This comment that I’ve cross-posted to LessWrong has quickly accrued negative karma. This comment is easy to misunderstand as I originally wrote it, so I understand the confusion. I’ll explain here what I explained in an edit to my comment on LW, so as to avoid the confusion here on the EA Forum that I incurred there.
I wrote this comment off the cuff, so I didn’t put as much effort into writing it as clearly or succinctly as I could, or maybe should, have. So, I understand how it might read is as a long, meandering nitpick, of a few statements near the beginning of the podcast episode, without me having listened to the whole episode yet. Then, I call a bunch of ex-EAs naive idiots, like Elizabeth referred to herself as at least formerly being a naive idiot, and then say even future effective altruists will be proven to be idiots, and those still propagating EA after so long, like Scott Alexander, might be the most naive and idiotic of all. To be clear, I also included myself, so this reading would also imply that I’m calling myself a naive idiot.
That’s not what I meant to say. I would downvote that comment too. I’m saying that
If it’s true what Elizabeth is saying about her being a naive idiot, then it would seem to follow that a lot of current, and former, effective altruists, including many rationalists, would also be naive idiots for similar reasons.
If that were the case, then it’d be consistent with greater truth-seeking, and criticizing others for not putting enough effort into truth-seeking with integrity with regards to EA, to point out to those hundreds of other people that they either, at one point were, or maybe still are, naive idiots.
If Elizabeth or whoever wouldn’t do that, not only because they consider it mean, but moreover because they wouldn’t think it true, then they should apply the same standards to themselves, and reconsider that they were not, in fact, just naive idiots.
I’m disputing the “naive idiocy” hypothesis here as spurious, as it comes down to the question of whether someone like Tim—and, by extension, someone like me in the same position, who has also mulled over quitting EA—are still being naive idiots, on account of not having updated yet to the conclusion Elizabeth has already reached.
That’s important because it’d seem to be one of the major cruxes of whether someone like Tim, or me, would update and choose to quit EA entirely, which is the point of this dialogue, so if that’s not a true crux of disagreement here, speculating about whether hundreds of current and former effective altruists have been naive idiots is a waste of time.
This comment that I’ve cross-posted to LessWrong has quickly accrued negative karma. This comment is easy to misunderstand as I originally wrote it, so I understand the confusion. I’ll explain here what I explained in an edit to my comment on LW, so as to avoid the confusion here on the EA Forum that I incurred there.
I wrote this comment off the cuff, so I didn’t put as much effort into writing it as clearly or succinctly as I could, or maybe should, have. So, I understand how it might read is as a long, meandering nitpick, of a few statements near the beginning of the podcast episode, without me having listened to the whole episode yet. Then, I call a bunch of ex-EAs naive idiots, like Elizabeth referred to herself as at least formerly being a naive idiot, and then say even future effective altruists will be proven to be idiots, and those still propagating EA after so long, like Scott Alexander, might be the most naive and idiotic of all. To be clear, I also included myself, so this reading would also imply that I’m calling myself a naive idiot.
That’s not what I meant to say. I would downvote that comment too. I’m saying that
If it’s true what Elizabeth is saying about her being a naive idiot, then it would seem to follow that a lot of current, and former, effective altruists, including many rationalists, would also be naive idiots for similar reasons.
If that were the case, then it’d be consistent with greater truth-seeking, and criticizing others for not putting enough effort into truth-seeking with integrity with regards to EA, to point out to those hundreds of other people that they either, at one point were, or maybe still are, naive idiots.
If Elizabeth or whoever wouldn’t do that, not only because they consider it mean, but moreover because they wouldn’t think it true, then they should apply the same standards to themselves, and reconsider that they were not, in fact, just naive idiots.
I’m disputing the “naive idiocy” hypothesis here as spurious, as it comes down to the question of
whether someone like Tim—and, by extension, someone like me in the same position, who has also mulled over quitting EA—are still being naive idiots, on account of not having updated yet to the conclusion Elizabeth has already reached.
That’s important because it’d seem to be one of the major cruxes of whether someone like Tim, or me, would update and choose to quit EA entirely, which is the point of this dialogue, so if that’s not a true crux of disagreement here, speculating about whether hundreds of current and former effective altruists have been naive idiots is a waste of time.