8 meetings in 8 weeks, each about a particular topic, following a handbook: the “EA Introductory Program.” Criticism inside the program is important; the weekly meetings should not be an hour of Bible study. In fact, criticism has an explicit place in the program: the seventh meeting is solely dedicated to criticism. On top of that, every week, criticism about the topic at hand is welcomed and encouraged.
But it evaporates after the meeting.
Not because the facilitators or the participants want to ignore it (anecdotally, they are eager for criticism), but because in the next meeting, the critiques won’t be taken into account. They can’t be taken into account: the program follows a well-defined path, intended to cover a large range of ideas; it’s not possible to go down the philosophical rabbit hole (arguments, counter-arguments, synthesis) for every criticism.
This has some perverse effects: the critics may feel uneasy arguing about an idea when they disagree on some of the underlying beliefs that are taken for granted (because they were covered in previous meetings); they could stop criticizing altogether because they realize that their criticism has no impact; they could feel repulsed because they value criticism, and it seems like criticism is not valued, or isn’t acted on, apart from a “good point” from the facilitator; they could feel betrayed because they were expecting a movement that endorses criticism as necessary and sought for but does not from their point of view which could lead them to believe that the movement is a kind of religion, a cult with a common doctrine; etc.
For all the reasons above, they could feel angry and reject the entire idea of “figuring out how to do the most good, and do it,” despite their potential impact. Of course, some could power through and do their own research, but they could also never return to EA, and we wouldn’t know because the movement can’t get feedback from the people repulsed by it for a number of reasons: they move on, don’t believe they can change the way things are in the movement, don’t care, etc.
On the other hand, they could ignore the critiques and believe that they’re unfounded because individuals deemed “smart” believe in them, because they are lost—looking for a purpose, because they want to be part of a community, because they lack critical-thinking skills, etc. Consequently, they would effectively be parrots, parroting back the ideas they believe in “because others believe in them too.”.
This is detrimental to the movement; it leads others to believe that some ideas are much more important than others for the wrong reasons and that they should focus on those exclusively (AI safety comes to mind). EA should put its eggs in as many solid baskets as it can. Most movements, if not all, were wrong about some of their big ideas. It would be misguided to think any given movement, including this one, wouldn’t be either.
To summarize, the movement isn’t optimizing the introductory program for the people it wants to attract—people with critical-thinking skills. Effectively, this leads to the amount of people lacking critical-thinking skills growing much faster than the amount of people with critical-thinking skills, which has a detrimental effect on the quality of the epistemics of the movement as a whole.
And there is another nasty consequence.
Outsiders could think that to be part of the movement, one needs to believe in all the prevalent ideas, that are only prevalent because of a “bandwagon effect”, and not because they are necessarily the best way to do the most good, or the only ways that insiders should care about.
While, in fact, the movement encourages idea diversity, the outsider has no way to know without being an insider. So, it is likely that great fits for the movement are driven away by the image projected by the group.
This leads to worse fits (i.e., people lacking critical-thinking skills) being more common, which prolongs and aggravates the problems described above.