I’ve just realized that a possible failure mode here would be conversation descending into a general discussion of abortion, which I’ve avoided doing so in the post. Instead, please limit any comments to the actual subject of the post:
The impact of EA beliefs on our other beliefs
Thus the article discusses the impact of believing in animal rights on fetus-personhood—but not the object-level issue of whether fetuses are people.
If you don’t think abortion is a good concrete application to discuss, you should probably change the original post to work through a different example.
Perhaps kidney donation? The sacrifice of kidney donation is smaller, the benefit is arguably larger because there’s no moral uncertainty as to whether the recipients count, and a much larger fraction of us are in a position to donate one?
I don’t think this is a fair restriction on commentary for this sort of article, especially since you go into the example in such detail. You’re suggesting that having EA beliefs seems to imply a higher degree of belief in the immorality of abortion than some people do have. People can respond to this by (a) retaining their abortion beliefs and changing their EA beliefs, (b) retaining their EA beliefs and changing their abortion beliefs, (c) retaining their EA beliefs and their abortion beliefs and rejecting the consistency requirement, or (d) retaining their EA beliefs and their abortion beliefs and rejecting the entailment. I don’t really see why we should prevent people from defending (d) here.
I think if you want people to think about the meta-level, you would be better off with a post that says “suppose you have an argument for abortion” or “suppose you believe this simple argument X for abortion is correct” (where X is obviously a strawman, and raised as a hypothetical), and asks “what ought you do based on assuming this belief is true”. There may be a less controversial topic to use in this case.
If you want to start an object level on abortion (which, if you believe this argument is true, it seems you ought to), it might be helpful to circulate the article you want to use to start the discussion to a few EAs with varying positions on the topic before posting for feedback, because it is on a topic likely to trigger political buttons.
I’ve just realized that a possible failure mode here would be conversation descending into a general discussion of abortion, which I’ve avoided doing so in the post. Instead, please limit any comments to the actual subject of the post:
The impact of EA beliefs on our other beliefs
Thus the article discusses the impact of believing in animal rights on fetus-personhood—but not the object-level issue of whether fetuses are people.
If you don’t think abortion is a good concrete application to discuss, you should probably change the original post to work through a different example.
Perhaps kidney donation? The sacrifice of kidney donation is smaller, the benefit is arguably larger because there’s no moral uncertainty as to whether the recipients count, and a much larger fraction of us are in a position to donate one?
I don’t think this is a fair restriction on commentary for this sort of article, especially since you go into the example in such detail. You’re suggesting that having EA beliefs seems to imply a higher degree of belief in the immorality of abortion than some people do have. People can respond to this by (a) retaining their abortion beliefs and changing their EA beliefs, (b) retaining their EA beliefs and changing their abortion beliefs, (c) retaining their EA beliefs and their abortion beliefs and rejecting the consistency requirement, or (d) retaining their EA beliefs and their abortion beliefs and rejecting the entailment. I don’t really see why we should prevent people from defending (d) here.
I think if you want people to think about the meta-level, you would be better off with a post that says “suppose you have an argument for abortion” or “suppose you believe this simple argument X for abortion is correct” (where X is obviously a strawman, and raised as a hypothetical), and asks “what ought you do based on assuming this belief is true”. There may be a less controversial topic to use in this case.
If you want to start an object level on abortion (which, if you believe this argument is true, it seems you ought to), it might be helpful to circulate the article you want to use to start the discussion to a few EAs with varying positions on the topic before posting for feedback, because it is on a topic likely to trigger political buttons.
I agree with Amanda that you discuss abortion at too much length to not make it open for discussion.
You should probably edit this into the post to make sure it’s visible to everyone who comments.