My point is that many people who disagree with the longtermist ethical viewpoint also spent years thinking about the issues, and dismissing the majority of philosophers, and the vast, vast majority of people’s views as not plausible, is itself one of the problems I tried to highlight on the original post when I said that a small group talking about how to fix everything should raise flags.
And my point about racism is that criticism of choices and priorities which have a potential to perpetuate existing structural disadvantages and inequity is not the same as calling someone racist.
The standards in the first para appear to be something like ‘you can never say that something is implausible if some philosophers believe it’. That seems like a pretty weird standard. Another way of making saying it is implausible is just saying that “I think it is probably false”.
Near-termists are also a small group talking about how to fix everything.
this is perhaps too meta, but on the second para, if that is what you meant, I don’t understand how it is a response to the comment your response was to.
I’m pointing out that you’re privileging your views over those of others—not “some philosophers,” but “most people.”
And unless you’re assuming a fairly strong version of moral realism, this isn’t a factual question, it’s a values question—so it’s strange to me to think that we should get to assume we’re correct despite being a small minority, without at least a far stronger argument that most people would agree with longermism if properly presented—and I think Stefan Schubert’s recent work implies that is not at all clear.
Any time you take a stance on anything you are privileging your view over some other people. Your argument also applies to people working on animal welfare and on global poverty. In surveys, most people don’t even seem to care about saving more lives than less.
If we are going to go down the route of saying that what EAs do should be decided by the majority opinion of the current global population, then that would be the end of EA of any kind. As I understand it, your claim is that the total view is false (or we don’t have reason to act on it) because the vast majority of the world population do not believe in the total view. Is that right?
It is difficult not to come up with examples. In 1500, most people would have believed that violence against women and slavery were permissible. Would that have made you stop campaigning to bring an end to that? These are also values, after all
My point is that many people who disagree with the longtermist ethical viewpoint also spent years thinking about the issues, and dismissing the majority of philosophers, and the vast, vast majority of people’s views as not plausible, is itself one of the problems I tried to highlight on the original post when I said that a small group talking about how to fix everything should raise flags.
And my point about racism is that criticism of choices and priorities which have a potential to perpetuate existing structural disadvantages and inequity is not the same as calling someone racist.
The standards in the first para appear to be something like ‘you can never say that something is implausible if some philosophers believe it’. That seems like a pretty weird standard. Another way of making saying it is implausible is just saying that “I think it is probably false”.
Near-termists are also a small group talking about how to fix everything.
this is perhaps too meta, but on the second para, if that is what you meant, I don’t understand how it is a response to the comment your response was to.
I’m pointing out that you’re privileging your views over those of others—not “some philosophers,” but “most people.”
And unless you’re assuming a fairly strong version of moral realism, this isn’t a factual question, it’s a values question—so it’s strange to me to think that we should get to assume we’re correct despite being a small minority, without at least a far stronger argument that most people would agree with longermism if properly presented—and I think Stefan Schubert’s recent work implies that is not at all clear.
Any time you take a stance on anything you are privileging your view over some other people. Your argument also applies to people working on animal welfare and on global poverty. In surveys, most people don’t even seem to care about saving more lives than less.
If we are going to go down the route of saying that what EAs do should be decided by the majority opinion of the current global population, then that would be the end of EA of any kind. As I understand it, your claim is that the total view is false (or we don’t have reason to act on it) because the vast majority of the world population do not believe in the total view. Is that right?
It is difficult not to come up with examples. In 1500, most people would have believed that violence against women and slavery were permissible. Would that have made you stop campaigning to bring an end to that? These are also values, after all