Ok, I acknowledge that I might have misunderstood your intent. If had taken that your point was to dispassionately explain why people (the EA community) donât engage with this topic, I myself might have reacted more dispassionately. However, as I read your comments, I donât think that it was very clear that this is what you were after. Rather, it seemed like you were actively making the case against engaging with the topic and using strawmanning tactics to make your point. I would encourage you to be more clear in this regard in the future, I will try to be more mindful of possible misinterpretation.
I think the key point of my comments stand in that the position you outlined is potentially problematic and ill-informed. To take an other example, you say:
You can cite the study âjustifyingâ limits to growth, (which Iâve discussed on this forum before!) but they said that there would be a collapse decades ago, so itâs hard to take that seriously
The point of simulation models is never to âpredictâ the future. We are not in the foundation novels and doing psychohistory here. Studies like this are used to look for and examine patterns in behavior. Thatâs why it is so remarkable that one of the scenarios they developed actually mapped so closely to current developments. That was never the goal of the exercise. So the issue here is that you are misrepresenting the way people are actually building their arguments. If you again are claiming that this is not how you see the situation but how other people see the situation, please make people aware of the errors in their reasoning and donât continue to propagate false or at least misleading information.
Iâm sure there is a steelmanned version of this that deserves some credit, and I initially said that there are some ideas from that movement that deserve creditâbut I donât understand what it has to do with the degrowth movement, which is pretty explicit about what it wants and aims for.
I think the point I was trying to make is that it would do us good to try to go out there with a charitable mindset, look for the steelmanned versions of arguments being made, and try to engage them on their merits. For me this implies looking also in âunusualâ or on the face of it âirritatingâ places and talking to people that hold different beliefs or work with different ideas, in particular if they are trying to reach out and engage with us. This happened to some degree here and all I am advocating for is keeping an open mind and not jumping to dismissive conclusions without deliberate critical engagement.
On your first point, I was first clarifying that there has been discussion of this, and there was a pretty clear reason to dismiss this in generalâwhile in my very first post agreeing that âThere are other claims that degrowth makes that seem unobjectionable, and worthy of debate.â You attacked that, and my position, and I defended it. I donât think I used a strawman at any pointâI think that I responded to your general claim about âdegrowthâ with an accurate characterization of that position, and you retreated to a series of specific analyses that defend specific points.
On your second point, youâre incorrectly interpreting what was done in 1972, which Iâm very, very familiar withâIâve actually read the report, and used the model as a teaching tool. It was absolutely intended to predict consequences of decisions, to support specific decisionmakers, and they explicitly said that while it was imperfect, it was intended to be used as-is in order to make decisions. I can only urge you to read their original work. The patterns it explored didnât hold up, the models were wrong in how the projected the key inputs and factors, and the conclusions they came to were wrong. Recent claims that they got things right are revisionist and wrongâpost-hoc justification is possible anywhere, but as Iâve said for years, itâs unsupportable here.
And finally, in general, if you ask others to be more charitable to a position instead of defending it, youâre asking for a favor, rather than saying that something stands on its own merits. I did not say there was nothing here worthy of consideration, but I did say that their central claim was wrong. I agree that itâs wonderful to be charitable in discussions, but as a general point, no, I donât think it makes sense to try to be charitable to and steelman every opposing viewpoint every time it is brought up, especially after youâve looked into it.
Ok, I acknowledge that I might have misunderstood your intent. If had taken that your point was to dispassionately explain why people (the EA community) donât engage with this topic, I myself might have reacted more dispassionately. However, as I read your comments, I donât think that it was very clear that this is what you were after. Rather, it seemed like you were actively making the case against engaging with the topic and using strawmanning tactics to make your point. I would encourage you to be more clear in this regard in the future, I will try to be more mindful of possible misinterpretation.
I think the key point of my comments stand in that the position you outlined is potentially problematic and ill-informed. To take an other example, you say:
The point of simulation models is never to âpredictâ the future. We are not in the foundation novels and doing psychohistory here. Studies like this are used to look for and examine patterns in behavior. Thatâs why it is so remarkable that one of the scenarios they developed actually mapped so closely to current developments. That was never the goal of the exercise. So the issue here is that you are misrepresenting the way people are actually building their arguments. If you again are claiming that this is not how you see the situation but how other people see the situation, please make people aware of the errors in their reasoning and donât continue to propagate false or at least misleading information.
I think the point I was trying to make is that it would do us good to try to go out there with a charitable mindset, look for the steelmanned versions of arguments being made, and try to engage them on their merits. For me this implies looking also in âunusualâ or on the face of it âirritatingâ places and talking to people that hold different beliefs or work with different ideas, in particular if they are trying to reach out and engage with us. This happened to some degree here and all I am advocating for is keeping an open mind and not jumping to dismissive conclusions without deliberate critical engagement.
On your first point, I was first clarifying that there has been discussion of this, and there was a pretty clear reason to dismiss this in generalâwhile in my very first post agreeing that âThere are other claims that degrowth makes that seem unobjectionable, and worthy of debate.â You attacked that, and my position, and I defended it. I donât think I used a strawman at any pointâI think that I responded to your general claim about âdegrowthâ with an accurate characterization of that position, and you retreated to a series of specific analyses that defend specific points.
On your second point, youâre incorrectly interpreting what was done in 1972, which Iâm very, very familiar withâIâve actually read the report, and used the model as a teaching tool. It was absolutely intended to predict consequences of decisions, to support specific decisionmakers, and they explicitly said that while it was imperfect, it was intended to be used as-is in order to make decisions. I can only urge you to read their original work. The patterns it explored didnât hold up, the models were wrong in how the projected the key inputs and factors, and the conclusions they came to were wrong. Recent claims that they got things right are revisionist and wrongâpost-hoc justification is possible anywhere, but as Iâve said for years, itâs unsupportable here.
And finally, in general, if you ask others to be more charitable to a position instead of defending it, youâre asking for a favor, rather than saying that something stands on its own merits. I did not say there was nothing here worthy of consideration, but I did say that their central claim was wrong. I agree that itâs wonderful to be charitable in discussions, but as a general point, no, I donât think it makes sense to try to be charitable to and steelman every opposing viewpoint every time it is brought up, especially after youâve looked into it.