Features that contribute to heated discussion on the forum

• Fear, on all sides (according to me lots of debates are bravery debates and people on "both sides" feel in the minority and fighting against a more powerful majority (and often it's both true, just in different ways), and this is really important for understanding the dynamics)

  • Political backlash
  • What other EAs will think of you
  • Just sometimes the experience of being on the forum
• Trying to protect colleagues or friends
• Speed as a reaction to having strong opinions, or worrying that others will jump on you
• Frustration at having to rehash arguments / protect things that should go without saying
• Desire to gain approval / goodwill from people you’d like to hire/fund/etc you in the future
• Desire to sound smart
• Desire to gain approval / goodwill from your friends, or people you respect
• Pattern matching (correctly or not) to conversations you’ve had before and porting over the emotional baggage from them

  • Sometimes it helps to assume the people you’re talking to are still trying to win their last argument with someone else

• Surprise that something is even a question
• I think there's a nasty feedback loop in tense situations with low trust. (This section by Ozzie Gooen)

  • People don't communicate openly their takes on things.
  • This leads to significant misunderstanding.
  • This leads to distrust of each other and assumptions of poor intent.
  • This leads to parties doing more zero-sum or adversarial actions to each other.
  • When any communication does happen, it's inspected with a magnifying glass (because of how rare it is). It's misunderstood (because of how little communication there has been).
  • The communicators then think, "What's the point? My communication is misunderstood and treated with hostility." So they communicate less.
• Not tracking being scrupulously truth-telling out of a desire to get less criticism
• Not feeling like part of the decision making process, opaqueness of the reasoning of EA leadership
• Not understanding how and why decisions that affect you are made
• Feeling misunderstood by the public, sometimes feeling wilfully misunderstood

• Trying to protect a norm you think matters
• Trying to protect other people you think are being treated unfairly
• Trying to create the EA you want by fiat / speech actions
• Power / game theoretical desires to have power shift in EA towards preferred distribution
• Speed - a sense that the conversation will get away from you otherwise

• An interest in understanding the internals of organizations you’re not part of
• An interest in not-sharing the internals of organizations you are part of