{"items": [{"author": "Stefan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838758559002", "anchor": "fb-838758559002", "service": "fb", "text": "Personally, I would prefer if we had more careful communication, and less off-the-cuff communication, in EA. Thinking about how to do the most good is difficult and most people aren't good at doing it off-the-cuff.", "timestamp": "1484422590"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838758559002&reply_comment_id=838759347422", "anchor": "fb-838758559002_838759347422", "service": "fb", "text": "→ What do you think about in person conversation?", "timestamp": "1484422915"}, {"author": "Stefan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838758559002&reply_comment_id=838760959192", "anchor": "fb-838758559002_838760959192", "service": "fb", "text": "→ It's necessary and good in many ways, and yes, people are naturally not held to the same standards there.
I'm not saying that there shouldn't be different kinds of venues for different kinds of different kinds of discussion. But I'm saying that on the margin, we have too little rather than too much careful communication relative to off-the-cuff-communication in EA.", "timestamp": "1484423432"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838758559002&reply_comment_id=838832515792", "anchor": "fb-838758559002_838832515792", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I'm not sure you can get additional careful communication by just pushing for it. In my model ideas worth writing up carefully have \"lots of casual discussions\" as an important input. And discouraging casual public discussions gives you more private discussions and fewer new solid ideas.", "timestamp": "1484448110"}, {"author": "Kiran", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838760794522", "anchor": "fb-838760794522", "service": "fb", "text": "I believe that instead of watering down standards for written communication, we should strengthen standards for spoken language.", "timestamp": "1484423346"}, {"author": "Anders", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838784976062", "anchor": "fb-838784976062", "service": "fb", "text": "Text should be optimized only for being easily and unambiguously understood by the person you are communicating with. The formal/informal axis is a distraction.
A norm that says people should write using formal language, will inevitably lead to be signalling spiral which eventually makes communication completely impossible. I am much more concerned about this failure mode; large parts of academia are scary examples of how bad this can get.", "timestamp": "1484432343"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838784976062&reply_comment_id=838832934952", "anchor": "fb-838784976062_838832934952", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Hmm. In my thinking \"formal\" isn't primarily about language. Instead it's mostly about how much thought and review have gone into preparing it? And how independent it is on the current idea ecosystem? Like, academic papers generally are generally the product of hundreds of hours of work, they have an extensive review process, and they are careful to summarize related work to make themselves (and their role in the discourse) understandable even to people reading them years later.", "timestamp": "1484448363"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838835938932", "anchor": "fb-838835938932", "service": "fb", "text": "[Edit again] (I was completely misunderstanding Jeff's post when I wrote this)", "timestamp": "1484449450"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838835938932&reply_comment_id=838836118572", "anchor": "fb-838835938932_838836118572", "service": "fb", "text": "→ [Edit]", "timestamp": "1484449616"}, {"author": "Peter", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838835938932&reply_comment_id=838843204372", "anchor": "fb-838835938932_838843204372", "service": "fb", "text": "→ David Chudzicki Isn't this kind of ironic?", "timestamp": "1484452843"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838852655432", "anchor": "fb-838852655432", "service": "fb", "text": "Are you suggesting the the linked pieces should be treated as casual and off-the-cuff? At least the first one is very long, and is formatted in some ways that resemble an academic paper (section headings including a \"Conclusion\" section, a table of contents, etc.). Those seem like pretty strong signals that something should't be treated as \"off-the-cuff\".
Maybe you're mentioning them just as context for the criticisms you're talking about? But then I'm confused about why suggestions to \"restrict informal communication to speech\" are coming out of this at all. Are some people making that suggestion thinking those pieces were meant as informal communication?
I think it's weird that you've given so much less context on what the people you're criticizing are saying than you have on what they're responding to.", "timestamp": "1484456425"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838852655432&reply_comment_id=838854137462", "anchor": "fb-838852655432_838854137462", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Sorry, I wasn't clear. I think the two pieces I linked are relatively formal, and are being interacted with appropriately. But both of them do a bunch of pulling out fb-comment-level statements to respond to in this more formal medium, and I think that's mostly not warranted in general or in these cases.
But mostly I'm responding to the idea that I've heard in several places that we should consider holding all written statements in all venues to a high standard in order to improve the level of discourse in our community, and I think that's a pretty bad idea.", "timestamp": "1484457309"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838852655432&reply_comment_id=838869910852", "anchor": "fb-838852655432_838869910852", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Thanks!", "timestamp": "1484458467"}, {"author": "Elizabeth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838993193792", "anchor": "fb-838993193792", "service": "fb", "text": "I agree that giving people space to think through things and to describe ideas without implying they believe in things is crucial. But I think what that means is people should be able to say \"I didn't mean that, here is what I actually think\" and be believed (and should probably be given a chance to say that before someone quotes them in formal writing), not that FB comments are sacred writing for which it is unfair to ever hold anyone accountable.
Examples:
* Sarah's post originally included a quote from someone for a position he was steelmanning but did not hold. It described him as a GWWC official when he was in fact a local organizer. She should have run that by him and given him a chance to clarify (she did remove his name was prompted). This is what convinced me it is important to run quotes by people.
* There's an EAA who has very consistently made the same argument for years across many different posts on facebook. I would consider quoting him fair, and if he issued a more official statement that disagreed with his casual ones without acknowledging a change of heart, I would consider the years of FB comments to be valid counterevidence.
* Someone in an EA org made a one off comment that taking the GWWC pledge literally was autistic and we should use the neurotypical interpretation. I think this is wrong on a couple of levels, and also a bad faith arguing technique in a discussion where I think they failed to prove their point in general. I'm planning on quoting them on my blog, but first am giving them a chance to respond. If they issued a clarifying statement I'd believe them, because that's the kind of thing that's easy to say off the cuff without endorsing, and it only happened once. This is why I'm not giving the person's name in this example.
This seems highly analogous to stand up comedy. Stand up is unique in that developing new material *must* happen in front of a crowd. If we immediately condemned new material that crossed a line, we would never get polished material on anything vaguely controversial or important, because the risk would be too great. But that's not a reason to ignore what comedians say in open mics, it's a reason to accept a gracious apology. If people say something wrong because they're not thinking and continue to insist it's right when they have time to think, \"I only said it out loud when I didn't have my filter\" is not a defense.", "timestamp": "1484511661"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838993193792&reply_comment_id=839959352602", "anchor": "fb-838993193792_839959352602", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I mostly agree, except I think \"here's what I actually think\" needs to be able to include things like \"I was kicking around ideas, and I'm not really sure *what* I think right now\".
Thanks for the stand-up comparison; I think that's a pretty helpful one.", "timestamp": "1484772197"}, {"author": "Elizabeth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838993193792&reply_comment_id=839969507252", "anchor": "fb-838993193792_839969507252", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Agreed, \"I don't know\" is a totally valid \"here's what I think\"", "timestamp": "1484775637"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838993193792&reply_comment_id=840514974132", "anchor": "fb-838993193792_840514974132", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Reading the post you were presumably talking about here, we now have an example to work from:
https://acesounderglass.com/.../what-is-the-giving-what.../
\"implying that a more literal interpretation of the pledge was autistic . He has since apologized for the implied ableism and stated he was attempting to understand other people\u2019s viewpoints. I think as a CEA employee he should choose his words better, but these are exactly the kind misunderstandings that can come from people speaking off the cuff.
[Author\u2019s note: I gave Wiblin the opportunity to respond to this description before publishing, he directed me towards that comment. I would not have found it otherwise.]\"
After having read his \"this is what I actually think\" comment on Sarah's post, why are you still calling him out on his initial \"off-the-cuff\" comment on the EA forum?", "timestamp": "1484920916"}, {"author": "Elizabeth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=838993193792&reply_comment_id=840519954152", "anchor": "fb-838993193792_840519954152", "service": "fb", "text": "→ That's a good question. I've removed his name but left up the story. It still feels like part of the narrative around the pledge to me.", "timestamp": "1484922552"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/838756937252?comment_id=839159325862", "anchor": "fb-839159325862", "service": "fb", "text": "We should be rigorous in teaching both but lax in everyday enforcement. Rigorous because it will teach clear thinking and expression, and lax because people should be focused on their content and not their medium. Both approaches are subject to counter productive extremes.", "timestamp": "1484538768"}]}