Yeah, almost made a post about this one because it was clickbaity enough to get me to click and read through, but then I kind of came to the end and thought “wow, maybe I shouldn’t talk about this any further because it feels like the prose is kind of designed to keep drawing you in with outrageous claims without ever giving you much to actually engage with.
I think have this up is fine, and I think there are benefits to collecting this sort of thing because it gives people a place to go to engage with it, but at the same time I feel like these pieces are waging an attention war, and that other posts highlighting them might suck in more people than it’s productive for, so maybe reconsider creating a sequence with a bunch of different posts which would essentially be boosting that effect. (Alternatively, you could make one post with that title and just add new pieces to the comments, maybe).
Yeah, I think your reaction to it was what my position used to be Tristan. But I think each article like this, even if clickbaity, provides another ‘brick in the wall’ against EA. Now I think it’s a flimsy wall given the weak nature of the arguments, but it should still be demolished before it becomes too thick imo.
The point about not engaging in an attention war is valid, so I’d be willing to consider alternative ways of writing these pieces, not as ‘dunks of anti-EA people’ put more as picking out particular arguments from these pieces that I think are common but unconvincing as anti-EA arguments[1]. In other words, being very clear about ‘playing the ball and not the man’
Would be great to hear your thoughts, but thanks for reading :)
Yeah, almost made a post about this one because it was clickbaity enough to get me to click and read through, but then I kind of came to the end and thought “wow, maybe I shouldn’t talk about this any further because it feels like the prose is kind of designed to keep drawing you in with outrageous claims without ever giving you much to actually engage with.
I think have this up is fine, and I think there are benefits to collecting this sort of thing because it gives people a place to go to engage with it, but at the same time I feel like these pieces are waging an attention war, and that other posts highlighting them might suck in more people than it’s productive for, so maybe reconsider creating a sequence with a bunch of different posts which would essentially be boosting that effect. (Alternatively, you could make one post with that title and just add new pieces to the comments, maybe).
Yeah, I think your reaction to it was what my position used to be Tristan. But I think each article like this, even if clickbaity, provides another ‘brick in the wall’ against EA. Now I think it’s a flimsy wall given the weak nature of the arguments, but it should still be demolished before it becomes too thick imo.
The point about not engaging in an attention war is valid, so I’d be willing to consider alternative ways of writing these pieces, not as ‘dunks of anti-EA people’ put more as picking out particular arguments from these pieces that I think are common but unconvincing as anti-EA arguments[1]. In other words, being very clear about ‘playing the ball and not the man’
Would be great to hear your thoughts, but thanks for reading :)
I use ‘arguments’ twice in this sentance but I think I mean too different things:
1) an argument as a piece of evidence, e.g. this thought experiment makes us doubt consequentialism
2) an argument as a general theory about morality/behaviour, e.g. EA is wrong and here’s why
would welcome any suggestions readers have