I’m not entirely sure how useful it is to have different terminologies for levels of contribution or willingness to contribute instead of just being explicit about levels of contribution at any stage where that realistically comes up (whether it’s # of pledgers or #of plan changes, for example), or later on (hopefully!), # of politicians who identify with EA. <-My certainty on this point is fairly low, I’m much more certain about the next point:
“The real question is not whether we are minimizing the contributions of less committed EAs, but whether we are (a) praising the contributions of EAs in proportion to the magnitude of their contribution, or (b) praising the contributions of EAs disproportionately to their contribution by praising everyone more or less equally. There are good reasons to opt for (b), but we should be clear that it is a departure from what is instinctively appropriate and therefore requires motivation.”
(a) is not at all intuitive to me. Praise is useful as (1) a feedback mechanism (2) general happiness increases (3)making the praised feel desired and part of a community, (4) engendering goodwill to the praiser and activating positive reciprocity norms. Praising people who do more good work more is intuitive, but it is not all intuitive that we want the praise to be proportionate to the amount of good work done. The strongest way I could steelman your argument is imagining that (1) is by far the most important function of praise, and that we do not have more granular ways to provide useful feedback other than through quantity of compliments. I think on balance (2)-(4) are pretty important too, and I also think that in general, you can be specific enough with praise to provide useful positive feedback that it doesn’t have to be so inefficient as praising somebody 1000x more times for doing 1000x more work.
I’m not entirely sure how useful it is to have different terminologies for levels of contribution or willingness to contribute instead of just being explicit about levels of contribution at any stage where that realistically comes up (whether it’s # of pledgers or #of plan changes, for example), or later on (hopefully!), # of politicians who identify with EA. <-My certainty on this point is fairly low, I’m much more certain about the next point:
Well imagine if we were talking about cities—we could refuse to say “small city” or “big city”, and then just enumerate the total length of road or the number of skyscrapers everytime such a feature was relevant… sure it would work, but it wouldn’t be great. Likewise, being fully or lightly involved in EA signals a wide range of covariant behaviors and attitudes which we might want to keep ourselves attuned to.
it is not all intuitive that we want the praise to be proportionate to the amount of good work done.
If we were giving praise on a nonconsequentialist point of view, then it would be the right thing to do, and intuitions tend to follow well-rounded nonconsequentialist moral ideas pretty well. Of course we would praise those who sacrificed more, because that’s implied by their sacrifices being praiseworthy.
(1) is by far the most important function of praise, and that we do not have more granular ways to provide useful feedback other than through quantity of compliments.
I don’t know if feedback (which, as I understand it, as a purely informational phenomenon?) is the right way to put it. Rather, we want to motivate members of the group to act certain ways, we want to keep the most-contributing individuals from dropping out or no longer caring, and we want to reinforce certain ideals and values because they are important to (or are) the goals of the movement.
2 is technically valid, but it’s like saying we should donate to Givewell because their researchers are happier than other researchers. 3 is sound, but for 4, blanket praise to all EAs interferes with reciprocity norms because the praise now has an extra degree of insensitivity to actual behavior.
The standard metric for city size is population. I normally ask for/specify this because different people’s ideas for big city/small city are VERY different. US vs. Europe vs. East Asia for example.
Madison, Wisconsin is considered a medium-sized city in the US (population 250,000) whereas many Chinese people talk about small towns of several million.
I definitely think population size is a much better gauge for a intuitive feel of how big a city is than people saying “big city” vs. “small city” It’s not a perfect metric, but it’s better than ill-defined words.
“If we were giving praise on a nonconsequentialist point of view, then it would be the right thing to do” It is unclear that this is “right”. I think it’s neither true in practice (most non consequentialists do not do this) nor true in theory (most nonconsequentialist theories would not suggest this).
I definitely think population size is a much better gauge for a intuitive feel of how big a city is than people saying “big city” vs. “small city” It’s not a perfect metric, but it’s better than ill-defined words.
I don’t think this answers the point. We don’t micromanage other people’s geographic discourse out of a desire to make their description of cities more precise, because we can rely on existing language norms to perform the function well. Likewise, if we want to be scientific or precise for any particular function then we’ll always be able to describe people based on various metrics for how much self-interest they incorporate into their decisionmaking. My point is not that we should only describe EAs as hard core or softcore, but rather that it’s a distinction which is acceptable to refer to in basic terms if a speaker feels like that is the most efficient way to convey their ideas. Likewise, even though large city or small city are imperfect descriptors, we don’t normally feel a need to tell people not to use the terms.
But it should be clear that the ire which is provoked by terms like “softcore” and “hardcore” has nothing to do with how precise the language actually is, because for one thing the people against using the terms merely wish to replace them with a different dichotomy that means the exact same thing. Rather, I take it that the issue is solely one of the implication that softcore EAs are failing to meet some (supererogatory or obligatory) moral standard.
It is unclear that this is “right”.
It is unclear whether nonconsequentialist morality should consider siubstantial altruism to be praiseworthy?
most nonconsequentialist theories would not suggest this).
Since when do most nonconsequentialist theories consider altruistic sacrifice to be neither obligatory nor supererogatory?
I’m not entirely sure how useful it is to have different terminologies for levels of contribution or willingness to contribute instead of just being explicit about levels of contribution at any stage where that realistically comes up (whether it’s # of pledgers or #of plan changes, for example), or later on (hopefully!), # of politicians who identify with EA. <-My certainty on this point is fairly low, I’m much more certain about the next point:
“The real question is not whether we are minimizing the contributions of less committed EAs, but whether we are (a) praising the contributions of EAs in proportion to the magnitude of their contribution, or (b) praising the contributions of EAs disproportionately to their contribution by praising everyone more or less equally. There are good reasons to opt for (b), but we should be clear that it is a departure from what is instinctively appropriate and therefore requires motivation.”
(a) is not at all intuitive to me. Praise is useful as (1) a feedback mechanism (2) general happiness increases (3)making the praised feel desired and part of a community, (4) engendering goodwill to the praiser and activating positive reciprocity norms. Praising people who do more good work more is intuitive, but it is not all intuitive that we want the praise to be proportionate to the amount of good work done. The strongest way I could steelman your argument is imagining that (1) is by far the most important function of praise, and that we do not have more granular ways to provide useful feedback other than through quantity of compliments. I think on balance (2)-(4) are pretty important too, and I also think that in general, you can be specific enough with praise to provide useful positive feedback that it doesn’t have to be so inefficient as praising somebody 1000x more times for doing 1000x more work.
Well imagine if we were talking about cities—we could refuse to say “small city” or “big city”, and then just enumerate the total length of road or the number of skyscrapers everytime such a feature was relevant… sure it would work, but it wouldn’t be great. Likewise, being fully or lightly involved in EA signals a wide range of covariant behaviors and attitudes which we might want to keep ourselves attuned to.
If we were giving praise on a nonconsequentialist point of view, then it would be the right thing to do, and intuitions tend to follow well-rounded nonconsequentialist moral ideas pretty well. Of course we would praise those who sacrificed more, because that’s implied by their sacrifices being praiseworthy.
I don’t know if feedback (which, as I understand it, as a purely informational phenomenon?) is the right way to put it. Rather, we want to motivate members of the group to act certain ways, we want to keep the most-contributing individuals from dropping out or no longer caring, and we want to reinforce certain ideals and values because they are important to (or are) the goals of the movement.
2 is technically valid, but it’s like saying we should donate to Givewell because their researchers are happier than other researchers. 3 is sound, but for 4, blanket praise to all EAs interferes with reciprocity norms because the praise now has an extra degree of insensitivity to actual behavior.
The standard metric for city size is population. I normally ask for/specify this because different people’s ideas for big city/small city are VERY different. US vs. Europe vs. East Asia for example.
Madison, Wisconsin is considered a medium-sized city in the US (population 250,000) whereas many Chinese people talk about small towns of several million.
I definitely think population size is a much better gauge for a intuitive feel of how big a city is than people saying “big city” vs. “small city” It’s not a perfect metric, but it’s better than ill-defined words.
“If we were giving praise on a nonconsequentialist point of view, then it would be the right thing to do” It is unclear that this is “right”. I think it’s neither true in practice (most non consequentialists do not do this) nor true in theory (most nonconsequentialist theories would not suggest this).
I don’t think this answers the point. We don’t micromanage other people’s geographic discourse out of a desire to make their description of cities more precise, because we can rely on existing language norms to perform the function well. Likewise, if we want to be scientific or precise for any particular function then we’ll always be able to describe people based on various metrics for how much self-interest they incorporate into their decisionmaking. My point is not that we should only describe EAs as hard core or softcore, but rather that it’s a distinction which is acceptable to refer to in basic terms if a speaker feels like that is the most efficient way to convey their ideas. Likewise, even though large city or small city are imperfect descriptors, we don’t normally feel a need to tell people not to use the terms.
But it should be clear that the ire which is provoked by terms like “softcore” and “hardcore” has nothing to do with how precise the language actually is, because for one thing the people against using the terms merely wish to replace them with a different dichotomy that means the exact same thing. Rather, I take it that the issue is solely one of the implication that softcore EAs are failing to meet some (supererogatory or obligatory) moral standard.
It is unclear whether nonconsequentialist morality should consider siubstantial altruism to be praiseworthy?
Since when do most nonconsequentialist theories consider altruistic sacrifice to be neither obligatory nor supererogatory?