The Wenar criticism in particular seems laughably bad, such that I find bad faith hypotheses like this fairly convincing. I do agree it’s a seductive line of reasoning to follow in general though, and that this can be dangerous
Idk, I do just think that bad faith actors exist, especially in the public sphere. It’s a mistake to assume that all critics are in bad faith, but equally it’s naive to assume that it’s never bad faith
It feels to me like black-and-white in-group/out-group thinking, where the out-group is evil, corrupt, deceptive, unintelligent, pathetic, etc. and the in-group is good, righteous, honest, intelligent, impressive, etc.
It actually isn’t my experience that people who identify as EAs interact “in good faith, rationally and empirically, constructively and sympathetically, according to high ethical and epistemic standards”. EAs are, in my experience, quite human.
This seems to me to be a self-serving, Manichean, and psychologically implausible account of why people write criticisms of EA.
The Wenar criticism in particular seems laughably bad, such that I find bad faith hypotheses like this fairly convincing. I do agree it’s a seductive line of reasoning to follow in general though, and that this can be dangerous
“I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate human actions, but to understand them.”
–Baruch Spinoza
Idk, I do just think that bad faith actors exist, especially in the public sphere. It’s a mistake to assume that all critics are in bad faith, but equally it’s naive to assume that it’s never bad faith
Yarrow—I’m curious which bits of what I wrote you found ‘psychologically implausible’?
It feels to me like black-and-white in-group/out-group thinking, where the out-group is evil, corrupt, deceptive, unintelligent, pathetic, etc. and the in-group is good, righteous, honest, intelligent, impressive, etc.
It actually isn’t my experience that people who identify as EAs interact “in good faith, rationally and empirically, constructively and sympathetically, according to high ethical and epistemic standards”. EAs are, in my experience, quite human.