paul-crowe
commented
1 year ago Example: Growth Causes Degradaion of Community Epistemic Standards
Summary: “As movements grow, they get more “epistemic inertia”: it becomes much harder for them to update on evidence. This is because they have to rely on social methods to propagate their memes rather than truth-seeking behavior. But people who have been drawn to EA by social pressure rather than truth-seeking take much longer to change their beliefs, so once the movement reaches a critical mass of them, it will become difficult for it to update on new evidence. As described above, this is already happening to effective altruism with the ever-less-useful Facebook group. ”
Date: 2nd Dec 2013
Status:
Lag to response:
Current canonical instance:
Prior status of critic:
Fundamental criticism:
Public responses: Point: Is this a criticism or an general observation about group psychology? This is just what happens to organisations. Why should EA be expected to be an exception to this?
g-leech
Example: Pressure for growth and belief in justice trades against epistemic rigour
Summary: "I've seen well-respected and high-profile organizations going after critics of their work, engaging in internal purges of folk associated with them, and compelling simple lies to manage the optics of criticism. I have direct knowledge of times when such organizations have decided to ignore the content of criticism and instead spin."
Date: 2nd Jul 2017
Status:
Lag to response:
Current canonical instance:
Prior status of critic:
Fundamental criticism:
Public responses: Uncritical Supercriticality (4th Dec 2007) Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs (7th Dec 2007) When None Dare Urge Restraint (9th Dec 2007) Image management > addressing internal criticism (18th Mar 2022)