In principle you only need i) and iii), that’s true, but I think in practice ii) is usually also required. Humans are fairly scope insensitive, and I doubt we’d see low community morale from ordinary do gooding actions being less good by a factor of two or three. As an example, historically GiveWell estimates of how much saving a life with AMF costs have differed by about this much—and it didn’t seem to have much of an impact on community morale. Not so now.
Our crux seems to be that you assume cluelessness or ideas in the same space are a large factor in producing low community morale for doing good. I must admit that I was surprised by this response, I personally haven’t found these arguments to be particularly persuasive, and most people around me seem to feel similarly about such arguments, if they are familiar with them at all.
I don’t know if there islower community morale of the sort you describe—you’re better positioned to have a sense of that than I am—but to the extent that there is, yes, it seems we disagree about whether to suspect that cluelessness would be a significant factor.
It would be interesting to include a pair of questions on the next EA survey about whether people feel more or less charitably motivated than last year, and, if less, why.
I personally haven’t found these arguments to be particularly persuasive, and most people around me seem to feel similarly about such arguments, if they are familiar with them at all.
Have you written somewhere about why you don’t find cluelessness arguments to be particularly persuasive?
No, I haven’t. Given the amount of upvotes Phil’s comment received (from which I conclude a decent fraction of people do find arguments in this space demotivating which is important to know) I will probably read up on it again. But I very rarely write top-level posts and the probability of this investigation turning into one is negligible.
This was now quite a while ago but I have spent some time trying to figure out why I don’t find cluelessness arguments persuasive. After we spent a bunch of time deconfusing ourselves, Alex has written up almost everything I could say on the subject in a long comment chain here.
In principle you only need i) and iii), that’s true, but I think in practice ii) is usually also required. Humans are fairly scope insensitive, and I doubt we’d see low community morale from ordinary do gooding actions being less good by a factor of two or three. As an example, historically GiveWell estimates of how much saving a life with AMF costs have differed by about this much—and it didn’t seem to have much of an impact on community morale. Not so now.
Our crux seems to be that you assume cluelessness or ideas in the same space are a large factor in producing low community morale for doing good. I must admit that I was surprised by this response, I personally haven’t found these arguments to be particularly persuasive, and most people around me seem to feel similarly about such arguments, if they are familiar with them at all.
I don’t know if there is lower community morale of the sort you describe—you’re better positioned to have a sense of that than I am—but to the extent that there is, yes, it seems we disagree about whether to suspect that cluelessness would be a significant factor.
It would be interesting to include a pair of questions on the next EA survey about whether people feel more or less charitably motivated than last year, and, if less, why.
Have you written somewhere about why you don’t find cluelessness arguments to be particularly persuasive?
No, I haven’t. Given the amount of upvotes Phil’s comment received (from which I conclude a decent fraction of people do find arguments in this space demotivating which is important to know) I will probably read up on it again. But I very rarely write top-level posts and the probability of this investigation turning into one is negligible.
Got it.
Perhaps a few bullet points in a comment if there’s no space for a top-level post (better written quickly than not at all...)
Hi Milan,
This was now quite a while ago but I have spent some time trying to figure out why I don’t find cluelessness arguments persuasive. After we spent a bunch of time deconfusing ourselves, Alex has written up almost everything I could say on the subject in a long comment chain here.
Thanks… I replied on that thread.