4 are straightforwardly criticisms: (“Free-spending EA might be bad...”, “Bad Omens”, “case against randomista development”, “Critiques of EA”)
4 are partial criticisms (“Long-Termism” vs. “Existential Risk”, “My mistakes on the path to impact”,”EA for dumb people?”, “Are you really in a race?”)
1 (the most upvoted) was a response to criticism (“EA and the current funding situation”)
1 was about the former EAForum head leaving (“Announcing my retirement”)
This is a total of 40-80%, depending on how you count.
(In the next 10 posts, I “only” see 3 posts that are criticisms, but I don’t think that 30% is particularly low either. It does get lower further down however).
I don’t find this example convincing. I just read the review and found it pretty underwhelming. Take this:
MacAskill’s personal position is to basically to throw up his hands, declare that none of the solutions to the problems with utilitarianism look very good, and we should just compromise between various repugnant theories of how to deal with populations, hoping that whatever compromise we take isn’t that bad.
The paragraph is reacting to the following passage in WWOTF:
There is still deep disagreement within philosophy about what the right view of population ethics is. . . Indeed, I don’t think that there’s any view in population ethics that anyone should be extremely confident in.
If you want to reject the Repugnant Conclusion, therefore, then you’ve got to reject one of the premises that this argument was based on. But each of these premises seem incontrovertible. We are left with a paradox. One option is to simply accept the Repugnant Conclusion. . . This is the view that I incline towards. Many other philosophers believe that we should reject one of the other premises instead.
Like all views in population ethics, the critical level view has some very unappealing downsides.
There is still deep disagreement about what the right view of population ethics is. . . Indeed, I don’t think that there’s any view in population ethics that anyone should be extremely confident in.
But MacAskill is here describing problems with rival views in population ethics, not problems with utilitarianism! Because the author (1) conflates the two, (2) mischaracterizes the Repugnant Conclusion (“worlds where all available land is turned into places worse than the worst slums of Bangladesh”), and (3) fails to distinguish the Repugnant Conclusion from standard “repugnant” implications of utilitarianism that have nothing to do with it, he ends up attributing to longtermism a number of “ridiculous” views that do not in fact follow from that position.
Separately, if criticizing WWOTF is considered to be a paradigmatic case of “heterodoxy”, it seems worth mentioning that a recent critical review by Magnus Vinding has been very favorably received (179 karma at the time of writing).
This response completely ignores the main point of my comment.
Separately, if criticizing WWOTF is considered to be a paradigmatic case of “heterodoxy”, it seems worth mentioning that a recent critical review by Magnus Vinding has been very favorably received (179 karma at the time of writing).
Please reread my comment because the whole point was that A.C.Skraeling said that criticism is accepted within some boundaries, or when expressed in suitable terms. You essentially just repeated Linch’s point except that my whole point was that Linch’s point is perfectly compatible with what A.C. Skraeling said.
Regarding Hoel’s review, you seem to have read my point as being that it was particularly good or convincing to EAs, which is incorrect. My point was that it was downvoted to −12, a karma score I associate with trollish posts, despite its content being much better than that, because of the combination of criticizing EA orthodoxy (longtermism, utilitarianism, population ethics etc) and not expressing it in a suitable manner. This makes it a decent example of what A.C.Skraeling said. You are free to disagree of course.
Please reread my comment because the whole point was that A.C.Skraeling said that criticism is accepted within some boundaries, or when expressed in suitable terms.
I did misread some parts of your original comment. I thought you were saying that criticizing WWOTF was itself an example of criticism that is beyond the bounds Skraeling was describing. But I now see that you were not saying this. My apologies. (I have crossed out the part of my comment that is affected by this misreading.)
Regarding Hoel’s review, you seem to have read my point as being that it was particularly good or convincing to EAs, which is incorrect.
That is not how I read your point. I interpreted you as saying that the quality of the book review justified higher karma than it received (which is confirmed by your reply). My comment was meant to argue against this point, by highlighting some serious blunders and sloppy reasoning by the author that probably justify the low rating. (-12 karma is appropriate for a post of very low quality, in my opinion, and not just a trollish post.)
Regarding the Hoel piece, the fact that you highlighted the section you did and the way you analyzed it suggests to me you didn’t understand what his position was, and didn’t try particularly hard to do so. I don’t think you can truly judge whether his content is very low quality if you don’t understand it. Personally, I think he made some interesting points really engaging with some cores of EA, even if I disagree with much of what he said. I completely disagree that his content, separate from its language and tone towards EAs, is anywhere near very low quality, certainly nowhere near −12. If you want to understand his views better, I found his comments replying to his piece on why he’s not an EA illuminating, such as his response to my attempted summary of his position. But we can agree to disagree.
Edit note: I significantly edited the part of this comment talking about Hoel’s piece within a few hours of posting with the aim of greater clarity.
Quantitatively, if you look at the top 10 most upvoted posts:
4 are straightforwardly criticisms: (“Free-spending EA might be bad...”, “Bad Omens”, “case against randomista development”, “Critiques of EA”)
4 are partial criticisms (“Long-Termism” vs. “Existential Risk”, “My mistakes on the path to impact”,”EA for dumb people?”, “Are you really in a race?”)
1 (the most upvoted) was a response to criticism (“EA and the current funding situation”)
1 was about the former EAForum head leaving (“Announcing my retirement”)
This is a total of 40-80%, depending on how you count.
(In the next 10 posts, I “only” see 3 posts that are criticisms, but I don’t think that 30% is particularly low either. It does get lower further down however).
I think this is a non-sequitur in response to A.C.Skraeling’s comment. They said:
A high percentage of the most upvoted posts of all time being criticism of some sort is perfectly compatible with this.
Here’s a recent case of someone questioning orthodoxy (writing a negative review of WWOTF), not bothering to express it in EA-friendly enough language, and subsequently being downvoted to a trollish level (-12) for it despite their content being much better than that: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AyPTZLTwm5hN2Kfcb/book-review-what-we-owe-the-future-erik-hoel
I don’t find this example convincing. I just read the review and found it pretty underwhelming. Take this:
The paragraph is reacting to the following passage in WWOTF:
But MacAskill is here describing problems with rival views in population ethics, not problems with utilitarianism! Because the author (1) conflates the two, (2) mischaracterizes the Repugnant Conclusion (“worlds where all available land is turned into places worse than the worst slums of Bangladesh”), and (3) fails to distinguish the Repugnant Conclusion from standard “repugnant” implications of utilitarianism that have nothing to do with it, he ends up attributing to longtermism a number of “ridiculous” views that do not in fact follow from that position.
Separately, if criticizing WWOTF is considered to be a paradigmatic case of “heterodoxy”, it seems worth mentioning thata recent critical review by Magnus Vindinghas been very favorably received (179 karma at the time of writing).This response completely ignores the main point of my comment.
Please reread my comment because the whole point was that A.C.Skraeling said that criticism is accepted within some boundaries, or when expressed in suitable terms. You essentially just repeated Linch’s point except that my whole point was that Linch’s point is perfectly compatible with what A.C. Skraeling said.
Regarding Hoel’s review, you seem to have read my point as being that it was particularly good or convincing to EAs, which is incorrect. My point was that it was downvoted to −12, a karma score I associate with trollish posts, despite its content being much better than that, because of the combination of criticizing EA orthodoxy (longtermism, utilitarianism, population ethics etc) and not expressing it in a suitable manner. This makes it a decent example of what A.C.Skraeling said. You are free to disagree of course.
I did misread some parts of your original comment. I thought you were saying that criticizing WWOTF was itself an example of criticism that is beyond the bounds Skraeling was describing. But I now see that you were not saying this. My apologies. (I have crossed out the part of my comment that is affected by this misreading.)
That is not how I read your point. I interpreted you as saying that the quality of the book review justified higher karma than it received (which is confirmed by your reply). My comment was meant to argue against this point, by highlighting some serious blunders and sloppy reasoning by the author that probably justify the low rating. (-12 karma is appropriate for a post of very low quality, in my opinion, and not just a trollish post.)
Thanks for the retraction.
Regarding the Hoel piece, the fact that you highlighted the section you did and the way you analyzed it suggests to me you didn’t understand what his position was, and didn’t try particularly hard to do so. I don’t think you can truly judge whether his content is very low quality if you don’t understand it. Personally, I think he made some interesting points really engaging with some cores of EA, even if I disagree with much of what he said. I completely disagree that his content, separate from its language and tone towards EAs, is anywhere near very low quality, certainly nowhere near −12. If you want to understand his views better, I found his comments replying to his piece on why he’s not an EA illuminating, such as his response to my attempted summary of his position. But we can agree to disagree.
Edit note: I significantly edited the part of this comment talking about Hoel’s piece within a few hours of posting with the aim of greater clarity.