The low quality of Guzey’s arguments around Doing Good Better (and his unwillingness to update in the face of strong counterarguments) substantially reduced my credence in his (similarly strong) claims about Why We Sleep, and I was confused about why so many people I know put so much credence in the latter after the former.
I think Guzey is very honest in these discussions (and subsequently), and is trying to engage with pushback from the community, which is laudable.
But I don’t think he’s actually changed his views to nearly the degree I would expect a well-meaning rational actor to do so, and I don’t think his views about MacAskill being a bad actor are remotely in proportion to the evidence he’s presented.
For example, relating to your first link, he still makes a big deal of the “interpretation of GiveWell cost-effectiveness estimates” angle, even though everyone (even GiveWell!) think he’s off base here.
On the second link, he has removed most PlayPump material from the current version of his essay, which suggests he has genuinely updated there. So that’s good. That said, if I found out I was as wrong about something as he originally was about PlayPumps, I hope I’d be much more willing to believe that other people might make honest errors of similar magnitude without condemning them as bad actors.
The low quality of Guzey’s arguments around Doing Good Better (and his unwillingness to update in the face of strong counterarguments) substantially reduced my credence in his (similarly strong) claims about Why We Sleep, and I was confused about why so many people I know put so much credence in the latter after the former.
Here are two examples of Guzey updating in response to specific points:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7aqGFHirEvHTMD5w5/william-macaskill-misrepresents-much-of-the-evidence?commentId=mHnp8t97EfwrRA3vg
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9xluu2/william_macaskill_misrepresents_much_of_the/eby9cwz/
It depends what you mean by “updating”.
I think Guzey is very honest in these discussions (and subsequently), and is trying to engage with pushback from the community, which is laudable.
But I don’t think he’s actually changed his views to nearly the degree I would expect a well-meaning rational actor to do so, and I don’t think his views about MacAskill being a bad actor are remotely in proportion to the evidence he’s presented.
For example, relating to your first link, he still makes a big deal of the “interpretation of GiveWell cost-effectiveness estimates” angle, even though everyone (even GiveWell!) think he’s off base here.
On the second link, he has removed most PlayPump material from the current version of his essay, which suggests he has genuinely updated there. So that’s good. That said, if I found out I was as wrong about something as he originally was about PlayPumps, I hope I’d be much more willing to believe that other people might make honest errors of similar magnitude without condemning them as bad actors.
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Is it so hard to believe reasonable people can disagree with you, for reasons other than corruption or conspiracy?
What is your credence that you’re wrong about this?