A relevant reframing here is whether having a PhD provides a high Bayes factor update to being hired. Eg, if people with and without PhDs have a 2% chance of being hired, but ">50% of successful applicants had a PhD" because most applicants have a PhD, then you should probably not include this, but if 1 in 50 applicants are hired, but it rises to 1 in 10 people if you have a PhD and falls to 1 in 100 if you don't, then the PhD is a massive evidential update even if there is no causal effect.

@JWS asked the question: why do EA critics hate EA so much? Are all EA haters just irrational culture warriors?

I genuinely don't know if this is an interesting/relevant question that's unique to EA. To me, the obvious follow-up question here is whether EA is unique or special in having this (average) level of vitriol in critiques of us? Like is the answer to "why so much EA criticism is hostile and lazy" the same answer to "why is so much criticism, period, hostile and lazy?" Or are there specific factors of EA that's at all relevant here?

I haven't been sufficiently embedded in other intellectual or social movements. I was a bit involved in global development before and don't recall much serious vitirol, maybe something like Easterly or Moyo are closest. I guess maybe MAGA implicitly doesn't like global dev? 

But otoh I've heard of other people involved in say animal rights who say that the "critiques" of EA are all really light and milquetoast by comparison.

I'd really appreciate answers from people who have been more "around the block" than I have. 

Sure, social aggression is a rather subjective call. I do think decoupling/locality norms are relevant here. "Garden variety incompetence" may not have been the best choice of words on Sean's part,^[1] but it did seem like a) a locally scoped comment specifically answering a question that people on the forum understandably had, b) much of it empirically checkable (other people formerly at FHI, particularly ops staff, could present their perspectives re: relationship management), and c) Bostom's capacity as director is very much relevant to the discussion of the organization's operations or why the organization shut down. 

Your comment first presents what I consider to be a core observation that is true and important, namely, FHI did a lot of good work, and this type of magic might not be easy to replicate if you do everything with apparent garden-variety competence. But afterwards, it also brought in a bunch of what I consider to be extraneous details on Sean's competency, judgment, and integrity. The points you raise are also more murkily defined and harder to check. So overall I think of your comment as more escalatory.

1. ^{^}

   or maybe it was under the circumstances. I don't know the details here, maybe the phrase was carefully chosen. 

Interesting example! I don't know much about Tate, but I understand him as a) only "influential" in a very ephemeral way, in the way that e.g. pro wrestlers are, and b) only influential among people who themselves aren't influential.

It's possible we aren't using the word "influential" in the same way. E.g. implicit in my understanding of "influential" is something like "having influence on people who matter" whereas maybe you're just defining it as "having influence on (many) people, period?"

I claim that on net FHI would've brought more prestige to Oxford than the other way around, especially in the counterfactual world where it thrived/was allowed to thrive (which might be impractical for other reasons). 

I might not be tracking all the exact nuances, but I'd have thought that prestige is ~just legible influence aged a bit, in the same way that old money is just new money aged a bit. I model institutions like Oxford as trying to play the "long game" here.

Erm, looking at the accomplishments of FHI, I'd be genuinely surprised if random philosophers from Oxford will be nearly as influential going forwards. "It's the man that honors the medal."

The vast majority of academic philosophy at prestigious universities will be relegated to the dustbins of history, FHI's work is quite plausibly an exception. 

To be clear, this is not a knock on philosophy; I'd guess that total funding for academic philosophy in the world is on the order of 1B. Most things that are 0.001% of the world economy won't be remembered much 100 years from now. I'd guess philosophy in general punches well above its weight here, but base rates are brutal.

Yeah I made a similar point here.

What a champ. if institutions can be heroes, FHI is surely one.