Alas, I do think this defense no longer works, given FTX, which seems substantially worse than all the ecoterrorism I have heard about.
I disagree with this because I believe FTX’s harm was way less bad than most ecoterrorism, primarily because of the disutility involved. FTX hasn’t actually injured or killed people, unlike a lot of ecoterrorism. It stole billions, which isn’t good, but right now no violence is involved. I don’t think FTX is good, but so far no violence has been attributed or even much advocated by EAs.
Yeah, doesn’t seem like a totally crazy position to take, but I don’t really buy it. I bet a lot of people would take a probability of having violence inflicted on them in exchange for $8 billion dollars, and I don’t think this kind of categorical comparison of different kinds of harm checks out. It’s hard to really imagine the scale of $8 billion dollars, but I am confident that Sam’s action have killed, indirectly via a long chain of actions, but nevertheless directly responsibly, at least 20-30 people, which I think is probably more than any ecoterrorism that has been committed (though I am not that confident about the history of ecoterrorism, so maybe there was actually something that got to that order of magnitude?)
IMO I think Ecoterrorism’s deaths were primarily the Unabomber, which was at least 3 deaths and 23 injuries. I may retract my first comment if I don’t have more evidence than this.
The unabomber does feel kind of weird to blame on environmentalism. Or like, I would give environmentalism a lot less blame for the unabomber than I would give us for FTX.
I disagree with this because I believe FTX’s harm was way less bad than most ecoterrorism, primarily because of the disutility involved. FTX hasn’t actually injured or killed people, unlike a lot of ecoterrorism. It stole billions, which isn’t good, but right now no violence is involved. I don’t think FTX is good, but so far no violence has been attributed or even much advocated by EAs.
Yeah, doesn’t seem like a totally crazy position to take, but I don’t really buy it. I bet a lot of people would take a probability of having violence inflicted on them in exchange for $8 billion dollars, and I don’t think this kind of categorical comparison of different kinds of harm checks out. It’s hard to really imagine the scale of $8 billion dollars, but I am confident that Sam’s action have killed, indirectly via a long chain of actions, but nevertheless directly responsibly, at least 20-30 people, which I think is probably more than any ecoterrorism that has been committed (though I am not that confident about the history of ecoterrorism, so maybe there was actually something that got to that order of magnitude?)
IMO I think Ecoterrorism’s deaths were primarily the Unabomber, which was at least 3 deaths and 23 injuries. I may retract my first comment if I don’t have more evidence than this.
The unabomber does feel kind of weird to blame on environmentalism. Or like, I would give environmentalism a lot less blame for the unabomber than I would give us for FTX.