First off, I specifically spoke to the LessWrong moderation team in advance of writing this, with the intention of rephrasing my questions so they didn’t sound like I was trying to make a point. I’m sorry if I failed in that, but making particular points was not my intention. Second of all, you seem to be taking a very adversarial tone to my post when it was not my intention to take an adversarial tone.
Now, on to my thoughts on your particular points.
I have in fact considered that the rest of EA is incentivized to pretend that there aren’t problems. In fact, I’d assume that most of EA has. I’m not accusing the Community Health team of causing any particular scandal; just of broadly introducing an atmosphere where comparatively minor incidents may potentially get blown out of proportion.
There seem to be clear and relevant parallels here. Seven of the fifteen people named as TESCREALists in the First Monday paper are Jewish, and many stereotypes attributed to TESCREALists in this conspiracy theory (victimhood complex, manipulating our genomes, ignoring the suffering of Palestinians) line up with antisemitic stereotypes and go far beyond just “powerful people controlling things.”
I want to do maximizing myself because I was under the impression that EA is about maximizing. In my mind, if you just wanted to do a lot of good, you’d work in just about any nonprofit. In contrast, EA is about doing the most good that you can do.
First off, I specifically spoke to the LessWrong moderation team in advance of writing this, with the intention of rephrasing my questions so they didn’t sound like I was trying to make a point. I’m sorry if I failed in that, but making particular points was not my intention. Second of all, you seem to be taking a very adversarial tone to my post when it was not my intention to take an adversarial tone.
Now, on to my thoughts on your particular points.
I have in fact considered that the rest of EA is incentivized to pretend that there aren’t problems. In fact, I’d assume that most of EA has. I’m not accusing the Community Health team of causing any particular scandal; just of broadly introducing an atmosphere where comparatively minor incidents may potentially get blown out of proportion.
There seem to be clear and relevant parallels here. Seven of the fifteen people named as TESCREALists in the First Monday paper are Jewish, and many stereotypes attributed to TESCREALists in this conspiracy theory (victimhood complex, manipulating our genomes, ignoring the suffering of Palestinians) line up with antisemitic stereotypes and go far beyond just “powerful people controlling things.”
I want to do maximizing myself because I was under the impression that EA is about maximizing. In my mind, if you just wanted to do a lot of good, you’d work in just about any nonprofit. In contrast, EA is about doing the most good that you can do.
Don’t forget that maximizing is perilous.
I understand that it’s perilous, but so is donating a kidney, and a large number of EAs have done that anyway.