Many People Hate Being CriticizedMany people and organizations actively detest being open or being criticized. Even if those being evaluated wouldn’t push back against evaluation, evaluators really don’t want to harm people. The fact that antagonistic actors online are using public information as ammunition makes things worse.There’s a broad spectrum regarding how much candidness different people/agents can handle. Even the most critical people can be really bad at taking criticism. One extreme is Scandal Markets. These could be really pragmatically useful, but many people would absolutely hate showing up on one. If any large effective altruist community enforced high-candidness norms, that would exclude some subset of potential collaborators.In business, there are innumerable books about how to give criticism and feedback. Similar to romantic relationships. It’s a major social issue!2. Not Criticizing Leads to DistrustWhat’s scarier than getting negative feedback? Knowing that people who matter to you dislike you, but not knowing why.When there are barriers in communication, people often assume the worst. They make up bizarre stories.The number one piece of advice I’ve seen for resolving tense situations in business and romance is to just talk to each other. (Sometimes bringing in a moderator can help with the early steps!)If you have critical takes on someone, you could:Make it clear you have issues with them, be silent on the matter, or pretend you don’t have issues with them.Reveal these issues, or hide them.Lying in Choice 1 can be locally convenient, but it often comes with many problems.You might have to create more lies to justify these lies.You might lie to yourself to make yourself more believable, but this messes with your epistemics in subtle ways that you won’t be able to notice.If others catch on that you do this, they won’t be able to trust many important things you say.If you are honest in Choice 1 (this can include social hints) but choose to conceal in Choice 2, then the other party will make up reasons why you dislike them. These are heated topics (people hate being disliked). I suspect that’s why guesses here are often particularly bad.Some things I’ve (loosely) heard around the EA community include:That’s why [person X] rejected my application. It’s probably because I’m just a bad researcher, and I will never be useful.Funders don’t like me because I don’t attend the right parties.Funders don’t like me because I criticized them, and they hate criticism.EAs hate my posts because I use emotion, and EAs hate emotion.All the EA critics just care about Woke buzzwords.When I post to the EA Forum about my reasons for (important actions), I get downvoted. That’s because they just care about woke stuff and no longer care about epistemics.3. People have wildly different abilities to convey candid information gracefullyFirst, there seems to be a large subset of people that assumes that social grace or politeness is all BS. You ca...