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.”)
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.”)