Thereâs no effective counter-argument since, almost by definition, any engagement is possibly biased. If one responds with, âI donât think Iâm biased because I didnât have these views to begin with,â the response can always be, âWell, you engaged in this topic and had a positive response, so surely, you must be biased somehow because most people donât engage at all.â
Iâm going to simplify a bit to make this easier to talk about, but imagine a continuum in how much people start off caring about animals, running from 0% (the person globally who values animals least) to 100% (values most). Learning that someone who started at 80% looked into things more and is now at 95% is informative, and someone who started at 50% and is now at 95% is more informative.
This isnât âsome people are biased and some arenâtâ but âeveryone is biased on lots of topics in lots of waysâ. When people come to conclusions that point in the direction of their biases others should generally find that less convincing than then they come to ones that point in the opposite direction.
Even if the criticism is valid, what is to be done?
What I would be most excited about seeing is people who currently are skeptical that animals matter anywhere near as much as Rethinkâs current best guess moral weights would suggest treat this as an important disagreement and donât continue just ignoring animals in their cause prioritization. Then theyâd have a reason to get into these weights that didnât trace back to already thinking animals mattered a lot. I suspect theyâd come to pretty different conclusions, based on making different judgement calls on what matters in assessing worth or how to interpret ambiguous evidence about what animals do or are capable of. Then Iâd like to see an adversarial collaboration.
Iâm going to simplify a bit to make this easier to talk about, but imagine a continuum in how much people start off caring about animals, running from 0% (the person globally who values animals least) to 100% (values most). Learning that someone who started at 80% looked into things more and is now at 95% is informative, and someone who started at 50% and is now at 95% is more informative.
This isnât âsome people are biased and some arenâtâ but âeveryone is biased on lots of topics in lots of waysâ. When people come to conclusions that point in the direction of their biases others should generally find that less convincing than then they come to ones that point in the opposite direction.
What I would be most excited about seeing is people who currently are skeptical that animals matter anywhere near as much as Rethinkâs current best guess moral weights would suggest treat this as an important disagreement and donât continue just ignoring animals in their cause prioritization. Then theyâd have a reason to get into these weights that didnât trace back to already thinking animals mattered a lot. I suspect theyâd come to pretty different conclusions, based on making different judgement calls on what matters in assessing worth or how to interpret ambiguous evidence about what animals do or are capable of. Then Iâd like to see an adversarial collaboration.