Offhand, I would guess that the holiday fundraiser that Émile and Nathan Young ran (for GiveDirectly I think it was?) was positive.
What makes you think this? I would guess it was pretty negative, by legitimizing Torres, and most of the donations funging heavily against other EA causes.
I would guess any legitimization of Émile by Nathan was symmetrical with a legitimization of Nathan by Émile. However I didn’t get the sense that either was legitimizing the other, so much as both were legitimizing GiveDirectly. It seems valuable to legitimize GiveDirectly, especially among the “left-ish academic circles” reading Émile who might otherwise believe that Émile is against all EA causes/organizations. (And among “left-ish academics” who might otherwise believe that Nathan scorns “near-termist” causes.)
There’s a lot of cause prioritization disagreement within EA, but it doesn’t usually get vicious, in part because EAs have “skin in the game” with regard to using their time & money in order to make the world a better place. One hypothesis is that if we can get Émile’s audience to feel some genuine curiosity about how to make their holiday giving effective, they’ll wonder why some people are longtermists. I think it’s absolutely fine to disagree with longtermism, but I also think that longtermists are generally thoughtful and well-intentioned, and it’s worth understanding why they give to the causes they do.
most of the donations funging heavily against other EA causes
Do you have specific reasons to believe this? It’s a possibility, but I could just as easily see most donations coming from non-EAs, or EAs who consider GiveDirectly a top pick anyways. Even if EA donors didn’t consider GiveDirectly a top pick on its own, they might have considered “GiveDirectly plus better relations with Émile with no extra cost” to be a top pick, and I feel hesitant to judge this more harshly than I would judge any other EA cause prioritization.
BTW, a mental model here is:
...it is striking by how often these shifts in opinion appear, upon closer inspection, to be triggered by Torres experiencing a feeling of rejection, such as being denied a job, not being invited to a podcast, or having a book collaboration terminated. Torres’s subsequent “realization” that these people and communities, once held in such high esteem, were in fact profoundly evil or dangerous routinely comes after those personal setbacks, as a post hoc rationalization.
If Émile is motivated to attack EA because they feel rejected by it, it’s conceivable to me that their motivation for aggression would decrease if a super kind and understanding therapist-type person listened to them really well privately and helped them feel heard & understood. The fundraiser thing makes me think this could work if done well, although the Helen Pluckrose thing from Mark’s post makes me think it’s risky. But if it’s private, especially from a person who’s not particularly well-known, I assume it wouldn’t run the specific risk of legitimization.
What makes you think this? I would guess it was pretty negative, by legitimizing Torres, and most of the donations funging heavily against other EA causes.
I would guess any legitimization of Émile by Nathan was symmetrical with a legitimization of Nathan by Émile. However I didn’t get the sense that either was legitimizing the other, so much as both were legitimizing GiveDirectly. It seems valuable to legitimize GiveDirectly, especially among the “left-ish academic circles” reading Émile who might otherwise believe that Émile is against all EA causes/organizations. (And among “left-ish academics” who might otherwise believe that Nathan scorns “near-termist” causes.)
There’s a lot of cause prioritization disagreement within EA, but it doesn’t usually get vicious, in part because EAs have “skin in the game” with regard to using their time & money in order to make the world a better place. One hypothesis is that if we can get Émile’s audience to feel some genuine curiosity about how to make their holiday giving effective, they’ll wonder why some people are longtermists. I think it’s absolutely fine to disagree with longtermism, but I also think that longtermists are generally thoughtful and well-intentioned, and it’s worth understanding why they give to the causes they do.
Do you have specific reasons to believe this? It’s a possibility, but I could just as easily see most donations coming from non-EAs, or EAs who consider GiveDirectly a top pick anyways. Even if EA donors didn’t consider GiveDirectly a top pick on its own, they might have considered “GiveDirectly plus better relations with Émile with no extra cost” to be a top pick, and I feel hesitant to judge this more harshly than I would judge any other EA cause prioritization.
BTW, a mental model here is:
https://markfuentes1.substack.com/p/emile-p-torress-history-of-dishonesty
If Émile is motivated to attack EA because they feel rejected by it, it’s conceivable to me that their motivation for aggression would decrease if a super kind and understanding therapist-type person listened to them really well privately and helped them feel heard & understood. The fundraiser thing makes me think this could work if done well, although the Helen Pluckrose thing from Mark’s post makes me think it’s risky. But if it’s private, especially from a person who’s not particularly well-known, I assume it wouldn’t run the specific risk of legitimization.
[edited to fix pronouns, sorry!!]
FYI, Émile’s pronouns are they/them.
[Edit: I really don’t like that this comment got downvoted and disagree voted...]