It would be helpful if criticism could be marked by intended audience and purpose. It’s OK if authors publish stuff that is targeted to people who already firmly believe in the core principles of their system, rather than attempting to engage with a broader audience. Lots of posts on the Forum (probably most posts) do the same thing. However, authors who make that particular targeting choice have no standing to complain when people outside their system (and inside the system they don’t like) don’t engage with their criticism.
I have only read small pieces of the book, but the sections I have read have been fairly clear that the main aim of the book is to shine a light onto a diverse range of voices speaking about negative consequences of effective altruism within animal advocacy. Here’s the ending of the introduction:
The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does is, in real part, a project of recovery: there are voices and projects much older than EA, keenly needed activist traditions that EA lacks the resources to asses and so threatens to squelch. We seek to recover, positively, what we are in danger of losing. (pg. xxx)
It is not intended to persuade effective altruists. Amia Srinivasan more or less says in the forward that she expects effective altruists to essentially ignore the book:
This volume contains many voices to which Effective Altruism as a whole is not in the practice of listening, even when those voices call for things—like the end of farmed animal suffering—that Effective Altruism also supports. Most of the volume’s contributors are not philosophers and academics, and do not write in the chosen vernacular of Effective Altruism. They raise worries about the overwhelming whiteness, middle-classness, and maleness of the Effective Altruist community that many of its members are likely to think irrelevant to the assessment of Effective Altruism’s value. They often speak from experience, and do not purport to offer alternative general principles that can guide all moral decision-making. There is every possibility, then, that Effective Altruists will ignore what these voices have to say—or fail to take the time to understand what their significance might be. That would be a deep shame, and what’s more, a betrayal of what I believe is a real commitment, on the part of many Effective Altruists, to bring about a better world. (pg. xii)
It would be helpful if criticism could be marked by intended audience and purpose. It’s OK if authors publish stuff that is targeted to people who already firmly believe in the core principles of their system, rather than attempting to engage with a broader audience. Lots of posts on the Forum (probably most posts) do the same thing. However, authors who make that particular targeting choice have no standing to complain when people outside their system (and inside the system they don’t like) don’t engage with their criticism.
I have only read small pieces of the book, but the sections I have read have been fairly clear that the main aim of the book is to shine a light onto a diverse range of voices speaking about negative consequences of effective altruism within animal advocacy. Here’s the ending of the introduction:
It is not intended to persuade effective altruists. Amia Srinivasan more or less says in the forward that she expects effective altruists to essentially ignore the book: