Somewhat of an aside but I was wondering if some others could confirm or deny my observations:
From interacting with EA folks, my impression was that the community has quite a pluralistic attitude towards utilitarianism. That is, not everyone is utilitarian, and those who are are often aware of the debates in philosophy, meaning that there’s a variety of views in terms of if people accept total utilitarianism vs. average utilitarianism, as well as act/rule/preference utilitarianism. Yet a lot of the criticisms seem to see the EA community as having an rigid consensus on kind of OG Bentham-esque act utilitarianism.
Thus it seems to me that either
my impression is wrong, EA is committed to simple hedonistic act utilitarianism, or
there’s an opportunity for some messaging to better reflect that EA is more of a “big tent” in this regard.
Incidentally, I think this is a well-written and useful article. It voices concerns that many people have, and does so with an unusual amount of charity, so I think it would be a positive thing to try to read it in good faith.
Somewhat of an aside but I was wondering if some others could confirm or deny my observations:
From interacting with EA folks, my impression was that the community has quite a pluralistic attitude towards utilitarianism. That is, not everyone is utilitarian, and those who are are often aware of the debates in philosophy, meaning that there’s a variety of views in terms of if people accept total utilitarianism vs. average utilitarianism, as well as act/rule/preference utilitarianism. Yet a lot of the criticisms seem to see the EA community as having an rigid consensus on kind of OG Bentham-esque act utilitarianism.
Thus it seems to me that either
my impression is wrong, EA is committed to simple hedonistic act utilitarianism, or
there’s an opportunity for some messaging to better reflect that EA is more of a “big tent” in this regard.
Incidentally, I think this is a well-written and useful article. It voices concerns that many people have, and does so with an unusual amount of charity, so I think it would be a positive thing to try to read it in good faith.
I think you are right.
I don’t think most people care what kind of consequentialism EA is.
I think it’s a shame that a rare article which covers the issue while in good faith, so poorly represents reality.