Okay, points taken. I should have been much more careful given the strength of the accusation, and the accusation that DGB was written “in bad faith” seems (far) too strong.
I guess I have a tendency to support efforts that challenge common beliefs that might not be held for the right reasons (in this case “DGB is a rigourously written book, and a good introduction to effective altruism”). This seemed to outweigh the costs of criticism, likely because my intuition often underestimates the costs of criticism. However, the OP challenged a much stronger common belief (“Will MacAskill is not an untrustworthy person”) and I should have better distinguished those (both in my mind and in writing).
When I was writing it, I was very doubtful about whether I was phrasing it correctly, and I don’t think I succeeded. I think my intention for “written in bad faith” was meant less strongly, but a bit more than ‘written with less attention to detail than it could have been’: i.e. that less attention was given to details that wouldn’t pan out in favour of EA. More along the lines of this:
“sloppy, and perhaps with a subconscious finger on the scale tilting the errors to be favourable to the thesis of the book” rather than deceit, malice, or other ‘bad faith’.
I also have a lower credence in this now. I should add that my use of “convincing” was also too strong a term, as it might be interpreted as >95% credence, instead of the >60% credence I observed at the time of writing.
Okay, points taken. I should have been much more careful given the strength of the accusation, and the accusation that DGB was written “in bad faith” seems (far) too strong.
I guess I have a tendency to support efforts that challenge common beliefs that might not be held for the right reasons (in this case “DGB is a rigourously written book, and a good introduction to effective altruism”). This seemed to outweigh the costs of criticism, likely because my intuition often underestimates the costs of criticism. However, the OP challenged a much stronger common belief (“Will MacAskill is not an untrustworthy person”) and I should have better distinguished those (both in my mind and in writing).
When I was writing it, I was very doubtful about whether I was phrasing it correctly, and I don’t think I succeeded. I think my intention for “written in bad faith” was meant less strongly, but a bit more than ‘written with less attention to detail than it could have been’: i.e. that less attention was given to details that wouldn’t pan out in favour of EA. More along the lines of this:
I also have a lower credence in this now. I should add that my use of “convincing” was also too strong a term, as it might be interpreted as >95% credence, instead of the >60% credence I observed at the time of writing.