Run Posts By Orgs

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 [LW · GW], 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, and I think it's better that they published than increase the chance by ~40% that they wouldn't publish at all, or a year later. If I consider a former FTX/Alameda employee who felt gaslit and tricked by the management in those places (pre the crash), if they had chosen to write about it, I think they would have felt actively (and correctly) scared about privately reaching out to the organization first for fear of retaliation, and again many people would prefer to say nothing rather than have that direct interaction where they say "I'm going to say negative things about you publicly".

(Also Zoe Curzi and Leverage. Really there's a lot of examples.)

My main issue with the norm you're proposing is that often people are (a) scared about retaliation, and even worse (b) scared to mention on the meta-level that they're scared, again for fear of retaliation. As such, additional norms required for interacting directly with the people of whom you're scared, seem to super strongly punish a substantial class of very important criticism from being published at all.

Instead, they walk the reader through a series of investigative steps in a way that reads like someone uncovering a corrupt grant.

Huh. It just sounded like "I thought I'd find some information and then I didn't" to me. Maybe I'm just being tone deaf. Like, it sounded like a (boring and result-less) stack trace of some investigation.

I think this would be positive, but putting it into practice is hard.

Ok. Yeah I don't see an obvious implementation; I was mainly trying to understand your position, though maybe it would actually be good.

Thanks for the links.

It's concerning if, as seems to be the case, people are making important decisions based on "a couple main points and a background negative feeling left in their brains".

What happens when you have to make a decision that would depend on stuff like that?

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

1. You're wasting time on trying to get people to like you, but those people have neutered their ability to get good stuff done, by engaging in this enforced groupthink.
2. You're distorting your thoughts, confusing yourself between real reality and social reality.
3. You're signaling capitulation to everyone else, saying, "Yes, even people as originally well-intentioned as we were, even such people will eventually see the dark truth, that all must be sacrificed to the will of groupthink". This also applies internally to the org.

I think "disagree" means something like "I think you actually did sort of mean it"?

yeah no idea either. here's the version of the original comment I endorse without hesitation:

Remember: if an authority is doing something you don't like, it's not always correct to ask them before you criticize them. By being an org, they aren't more important than you, and shouldn't always be respected.

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.

Hmm. I see.

Not sure how much this addresses your concerns?

Almost not at all.

Reading your comments on Sarah’s post, it sounds like your objecting to a norm where someone criticizing is expected to address private feedback they get from an org before publishing?

That’s definitely not the only thing I’m objecting to.

This norm should not exist at all, because it will inevitably reduce the probability that true and/or correct criticism reaches the public.

The downsides you point out are to the organization (or person) themselves. But I do not think that members of the public have any obligation to consider the org’s interests in such cases. Indeed, it would be wrong to do so, to whatever extent that consideration of the org’s interests (and any actions, or perceived obligation for actions, that result from such consideration) may tip the scales toward not publishing the criticism.

It seems to me that it’s morally acceptable to consider the org’s interests only insofar as they have an effect on the public (construed here in an identical way to “the public” in “learning true facts and correct criticism of an org benefits the public). And even in those cases, disclosure of true information and correct criticism must be weighted much more strongly than some other purported effects (in accordance with the principle of non-paternalism).

In short, the author of a critical post owes the target of the criticism no consideration of consequences, so long as obligations of honesty, accuracy, legality, appropriateness, etc. are met. The author may owe the post’s audience (a.k.a. the public) more than that, or may not; that may be argued. But to the target—no.