That seems like taking charitableness too far. I’m alright with finding different interpretations based on the words written, but ultimately, Siebe wrote what we wrote, and it cannot be intepreted as you suggest. It’s quite a big accusation, so caution is required when making it
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.
That seems like taking charitableness too far. I’m alright with finding different interpretations based on the words written, but ultimately, Siebe wrote what we wrote, and it cannot be intepreted as you suggest. It’s quite a big accusation, so caution is required when making it
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.