“Altruistic action(s) should occasionally be adversarial.”
[Edit: Folks’ downvotes here interest me. I take them to mean ‘No, I strongly feel this topic should not be debated’, rather than people taking a stance in the debate, as hearing those stances and arguments was my intent in proposing this. If it is indeed the former, would love to know why!]
Can you give examples of “adversarial” altruistic actions? Like protesting against ICE to help immigrants? Getting CEOs fired to improve what their corporations do?
I think I was envisioning the debate as something like 1) Do these sets (the sets of altruistic and adversarial actions) occasionally intersect? 2) Does that have any implications for EA as a movement?
But to answer your question, I think a paradigmatic example for the purposes of debating the topic would be the military intervention in and defeat of an openly genocidal and expansionist nation-state; i.e., something requiring complex, sophisticated adversarial action, up to and including deadly force, assuming that the primary motivations for the defeat of said nation state were the prevention of catastrophic and unspeakable harm. Exploring what the set of altruistic adversarial actions might look like at various scales and in various instances could potentially be a generative part of the debate.
“Altruistic action(s) should occasionally be adversarial.”
[Edit: Folks’ downvotes here interest me. I take them to mean ‘No, I strongly feel this topic should not be debated’, rather than people taking a stance in the debate, as hearing those stances and arguments was my intent in proposing this. If it is indeed the former, would love to know why!]
Can you give examples of “adversarial” altruistic actions? Like protesting against ICE to help immigrants? Getting CEOs fired to improve what their corporations do?
I think I was envisioning the debate as something like 1) Do these sets (the sets of altruistic and adversarial actions) occasionally intersect? 2) Does that have any implications for EA as a movement?
But to answer your question, I think a paradigmatic example for the purposes of debating the topic would be the military intervention in and defeat of an openly genocidal and expansionist nation-state; i.e., something requiring complex, sophisticated adversarial action, up to and including deadly force, assuming that the primary motivations for the defeat of said nation state were the prevention of catastrophic and unspeakable harm. Exploring what the set of altruistic adversarial actions might look like at various scales and in various instances could potentially be a generative part of the debate.
Animal welfare corporate campaigns often are adversarial to some extent, heavily EA funded. AI safety stuff sometimes is too.
Any interesting “adversarial” actions / interventions in GHD in your view?
FTX