Great question! Yeah, I personally favor animal advocacy over reducing extinction risk. (I use existential risk to include both risks of extinction and risks of well-populated, but morally bad, e.g. dystopian, futures.) Here’s another blog post that talks about some things to consider when deciding which of these long-term risks to prioritize: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/t3/some_considerations_for_different_ways_to_reduce/
Also note that some work might both decrease extinction and quality risks, such as general EA movement-building and research. Also, “animal advocacy” is kind of a vague term, which could either refer to just “values spreading” (i.e. trying to inspire people, now and/or in the future, to have better values and/or act more morally), or just generally refer to “helping animals.” If it’s used as the latter, then it could include extinction risk if you think that will help future animals or animal-like beings (e.g. sentient machines).
Yep. I’ve used the “Tyrael” username on here for posts that I might have wanted to keep anonymous (largely due to the downvoting brigades), but ended up being okay with it being nonanonymous after the fact.
Evidence is (i) downvoting is on certain users/topics, rather than certain arguments/rhetoric, (ii) lots of downvotes relative to a small amount of negative comments, (iii) strange timing, e.g. I quickly got two downvotes on the OP before anyone had time to read it (<2 minutes).
I think it happens to me some, but I think it happens a lot to animal-focused content generally.
Edit: jtbc, I mean “systematically downvoting content that contributes to the discussion because you disagree with it, you don’t like the author, or other ‘improper’ reasons.” Maybe “brigades” was the wrong word if that suggests coordination, which i’m updating towards after searching online for more uses of the term. Though there might be coordination, not really sure.
Yep. I’ve used the “Tyrael” username on here for posts that I might have wanted to keep anonymous (largely due to the downvoting brigades), but ended up being okay with it being nonanonymous after the fact.
Great question! Yeah, I personally favor animal advocacy over reducing extinction risk. (I use existential risk to include both risks of extinction and risks of well-populated, but morally bad, e.g. dystopian, futures.) Here’s another blog post that talks about some things to consider when deciding which of these long-term risks to prioritize: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/t3/some_considerations_for_different_ways_to_reduce/
Also note that some work might both decrease extinction and quality risks, such as general EA movement-building and research. Also, “animal advocacy” is kind of a vague term, which could either refer to just “values spreading” (i.e. trying to inspire people, now and/or in the future, to have better values and/or act more morally), or just generally refer to “helping animals.” If it’s used as the latter, then it could include extinction risk if you think that will help future animals or animal-like beings (e.g. sentient machines).
Am I right in thinking you are the author of the linked post?
Yep. I’ve used the “Tyrael” username on here for posts that I might have wanted to keep anonymous (largely due to the downvoting brigades), but ended up being okay with it being nonanonymous after the fact.
Have you experienced downvoting brigades? How do you distinguish them from sincere negative feedback?
Evidence is (i) downvoting is on certain users/topics, rather than certain arguments/rhetoric, (ii) lots of downvotes relative to a small amount of negative comments, (iii) strange timing, e.g. I quickly got two downvotes on the OP before anyone had time to read it (<2 minutes).
I think it happens to me some, but I think it happens a lot to animal-focused content generally.
Edit: jtbc, I mean “systematically downvoting content that contributes to the discussion because you disagree with it, you don’t like the author, or other ‘improper’ reasons.” Maybe “brigades” was the wrong word if that suggests coordination, which i’m updating towards after searching online for more uses of the term. Though there might be coordination, not really sure.
So to clarify, the accounts:
thebestwecan
Tyrael
Jacy_Anthis2
are all yours?
The last account is presumably a dummy one created by mapping comments from other sites to the EA Forum, but yeah, the first two are mine.
What downvoting brigades are there?