This is more of a misread than a strawman, but on page 8 the paper says:
Sometimes the institutional critique is stated in ways that illegitimately presuppose that “complicity” with suboptimal institutions entails net harm. For example, Adams, Crary, and Gruen (2023, xxv) write:
> EA’s principles are actualized in ways that support some of the very social structures that cause suffering, thereby undermining its efforts to “do the most good.” (emphasis added)
This reasoning is straightforwardly invalid. It’s entirely possible—indeed, plausible—that you may do the most good by supporting some structures that cause suffering. For one thing, even the best possible structures—like democracy—will likely cause some suffering; it suffices that the alternatives are even worse. For another, even a suboptimal structure might be too costly, or too risky, to replace. But again, if there’s evidence that current EA priorities are actually doing more harm than good, then that’s precisely the sort of thing that EA principles are concerned with. So it makes literally no sense to express this as an external critique 10 (i.e. of the ideas, rather than their implementation).
I don’t think saying that Adams, Crary, and Gruen “illegitimately presuppose that “complicity” with suboptimal institutions entails net harm” is correct. The paper misunderstands what they were saying. Here’s the full sentence (emphasis added):
Taken together, the book’s chapters show that in numerous interrelated areas of social justice work—including animal protection, antiracism, public health advocacy, poverty alleviation, community organizing, the running of animal sanctuaries, education, feminist and LGBTQ politics, and international advocacy—EA’s principles are actualized in ways that support some of the very social structures that cause suffering, thereby undermining its efforts to “do the most good.”
I interpret it as saying:
The way the EA movement/community/professional network employs EA principles in practice fundamentally support and enable fundamental causes of suffering, which undermines EA’s ability to do the most good.
In other words, it is an empirical claim that the way EA is carried out in practice has some counterproductive results. It is not a normative claim about whether complicity with suboptimal institutions is ever okay.
But they never even try to argue that EA support for “the very social structures that cause suffering” does more harm than good. As indicated by the “thereby”, they seem to take the mere fact of complicity to suffice for “undermining its efforst to ‘do the most good’.”
I agree that they’re talking about the way that EA principles are “actualized”. They’re empirically actualized in ways that involve complicity with suboptimal institutions. And the way these authors argue, they take this fact to suffice for critique. I’m pointing out that this fact doesn’t suffice. They need to further show that the complicity does more harm than good.
This is more of a misread than a strawman, but on page 8 the paper says:
I don’t think saying that Adams, Crary, and Gruen “illegitimately presuppose that “complicity” with suboptimal institutions entails net harm” is correct. The paper misunderstands what they were saying. Here’s the full sentence (emphasis added):
I interpret it as saying:
In other words, it is an empirical claim that the way EA is carried out in practice has some counterproductive results. It is not a normative claim about whether complicity with suboptimal institutions is ever okay.
But they never even try to argue that EA support for “the very social structures that cause suffering” does more harm than good. As indicated by the “thereby”, they seem to take the mere fact of complicity to suffice for “undermining its efforst to ‘do the most good’.”
I agree that they’re talking about the way that EA principles are “actualized”. They’re empirically actualized in ways that involve complicity with suboptimal institutions. And the way these authors argue, they take this fact to suffice for critique. I’m pointing out that this fact doesn’t suffice. They need to further show that the complicity does more harm than good.