I don’t understand the meaning of this post/excerpt. It reads like a critique, but I can’t tell what Ben wants to change or how he wants to change it, as the Republic summary has no clear bearing on the actions of any EA organization I’m aware of.
Also, if I weren’t someone with a lot of context on who Ben is, this would be even more confusing (in my case, I can at least link his concerns here to other things I know he’s written).
I recommend that people creating linkposts include a brief summary of what they took away from what they’ve linked to (or an actual abstract if you’ve linked to a scientific paper).
It can also be helpful to include information about the author if they don’t have a position that makes their expertise obvious. Even if someone doesn’t have a relevant background, just knowing about things they’ve written before can help; for example, you might note that Ben has been writing about EA for a while, partly from a perspective of being critical about issues X and Y.
On the plus side, I like the way you always include archive.org links! It’s important to avoid reference rot, and you’re the only poster I know of who takes this clearly positive step toward doing so.
It reads like a critique, but I can’t tell what Ben wants to change or how he wants to change it, as the Republic summary has no clear bearing on the actions of any EA organization I’m aware of.
I’m not sure what Ben wants to change (or if he even has policy recommendations).
I think the Republic parallel is interesting. “Figure out how the entire system should be ordered, then align your own life such that it accords with that ordering” is a plausible algorithm for doing ethics, but it’s not clear that it dominates alternative algorithms.
I appreciated the parallel because I hadn’t made the connection before, and I think something like this algorithm is operating latently underneath a lot of EA reasoning.
I don’t understand the meaning of this post/excerpt. It reads like a critique, but I can’t tell what Ben wants to change or how he wants to change it, as the Republic summary has no clear bearing on the actions of any EA organization I’m aware of.
Also, if I weren’t someone with a lot of context on who Ben is, this would be even more confusing (in my case, I can at least link his concerns here to other things I know he’s written).
I recommend that people creating linkposts include a brief summary of what they took away from what they’ve linked to (or an actual abstract if you’ve linked to a scientific paper).
It can also be helpful to include information about the author if they don’t have a position that makes their expertise obvious. Even if someone doesn’t have a relevant background, just knowing about things they’ve written before can help; for example, you might note that Ben has been writing about EA for a while, partly from a perspective of being critical about issues X and Y.
On the plus side, I like the way you always include archive.org links! It’s important to avoid reference rot, and you’re the only poster I know of who takes this clearly positive step toward doing so.
I’m not sure what Ben wants to change (or if he even has policy recommendations).
I think the Republic parallel is interesting. “Figure out how the entire system should be ordered, then align your own life such that it accords with that ordering” is a plausible algorithm for doing ethics, but it’s not clear that it dominates alternative algorithms.
I appreciated the parallel because I hadn’t made the connection before, and I think something like this algorithm is operating latently underneath a lot of EA reasoning.