Upvoted. Maybe this is just what’s typical for academic style, but when you address Gabriel it seems you’re attributing the points of view presented to him, while when I read the original paper I got the impression he was collating and clarifying some criticisms of effective altruism so they’d be coherent enough they’d affect change. One thing about mainstream journalism is it’s usually written for a specific type of audience the editor has in mind, even if the source claims to be seeking a general audience, and so they spin things a certain way. While criticisms of EA definitely aren’t what I’d call sensationalistic, they’re written in a style of a rhetorical list of likes and dislikes about the EA movement. It’s taken for granted the implied position of the author is somehow a better alternative than what EA is currently doing, as if no explanation is needed.
Gabriel fixes this by writing the criticisms of EA up in a way that we’d understand what about the movement would need to change to satisfy critics, if we were indeed to agree with critics. Really, except for the pieces published on the Boston Review, I feel like other criticisms of EA were written not for EA at all, but rather a review of EA for other do-gooders as a warning to stay away from the movement. It’s not the job of critics to solve all our problems for us, but being a movement that is at least willing to try to change in the face of criticism, it’s frustrating nobody takes us up on the opportunity given what blindspots we may have and tries to be constructive.
Thanks for the comment! We do go to some length to make clear that we’re unsure whether Gabriel himself endorses the objections. We’re pretty sure he endorses some (systemic change, counterfactuals), but less sure about the others.
Upvoted. Maybe this is just what’s typical for academic style, but when you address Gabriel it seems you’re attributing the points of view presented to him, while when I read the original paper I got the impression he was collating and clarifying some criticisms of effective altruism so they’d be coherent enough they’d affect change. One thing about mainstream journalism is it’s usually written for a specific type of audience the editor has in mind, even if the source claims to be seeking a general audience, and so they spin things a certain way. While criticisms of EA definitely aren’t what I’d call sensationalistic, they’re written in a style of a rhetorical list of likes and dislikes about the EA movement. It’s taken for granted the implied position of the author is somehow a better alternative than what EA is currently doing, as if no explanation is needed.
Gabriel fixes this by writing the criticisms of EA up in a way that we’d understand what about the movement would need to change to satisfy critics, if we were indeed to agree with critics. Really, except for the pieces published on the Boston Review, I feel like other criticisms of EA were written not for EA at all, but rather a review of EA for other do-gooders as a warning to stay away from the movement. It’s not the job of critics to solve all our problems for us, but being a movement that is at least willing to try to change in the face of criticism, it’s frustrating nobody takes us up on the opportunity given what blindspots we may have and tries to be constructive.
Thanks for the comment! We do go to some length to make clear that we’re unsure whether Gabriel himself endorses the objections. We’re pretty sure he endorses some (systemic change, counterfactuals), but less sure about the others.