”In the last week alone, the effective altruist movement has been on the cover of The New Yorker, The NYT, and Time Magazine. It has billions in funding, and wants to make the world a better place. The problem is that it’s poisonous.”
However you finished that same thread by tweeting:
”10/ Ultimately this is what the “longtermism” view is—merely a dilution of the utilitarianism in effective altruism to caring only about existential risk, which is something everyone can get on board with”
I dislike the implication that EA is poisonous, but fair enough. But seemingly you don’t believe this either, hence you tweeted your final tweet. That seems clickbaity.
Also, if you think that EA gets the balance right in practice, I don’t think it’s okay to say it’s a poision. If the median EA does the things as you’d want them done, then it seems like EA is antivenom, even if parts of the dose would be venomous on their own. This seems unreasonable.
What’s more, would you call the need to tell an axe murdered where your friend is hiding a “poison” in virtue ethics? Or most people’s denial of those dying in the developing world in a way that can be cheaply prevented? This seems an unfair judgement of EA alone.
I think the framing (which again, even you don’t seem to believe) of EA being a poison is unreasonable, unfair and clickbaity.
Just to note: the specific accusation of it being “unreasonable” and clickbaity” relies entirely on there being a really strong difference in valence between the terms “poison” (my lay term for it) and “repugnancy” (the well-accepted academic term for it) and I just don’t think it’s the case that “this philosophy is poisonous” is an unreasonable stretch from “this philosophy is repugnant.” That may be a personal thing, but they seem within the same range of negative tone to me, and hence it also seems neither especially unreasonable or clickbaity to lead with a more understandable analogy of the same valence and then explain it in the text. Clickbait would have been if I titled it “Why do billionaires keep giving to a secretive poisonous philosophy?” not “Why I am not an effective altruist.”
Yeah, I think there is a clear difference. Do you write about the flaws in other moral systems using equivalently valent terms?
But even if there isn’t a difference, you yourself don’t believe that EA is a poison. You think it’s got some poision in it. I dislike the framing of that original, much shared, tweet.
When sharing this article you tweeted:
”In the last week alone, the effective altruist movement has been on the cover of The New Yorker, The NYT, and Time Magazine. It has billions in funding, and wants to make the world a better place. The problem is that it’s poisonous.”
However you finished that same thread by tweeting:
”10/ Ultimately this is what the “longtermism” view is—merely a dilution of the utilitarianism in effective altruism to caring only about existential risk, which is something everyone can get on board with”
I dislike the implication that EA is poisonous, but fair enough. But seemingly you don’t believe this either, hence you tweeted your final tweet. That seems clickbaity.
Also, if you think that EA gets the balance right in practice, I don’t think it’s okay to say it’s a poision. If the median EA does the things as you’d want them done, then it seems like EA is antivenom, even if parts of the dose would be venomous on their own. This seems unreasonable.
What’s more, would you call the need to tell an axe murdered where your friend is hiding a “poison” in virtue ethics? Or most people’s denial of those dying in the developing world in a way that can be cheaply prevented? This seems an unfair judgement of EA alone.
I think the framing (which again, even you don’t seem to believe) of EA being a poison is unreasonable, unfair and clickbaity.
Just to note: the specific accusation of it being “unreasonable” and clickbaity” relies entirely on there being a really strong difference in valence between the terms “poison” (my lay term for it) and “repugnancy” (the well-accepted academic term for it) and I just don’t think it’s the case that “this philosophy is poisonous” is an unreasonable stretch from “this philosophy is repugnant.” That may be a personal thing, but they seem within the same range of negative tone to me, and hence it also seems neither especially unreasonable or clickbaity to lead with a more understandable analogy of the same valence and then explain it in the text. Clickbait would have been if I titled it “Why do billionaires keep giving to a secretive poisonous philosophy?” not “Why I am not an effective altruist.”
Yeah, I think there is a clear difference. Do you write about the flaws in other moral systems using equivalently valent terms?
But even if there isn’t a difference, you yourself don’t believe that EA is a poison. You think it’s got some poision in it. I dislike the framing of that original, much shared, tweet.