This is sort of unavoidably going to get into culture war/political territory… but if Nathan J Robinson is the kind of public enemy that EA has, we’re doing very well. NJR is a terrible hack who has little of substance to say and whose place in The Discourse is usually as a laughingstock, even among those who are ideologically close to him.
I’m of the opinion that EAs should pick more public fights anyways, so I see this is as a positive development.
This is somewhat reassuring, considering that I’ve been really concerned about the influence that Torres et al. have on public discourse about EA. Torres-style anti-EA backlash is mainly among extremely online leftists. (Though, to be fair, as the old saying goes, they’ve won the English department but lost the Supreme Court.) I still find that a lot of my IRL friends don’t know or care about EA.
This is nitpicky, but I wouldn’t call that “an obscure academic screed”:
It was written by Charity Navigator leadership, who presumably felt threatened or something by GiveWell. So I think it was more like a non-profit turf war thing than an academic debate.
I wasn’t around at the time, but I have the impression that it was pretty (in)famous in EA circles at the time. Among other things it prompted a response by Will MacAskill. So it also feels wrong to call it obscure.
This is sort of unavoidably going to get into culture war/political territory… but if Nathan J Robinson is the kind of public enemy that EA has, we’re doing very well. NJR is a terrible hack who has little of substance to say and whose place in The Discourse is usually as a laughingstock, even among those who are ideologically close to him.
I’m of the opinion that EAs should pick more public fights anyways, so I see this is as a positive development.
This is somewhat reassuring, considering that I’ve been really concerned about the influence that Torres et al. have on public discourse about EA. Torres-style anti-EA backlash is mainly among extremely online leftists. (Though, to be fair, as the old saying goes, they’ve won the English department but lost the Supreme Court.) I still find that a lot of my IRL friends don’t know or care about EA.
also—the clever sounding title was taken from an obscure academic screed 9 years ago—https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_elitist_philanthropy_of_so_called_effective_altruism
This is nitpicky, but I wouldn’t call that “an obscure academic screed”:
It was written by Charity Navigator leadership, who presumably felt threatened or something by GiveWell. So I think it was more like a non-profit turf war thing than an academic debate.
I wasn’t around at the time, but I have the impression that it was pretty (in)famous in EA circles at the time. Among other things it prompted a response by Will MacAskill. So it also feels wrong to call it obscure.