Holden Karnofsky describes the claims of his “Most Important Century” series as “wild” and “wacky”, but at the same time purports to be in the mindset of “critically examining” such “strange possibilities” with “as much rigour as possible”. This emphasis is mine, but for what is supposedly an important piece of writing in a field that has a big part of its roots in academic analytic philosophy, it is almost ridiculous to suggest that this examination has been carried out with ‘as much rigour as possible’.
(Probably unimportant note: I don’t understand why you don’t link to the specific post(s) you’re referring to; could you please do that? I ask not simply to nitpick, but because I want to acknowledge that perhaps you’re not referring to https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/ , in which case the main comment below may not apply.)
I fear you may have (seriously) mischaracterized/misquoted Holden.[1] The following is the actual quote from that post:
But part of the mindset I’ve developed through GiveWell and Open Philanthropy is being open to strange possibilities, while critically examining them with as much rigor as possible. And after a lot of investment in examining the above thesis, I think it’s likely enough that the world urgently needs more attention on it. By writing about it, I’d like to either get more attention on it, or gain more opportunities to be criticized and change my mind.
When I read the quotes from your opening paragraph, I developed the strong impression that Holden wrote something like “This series on ‘The Most Important Century’ is my attempt at critically examining some wild claims with as much rigor as possible.”JoshuaBlake also appears to have developed this impression, given that he commented “Then Karnofsky shouldn’t claim that he was arguing with “as much rigour as possibly”.”
However, this is not what Holden claimed, and I never interpreted The Most Important Century as an attempt to be “as rigorous as possible”—which should be implied given that this is a blog post series, not a series of academic papers.
Ultimately, I would like for OP to clarify the situation (e.g., are you just referring to a quote from a different post?) before I go into more detail.
Caveat: I can’t myself claim to know exactly what Holden intended, all I can say is the way you made me think Holden described his writing is very different from how I actually interpreted Holden’s claims both before and after I read this post.
I’ll be honest, I’m probably not going to go back through all of the quotations now and give the separate posts they come from. Karnofsky did put the whole series into a single pdf which can function as a single source (but as I say, I haven’t gone through again and checked myself).
I do recognize the bit you are quoting though—yes that is indeed where I got my quotations for that part from—and I did think a bit the issue you are bringing up. To me, this seems like a fair paraphrase/description of Karnofsky in that section:
a) He’s developed a mindset in which he critically examines things like this with as much rigour as possible;
and
b) He has made a lot of investment in examining this thesis.
So it seemed—and still seems—to me that he is implying that he has invested a lot of time in critically examining this thesis with as much as rigour as possible.
However, I would not have used the specific phrasing that JoshuaBlake used. i.e. I deliberately did not say something like ’Karnofsky claims tohave written these posts with as much rigour as possible”. So I do think that one could try to give him the benefit of the doubt and say something like:
‘Although he spent a lot of time examining the thesis with as much rigor as possible, it does not necessarily follow that he wrote the posts in a way that shows that. So criticising the writing in the posts is kind of an unfair way to attack his use of rigour.‘
But I think to me this just seemed like I would be trying a bit too hard to avoid criticising him. This comes back to some of my points in my post: i.e. I am suggesting that his posts are not written in a way that invites clear criticism, despite his claim that his is one of his main intentions and I suggest that Karnofsky’s rhetorical style aims for the best of both worlds: He wants his readers to think both that he has thought about this very rigorously and critically for a long time but also—wherever it seems vague or wrong—to give him the benefit of the doubt and say ‘well it was never meant to be taken too seriously or to be 100% rigorous, they’re just blog posts etc.’.
(Just a note: Of course you are free to go into more detail in comments but I’m not sure I have much bandwidth to devote to writing long replies.)
(Probably unimportant note: I don’t understand why you don’t link to the specific post(s) you’re referring to; could you please do that? I ask not simply to nitpick, but because I want to acknowledge that perhaps you’re not referring to https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/ , in which case the main comment below may not apply.)
I fear you may have (seriously) mischaracterized/misquoted Holden.[1] The following is the actual quote from that post:
When I read the quotes from your opening paragraph, I developed the strong impression that Holden wrote something like “This series on ‘The Most Important Century’ is my attempt at critically examining some wild claims with as much rigor as possible.” JoshuaBlake also appears to have developed this impression, given that he commented “Then Karnofsky shouldn’t claim that he was arguing with “as much rigour as possibly”.”
However, this is not what Holden claimed, and I never interpreted The Most Important Century as an attempt to be “as rigorous as possible”—which should be implied given that this is a blog post series, not a series of academic papers.
Ultimately, I would like for OP to clarify the situation (e.g., are you just referring to a quote from a different post?) before I go into more detail.
Caveat: I can’t myself claim to know exactly what Holden intended, all I can say is the way you made me think Holden described his writing is very different from how I actually interpreted Holden’s claims both before and after I read this post.
I appreciate the comment.
I’ll be honest, I’m probably not going to go back through all of the quotations now and give the separate posts they come from. Karnofsky did put the whole series into a single pdf which can function as a single source (but as I say, I haven’t gone through again and checked myself).
I do recognize the bit you are quoting though—yes that is indeed where I got my quotations for that part from—and I did think a bit the issue you are bringing up. To me, this seems like a fair paraphrase/description of Karnofsky in that section:
a) He’s developed a mindset in which he critically examines things like this with as much rigour as possible;
and
b) He has made a lot of investment in examining this thesis.
So it seemed—and still seems—to me that he is implying that he has invested a lot of time in critically examining this thesis with as much as rigour as possible.
However, I would not have used the specific phrasing that JoshuaBlake used. i.e. I deliberately did not say something like ’Karnofsky claims to have written these posts with as much rigour as possible”. So I do think that one could try to give him the benefit of the doubt and say something like:
‘Although he spent a lot of time examining the thesis with as much rigor as possible, it does not necessarily follow that he wrote the posts in a way that shows that. So criticising the writing in the posts is kind of an unfair way to attack his use of rigour.‘
But I think to me this just seemed like I would be trying a bit too hard to avoid criticising him. This comes back to some of my points in my post: i.e. I am suggesting that his posts are not written in a way that invites clear criticism, despite his claim that his is one of his main intentions and I suggest that Karnofsky’s rhetorical style aims for the best of both worlds: He wants his readers to think both that he has thought about this very rigorously and critically for a long time but also—wherever it seems vague or wrong—to give him the benefit of the doubt and say ‘well it was never meant to be taken too seriously or to be 100% rigorous, they’re just blog posts etc.’.
(Just a note: Of course you are free to go into more detail in comments but I’m not sure I have much bandwidth to devote to writing long replies.)