This comment reads to me as unnecessarily adversarial and as a strawman of the authors’ position.
It sounds to me like their real complaint is something like: How dare EA/utilitarianism prioritize other things over my pet causes, just because there’s no reason to think that my pet causes are optimal?
I think a more likely explanation of the authors’ position includes cruxes like:
disagreeing with the assumption of maximization (and underlying assumptions about the aggregation of utility), such that arguments about optimality are not relevant
moral partiality, e.g. a view that people have special obligations towards those in their local community
weighting (in)justice much more strongly than the average EA, such that the correction of (certain) historical wrongs is a very high priority
disagreements about the (non-consequentialist) badness of e.g. foreign philanthropic interventions
Your description of their position may very well be compatible with mine, they do write with a somewhat disparaging tone, and I expect to strongly disagree with many of the book’s arguments (including for some of the reasons you point out). However, it doesn’t feel like you’re engaging with their position in good faith.
Additionally, EA comprises a lot of nuanced ideas (e.g. distinguishing “classic (GiveWell-style) EA” from other strains of EA) and there isn’t a canonical description of those ideas (though the EA Handbook does a decent job). While they might be obvious to community members, many of those nuances, counterarguments to naive objections, etc. aren’t in easy-to-find descriptions of EA. While in an ideal world all critics would pass their subjects’ ITT, I’m wary of creating too high of a bar for how much people need to understand EA ideas before they feel able to criticize them.
I’m responding to published academic work by (at least some) professional academics, published in the top academic press. The appropriate norms for professional academic criticism are not the same as for (say) making a newcomer feel welcome on the forum. It is (IMO) absolutely appropriate to clearly state one’s opinion when academic work is of low quality, and explain why, as I did in my comment.
You’re certainly welcome to form a different opinion of their work. But you shouldn’t accuse me of “bad faith” just because I assessed their work more negatively than you do. It’s my honest opinion, and I offered supporting reasons for it.
IMO, this would be a worse forum if people weren’t allowed to clearly express their honest opinion of shoddy academic work, including (when textually supported) reasons for thinking that their targets were engaging in motivated reasoning.
Finally, I should clarify that I was not addressing the question of whether someone could construct a valuable steelman of the authors’ positions. Many have offered critiques along the lines you suggest, and you could certainly attribute those to the authors to make them sound more reasonable. But in that case you might as well skip this text and go straight to the critiques that have been better expressed elsewhere. What I was assessing was the value of this particular text. And, as I said, what I’ve seen so far strikes me as low quality. Hopefully some of the included essays by other authors are better.
Just to be clear, you are assessing the quality of the text based on the 1 page editor’s introduction and what you believe the authors will write, and without having actually read it?
I’m assessing the text that’s currently available, yes. I think my original comment was perfectly clear on that. I hope the book itself is better than the editors’ introduction would indicate, but it’s not unreasonable to assess what they’ve shared so far.
The comment I replied to sounds like you’re critiquing the main academic work rather than a description of it, so I wanted to check if you had read an advance copy or something.
How dare EA/utilitarianism prioritize other things
I think a more likely explanation of the authors’ position includes cruxes like: ...
Speaking generally, it does seem like EA critics often equivocate between these two positions. For example, saying EA is bad for diverting money from soup kitchens to bednets but not being willing to say money should be diverted the other way. IMO focus on philosophical issues like utilitarianism can have the effect of equivocating further by implying more specific disagreements without really defending them.
(I don’t have any opinions about this book in particular).
This comment reads to me as unnecessarily adversarial and as a strawman of the authors’ position.
I think a more likely explanation of the authors’ position includes cruxes like:
disagreeing with the assumption of maximization (and underlying assumptions about the aggregation of utility), such that arguments about optimality are not relevant
moral partiality, e.g. a view that people have special obligations towards those in their local community
weighting (in)justice much more strongly than the average EA, such that the correction of (certain) historical wrongs is a very high priority
disagreements about the (non-consequentialist) badness of e.g. foreign philanthropic interventions
Your description of their position may very well be compatible with mine, they do write with a somewhat disparaging tone, and I expect to strongly disagree with many of the book’s arguments (including for some of the reasons you point out). However, it doesn’t feel like you’re engaging with their position in good faith.
Additionally, EA comprises a lot of nuanced ideas (e.g. distinguishing “classic (GiveWell-style) EA” from other strains of EA) and there isn’t a canonical description of those ideas (though the EA Handbook does a decent job). While they might be obvious to community members, many of those nuances, counterarguments to naive objections, etc. aren’t in easy-to-find descriptions of EA. While in an ideal world all critics would pass their subjects’ ITT, I’m wary of creating too high of a bar for how much people need to understand EA ideas before they feel able to criticize them.
I’m responding to published academic work by (at least some) professional academics, published in the top academic press. The appropriate norms for professional academic criticism are not the same as for (say) making a newcomer feel welcome on the forum. It is (IMO) absolutely appropriate to clearly state one’s opinion when academic work is of low quality, and explain why, as I did in my comment.
You’re certainly welcome to form a different opinion of their work. But you shouldn’t accuse me of “bad faith” just because I assessed their work more negatively than you do. It’s my honest opinion, and I offered supporting reasons for it.
IMO, this would be a worse forum if people weren’t allowed to clearly express their honest opinion of shoddy academic work, including (when textually supported) reasons for thinking that their targets were engaging in motivated reasoning.
Finally, I should clarify that I was not addressing the question of whether someone could construct a valuable steelman of the authors’ positions. Many have offered critiques along the lines you suggest, and you could certainly attribute those to the authors to make them sound more reasonable. But in that case you might as well skip this text and go straight to the critiques that have been better expressed elsewhere. What I was assessing was the value of this particular text. And, as I said, what I’ve seen so far strikes me as low quality. Hopefully some of the included essays by other authors are better.
Just to be clear, you are assessing the quality of the text based on the 1 page editor’s introduction and what you believe the authors will write, and without having actually read it?
I’m assessing the text that’s currently available, yes. I think my original comment was perfectly clear on that. I hope the book itself is better than the editors’ introduction would indicate, but it’s not unreasonable to assess what they’ve shared so far.
The comment I replied to sounds like you’re critiquing the main academic work rather than a description of it, so I wanted to check if you had read an advance copy or something.
Speaking generally, it does seem like EA critics often equivocate between these two positions. For example, saying EA is bad for diverting money from soup kitchens to bednets but not being willing to say money should be diverted the other way. IMO focus on philosophical issues like utilitarianism can have the effect of equivocating further by implying more specific disagreements without really defending them.
(I don’t have any opinions about this book in particular).