I find it quite irritating that no matter how much in depth object level criticism people like Thorstadt or I make, if we dare to mention meta-level problems at all we often get treated like rabid social justice vigilantes. This is just mud-slinging: both meta level and object level issues are important for the epistemological health of the movement.
How does writing a substantive post on x-risk give Thorstad a free pass to cast aspersions when he turns to discussing politics or economics?
I’m criticizing specific content here. I don’t know who you are or what your grievances are, and I’d ask you not to project them onto my specific criticisms of Thorstad and Crary et al.
Thorstad acknowledged that many of us have engaged in depth with the critique he references, but instead of treating our responses as worth considering, he suggests it is “worth considering if the social and financial position of effective altruists might have something to do with” the conclusions we reach.
It is hardly “mud-slinging” for me to find this slimy dismissal objectionable. Nor is it mud-slinging to point out ways in which Crary et al (cited approvingly by Thorstad) are clearly being unprincipled in their appeals to “systemic change”. This is specific, textually-grounded criticism of specific actors, none of whom are you.
I think Thorstad has written very good stuff-for example on the way in which arguments for small reductions in extinction risk. More politically, his reporting on Scott Alexander and some other figures connected to the community’s racism is a useful public service and he has every right to be pissed off {EDIT: sentence originally ended here: I meant to say he has every right to be pissed of at people ignore or disparaging the racism stuff]. I don’t even necessarily entirely disagree with the meta-level critique being offered here.
But it was still striking to me that someone responded to the complaint that people making the institutional critique tend not to actually have much in the way of actionable information, and to take a “let me explain why these people came to their obviously wrong views” tone, by posting a bunch of stuff that was mostly like that.
If my tone is sharp it’s also because, like Richard I find the easy, unthinking combination of “the problem with these people is that they don’t care about changing the system” with “why are they doing meat alternatives and not vegan outreach aimed at a particular ethnic group that makes up <20% of the population or animal shelters” to be genuinely enragingly hypocritical and unserious. That’s actually somewhat separate from whether EAs are insufficiently sympathetic to anticapitalist or “social justice”-coded.
Incidentally, while I agree with Jason that it’s “Moskowitz and Tuna ought to be able to personally decide where nearly all the money in the movement is spent” that is the weird claim that needs defending, my guess is that at least one practical effect of this has been to pull the movement left, not right, on several issues. Open Phil spent money on anti- mass incarceration stuff, and vaguely left-coded macroeconomic policy stuff at a time when the community was not particularly interested in either of those things. Indeed I remember Thorstad singling out critiques of the criminal justice stuff as examples of the community holding left-coded stuff to a higher standard of proof. More recently you must have seen the rationalist complaints on the forum about how Open Phil won’t fund anything “right-coded”. None of that’s to say there are no problems in principle with unaccountable billionares of course. After all, our other major billionaire donor was SBF! (Though his politics wasn’t really the issue.)
To be clear, Thorstadt has written around a hundred different articles critiquing EA positions in depth, including significant amounts of object level criticism.
I find it quite irritating that no matter how much in depth object level criticism people like Thorstadt or I make, if we dare to mention meta-level problems at all we often get treated like rabid social justice vigilantes. This is just mud-slinging: both meta level and object level issues are important for the epistemological health of the movement.
How does writing a substantive post on x-risk give Thorstad a free pass to cast aspersions when he turns to discussing politics or economics?
I’m criticizing specific content here. I don’t know who you are or what your grievances are, and I’d ask you not to project them onto my specific criticisms of Thorstad and Crary et al.
Thorstad acknowledged that many of us have engaged in depth with the critique he references, but instead of treating our responses as worth considering, he suggests it is “worth considering if the social and financial position of effective altruists might have something to do with” the conclusions we reach.
It is hardly “mud-slinging” for me to find this slimy dismissal objectionable. Nor is it mud-slinging to point out ways in which Crary et al (cited approvingly by Thorstad) are clearly being unprincipled in their appeals to “systemic change”. This is specific, textually-grounded criticism of specific actors, none of whom are you.
I think Thorstad has written very good stuff-for example on the way in which arguments for small reductions in extinction risk. More politically, his reporting on Scott Alexander and some other figures connected to the community’s racism is a useful public service and he has every right to be pissed off {EDIT: sentence originally ended here: I meant to say he has every right to be pissed of at people ignore or disparaging the racism stuff]. I don’t even necessarily entirely disagree with the meta-level critique being offered here.
But it was still striking to me that someone responded to the complaint that people making the institutional critique tend not to actually have much in the way of actionable information, and to take a “let me explain why these people came to their obviously wrong views” tone, by posting a bunch of stuff that was mostly like that.
If my tone is sharp it’s also because, like Richard I find the easy, unthinking combination of “the problem with these people is that they don’t care about changing the system” with “why are they doing meat alternatives and not vegan outreach aimed at a particular ethnic group that makes up <20% of the population or animal shelters” to be genuinely enragingly hypocritical and unserious. That’s actually somewhat separate from whether EAs are insufficiently sympathetic to anticapitalist or “social justice”-coded.
Incidentally, while I agree with Jason that it’s “Moskowitz and Tuna ought to be able to personally decide where nearly all the money in the movement is spent” that is the weird claim that needs defending, my guess is that at least one practical effect of this has been to pull the movement left, not right, on several issues. Open Phil spent money on anti- mass incarceration stuff, and vaguely left-coded macroeconomic policy stuff at a time when the community was not particularly interested in either of those things. Indeed I remember Thorstad singling out critiques of the criminal justice stuff as examples of the community holding left-coded stuff to a higher standard of proof. More recently you must have seen the rationalist complaints on the forum about how Open Phil won’t fund anything “right-coded”. None of that’s to say there are no problems in principle with unaccountable billionares of course. After all, our other major billionaire donor was SBF! (Though his politics wasn’t really the issue.)