If, for instance, someone who has written about AI more than once argues that the Chinese government funding AI research for solely humanitarian reasons...
I think there are a bunch of examples we could use here, which fall along a spectrum of “believability” or something like that.
Where the unbelievable end of the spectrum is e.g. “China has never imprisoned a Uyghur who wasn’t an active terrorist”, and the believable end of the spectrum is e.g. “gravity is what makes objects fall”.
If someone argues that objects fall because of something something the luminiferous aether, it seems really unlikely that “they have a background in physics but just disagree about gravity” is the right explanation.
If someone argues that China actually imprisons many non-terrorist Uyghurs, it seems really likely that “they have a background in the Chinese government’s claims but just disagree with the Chinese government” is the right explanation.
So what about someone who argues that degrowth is very likely to lead to “enormous humanitarian costs”? How likely is it that “they have a background in the claims of Hickel et al. but disagree” is the right explanation, vs. something like “they’ve never read Hickel” or “they believe Hickel is right but are lying”?
Moreover, is it “basic background knowledge” that degrowth would not be very likely to lead to “enormous humanitarian costs”?
What you think of those questions seems to depend on how you feel about the degrowth question generally. To some people, it seems perfectly believable that we could realistically achieve degrowth without enormous humanitarian costs. To other people, this seems unbelievable.
I see Halstead as being on the “unbelievable” side and you as being on the “believable” side. Given that there are two sides to the question, with some number of reasonable scholars on each side, Halstead would ideally hedge his language (“degrowth would likely have enormous humanitarian costs” rather than “built-in feature”). And you’d ideally hedge your language (“fails to address reasonable arguments from people like Hickel” rather than “flatly untrue in a way that is obvious”).
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I cared more about your reply than Halstead’s comment because, while neither person is doing the ideal hedge thing, your comment was more rude/aggressive than Halstead’s.
(I could imagine someone reading his comment as insulting to the authors, but I personally read it as “he thinks the authors are deliberately making a tradeoff of one value for another” rather than “he thinks the authors support something that is clearly monstrous”.)
To me, the situation reads as one person making contentious claim X, and the other saying “X is flatly wrong in a way that is obvious to anyone who reads contentious author Y, stop mischaracterizing the positions of people like author Y” — when the first person never mentioned author Y.
Perhaps the first person should have mentioned author Y somewhere, if only to say “I disagree with them” — in this case, author Y is pretty famous for their views — but even so, a better response is “I think X is wrong because of the points made by author Y”.
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I’d feel the same way even if someone were making some contentious statement about EA. And I hope that I’d respond to e.g. “effective altruism neglects systemic change” with something like “I think article X shows this isn’t true, why are you saying this?”
I’d feel differently if that person were posting the same kinds of comments frequently, and never responding to anyone’s follow-up questions or counterarguments. Given your initial comment, maybe that’s how you feel about Halstead + degrowth? (Though if that’s the case, I still think the burden of proof is on the person accusing another of bad faith, and they should link to other cases of the person failing to engage.)
I think there are a bunch of examples we could use here, which fall along a spectrum of “believability” or something like that.
Where the unbelievable end of the spectrum is e.g. “China has never imprisoned a Uyghur who wasn’t an active terrorist”, and the believable end of the spectrum is e.g. “gravity is what makes objects fall”.
If someone argues that objects fall because of something something the luminiferous aether, it seems really unlikely that “they have a background in physics but just disagree about gravity” is the right explanation.
If someone argues that China actually imprisons many non-terrorist Uyghurs, it seems really likely that “they have a background in the Chinese government’s claims but just disagree with the Chinese government” is the right explanation.
So what about someone who argues that degrowth is very likely to lead to “enormous humanitarian costs”? How likely is it that “they have a background in the claims of Hickel et al. but disagree” is the right explanation, vs. something like “they’ve never read Hickel” or “they believe Hickel is right but are lying”?
Moreover, is it “basic background knowledge” that degrowth would not be very likely to lead to “enormous humanitarian costs”?
What you think of those questions seems to depend on how you feel about the degrowth question generally. To some people, it seems perfectly believable that we could realistically achieve degrowth without enormous humanitarian costs. To other people, this seems unbelievable.
I see Halstead as being on the “unbelievable” side and you as being on the “believable” side. Given that there are two sides to the question, with some number of reasonable scholars on each side, Halstead would ideally hedge his language (“degrowth would likely have enormous humanitarian costs” rather than “built-in feature”). And you’d ideally hedge your language (“fails to address reasonable arguments from people like Hickel” rather than “flatly untrue in a way that is obvious”).
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I cared more about your reply than Halstead’s comment because, while neither person is doing the ideal hedge thing, your comment was more rude/aggressive than Halstead’s.
(I could imagine someone reading his comment as insulting to the authors, but I personally read it as “he thinks the authors are deliberately making a tradeoff of one value for another” rather than “he thinks the authors support something that is clearly monstrous”.)
To me, the situation reads as one person making contentious claim X, and the other saying “X is flatly wrong in a way that is obvious to anyone who reads contentious author Y, stop mischaracterizing the positions of people like author Y” — when the first person never mentioned author Y.
Perhaps the first person should have mentioned author Y somewhere, if only to say “I disagree with them” — in this case, author Y is pretty famous for their views — but even so, a better response is “I think X is wrong because of the points made by author Y”.
*****
I’d feel the same way even if someone were making some contentious statement about EA. And I hope that I’d respond to e.g. “effective altruism neglects systemic change” with something like “I think article X shows this isn’t true, why are you saying this?”
I’d feel differently if that person were posting the same kinds of comments frequently, and never responding to anyone’s follow-up questions or counterarguments. Given your initial comment, maybe that’s how you feel about Halstead + degrowth? (Though if that’s the case, I still think the burden of proof is on the person accusing another of bad faith, and they should link to other cases of the person failing to engage.)