I think this went really well, although MacAskill could make another point, which I’m not sure why he chose not to—which is that the people living paycheck to paycheck, not being sure where their rent will come from, aren’t really expected to do these things. That these are the obligations of people in stable lives, and that those who don’t yet have stability should focus on obtaining it for themselves first.
I guess it didn’t occur to him. You can see he’s nervous and speaking succinctly and winsomely in front of a crowd and tv cameras is really hard. I was impressed how many relevant facts he had at his immediate disposal.
I didn’t downvote but my guess is that there are two distinct reasons:
The Daily Show is the big leagues. MacAskill’s interview was really well done, which is hard for the audience and context. I think that every phrase MacAskill said was carefully chosen to be correct and serve the intended narrative, while at the same time appearing succinct and natural. A digression, which IMO is what you’re suggesting, would take up time and attention.
The natural place where MacAskill could insert your proposed point was inside a potentially problematic subthread that EA attracts billionaire wealth. MacAskill responded by an argument revolving around the idea that that billionaires should pay more than others.
To be more exact, at “6:16” the host said “It’s also interesting to see how many billionaires have signed onto your ideas.”
IMO, this is a pretty “hingey” place in the interview and MacAskill responds perfectly by talking about how wealth doesn’t matter much proportionately to the wealthy, and even lands applause with a punchy point.
At about 7:05 is the most natural place for your comment, and MacAskill uses it to press on the (hyper)privileged giving more. Here’s a rough transcript:
The second issue is that, in this specific enviromment, I think there’s a risk of having your point conflated: your point that the underprivileged should not have to give, might be conflated with the idea that underprivileged should not engage with EA.
This conflation outcome seems bad: it’s possible that non-”elite”, lower income people could make major contributions to EA by being employees, leaders or founders (which is like, your personal belief right?). Also, this idea is terrible optics.
I think there is some risk of this conflation and it would take care and attention to communicate this original point. Even 15 seconds would be costly and risk redirecting the flow of the conversation.
I’m not sure this is true, also, I’m personally a carpet bagger and chancer and I learned about EA two weeks ago: My sense is that the original, OG EAs, were hard core and took the idea of frugality very seriously. There’s stories about Julia Wise crying about having candy bought for her, when it could buy a bednet instead. MacAskill has had serious back problems, presumably because he avoided spending money on furniture or specialists for himself.
Even among very established, “EA elite”, there might many who miss things about that old spirit. The ideas in your comment seem against this level of dedication and might screen out new “instances” of these people.
>My sense is that the original, OG EAs, were hard core and took the idea of frugality very seriously
The relevant story:
It was a sunny day in September, and they were at an apple orchard outside Boston. There were candy apples for sale, and Julia wanted one. Normally she would have told herself that she could not justify spending her money that way, but Jeff had told her that if she wanted anything he would buy it for her with his money. He had found a job as a computer programmer; Julia was still unemployed, and did not have any savings, because she had given everything she had earned in the summer to Oxfam.
That night they lay in bed and talked about money. Jeff told Julia that, inspired by her example, he was thinking of giving some percentage of his salary to charity. And Julia realised that, if Jeff was going to start giving away his earnings, then, by asking him to buy her the apple, she had spent money that might have been given. With her selfish, ridiculous desire for a candy apple, she might have deprived a family of an anti-malarial bed net or deworming medicine that might have saved the life of one of its children. The more she thought about this, the more horrific and unbearable it seemed to her, and she started to cry. She cried for a long time, and it got so bad that Jeff started to cry, too, which he almost never did. He cried because, more than anything, he wanted Julia to be happy, but how could she be happy if she went through life seeing malarial children everywhere, dying before her eyes for want of a bed net? He knew that he wanted to marry her, but he was not sure how he could cope with a life that was going to be this difficult and this sad, with no conceivable way out.
They stopped crying and talked about budgets. They realised that Julia was going to lose her mind if she spent the rest of her life weighing each purchase in terms of bed nets, so, after much discussion, they came up with a system...
I think this went really well, although MacAskill could make another point, which I’m not sure why he chose not to—which is that the people living paycheck to paycheck, not being sure where their rent will come from, aren’t really expected to do these things. That these are the obligations of people in stable lives, and that those who don’t yet have stability should focus on obtaining it for themselves first.
I guess it didn’t occur to him. You can see he’s nervous and speaking succinctly and winsomely in front of a crowd and tv cameras is really hard. I was impressed how many relevant facts he had at his immediate disposal.
Ok, I’m really confused about the downvotes here. If someone cares to explain, I’d be grateful.
I didn’t downvote but my guess is that there are two distinct reasons:
The Daily Show is the big leagues. MacAskill’s interview was really well done, which is hard for the audience and context. I think that every phrase MacAskill said was carefully chosen to be correct and serve the intended narrative, while at the same time appearing succinct and natural. A digression, which IMO is what you’re suggesting, would take up time and attention.
The natural place where MacAskill could insert your proposed point was inside a potentially problematic subthread that EA attracts billionaire wealth. MacAskill responded by an argument revolving around the idea that that billionaires should pay more than others.
To be more exact, at “6:16” the host said “It’s also interesting to see how many billionaires have signed onto your ideas.”
IMO, this is a pretty “hingey” place in the interview and MacAskill responds perfectly by talking about how wealth doesn’t matter much proportionately to the wealthy, and even lands applause with a punchy point.
At about 7:05 is the most natural place for your comment, and MacAskill uses it to press on the (hyper)privileged giving more. Here’s a rough transcript:
The second issue is that, in this specific enviromment, I think there’s a risk of having your point conflated: your point that the underprivileged should not have to give, might be conflated with the idea that underprivileged should not engage with EA.
This conflation outcome seems bad: it’s possible that non-”elite”, lower income people could make major contributions to EA by being employees, leaders or founders (which is like, your personal belief right?). Also, this idea is terrible optics.
I think there is some risk of this conflation and it would take care and attention to communicate this original point. Even 15 seconds would be costly and risk redirecting the flow of the conversation.
I’m not sure this is true, also, I’m personally a carpet bagger and chancer and I learned about EA two weeks ago: My sense is that the original, OG EAs, were hard core and took the idea of frugality very seriously. There’s stories about Julia Wise crying about having candy bought for her, when it could buy a bednet instead. MacAskill has had serious back problems, presumably because he avoided spending money on furniture or specialists for himself.
Even among very established, “EA elite”, there might many who miss things about that old spirit. The ideas in your comment seem against this level of dedication and might screen out new “instances” of these people.
>My sense is that the original, OG EAs, were hard core and took the idea of frugality very seriously
The relevant story:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/extreme-altruism-should-you-care-for-strangers-as-much-as-family