I largely agree with this, but I feel like your tone is too dismissive of the issue here? Like: the problem is that the maximizing mindset (encouraged by EA), applied to the question of how much to apply the maximizing mindset, says to go all in. This isn’t getting communicated explicitly in EA materials, but I think it’s an implicit message which many people receive. And although I think that it’s unhealthy to think that way, I don’t think people are dumb for receiving this message; I think it’s a pretty natural principled answer to reach, and the alternative answers feel unprincipled.
Given this, my worry is that expressing things like “EA aims to be maximizing in the second sense only” may be kind of gaslight-y to some people’s experience (although I agree that other people will think it’s a fair summary of the message they personally understood).
I largely agree with this, but I feel like your tone is too dismissive of the issue here? Like: the problem is that the maximizing mindset (encouraged by EA), applied to the question of how much to apply the maximizing mindset, says to go all in. This isn’t getting communicated explicitly in EA materials, but I think it’s an implicit message which many people receive. And although I think that it’s unhealthy to think that way, I don’t think people are dumb for receiving this message; I think it’s a pretty natural principled answer to reach, and the alternative answers feel unprincipled.
Given this, my worry is that expressing things like “EA aims to be maximizing in the second sense only” may be kind of gaslight-y to some people’s experience (although I agree that other people will think it’s a fair summary of the message they personally understood).