I found the tone of this piece pretty sneer-y and offputting. There’s a difference between “here’s an extreme example showing why this argument doesn’t work” and “look how stupid these people are” — I think this writing is veering towards the latter, and I’d prefer to see less of that on the Forum.
Yep. If a major objection to criticism is that it often misunderstands or even strawman the movement, trying to strawman almost every criticism ever offered of anyone or anything associated with Effective Altruism in the same article probably isn’t the best way of addressing matters even if it’s obviously not serious and some of the original criticisms really aren’t very good. One of the most common claims that EAs make about themselves is that with “scout mentality” they are extremely receptive to criticism and always looking for ways they might be able to do better; one of the most common criticising of EAs is that actually they’re more concerned with justifying how much better they are than anyone else…
The “Instead Henry Heimlich would get the credit” quote made me laugh tbf.
I found the tone of this piece pretty sneer-y and offputting. There’s a difference between “here’s an extreme example showing why this argument doesn’t work” and “look how stupid these people are” — I think this writing is veering towards the latter, and I’d prefer to see less of that on the Forum.
Yep. If a major objection to criticism is that it often misunderstands or even strawman the movement, trying to strawman almost every criticism ever offered of anyone or anything associated with Effective Altruism in the same article probably isn’t the best way of addressing matters even if it’s obviously not serious and some of the original criticisms really aren’t very good. One of the most common claims that EAs make about themselves is that with “scout mentality” they are extremely receptive to criticism and always looking for ways they might be able to do better; one of the most common criticising of EAs is that actually they’re more concerned with justifying how much better they are than anyone else…
The “Instead Henry Heimlich would get the credit” quote made me laugh tbf.