A brief meta-comment on critics of EAs, and how to react to them:
We’re so used to interacting with each other in good faith, rationally and empirically, constructively and sympathetically, according to high ethical and epistemic standards, that we EAs have real trouble remembering some crucial fact of life:
Some people, including many prominent academics, are bad actors, vicious ideologues, and/or Machiavellian activists who do not share our world-view, and never will
Many people engaged the public sphere are playing games of persuasion, influence, and manipulation, rather than trying to understand or improve the world
EA is emotionally and ideologically threatening to many people and institutions, because insofar as they understand our logic of focusing on tractable, neglected, big-scope problems, they realize that they’ve wasted large chunks of their lives on intractable, overly popular, smaller-scope problems; and this makes them sad and embarrassed, which they resent
Most critics of EA will never be persuaded that EA is good and righteous. When we argue with such critics, we must remember that we are trying to attract and influence onlookers, not trying to change the critics’ minds (which are typically unchangeable).
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.
A brief meta-comment on critics of EAs, and how to react to them:
We’re so used to interacting with each other in good faith, rationally and empirically, constructively and sympathetically, according to high ethical and epistemic standards, that we EAs have real trouble remembering some crucial fact of life:
Some people, including many prominent academics, are bad actors, vicious ideologues, and/or Machiavellian activists who do not share our world-view, and never will
Many people engaged the public sphere are playing games of persuasion, influence, and manipulation, rather than trying to understand or improve the world
EA is emotionally and ideologically threatening to many people and institutions, because insofar as they understand our logic of focusing on tractable, neglected, big-scope problems, they realize that they’ve wasted large chunks of their lives on intractable, overly popular, smaller-scope problems; and this makes them sad and embarrassed, which they resent
Most critics of EA will never be persuaded that EA is good and righteous. When we argue with such critics, we must remember that we are trying to attract and influence onlookers, not trying to change the critics’ minds (which are typically unchangeable).
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.