This comment deserves some kind of EA Forum award. My goodness, I envy and admire the breezy style with which you wrote this. I wish we had some analogue of Reddit gold, an award in limited supply, we could use to recognize exceptional contributions like this.
I agree with David Mathers that itās simply psychologically implausible that David Thorstad, a sharp professional philosopher and an expert on bounded rationality, existential risk, longtermism, and effective altruism, doesnāt understand the concept of expected value. I think we need to jettison such accusations, which have more of personal insult about them than substantive argument. Such accusations, besides just being ridiculous on their face, are corrosive to productive, charitable discussion about substantive disagreements on important topics.
Itās not a psychological question. I wrote a blog post offering a philosophical critique of some published academic papers that, it seemed to me, involved an interesting and important error of reasoning. Anyone who thinks my critique goes awry is welcome to comment on it there. But whether my philosophical critique is ultimately correct or not, I donāt think that the attempt is aptly described as āpersonal insultā, āridiculous on [its] faceā, or ācorrosive to productive, charitable discussionā. Itās literally just doing philosophy.
Iād like it if people read my linked post before passing judgment on it.
This comment deserves some kind of EA Forum award. My goodness, I envy and admire the breezy style with which you wrote this. I wish we had some analogue of Reddit gold, an award in limited supply, we could use to recognize exceptional contributions like this.
I agree with David Mathers that itās simply psychologically implausible that David Thorstad, a sharp professional philosopher and an expert on bounded rationality, existential risk, longtermism, and effective altruism, doesnāt understand the concept of expected value. I think we need to jettison such accusations, which have more of personal insult about them than substantive argument. Such accusations, besides just being ridiculous on their face, are corrosive to productive, charitable discussion about substantive disagreements on important topics.
Itās not a psychological question. I wrote a blog post offering a philosophical critique of some published academic papers that, it seemed to me, involved an interesting and important error of reasoning. Anyone who thinks my critique goes awry is welcome to comment on it there. But whether my philosophical critique is ultimately correct or not, I donāt think that the attempt is aptly described as āpersonal insultā, āridiculous on [its] faceā, or ācorrosive to productive, charitable discussionā. Itās literally just doing philosophy.
Iād like it if people read my linked post before passing judgment on it.