For the record I don't think anyone needs to check with Lightcone before criticizing any of our work.
I'm not saying it won't improve someone's post to get direct feedback from us, and I'm not saying it might not end up reducing some amount of effort from someone on the lightcone team to respond to things people are wrong about, but my current model is that for people to have justified belief in their model of the work that an org does, they should believe they would have heard negative info about us if it exists, and so I ought to encourage people to be openly severely critical and push back against demands to not write their criticism for a pretty large swathe of possible reasons.
Concretely, public criticism of CFAR and MIRI has made me feel more confident in my model of how bad things have been in those places (and how bad it hasn't). Even if the criticism itself was costly to respond to, the cost was just worth it in terms of people being able to come to accurate beliefs about those places.
I wasn't referring specifically to the OP when I wrote that, I meant I ought to pushback against a pretty wide swath of possible arguments and pressures against publishing criticism. Nonetheless I want to answer your question.
My answer is more "yes" than "no". If someone is to publish a critique of an EA org and hasn't shown it to the org, people can say "But you didn't check it with the org, which we agreed is a norm around here, so you don't seem to be willing to play by the rules, and I now suspect the rest of this post is in bad faith." Yet I think it's a pretty bad norm in many important instances. If the writer feels personally harmed or tricked by the org, they often will feel that their relationship with the org is rocky, and may choose to say nothing rather than talk to the org. I am reminded of a time at university where I felt so scrutinized and disliked by my professors that after completing my assigned problem set, I couldn't bring myself to hand it in and face them directly. Somewhat more strongly, I think requiring people to talk to whoever they're saying negative things about would have made it much more costly for the authors of both of the links I linked to above,...
(Also Zoe Curzi and Leverage. Really there’s a lot of examples.)
Also examples on the other side, I would note. Without a healthy skepticism of anonymous or other kinds of reduced-accountability reports, one would've been lead around by the nose by Ziz's attempts.
Right. I suspect we still have some disagreement but happy to leave it here.
(To briefly leave pointer, but with no expectation Jeff for you to respond to it: I think this sort of dynamic extends further into lots of other criticism, where even if your criticism isn't about bad behavior you're still pretty unsure how they respond to criticism and whether they'll respond well, and it can be very stressful to engage directly yet still pro-social to publish criticism.)
What's wrong with an org posting a response later? Why do they have to scramble? This isn't a rhetorical question. I imagine two of the reasons are:
If there's a misconception caused by the post, then until the misconception is corrected, there could be incorrect harm to the org. This seems like a reasonable concern in theory, but is this really a concern in practice? What are some examples of this being a real concern (if not for point 2 below)?
If there's a misconception caused by the post, then the misconception might become ingrained in the social space and be more difficult for the org to correct.
If point 2 is necessary for your argument, then, this seems like the problem is about people getting ingrained opinions that can't be later corrected. Why does that happen? Are the processes driven by people who have really ingrained opinions actually processes that good-doing orgs want to be a part of? I expect people to shrug and say "yeah, but look, that's just how the world works, people get ingrained opinions, we have to work around that". My response is: why on earth are you forfeiting victory without thoroughly discussing the problem?
A more convincing argument would have to discuss how orgs are using time-sensitive PR to deceive the social space.
This comment feels like wishful thinking to me. Like, I think our communities are broadly some of the more truth-seeking communities out there. And yet, they have flaws common to human communities, such as both 1 and 2. And yet, I want to engage with these communities, and to cooperate with them. That cooperation is made much harder if actors blithely ignore these dynamics by:
I have a long experience of watching conversations about orgs evolve. I advise my colleagues to urgently reply. I don't think this is an attempt to manipulate anyone.
What are some examples of this being a real concern
I didn't give this example in the original because it could look like calling out a specific individual author, which would be harsh. But it does seem like this post needs an example, so I've linked it here. Please be nice; I'm not giving them as an example of a bad person, just someone whose post triggered bad dynamics.
This is something I've been thinking about for a while, but it was prompted by the recent On what basis did Founder's Pledge disperse $1.6 mil. to Qvist Consulting from its Climate Change Fund? It reads as a corruption exposé, and I think Founders Pledge judged correctly that if they didn't get their response out quickly a lot of people would have shifted their views in ways that (the original poster agrees) would have been wrong.
The problem of people not getting the right information here seems hard to solve. For example, if you see just the initial post and none of the followup I think it's probably right to be somewhat more skeptical of FP. After the follow-up we have (a) people who saw only the original, (b) people who saw only the follow-up, and (c) people who saw both. And even if the follow-up gets a...
I dunno man. If I imagine someone who's sort of peripheral to EA but knows a lot about X, and they see EA org-X doing silly stuff with X, and they write a detailed post, only to have it downvoted due to the norm... I expect that to cut off useful information far more than prevent {misconceptions among people who would have otherwise had usefully true and detailed models}.
Yeah, doing a group think seems to increase this cost. (And of course the group think is the problem here, and playing to the group think is some sort of corruption, it seems to me.)
Suppose that it actually were the case that OP and so on would shun orgs based on groupthink rather than based on real reasons. Now, what should an org do, if faced with the possibility of groupthink deciding the org is bad? An obvious response is to try to avoid that. But I'm saying that this response is a sort of corruption. A better response would be to say: Okay, bye! An even better response would be to try to call out these dynamics, in the hopes of redeeming the groupthinkers. The way the first response is corruption, is
Remember: if an authority is doing something you don't like, make sure to ask them before you criticize them. By being an org, they are more important than you, and should be respected. Make sure to respect your betters.
More seriously, it doesn't seem totally unreasonable to ask people you're criticizing if they'd like to reply. And I do believe in trying to be respectful to those you disagree with to a significant degree most of the time. But, there's something extremely yikes about this being the default.
Remember: if an authority is doing something you don't like, make sure to ask them before you criticize them. By being an org, they are more important than you, and should be respected. Make sure to respect your betters.
I'm not sure if you changed your mind or kinda-sorta still mean this. But I also think that it would be best to have a norm of giving individual people a week to read and respond to a critical post, unless you have reason to think they'd use the time to behave in a tactical/adversarial manner. Same for orgs. If you think an organization would just use the week to write something dishonest or undermine your reputation, then go right ahead and post immediately. But if you're criticizing somebody or an org who you genuinely think will respond in good faith, then a week of response time seems like a great norm to me - it's what I would want if I was on the receiving end.
I don't think anyone ever thought you might actually think what you wrote in struck-out text. But what's not so clear is whether you actually think that's a fair paraphrase of the real meaning of what jefftk wrote.
I think it's plainly not a fair paraphrase of the real meaning of what jefftk wrote, and that there is no reason to think that Jeff's actual opinions or intentions at all resemble those in your struck-out text.
Jeff explicitly says that someone writing a critical piece about an organization shouldn't feel any pressure to let them influence what it says, let alone to let them stop it being published. He doesn't say anything at all like "they are more important than you" or "they are better than you" or "you owe them respect".
And I don't think there's anything at all "yikes" about Jeff's suggestion. I think that on the whole it is likely to produce more useful criticism and more useful discussion.
I'm toying with a summary of "giving notice and a preview is value-creating when the org is genuinely trying but value-destroying when it's not. A post author can easily be uncertain about this and pushing them to decide ahead of time destroys more value."
I think the effect can be changed on the margin by how the org responds, and would be really interested in a companion piece to this about what orgs owe potential writers of critical posts.
I disagree with this post. At the very least, I feel like there should be some kind of caveat or limit regarding the size of the organization or distance that one has from the organization. For example, if I'm writing a post or comment about some poor experience I had with Amazon, do I have a moral obligation to run that post by Amazon's PR beforehand? No. Amazon is a huge company, and I'm not really connected to them in any way, so I do not and should not feel any obligation towards them prior to sharing my experiences with their products or services.
Isn’t whether there is, in fact, a cooperative relationship likely to be precisely the issue at hand, in many cases of criticism of EA orgs?
Why only orgs? Why not people? Is there some reason why this shouldn’t apply to all criticism, of anyone?
(Also, did you intend to limit this suggestion to only EA orgs, or any orgs?)
I'm very happy to see effective altruism community members write public posts about EA organizations, where they point out errors, discuss questionable choices, and ask hard questions. I'd like to see more cases where someone digs deeply into an org's work and writes about what they find; a simple "this checked out" or a "critical feedback that helps the org improve" are both good outcomes. Even a "this org is completely incompetent" is a good outcome: I'd rather orgs be competent of course, but in the cases where they aren't we want to know so we can explore alternatives.
When posting critical things publicly, however, unless it's very time-sensitive we should generally be letting orgs review a draft first. This allows the org to prepare a response if they want, which they can post right when your posts goes out, usually as a comment. It's very common that there are important additional details that you don't have as someone outside the org, and it's good for people to be able to review those details alongside your post. If you don't give the org a heads up they need to choose between:
Scrambling to respond as soon as possible, including working on weekends or after hours and potentially dropping other commitments, or
Accepting that with a late reply many people will see your post, some will downgrade their view of the org, and most will never see the follow-up.
Surprising them is to your advantage, if you consider this tactically, but within the community we're working towards the same goals: you're not trying to win a fight, you're trying to help us all get closer to the truth.
In general I think a week is a good amount of time to give for review. I often say something like "I was planning to publish this on Tuesday, but let me know if you'd like another day or two to review?" If a key person is out I think it's polite to wait a bit longer (and this likely gets you a more knowledgeable response) but if the org keeps trying to push the date out you've done your part and it's fine to say no.
Sometimes orgs will respond with requests for changes, or try to engage you in private back-and forth. While you're welcome to make edits in response to what you learn from them, you don't have an obligation to: it's fine to just say "I'm planning to publish this as-is, and I'd be happy to discuss your concerns publicly in the comments."
[EDIT: I'm not advocating this for cases where you're worried that the org will retaliate or otherwise behave badly if you give them advance warning, or for cases where you've had a bad experience with an org and don't want any further interaction. For example, I expect Curzi didn't give Leverage an opportunity to prepare a response to My Experience with Leverage Research, and that's fine.]
For orgs, when someone does do this it's good to thank them in your response. Not only is it polite to acknowledge it when someone does you a favor, it also helps remind people that sharing drafts is good practice.
As a positive example, I think the recent critical post, Why I don't agree with HLI's estimate of household spillovers from therapy handled this well: if James had published that publicly on a Sunday night with no warning then HLI would have been scrambling to put together a response. Instead, James shared it in advance and we got a much more detailed response from HLI, published at the same time as the rest of the piece, which was really helpful for outsiders trying to make sense of the situation.
The biggest risk here, as Ben points out, is that faced with the burden of sharing a draft and waiting for a response some good posts won't happen. To some people this sounds a bit silly (if you have something important to say and it's not time sensitive is it really so bad to send a draft and set a reminder to publish in a bit?) but not to me. I think this depends a lot on how people's brains work, but for some of us a short (or no!) gap between writing and publishing is an incredibly strong motivator. I'm writing this post in one sitting, and while I think I'd still be able to write it up if I knew I had to wait a week I know from experience this isn't always the case. This is a strong reason to keep reviews low-friction: orgs should not be guilting people into making changes, or (in the typical case) pushing for more time. Even if the process is as frictionless as possible, there's the unavoidable issue of delay being unpleasant, and I expect this norm does lose us a few good posts. Given how stressful it is to rush out responses, however, and the lower quality of such responses, I think it's a good norm on balance.