Another issue, and why the comment is getting downvoted heavily (including by myself) is because you seem to conflate the is-ought distinction with this post, and without the is-ought distinction being conflated, this post would not exist.
You routinely leap from âa person has moral views that are offensive to youâ to âthey are wrong about the facts of the matterâ, and your evidence for this is paper thin at best.
Being able to separate moral views from beliefs on factual claims is one of the things that is expected if you are in EA/âLW spaces.
I donât agree with this evaluation and, as stated, itâs just an unsupported assertion. So, there is nothing really here for me to respond to except to say I disagree.
It would help to have an example of what you mean by this. I imagine, if you gave an example, I would probably say that I think your characterization is simply wrong, and I find your wording obnoxious. This comes across as trying to insult me personally rather than trying to make a substantive argument that could conceivably be persuasive to me or to any outside person whoâs on the fence about this topic.
Iâm guessing you may have wrongly inferred that I reject certain factual claims on moral grounds, when really I reject them on factual grounds and part of what Iâm criticizing is the ignorance or poor reasoning that I strain to imagine must be required to believe such plainly false and obviously ridiculous things. Yet it is also fair to criticize such epistemic mistakes for their moral ramifications. For example, if someone thinks world affairs are orchestrated by a global Jewish conspiracy, thatâs just an unbelievably stupid thing to think and they can be rightly criticized for believing something so stupid. They can also rightly be criticized for this mistake because it also implies immoral conduct, namely, unjustifiable discrimination and hatred against Jewish people. If someone thinks this is a failure to decouple or a failure to appreciate the is/âought distinction, they donât know what theyâre talking about. In that case, they should study philosophy and not make up nonsense.[1]
But I will caveat that I actually have no idea what you meant, specifically, because you didnât say. And maybe what you intended to say was actually correct and well-reasoned. Maybe if you explained your logic, I would accept it and agree. I donât know.
I donât know what you meant by your comment specifically, but, in general, I have sometimes found arguments about decoupling to be just unbelievably poorly reasoned because they donât account for the most basic considerations. (The problem is not with the concept of decoupling in principle, in the abstract, itâs that people try to apply this concept in ways that make no sense.)[2] They are woefully incurious about what the opposing case might be and often contradict plain facts. For example, they might fail to distinguish between the concept of a boycott of an organization with morally objectionable views that is intended to have a causal impact on the world vs. the concept of acknowledging both positive and negative facts about that organization. For example:
Person A:I donât want to buy products from Corporation Inc. because they fund lobbying for evil policies.
Person B:But Corporation Inc. makes good products! Learn to decouple!
(This is based on a real example. Yes, this is ridiculous, and yet something very similar to this was actually said.)
People donât understand the basic concepts being discussed â e.g., the concept of a boycott and the rationale for boycotts â and then they say, âtut, tut, be rational!â but anyone could say âtut, tut, be rationalâ when anyone disagrees with them about anything (even in the cases they happen to be dead wrong and say things that donât make sense), so what on Earth is the point of saying that?
This kind of âtut, tutâ comes across to me as epistemically sloppy. The more you scold someone who disagrees with you, the more you lose face if you have to admit you made an embarrassing reasoning mistake, so the less likely you will be to admit such mistakes and the more youâll double down on silly arguments because losing face is so uncomfortable. So, a good way to hold wrong views indefinitely is to say âtut, tutâ as much as possible.
But, thatâs only generally speaking, and I donât know what you meant specifically. Maybe what you meant to say actually made sense. Iâll give you the benefit of the doubt, and an opportunity to elaborate, if you want.
This also obviously applies to prudential cases, in addition to moral cases. If you make a stupid mistake like putting the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the cupboard, you can laugh about that because the stakes are low. If you make a stupid mistake that is also dangerous to you, such as mixing cleaning products that contain bleach and ammonia (which produces chlorine gas), then you can criticize this mistake on prudential grounds as well as epistemic grounds. (To criticize a mistake on prudential or moral grounds is only valid if it is indeed a mistake, obviously.) And no one should assert this criticism is based on some kind of basic logical error where youâre failing to distinguish prudential considerations from epistemic ones â anyone saying that would not know what theyâre talking about and should take a philosophy class.
In general, a common sort of reasoning error I observe is that people invoke a correct principle and apply it incorrectly. When they are pressed on the incorrect application, they fall back to defending the principle in the abstract, which is obviously not the point. By analogy, if someone you knew was talking about investing 100% of their savings in GameStop, it would be exasperating if they defended this decision by citing â very strong, quite plausibly completely correct â research about how itâs optimal to have an all-equity portfolio. It would be infuriating if they accused you of not understanding the rationale for investing in equities simply because you think a 100% GameStop portfolio is reckless. The simple lesson of this analogy: applying correct principles does not lead to correct conclusions if the principle is applied incorrectly! Itâs obvious to spot when I deliberately make the example obvious to illustrate the point, but often less obvious to spot in practice â which is why so many people make errors of this kind so often.
An example here is this quote, which straddles dangerously close to âthese people have morality that you find to be offensive, therefore they are wrong on the actual facts of the matterâ (Otherwise you would make the Nazi source allegations less central to your criticism here):
(I donât hold the moral views of what the quote is saying, to be clear).
It has never stopped shocking and disgusting me that the EA Forum is a place where someone can write a post arguing that Black Africans need Western-funded programs to edit their genomes to increase their intelligence in order to overcome global poverty and can cite overtly racist and white supremacist sources to support this argument (even a source with significant connections to the 1930s and 1940s Nazi Party in Germany and the American Nazi Party, a neo-Nazi party) and that post can receive a significant amount of approval and defense from people in EA, even after the thin disguise over top of the racism is removed by perceptive readers. That is such a bonkers thing and such a morally repugnant thing, I keep struggling to find words to express my exasperation and disbelief. Effective altruism as a movement probably deserves to fail for that, if it canât correct it.[2]
I donât agree with this evaluation and, as stated, itâs just an unsupported assertion. So, there is nothing really here for me to respond to except to say I disagree.
It would help to have an example of what you mean by this. I imagine, if you gave an example, I would probably say that I think your characterization is simply wrong, and I find your wording obnoxious. This comes across as trying to insult me personally rather than trying to make a substantive argument that could conceivably be persuasive to me or to any outside person whoâs on the fence about this topic.
Iâm guessing you may have wrongly inferred that I reject certain factual claims on moral grounds, when really I reject them on factual grounds and part of what Iâm criticizing is the ignorance or poor reasoning that I strain to imagine must be required to believe such plainly false and obviously ridiculous things. Yet it is also fair to criticize such epistemic mistakes for their moral ramifications. For example, if someone thinks world affairs are orchestrated by a global Jewish conspiracy, thatâs just an unbelievably stupid thing to think and they can be rightly criticized for believing something so stupid. They can also rightly be criticized for this mistake because it also implies immoral conduct, namely, unjustifiable discrimination and hatred against Jewish people. If someone thinks this is a failure to decouple or a failure to appreciate the is/âought distinction, they donât know what theyâre talking about. In that case, they should study philosophy and not make up nonsense.[1]
But I will caveat that I actually have no idea what you meant, specifically, because you didnât say. And maybe what you intended to say was actually correct and well-reasoned. Maybe if you explained your logic, I would accept it and agree. I donât know.
I donât know what you meant by your comment specifically, but, in general, I have sometimes found arguments about decoupling to be just unbelievably poorly reasoned because they donât account for the most basic considerations. (The problem is not with the concept of decoupling in principle, in the abstract, itâs that people try to apply this concept in ways that make no sense.)[2] They are woefully incurious about what the opposing case might be and often contradict plain facts. For example, they might fail to distinguish between the concept of a boycott of an organization with morally objectionable views that is intended to have a causal impact on the world vs. the concept of acknowledging both positive and negative facts about that organization. For example:
Person A: I donât want to buy products from Corporation Inc. because they fund lobbying for evil policies.
Person B: But Corporation Inc. makes good products! Learn to decouple!
(This is based on a real example. Yes, this is ridiculous, and yet something very similar to this was actually said.)
People donât understand the basic concepts being discussed â e.g., the concept of a boycott and the rationale for boycotts â and then they say, âtut, tut, be rational!â but anyone could say âtut, tut, be rationalâ when anyone disagrees with them about anything (even in the cases they happen to be dead wrong and say things that donât make sense), so what on Earth is the point of saying that?
This kind of âtut, tutâ comes across to me as epistemically sloppy. The more you scold someone who disagrees with you, the more you lose face if you have to admit you made an embarrassing reasoning mistake, so the less likely you will be to admit such mistakes and the more youâll double down on silly arguments because losing face is so uncomfortable. So, a good way to hold wrong views indefinitely is to say âtut, tutâ as much as possible.
But, thatâs only generally speaking, and I donât know what you meant specifically. Maybe what you meant to say actually made sense. Iâll give you the benefit of the doubt, and an opportunity to elaborate, if you want.
This also obviously applies to prudential cases, in addition to moral cases. If you make a stupid mistake like putting the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the cupboard, you can laugh about that because the stakes are low. If you make a stupid mistake that is also dangerous to you, such as mixing cleaning products that contain bleach and ammonia (which produces chlorine gas), then you can criticize this mistake on prudential grounds as well as epistemic grounds. (To criticize a mistake on prudential or moral grounds is only valid if it is indeed a mistake, obviously.) And no one should assert this criticism is based on some kind of basic logical error where youâre failing to distinguish prudential considerations from epistemic ones â anyone saying that would not know what theyâre talking about and should take a philosophy class.
In general, a common sort of reasoning error I observe is that people invoke a correct principle and apply it incorrectly. When they are pressed on the incorrect application, they fall back to defending the principle in the abstract, which is obviously not the point. By analogy, if someone you knew was talking about investing 100% of their savings in GameStop, it would be exasperating if they defended this decision by citing â very strong, quite plausibly completely correct â research about how itâs optimal to have an all-equity portfolio. It would be infuriating if they accused you of not understanding the rationale for investing in equities simply because you think a 100% GameStop portfolio is reckless. The simple lesson of this analogy: applying correct principles does not lead to correct conclusions if the principle is applied incorrectly! Itâs obvious to spot when I deliberately make the example obvious to illustrate the point, but often less obvious to spot in practice â which is why so many people make errors of this kind so often.
An example here is this quote, which straddles dangerously close to âthese people have morality that you find to be offensive, therefore they are wrong on the actual facts of the matterâ (Otherwise you would make the Nazi source allegations less central to your criticism here):
(I donât hold the moral views of what the quote is saying, to be clear).