Brief comments here, on request of the OP. Low confidence—these are just quick thoughts that came to mind / not well considered.
I agree with Julia RE: giving the impression of shifting goalposts. (I think this is possibly exacerbated by the semantic debate). I think the pushback by commentors is in part because of object-level disagreements, but also in part because of some lack of clarity around what your justifications for claims and suggestions are.
I think it’s worth being mindful of motivated reasoning here—I’m not suggesting this is the case, but it would be important for yourself to know how you might meaningfully distinguish to an outsider who has less understanding of the true reasons for your justifications. One thing that might help (alongside Julia’s suggestion above), is to figure out what would need to be true / assumed for your preferred conclusions to be false / for you to meaningfully update against it and be upfront about the key assumptions and cruxes that underpin your views. (Fwiw, someone pointed me to this post with a comment along the lines of “this reads like someone who already supports defunding abortion for other reasons who is trying to justify it on longtermist grounds.” n=1 on this specific claim though)
If you think the most important points are 3 / 4a, I think the title doesn’t accurately reflect this, since the main claim based on your suggestions listed here sounds more like “effects on population sizes of neartermist interventions may be underrated in cause prioritisation”.
I don’t think it’s wrong to bring up abortion, and I think it may be a relevant consideration, though I think the case for abortion reduction in this post is weakened by the disclaimer and idea that this post is about voluntary abortion reduction (i.e. if your personal views in 3 and 4a leads to a position that abortion is wrong on consequentialist grounds irrespective of whether this is voluntary, then it would be more accurate to state this clearly. If you prefer not to talk about non-voluntary abortion reduction for any other reason, then you should focus on interventions that support higher fertility rates without interacting with the subset of women who don’t wish to have children. I could be wrong, but I don’t think you’ve made a compelling case that interventions on this subset should be considered “voluntary abortion reduction”. (Linking this comment thread here as context for other readers / for others to decide).
Accordingly, I disagree that the semantic debate is distracting you from what you were trying to say. I think it is acting to clarify what you are trying to say. As stated, neither 3 nor 4 as written actually exclude non-voluntary abortion reduction, (if anything, they may be interpreted that nonvoluntary abortion reduction is justified or preferable, due to the “lives saved” as a result). But clearly the extent to which you believe nonvoluntary abortion reduction is morally preferable (and why), and the extent to which readers agree with this line of reasoning are relevant considerations when taking into account your recommendations. For example, if you suggest “we should put more $ into AMF” and “we should suspend funding for family planning services” primarily for population growth arguments, then people who think involuntary abortion reduction is worth the harms might agree with both claims, but people who only agree with voluntary abortion reduction might plausibly accept the first claim but not the second.
I generally feel good about edits on the post that suggest any meaningful updates or are clarifying some misunderstandings etc
I think the value of a new post would depend on the content of the post itself, so find this hard to comment on.
Hope this is useful, can’t promise further engagement though!
Thanks so much for all of your effort and engagement, Bruce! This has been extremely helpful. I’ll include an “updates” edit with the following:
On the lack of clarity: Link to my reply to Julia which is a more accurate summary of what I was trying to say, including the far-better-specified main claim of “effects on population sizes of neartermist interventions may be underrated in cause prioritisation.”
On the definition of voluntary: Be clear that the defunding intervention wouldn’t satisfy some reasonable definitions of voluntary, and link to the comment thread discussing that.
With your permission, crediting you as a particularly helpful person for realizing these updates.
the pushback by commentors is in part because of object-level disagreements...the case for abortion reduction in this post is weakened by the disclaimer and idea that this post is about voluntary abortion reduction (i.e. if your personal views in 3 and 4a leads to a position that abortion is wrong on consequentialist grounds irrespective of whether this is voluntary, then it would be more accurate to state this clearly...neither 3 nor 4 as written actually exclude non-voluntary abortion reduction, (if anything, they may be interpreted that nonvoluntary abortion reduction is justified or preferable, due to the “lives saved” as a result)
When I passed around drafts of this post, the overwhelming feedback I received was that people would be completely unreceptive to and unwilling to engage with even the slightest suggestion of involuntary abortion reduction. The impression I received from the feedback was that in publishing this post, I would be like a hardcore vegan entering a KFC with a megaphone.
There’s a Venn diagram of policies regarding animal suffering endorsed by hardcore vegans versus by KFC patrons. The shared part of the Venn diagram includes policies like convincing people to voluntarily go vegan, and on the edge of the shared part, there might be the proposal of suspending subsidies for KFC because there’s a chance that animal suffering actually matters. The hardcore vegan tries to identify some aspect of the shared part of the Venn diagram to restrict their speech and the ensuing conversation’s scope to, so that the KFC patrons will actually take seriously and engage with what they have to say. They settle on “voluntary animal suffering reduction,” and make that the headline of their speech.
Then patrons point out that suspending subsidies for KFC could cause some KFCs to shut down, so people who live in communities where those KFCs shut down won’t be able to access their sweet, sweet fried chicken. Therefore, the patrons argue, the hardcore vegan’s proposal constitutes involuntary animal suffering reduction, because those people didn’t voluntarily choose to go vegan. Now the hardcore vegan is in a bind, because on the one hand, suspending KFC subsidies seems to them like obviously the morally right thing to do. On the other hand, they’re the one who chose to restrict the conversation to “voluntary animal suffering reduction,” and there’s a reasonable argument that suspending KFC subsidies would indeed constitute involuntary animal suffering reduction. So they can either drop the “voluntary” part, and be socially ostracized and have everything they have to say duly ignored, or they can enter the semantic debate about which definitions of “voluntary” their proposed intervention might fall under.
The hardcore vegan, having been passionate about animal suffering for years, chooses the latter, in spite of it being pretty motivated reasoning in retrospect. Bruce, a kindly and patient KFC patron, pulls the vegan aside and convinces them that their reasoning was motivated, and here we are.
clearly the extent to which you believe nonvoluntary abortion reduction is morally preferable (and why), and the extent to which readers agree with this line of reasoning are relevant considerations when taking into account your recommendations
There are quite a few pro-choice people who believe that abortion is morally wrong, but that the government should not ban it. Is it that hard to believe that, given an action many people think is morally wrong but should not be banned, other people with different views on the role of government might say that since it is morally wrong it should be banned? In fact, isn’t the person who says “This is murder, so let’s not do it” a whole lot more honest than the person who says “This is murder, but I think we should continue to permit it anyway”?
I can only speak for myself, but while I would have disagreed with you even more if you’d lead with advocacy for involuntary abortion reduction, I’d have been more supportive of your efforts in making that argument.
In the future, you might consider dealing with this challenge by making a sock puppet account. That way, you can air your views without risking social blowback. If the conversation turns out better than you expect, you can open up about your identity if you choose.
I understand your hesitancy. However, I find it frustrating when I intuit that my debate partner is making the argument they think I might accept rather than the one they actually believe. Time and energy I put into arguing against them is wasted—I don’t know what your true cruxes are, and not even you truly hold the beliefs you’re putting forth in your OP.
Thanks for your advice, and for all of your value-adding comments! I genuinely apologize for making you feel that way. In hindsight, it’s much easier to see where and how one’s structural choices can damage the conversation, and I regret those choices all the more because of that.
On making a sock puppet account, I was always taught that “if it’s worth saying in public, you should be willing to attach your name to it.” Perhaps that belief was too simplistic, but it’s why I chose to write this under my true identity.
I do truly hold the beliefs I’m putting forth. As in the KFC analogy, I chose to focus on voluntary interventions because the feedback I received was that anything else would land on deaf ears. However, I do believe that voluntary interventions, especially broadly agreeable policies which help parents, would be a great thing to do.
Regarding crux(es), I hold total and non-person-affecting views in population ethics, and I think a child will live a life of positive value in expectation. Ignoring replaceability, I don’t see the moral distinction between preventing an abortion and adding a future person who will live a life of positive value (in expectation). So even if x-risks are much more important, or animal welfare considerations completely dominate, etc, it still seems to me that preventing an abortion (ignoring replaceability) is as good as saving a human life today. Given the scale of abortion, it seems to me that if none of the abortions occurring today occurred, even with replaceability, that would still be as good as saving millions of lives, which I think dominates concerns of personal autonomy.
I’ll add this, now that you’ve confirmed your views RE: voluntary vs nonvoluntary abortion reduction (mainly referring to “that would still be as good as saving millions of lives, which I think dominates concerns of personal autonomy”)
Taking your analogy from this comment, which you use to argue against family planning despite “the aims we want—women’s health + autonomy”
As an analogy, many Ethiopians suffer from malnutrition. Let’s say well-meaning EAs sponsored an “EA steakhouse” in Ethiopia, as steak can provide crucial nutrients to people in extreme poverty. There seem to be other interventions, including GAIN’s Salt Iodization program, which also target malnutrition, without the possible serious negative externality of animal suffering. In that case, I think we should temporarily suspend our support for the steakhouse while we evaluate the relevant moral considerations. In the meanwhile, Ethiopians can still eat steak at non-EA steakhouses if they’d like (as other well-meaning altruists have sponsored steakhouses of their own), or acquire steak through other means—we wouldn’t be reducing their ability to voluntarily eat steak if they so choose. Our goal—combating malnutrition—remains the same, but we choose the intervention to accomplish that goal without the possible negative externality.
If I apply this same logic to your goal of increasing population size, you could plausibly say that interventions that empower women who want to have more children or reduce barriers that they face are equivalent to GAIN’s salt iodisation programme, and interventions that reduce the ability for women who don’t want children to have abortions are equivalent to the steakhouse? If so, shouldn’t you choose the intervention to accomplish the goal of increasing population size that didn’t have the negative externality?
I’m not actually endorsing using this argument generally for all cause prioritisation considerations, but just pointing out that if you’re happy to use this analogy to argue against family planning, it seems like it could now be also used to argue against interventions that reduce access to abortion, if your goal is to “increase future humans”? So am curious about the inconsistency there and what other considerations you’re taking into account.
And I guess this makes me update towards your your goal of pushing against abortion being higher than I previously had in mind. May be misinterpreting you though!
My aim is to increase the amount of happy future people. Reducing abortion is one way to do that, but I’ve been clear in a few comments that I would endorse other interventions over reducing abortions:
“optimizing for increasing the amount of children that families want and are able to happily have is probably better than voluntary abortion reduction as a means of increasing the amount of near-term future people” (source)
“I think voluntary abortion reduction is just one of many ways to increase the amount of near-term future people. The post’s “In Our Personal Lives” section includes the suggestions you gave and more, which I agree are arguably more effective than voluntary abortion reduction in accomplishing that goal.” (source)
You weren’t able to see this, but I also agree-voted the following comments by others:
“the best solution here is incentivizing people to voluntarily have more children—e.g. child tax credits, maternity/paternity leave, etc” (source)
“I’d be tentatively more comfortable with measures taken to facilitate increasing the number of wanted pregnancies, including legalizing paid surrogacy services and subsidizing childcare and adoption of older children.” (source)
Everything I wrote about prioritizing other causes over voluntary abortion reduction goes double for involuntary abortion reduction, because of personal autonomy concerns. So yes, I endorse applying the same argument here in favor of prioritizing EA intervention without a negative externality regarding personal autonomy. I don’t think there’s an inconsistency here, because I’ve made it clear that I would prioritize “interventions that empower women who want to have more children or reduce barriers that they face.”
On the definition of voluntary: Be clear that the defunding intervention wouldn’t satisfy some reasonable definitions of voluntary, and link to the comment thread discussing that.
minor, and I don’t have anything against you linking the thread, but presumably if you just clearly summarise your definition and usage of voluntary that will spare readers from trying to figure it out by going through that thread.
Happy to defer to you RE: acknowledgement, I don’t feel strongly either way.
I appreciate the kindly and patient statement! I don’t think the KFC analogy is great[1] but I’ll run with it—clearly if the vegan is choosing to “settle on voluntary animal suffering reduction,”, then the vegan only gets benefits of doing this to the extent that the proposed interventions are actually voluntary.
While I think much of my pushback would have not existed if you had either bit the bullet and justified claims around involuntary abortion (if these are your true views), or if you were clearer about your use of voluntary, there are clearly many more considerations than just this one point I raised, and I think the feedback you were given seems reasonable! And I don’t have a strong sense of whether the EA forum is a place where people would actually incur costs like “socially ostracized and have everything they have to say duly ignored”. But I do think this could be an important consideration and I don’t want to suggest that I think you should ignore this feedback. I’m largely speaking for myself when I push back on the usage of voluntary, and I’m not suggesting that you should prefer biting the bullet over say, focussing only on the subset of voluntary (by my definition) abortion reduction.
It’s also worth considering the reasons for the feedback RE: predicted pushback—is the expected pushback because the audience is tribal and unwilling to consider anything that isn’t coming from its ingroup? Is there a significant value difference? Is it a legitimate criticism?
RE: motivated reasoning—just to clarify, my intention personally wasn’t to convince you that your reasoning was motivated, only to suggest that it could be perceived as such.
RE: Scott’s quote you linked: my guess is that the majority of people who are pro-choice do so not because they think “[abortion] is murder, but I think we should continue to permit it anyway”, but because either 1) they don’t believe abortion is morally equivalent to murder or 2) even in cases where it is morally equivalent to murder, preserving the foetus’s life doesn’t trump other considerations (such as preserving the mother’s life, e.g. in a perimortem caesarean).
A better analogy might be going to a subset of very poor coastal West African fishermen who are highly dependent on fish for their food / income, and telling them that it’s morally wrong to eat fish. Comparing pregnant women seeking abortions to people having KFC seems like it doesn’t really capture the tradeoffs going on here.
Done on both of the concerns you raised. RE: acknowledgement, I believe people who update others should be celebrated :)
Agreed that the West African fishermen analogy would have been better than the KFC.
is the expected pushback because the audience is tribal and unwilling to consider anything that isn’t coming from its ingroup?
As far as tribalism goes, EAs and rationalists are miles better than every other group I’ve ever come across, but that doesn’t mean we’re not immune to it, especially with deeply divisive issues such as this post’s subject.
RE: Scott’s quote, most pro-choice people don’t think that way, but I’ve met many anecdotally who do. Like you said, they more commonly consider abortion to not be equivalent to murder, with the violinist analogy as a backup in case it were equivalent.
I think it’s worth being mindful of motivated reasoning here—I’m not suggesting this is the case, but it would be important for yourself to know how you might meaningfully distinguish to an outsider who has less understanding of the true reasons for your justifications. One thing that might help (alongside Julia’s suggestion above), is to figure out what would need to be true / assumed for your preferred conclusions to be false / for you to meaningfully update against it and be upfront about the key assumptions and cruxes that underpin your views. (Fwiw, someone pointed me to this post with a comment along the lines of “this reads like someone who already supports defunding abortion for other reasons who is trying to justify it on longtermist grounds.” n=1 on this specific claim though)
For what it’s worth, this does read to me as at least somewhat motivated reasoning—I was more charitable when reading the post and figured it might be because of some confused argumentation or somethings being not expressed as well as they could have been, but reading the comments (particularly the one you’re responding to me) makes me lean more towards motivated reasoning clouding the reasoning and expression of ideas.
Brief comments here, on request of the OP. Low confidence—these are just quick thoughts that came to mind / not well considered.
I agree with Julia RE: giving the impression of shifting goalposts. (I think this is possibly exacerbated by the semantic debate). I think the pushback by commentors is in part because of object-level disagreements, but also in part because of some lack of clarity around what your justifications for claims and suggestions are.
I think it’s worth being mindful of motivated reasoning here—I’m not suggesting this is the case, but it would be important for yourself to know how you might meaningfully distinguish to an outsider who has less understanding of the true reasons for your justifications. One thing that might help (alongside Julia’s suggestion above), is to figure out what would need to be true / assumed for your preferred conclusions to be false / for you to meaningfully update against it and be upfront about the key assumptions and cruxes that underpin your views. (Fwiw, someone pointed me to this post with a comment along the lines of “this reads like someone who already supports defunding abortion for other reasons who is trying to justify it on longtermist grounds.” n=1 on this specific claim though)
If you think the most important points are 3 / 4a, I think the title doesn’t accurately reflect this, since the main claim based on your suggestions listed here sounds more like “effects on population sizes of neartermist interventions may be underrated in cause prioritisation”.
I don’t think it’s wrong to bring up abortion, and I think it may be a relevant consideration, though I think the case for abortion reduction in this post is weakened by the disclaimer and idea that this post is about voluntary abortion reduction (i.e. if your personal views in 3 and 4a leads to a position that abortion is wrong on consequentialist grounds irrespective of whether this is voluntary, then it would be more accurate to state this clearly. If you prefer not to talk about non-voluntary abortion reduction for any other reason, then you should focus on interventions that support higher fertility rates without interacting with the subset of women who don’t wish to have children. I could be wrong, but I don’t think you’ve made a compelling case that interventions on this subset should be considered “voluntary abortion reduction”. (Linking this comment thread here as context for other readers / for others to decide).
Accordingly, I disagree that the semantic debate is distracting you from what you were trying to say. I think it is acting to clarify what you are trying to say. As stated, neither 3 nor 4 as written actually exclude non-voluntary abortion reduction, (if anything, they may be interpreted that nonvoluntary abortion reduction is justified or preferable, due to the “lives saved” as a result). But clearly the extent to which you believe nonvoluntary abortion reduction is morally preferable (and why), and the extent to which readers agree with this line of reasoning are relevant considerations when taking into account your recommendations. For example, if you suggest “we should put more $ into AMF” and “we should suspend funding for family planning services” primarily for population growth arguments, then people who think involuntary abortion reduction is worth the harms might agree with both claims, but people who only agree with voluntary abortion reduction might plausibly accept the first claim but not the second.
I generally feel good about edits on the post that suggest any meaningful updates or are clarifying some misunderstandings etc
I think the value of a new post would depend on the content of the post itself, so find this hard to comment on.
Hope this is useful, can’t promise further engagement though!
Thanks so much for all of your effort and engagement, Bruce! This has been extremely helpful. I’ll include an “updates” edit with the following:
On the lack of clarity: Link to my reply to Julia which is a more accurate summary of what I was trying to say, including the far-better-specified main claim of “effects on population sizes of neartermist interventions may be underrated in cause prioritisation.”
On the definition of voluntary: Be clear that the defunding intervention wouldn’t satisfy some reasonable definitions of voluntary, and link to the comment thread discussing that.
With your permission, crediting you as a particularly helpful person for realizing these updates.
When I passed around drafts of this post, the overwhelming feedback I received was that people would be completely unreceptive to and unwilling to engage with even the slightest suggestion of involuntary abortion reduction. The impression I received from the feedback was that in publishing this post, I would be like a hardcore vegan entering a KFC with a megaphone.
There’s a Venn diagram of policies regarding animal suffering endorsed by hardcore vegans versus by KFC patrons. The shared part of the Venn diagram includes policies like convincing people to voluntarily go vegan, and on the edge of the shared part, there might be the proposal of suspending subsidies for KFC because there’s a chance that animal suffering actually matters. The hardcore vegan tries to identify some aspect of the shared part of the Venn diagram to restrict their speech and the ensuing conversation’s scope to, so that the KFC patrons will actually take seriously and engage with what they have to say. They settle on “voluntary animal suffering reduction,” and make that the headline of their speech.
Then patrons point out that suspending subsidies for KFC could cause some KFCs to shut down, so people who live in communities where those KFCs shut down won’t be able to access their sweet, sweet fried chicken. Therefore, the patrons argue, the hardcore vegan’s proposal constitutes involuntary animal suffering reduction, because those people didn’t voluntarily choose to go vegan. Now the hardcore vegan is in a bind, because on the one hand, suspending KFC subsidies seems to them like obviously the morally right thing to do. On the other hand, they’re the one who chose to restrict the conversation to “voluntary animal suffering reduction,” and there’s a reasonable argument that suspending KFC subsidies would indeed constitute involuntary animal suffering reduction. So they can either drop the “voluntary” part, and be socially ostracized and have everything they have to say duly ignored, or they can enter the semantic debate about which definitions of “voluntary” their proposed intervention might fall under.
The hardcore vegan, having been passionate about animal suffering for years, chooses the latter, in spite of it being pretty motivated reasoning in retrospect. Bruce, a kindly and patient KFC patron, pulls the vegan aside and convinces them that their reasoning was motivated, and here we are.
I’ll just drop a relevant quote from Scott Alexander’s “Fetal Attraction: Abortion and the Principle of Charity” and leave it at that:
I can only speak for myself, but while I would have disagreed with you even more if you’d lead with advocacy for involuntary abortion reduction, I’d have been more supportive of your efforts in making that argument.
In the future, you might consider dealing with this challenge by making a sock puppet account. That way, you can air your views without risking social blowback. If the conversation turns out better than you expect, you can open up about your identity if you choose.
I understand your hesitancy. However, I find it frustrating when I intuit that my debate partner is making the argument they think I might accept rather than the one they actually believe. Time and energy I put into arguing against them is wasted—I don’t know what your true cruxes are, and not even you truly hold the beliefs you’re putting forth in your OP.
Thanks for your advice, and for all of your value-adding comments! I genuinely apologize for making you feel that way. In hindsight, it’s much easier to see where and how one’s structural choices can damage the conversation, and I regret those choices all the more because of that.
On making a sock puppet account, I was always taught that “if it’s worth saying in public, you should be willing to attach your name to it.” Perhaps that belief was too simplistic, but it’s why I chose to write this under my true identity.
I do truly hold the beliefs I’m putting forth. As in the KFC analogy, I chose to focus on voluntary interventions because the feedback I received was that anything else would land on deaf ears. However, I do believe that voluntary interventions, especially broadly agreeable policies which help parents, would be a great thing to do.
Regarding crux(es), I hold total and non-person-affecting views in population ethics, and I think a child will live a life of positive value in expectation. Ignoring replaceability, I don’t see the moral distinction between preventing an abortion and adding a future person who will live a life of positive value (in expectation). So even if x-risks are much more important, or animal welfare considerations completely dominate, etc, it still seems to me that preventing an abortion (ignoring replaceability) is as good as saving a human life today. Given the scale of abortion, it seems to me that if none of the abortions occurring today occurred, even with replaceability, that would still be as good as saving millions of lives, which I think dominates concerns of personal autonomy.
I’ll add this, now that you’ve confirmed your views RE: voluntary vs nonvoluntary abortion reduction (mainly referring to “that would still be as good as saving millions of lives, which I think dominates concerns of personal autonomy”)
Taking your analogy from this comment, which you use to argue against family planning despite “the aims we want—women’s health + autonomy”
If I apply this same logic to your goal of increasing population size, you could plausibly say that interventions that empower women who want to have more children or reduce barriers that they face are equivalent to GAIN’s salt iodisation programme, and interventions that reduce the ability for women who don’t want children to have abortions are equivalent to the steakhouse? If so, shouldn’t you choose the intervention to accomplish the goal of increasing population size that didn’t have the negative externality?
I’m not actually endorsing using this argument generally for all cause prioritisation considerations, but just pointing out that if you’re happy to use this analogy to argue against family planning, it seems like it could now be also used to argue against interventions that reduce access to abortion, if your goal is to “increase future humans”? So am curious about the inconsistency there and what other considerations you’re taking into account.
And I guess this makes me update towards your your goal of pushing against abortion being higher than I previously had in mind. May be misinterpreting you though!
My aim is to increase the amount of happy future people. Reducing abortion is one way to do that, but I’ve been clear in a few comments that I would endorse other interventions over reducing abortions:
“optimizing for increasing the amount of children that families want and are able to happily have is probably better than voluntary abortion reduction as a means of increasing the amount of near-term future people” (source)
“I think voluntary abortion reduction is just one of many ways to increase the amount of near-term future people. The post’s “In Our Personal Lives” section includes the suggestions you gave and more, which I agree are arguably more effective than voluntary abortion reduction in accomplishing that goal.” (source)
You weren’t able to see this, but I also agree-voted the following comments by others:
“the best solution here is incentivizing people to voluntarily have more children—e.g. child tax credits, maternity/paternity leave, etc” (source)
“I’d be tentatively more comfortable with measures taken to facilitate increasing the number of wanted pregnancies, including legalizing paid surrogacy services and subsidizing childcare and adoption of older children.” (source)
Everything I wrote about prioritizing other causes over voluntary abortion reduction goes double for involuntary abortion reduction, because of personal autonomy concerns. So yes, I endorse applying the same argument here in favor of prioritizing EA intervention without a negative externality regarding personal autonomy. I don’t think there’s an inconsistency here, because I’ve made it clear that I would prioritize “interventions that empower women who want to have more children or reduce barriers that they face.”
minor, and I don’t have anything against you linking the thread, but presumably if you just clearly summarise your definition and usage of voluntary that will spare readers from trying to figure it out by going through that thread.
Happy to defer to you RE: acknowledgement, I don’t feel strongly either way.
I appreciate the kindly and patient statement! I don’t think the KFC analogy is great[1] but I’ll run with it—clearly if the vegan is choosing to “settle on voluntary animal suffering reduction,”, then the vegan only gets benefits of doing this to the extent that the proposed interventions are actually voluntary.
While I think much of my pushback would have not existed if you had either bit the bullet and justified claims around involuntary abortion (if these are your true views), or if you were clearer about your use of voluntary, there are clearly many more considerations than just this one point I raised, and I think the feedback you were given seems reasonable! And I don’t have a strong sense of whether the EA forum is a place where people would actually incur costs like “socially ostracized and have everything they have to say duly ignored”. But I do think this could be an important consideration and I don’t want to suggest that I think you should ignore this feedback. I’m largely speaking for myself when I push back on the usage of voluntary, and I’m not suggesting that you should prefer biting the bullet over say, focussing only on the subset of voluntary (by my definition) abortion reduction.
It’s also worth considering the reasons for the feedback RE: predicted pushback—is the expected pushback because the audience is tribal and unwilling to consider anything that isn’t coming from its ingroup? Is there a significant value difference? Is it a legitimate criticism?
RE: motivated reasoning—just to clarify, my intention personally wasn’t to convince you that your reasoning was motivated, only to suggest that it could be perceived as such.
RE: Scott’s quote you linked: my guess is that the majority of people who are pro-choice do so not because they think “[abortion] is murder, but I think we should continue to permit it anyway”, but because either 1) they don’t believe abortion is morally equivalent to murder or 2) even in cases where it is morally equivalent to murder, preserving the foetus’s life doesn’t trump other considerations (such as preserving the mother’s life, e.g. in a perimortem caesarean).
A better analogy might be going to a subset of very poor coastal West African fishermen who are highly dependent on fish for their food / income, and telling them that it’s morally wrong to eat fish. Comparing pregnant women seeking abortions to people having KFC seems like it doesn’t really capture the tradeoffs going on here.
Done on both of the concerns you raised. RE: acknowledgement, I believe people who update others should be celebrated :)
Agreed that the West African fishermen analogy would have been better than the KFC.
As far as tribalism goes, EAs and rationalists are miles better than every other group I’ve ever come across, but that doesn’t mean we’re not immune to it, especially with deeply divisive issues such as this post’s subject.
RE: Scott’s quote, most pro-choice people don’t think that way, but I’ve met many anecdotally who do. Like you said, they more commonly consider abortion to not be equivalent to murder, with the violinist analogy as a backup in case it were equivalent.
For what it’s worth, this does read to me as at least somewhat motivated reasoning—I was more charitable when reading the post and figured it might be because of some confused argumentation or somethings being not expressed as well as they could have been, but reading the comments (particularly the one you’re responding to me) makes me lean more towards motivated reasoning clouding the reasoning and expression of ideas.