Thanks! I do want to stress that I really respect your motives in this case and your evident thoughtfulness and empathy in response to the discussion; I also think this particular bet might be overall beneficial. I also agree with your suggestion that explicitly stating intent and being especially careful with tone/framing can probably do a lot of work.
It’s maybe a bit unfortunate that I’m making this comment in a thread that began with your bet, then, since my comment isn’t really about your bet. I realize it’s probably pretty unpleasant to have an extended ethics debate somehow spring up around one of your posts.
I mainly just wanted to say that it’s OK for people to raise feelings of personal/moral discomfort and that these feelings of discomfort can at least sometimes be important enough to justify refraining from a public bet. It seemed to me like some of the reaction to Chi’s comment went too far in the opposite direction. Maybe wrongly/unfairly, it seemed to me that there was some suggestion that this sort of discomfort should basically just be ignored or that people should feel discouraged from expressing their discomfort on the EA Forum.
Thanks bmg. FWIW, I provide my justification (from my personal perspective) here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g2F5BBfhTNESR5PJJ/concerning-the-recent-wuhan-coronavirus-outbreak?commentId=mWi2L4S4sRZiSehJq
Thanks! I do want to stress that I really respect your motives in this case and your evident thoughtfulness and empathy in response to the discussion; I also think this particular bet might be overall beneficial. I also agree with your suggestion that explicitly stating intent and being especially careful with tone/framing can probably do a lot of work.
It’s maybe a bit unfortunate that I’m making this comment in a thread that began with your bet, then, since my comment isn’t really about your bet. I realize it’s probably pretty unpleasant to have an extended ethics debate somehow spring up around one of your posts.
I mainly just wanted to say that it’s OK for people to raise feelings of personal/moral discomfort and that these feelings of discomfort can at least sometimes be important enough to justify refraining from a public bet. It seemed to me like some of the reaction to Chi’s comment went too far in the opposite direction. Maybe wrongly/unfairly, it seemed to me that there was some suggestion that this sort of discomfort should basically just be ignored or that people should feel discouraged from expressing their discomfort on the EA Forum.