Here’s what I think Spencer is saying (somewhat abridged):
Holden’s writing does not have the careful rigour and precision you would get from a philosophy paper
This makes it harder to engage with the arguments
This means you should be less willing to trust Holden’s conclusions, if you had only formed your conclusions based on those posts alone
This all seems reasonable, but I don’t think Holden was aiming for a carefully reasoned philosophy paper, I think he was aiming for accessible blog posts.
I would be more excited to see Spencer steelman the strongest case for the Most Important Century hypothesis, and then argue why it’s incorrect.
I don’t think Holden was aiming for a carefully reasoned philosophy paper, I think he was aiming for accessible blog posts
Then Karnofsky shouldn’t claim that he was arguing with “as much rigour as possibly”.
EDIT: It is not clear Karnofsky was claiming that, see linked comment thread in the replies.
I would be more excited to see Spencer steelman the strongest case for the Most Important Century hypothesis, and then argue why it’s incorrect.
This is placing a very high burden on Spencer. Karnofsky claims that the argument is so strong that it should update you from a roughly 1 in 10 million prior to around 1 in 5, a Bayes factor of 2.5 million. If this is the case, it should be on Karnofsky to lay it out clearly, not Spencer.
In fact, this type of requirement is directly addressed by Spencer in his essay.
Firstly, I think that the main issues to do with clarity and precision that I will highlight occur at a fundamental level. It is not that they are ‘more important’ than individual, specific, object-level disagreements, but I claim that Karnofsky does a sufficiently poor job of explaining his main claims, the structure of his arguments, the dependencies between his propositions, and in separating his claims from the verifications of those claims, that it actually prevents detailed, in-depth discussions of object-level disagreements from making much sense.
And
To form detailed, specific criticisms of something that one finds to be vague and disorganized, one typically has to actually add clarity first. For example, by picking a precise characterization for a term that was left undefined, as MacAskill had to do in his Are we living at the hinge of history? essay when responding to Parfit, or by rearranging a set of points that were made haphazardly into an argument that is linear enough to be cleanly attacked. But I have not set out to do these things. In particular, if one finds the claims to be generally unconvincing and can’t see a good route to bolstering them with better versions of the arguments, then it is hard to find motivation to do this.
Thank you for the correction, I had not checked the full context of the quote myself. I have now edited to clarify that Karnofsky did not claim this in response to this and Spencer’s reply.
Here’s what I think Spencer is saying (somewhat abridged):
Holden’s writing does not have the careful rigour and precision you would get from a philosophy paper
This makes it harder to engage with the arguments
This means you should be less willing to trust Holden’s conclusions, if you had only formed your conclusions based on those posts alone
This all seems reasonable, but I don’t think Holden was aiming for a carefully reasoned philosophy paper, I think he was aiming for accessible blog posts.
I would be more excited to see Spencer steelman the strongest case for the Most Important Century hypothesis, and then argue why it’s incorrect.
Then Karnofsky shouldn’t claim that he was arguing with “as much rigour as possibly”.
EDIT: It is not clear Karnofsky was claiming that, see linked comment thread in the replies.
This is placing a very high burden on Spencer. Karnofsky claims that the argument is so strong that it should update you from a roughly 1 in 10 million prior to around 1 in 5, a Bayes factor of 2.5 million. If this is the case, it should be on Karnofsky to lay it out clearly, not Spencer.
In fact, this type of requirement is directly addressed by Spencer in his essay.
And
Regarding
See my comment
Thank you for the correction, I had not checked the full context of the quote myself. I have now edited to clarify that Karnofsky did not claim this in response to this and Spencer’s reply.