Based on your background and posts on here, I think this is a shame.
And I say that as someone who has never called himself an EA even though I share its broad goal and have a healthy respect for the work of some of its organizations and people (partly because of similar impressions to the ones you’ve formed, but also because my cause area and other interests don’t overlap with EA quite as much as yours)
Hope you continue to achieve success and enjoyment in the work you do, and given you’re in Brussels wondered if you’d checked out the School for Moral Ambition which appears to be an EAish philosophy plus campaigning org trying to expand from your Dutch neighbours (no affiliation other than seeing it discussed here)
I appreciate what Rutger Bregman is trying to do, and his work has certainly had a big positive impact on the world, almost certainly larger than mine at least. But honestly, I think he could be more rigorous. I haven’t looked into his ‘school for moral ambition’ project, but I have read (the first half) of his book “humankind”, and despite vehemently agreeing with the conclusion, I would never recommend it to anyone, especially not anyone who has done any research before.
There seems to be some sort of trade-off between wide reach and rigor. I noticed a similar thing with other EA public intellectuals, like for example with Sam Harris and his book “The Moral Landscape” (I haven’t read any of his other books, mostly because this one was just so riddled with sloppy errors), and Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now” (Haven’t read any of his other books either, again because of errors in this book). (Also, I’ve seen some clips of them online, and while that’s not the best way to get information about someone, they didn’t raise my opinion of them, to say the least).
Pretty annoying overall. At least Bregman is not prominently displayed on the EA People page like they are (even though what I read of his book was comparatively better). I would delete them off of it, but last time I removed SBF and Musk from it, that edit got downvoted and I had to ask a friend to upvote it (and this was after SBF was detained, so I don’t think a Harris or Pinker edit would fare much better). Pretty sad, because I think EA has much better people to display than a lot of individuals on that page. Especially considering some of them (like Harris and Pinker) currently don’t even identify as EA.
Interesting, you’re clearly more familiar with Bregman than I am: I was thinking of it in terms of the social reinforcement in finding interesting cause areas and committing to them thing he appears to be trying to do rather than his philosophy.
There’s definitely a tradeoff between wide reach and rigour when writing for public audiences, but I think most people fall short of rigour most of the time. But those who claim exceptional rigour as their distinguishing characteristic should definitely try to avoid appearing to be more cliquey and arbitrary in their decision making than average...
When it comes to someone like Pinker it’s the tone that irritates me more than the generalizations, to the point I’m even more annoyed when I think he’s right about something! If Bregman sometimes sounds similar I can see how it would grate.
Based on your background and posts on here, I think this is a shame.
And I say that as someone who has never called himself an EA even though I share its broad goal and have a healthy respect for the work of some of its organizations and people (partly because of similar impressions to the ones you’ve formed, but also because my cause area and other interests don’t overlap with EA quite as much as yours)
Hope you continue to achieve success and enjoyment in the work you do, and given you’re in Brussels wondered if you’d checked out the School for Moral Ambition which appears to be an EAish philosophy plus campaigning org trying to expand from your Dutch neighbours (no affiliation other than seeing it discussed here)
I appreciate what Rutger Bregman is trying to do, and his work has certainly had a big positive impact on the world, almost certainly larger than mine at least. But honestly, I think he could be more rigorous. I haven’t looked into his ‘school for moral ambition’ project, but I have read (the first half) of his book “humankind”, and despite vehemently agreeing with the conclusion, I would never recommend it to anyone, especially not anyone who has done any research before.
There seems to be some sort of trade-off between wide reach and rigor. I noticed a similar thing with other EA public intellectuals, like for example with Sam Harris and his book “The Moral Landscape” (I haven’t read any of his other books, mostly because this one was just so riddled with sloppy errors), and Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now” (Haven’t read any of his other books either, again because of errors in this book). (Also, I’ve seen some clips of them online, and while that’s not the best way to get information about someone, they didn’t raise my opinion of them, to say the least).
Pretty annoying overall. At least Bregman is not prominently displayed on the EA People page like they are (even though what I read of his book was comparatively better). I would delete them off of it, but last time I removed SBF and Musk from it, that edit got downvoted and I had to ask a friend to upvote it (and this was after SBF was detained, so I don’t think a Harris or Pinker edit would fare much better). Pretty sad, because I think EA has much better people to display than a lot of individuals on that page. Especially considering some of them (like Harris and Pinker) currently don’t even identify as EA.
Interesting, you’re clearly more familiar with Bregman than I am: I was thinking of it in terms of the social reinforcement in finding interesting cause areas and committing to them thing he appears to be trying to do rather than his philosophy.
There’s definitely a tradeoff between wide reach and rigour when writing for public audiences, but I think most people fall short of rigour most of the time. But those who claim exceptional rigour as their distinguishing characteristic should definitely try to avoid appearing to be more cliquey and arbitrary in their decision making than average...
When it comes to someone like Pinker it’s the tone that irritates me more than the generalizations, to the point I’m even more annoyed when I think he’s right about something! If Bregman sometimes sounds similar I can see how it would grate.