MacAskill was definitely a major voice in the beginning of the movement, as expected, given his help founding it and his book Doing Good Better—but all movements (much like startups) must face that first “crisis” of being able to support itself without needing the founder’s daily involvement in putting out small fires, or in this case, engaging with every new (or old) criticism that comes in.
Originally it was Toby handling all the media attention etc. - transferring this onto Will, because Toby didn’t want to do it any more, was a deliberate strategy. This transition was so successful it seems a lot of people are not aware of the prior situation!
Will might be the only person in EA who is confident enough in his understanding of the ideas (having helped create them) that feels he can publicly respond and debate the ideas with external critics.
I don’t think this is the case; there are lots of people who could write a response to Torres, people are just too busy / think it’s not very valuable to engage at length with bad-faith attacks.
Devin’s response:
“I would be careful about calling this a bad faith attack. It may seem low quality or biased, but low quality is very different from bad faith and bias is probably something most of our defenders are guilty of to a decent degree as well. I’m not an expert on this case, but my own understanding is basically that Torres wrote a more academic, EA-targeted version of this before, got no responses or engagement he found adequate, despite reaching out to try to get it, and decided to take his case to a broader audience. I think there’s a ton wrong with his analysis including stuff a more balanced view of his subjects should have easily caught, but I see every indication he was trying to criticize in good faith. Then again, I am not super familiar with this case, and maybe I’m totally wrong. But one of the broader points of my piece is something like this: we can’t engage with all critics without being overwhelmed, indeed we can’t even engage with all the critics who really deserve some engagement without being overwhelmed. It is much much better to just admit this than to act like we are engaging with everyone who deserves it by getting trigger happy with accusations of bad faith and unreasonableness. Even when each of these is true, they are far too tempting an excuse once they enter your arsenal.”
I’m not an expert on this case, but my own understanding is basically that Torres wrote a more academic, EA-targeted version of this before, got no responses or engagement he found adequate
He got a very lengthy response here—far more detailed than most people would get.
I see every indication he was trying to criticize in good faith.
In contemporary western society, ‘white supremacist’ is one of the most harmful accusations you can make about someone, and should not be done without serious evidence, yet Phil flings the slur around with abandon. Indeed, in the Current Affairs piece he goes so far as to conveniently ‘forget’ to mention that one of his targets founded an organization dedicated to helping the global poor and committed to give away everything he earned above £18,000.
It is important to be open-minded with criticism, but at some point we need to accept that some people are bad actors. The community has already spent an inordinately large amount of time dealing with Phil already, both online and in person, culminating in his current status of being banned from multiple EA spaces for dishonesty. I recommend you read the thread here for an overview.
“The white supremacy part doesn’t have this effect for me. Yes there is a use of this word to refer to overt, horrible bigotry, but there is also a use of this word meaning something closer to ‘structures that empower, or maintain the power, of white people disproportionately in prominent decision-making positions’. It is reasonable to say that this latter definition may be a bad way of wording things, you could even argue a terrible way, but since this use has both academic, and more recently some mainstream, usage, it hardly seems fair to assume bad faith because of it. Some of the other stuff in this thread is more troubling, it seems there is a deep rabbit hole here, and it’s possible that Torres is generally a bad actor. Again, I don’t want to be too confident in this particular case. Although it seems we have very different ways of viewing these criticisms even when we are looking at the same thing, I will allow that you seem to have more familiarity with them.”
Originally it was Toby handling all the media attention etc. - transferring this onto Will, because Toby didn’t want to do it any more, was a deliberate strategy. This transition was so successful it seems a lot of people are not aware of the prior situation!
I don’t think this is the case; there are lots of people who could write a response to Torres, people are just too busy / think it’s not very valuable to engage at length with bad-faith attacks.
Devin’s response: “I would be careful about calling this a bad faith attack. It may seem low quality or biased, but low quality is very different from bad faith and bias is probably something most of our defenders are guilty of to a decent degree as well. I’m not an expert on this case, but my own understanding is basically that Torres wrote a more academic, EA-targeted version of this before, got no responses or engagement he found adequate, despite reaching out to try to get it, and decided to take his case to a broader audience. I think there’s a ton wrong with his analysis including stuff a more balanced view of his subjects should have easily caught, but I see every indication he was trying to criticize in good faith. Then again, I am not super familiar with this case, and maybe I’m totally wrong. But one of the broader points of my piece is something like this: we can’t engage with all critics without being overwhelmed, indeed we can’t even engage with all the critics who really deserve some engagement without being overwhelmed. It is much much better to just admit this than to act like we are engaging with everyone who deserves it by getting trigger happy with accusations of bad faith and unreasonableness. Even when each of these is true, they are far too tempting an excuse once they enter your arsenal.”
He got a very lengthy response here—far more detailed than most people would get.
In contemporary western society, ‘white supremacist’ is one of the most harmful accusations you can make about someone, and should not be done without serious evidence, yet Phil flings the slur around with abandon. Indeed, in the Current Affairs piece he goes so far as to conveniently ‘forget’ to mention that one of his targets founded an organization dedicated to helping the global poor and committed to give away everything he earned above £18,000.
It is important to be open-minded with criticism, but at some point we need to accept that some people are bad actors. The community has already spent an inordinately large amount of time dealing with Phil already, both online and in person, culminating in his current status of being banned from multiple EA spaces for dishonesty. I recommend you read the thread here for an overview.
Devin’s response:
“The white supremacy part doesn’t have this effect for me. Yes there is a use of this word to refer to overt, horrible bigotry, but there is also a use of this word meaning something closer to ‘structures that empower, or maintain the power, of white people disproportionately in prominent decision-making positions’. It is reasonable to say that this latter definition may be a bad way of wording things, you could even argue a terrible way, but since this use has both academic, and more recently some mainstream, usage, it hardly seems fair to assume bad faith because of it. Some of the other stuff in this thread is more troubling, it seems there is a deep rabbit hole here, and it’s possible that Torres is generally a bad actor. Again, I don’t want to be too confident in this particular case. Although it seems we have very different ways of viewing these criticisms even when we are looking at the same thing, I will allow that you seem to have more familiarity with them.”