Personally, I share Ozzie’s concern about clickbait proliferation, but I didn’t think the title here was too bad: I think you can technically say (per utilitarianism) that sometimes being more boring is “unethical.” The point about ineffective giving and careers being off-putting is “correct,” but I don’t see that as really relevant to what Kat wrote here: those would be bad titles (in my view) primarily because they insult large personal choices that someone may have made in the past and which also tend to reflect/create a piece of someone’s identity (especially a career choice)—much more so than a writing style. Also, to me it reads a slight bit tongue-in-cheek (if only in that it feels somewhat self-referential, given the subject of the post).
It’s just an example: I think it would also sound odd to say that minor decisions that reduce impact but are otherwise fine, e.g. from the perspective of common-sense morality, are “unethical”.
I’ll agree that some people may still find “boring writing is unethical” to be off-putting, and I’ll also say that I personally find it to be “odd.” However, I definitely don’t see it as off-putting as saying/implying “your career choice to be a [position that society tends to hold up as good] was immoral,” for reasons I described above. My initial (and current) reading of your original comment (especially after seeing MichaelChen’s response) was “I think this is odd and could be very off-putting; here’s an analogy/example of why I think that.” I would certainly agree that people shouldn’t title their posts “[X career that you know and society loves] is unethical [because it’s not as effective as Y career].” However, if you’re just saying it’s odd and slightly off-putting, I would say “maybe, but I also think the benefits of being bold here might outweigh that.”
Personally, I share Ozzie’s concern about clickbait proliferation, but I didn’t think the title here was too bad: I think you can technically say (per utilitarianism) that sometimes being more boring is “unethical.” The point about ineffective giving and careers being off-putting is “correct,” but I don’t see that as really relevant to what Kat wrote here: those would be bad titles (in my view) primarily because they insult large personal choices that someone may have made in the past and which also tend to reflect/create a piece of someone’s identity (especially a career choice)—much more so than a writing style. Also, to me it reads a slight bit tongue-in-cheek (if only in that it feels somewhat self-referential, given the subject of the post).
It’s just an example: I think it would also sound odd to say that minor decisions that reduce impact but are otherwise fine, e.g. from the perspective of common-sense morality, are “unethical”.
I’ll agree that some people may still find “boring writing is unethical” to be off-putting, and I’ll also say that I personally find it to be “odd.” However, I definitely don’t see it as off-putting as saying/implying “your career choice to be a [position that society tends to hold up as good] was immoral,” for reasons I described above. My initial (and current) reading of your original comment (especially after seeing MichaelChen’s response) was “I think this is odd and could be very off-putting; here’s an analogy/example of why I think that.” I would certainly agree that people shouldn’t title their posts “[X career that you know and society loves] is unethical [because it’s not as effective as Y career].” However, if you’re just saying it’s odd and slightly off-putting, I would say “maybe, but I also think the benefits of being bold here might outweigh that.”