Executive summary: Moral misdirection, which involves leading people morally astray by manipulating their attention, is a major barrier to intellectual and moral progress that even many otherwise good people routinely engage in, and its avoidance may be the most important component of intellectual integrity.
Key points:
Moral misdirection involves leading people morally astray by manipulating their attention, predictably reducing the importance-weighted accuracy of their moral beliefs.
Examples of moral misdirection include anti-woke culture warring, media misdirection (e.g. focusing on Clinton’s emails), and anti-vax scaremongering.
Responsible criticism of a good thing should acknowledge the most important truth and reinforce it, while pursuing remaining disagreements.
Criticism of effective altruism that fails to acknowledge the potential to do a lot of good in the face of severe global problems constitutes harmful, lethal moral misdirection.
Honest public communication requires taking care not to mislead general audiences, even if individual claims are technically true.
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Executive summary: Moral misdirection, which involves leading people morally astray by manipulating their attention, is a major barrier to intellectual and moral progress that even many otherwise good people routinely engage in, and its avoidance may be the most important component of intellectual integrity.
Key points:
Moral misdirection involves leading people morally astray by manipulating their attention, predictably reducing the importance-weighted accuracy of their moral beliefs.
Examples of moral misdirection include anti-woke culture warring, media misdirection (e.g. focusing on Clinton’s emails), and anti-vax scaremongering.
Responsible criticism of a good thing should acknowledge the most important truth and reinforce it, while pursuing remaining disagreements.
Criticism of effective altruism that fails to acknowledge the potential to do a lot of good in the face of severe global problems constitutes harmful, lethal moral misdirection.
Honest public communication requires taking care not to mislead general audiences, even if individual claims are technically true.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.