I think it’s wrong to think of it as criticism in the way EA thinks about criticism which is “tell me X thing I’m doing is wrong so I can fix it” but rather highlight the set of existing fundamental disagreements. I think the book is targeted at an imagined left-wing young person who the authors think would be “tricked” into EA because they misread certain claims that EA puts forward. It’s a form of memeplex competition. Moreover, I do think some of the empirical details talking about the effect ACE has on the wider community can inform a lot of EAs with coordinating with wider ecosystems in cause areas and common communication failure modes.
Well, no. I gather that the goal of these criticisms is to “disprove EA” or “argue that EA is wrong”. To the extent that they attack strawmen of EA instead of representing it for what it is and arguing against that, they’ve failed to achieve that goal.
FWIW, I read your comment as agreeing with zchuangs. They say that the book aims to convince its target audience by highlighting fundamental differences, and you say it aims to disprove EA. Highlighting (and I guess more specifically, sometimes at least, arguing against) fundamental principles of EA seems like it’s in the “disproving EA” bucket to me.
(I agree with both of these perspectives, but I only read a single essay, which zchuang called one of the weird ones, so take that with a grain of salt.)
I think it’s wrong to think of it as criticism in the way EA thinks about criticism which is “tell me X thing I’m doing is wrong so I can fix it” but rather highlight the set of existing fundamental disagreements. I think the book is targeted at an imagined left-wing young person who the authors think would be “tricked” into EA because they misread certain claims that EA puts forward. It’s a form of memeplex competition. Moreover, I do think some of the empirical details talking about the effect ACE has on the wider community can inform a lot of EAs with coordinating with wider ecosystems in cause areas and common communication failure modes.
Well, no. I gather that the goal of these criticisms is to “disprove EA” or “argue that EA is wrong”. To the extent that they attack strawmen of EA instead of representing it for what it is and arguing against that, they’ve failed to achieve that goal.
FWIW, I read your comment as agreeing with zchuangs. They say that the book aims to convince its target audience by highlighting fundamental differences, and you say it aims to disprove EA. Highlighting (and I guess more specifically, sometimes at least, arguing against) fundamental principles of EA seems like it’s in the “disproving EA” bucket to me.
(I agree with both of these perspectives, but I only read a single essay, which zchuang called one of the weird ones, so take that with a grain of salt.)