What “major life goals should include (emphasis added)” is not a sociological question. It is not a topic that a sociology department would study. See my comment that I agree “conventional wisdom is wrong” in dismissing the philosophy of effective altruism (including the work of Peter Singer). And my remark immediately thereafter: “Yes, these are philosophical positions, not sociological ones, so it is not so outrageous to have a group of philosophers and philosophically-minded college students outperform conventional wisdom by doing first-principles reasoning”.
I am not citing Amazon as an example of an actor using evidence and reason to do as much good as possible. I am citing it as an example of an organization that is effective at what it aims to do.
Maybe I’m just missing something, but I don’t get why EAs have enough standing in philosophy to dispute the experts, but not in sociology. I’m not sure I could reliably predict which other fields you think conventional wisdom is or isn’t adequate in.
In fields where it’s possible to make progress with first-principles arguments/armchair reasoning, I think smart non-experts stand a chance of outperforming. I don’t want to make strong claims about the likelihood of success here; I just want to say that it’s a live possibility. I am much more comfortable saying that outperforming conventional wisdom is extremely unlikely on topics where first-principles arguments/armchair reasoning are insufficient.
(As it happens, EAs aren’t really disputing the experts in philosophy, but that’s beside the point...)
So basically, just philosophy, math, and some very simple applied math (like, say, the exponential growth of an epidemic), but already that last example is quite shaky.
I think the crux of the disagreement is this: you can’t disentangle the practical sociological questions from the normative questions this easily. E.g., the practical solution to “how do we feed everyone” is “torture lots of animals” because our society cares too much about having cheap, tasty food and too little about animals’ suffering. The practical solution to “what do we do about crime” is “throw people in prison for absolutely trivial stuff” because our society cares too much about retribution and too little about the suffering of disadvantaged populations. And so on. Practical sociological solutions are always accompanied by normative baggage, and much of this normative baggage is bad.
EA wouldn’t be effective if it just made normative critiques (“the world is extremely unjust”) but didn’t generate its own practical solutions (“donate to GiveWell”). EA has more impact than most philosophy departments because it criticizes many conventional philosophical positions while also generating its own practical sociological solutions. This doesn’t mean all of those solutions are right—I agree that manyaren’t—but EA wouldn’t be EA if it didn’t challenge conventional sociological wisdom.
(Separately, I’d contest that this is not a topic of interest to sociologists. Most sociology PhD curricula devote substantial time to social theory, and a large portion of sociologists are critical theorists; i.e., they believe that “social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals… [social theory] argues that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation.”)
What “major life goals should include (emphasis added)” is not a sociological question. It is not a topic that a sociology department would study. See my comment that I agree “conventional wisdom is wrong” in dismissing the philosophy of effective altruism (including the work of Peter Singer). And my remark immediately thereafter: “Yes, these are philosophical positions, not sociological ones, so it is not so outrageous to have a group of philosophers and philosophically-minded college students outperform conventional wisdom by doing first-principles reasoning”.
I am not citing Amazon as an example of an actor using evidence and reason to do as much good as possible. I am citing it as an example of an organization that is effective at what it aims to do.
Maybe I’m just missing something, but I don’t get why EAs have enough standing in philosophy to dispute the experts, but not in sociology. I’m not sure I could reliably predict which other fields you think conventional wisdom is or isn’t adequate in.
In fields where it’s possible to make progress with first-principles arguments/armchair reasoning, I think smart non-experts stand a chance of outperforming. I don’t want to make strong claims about the likelihood of success here; I just want to say that it’s a live possibility. I am much more comfortable saying that outperforming conventional wisdom is extremely unlikely on topics where first-principles arguments/armchair reasoning are insufficient.
(As it happens, EAs aren’t really disputing the experts in philosophy, but that’s beside the point...)
So basically, just philosophy, math, and some very simple applied math (like, say, the exponential growth of an epidemic), but already that last example is quite shaky.
I think the crux of the disagreement is this: you can’t disentangle the practical sociological questions from the normative questions this easily. E.g., the practical solution to “how do we feed everyone” is “torture lots of animals” because our society cares too much about having cheap, tasty food and too little about animals’ suffering. The practical solution to “what do we do about crime” is “throw people in prison for absolutely trivial stuff” because our society cares too much about retribution and too little about the suffering of disadvantaged populations. And so on. Practical sociological solutions are always accompanied by normative baggage, and much of this normative baggage is bad.
EA wouldn’t be effective if it just made normative critiques (“the world is extremely unjust”) but didn’t generate its own practical solutions (“donate to GiveWell”). EA has more impact than most philosophy departments because it criticizes many conventional philosophical positions while also generating its own practical sociological solutions. This doesn’t mean all of those solutions are right—I agree that many aren’t—but EA wouldn’t be EA if it didn’t challenge conventional sociological wisdom.
(Separately, I’d contest that this is not a topic of interest to sociologists. Most sociology PhD curricula devote substantial time to social theory, and a large portion of sociologists are critical theorists; i.e., they believe that “social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals… [social theory] argues that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation.”)