Sorry it was rather unclear. I wasn’t thinking of my post as disagreeing with Greg. I was trying to make two points: 1) Sometimes, when it seems like someone is saying ‘eradicating existing extreme poverty is the best way to improve the far future’ (which you might think seems plausibly caused by bias because you wouldn’t expect the two to be strongly correlated), they might actually be saying ‘here is the argument for why eradicating existing extreme poverty might be the best way to improve the far future’. 2) One of the causal mechanisms by which people come to believe the strong causal correlation in cases where that doesn’t seem plausible is that by virtue of working in a particular cause area, they are often called on to defend that cause area as being also the best way of doing other things.
The kinds of cases I was thinking of: for EA Global I was asked to be on a panel as the person defending poverty as the most important cause area (where there were other panellists defending animal suffering and x-risk). The idea is that you get the best arguments coming out if you get one person to steel man each position, and then have a discussion amongst panellists, and the people most likely to be able to present a good case for a cause are those who spend their whole day thinking about that cause. I actually dislike this format, both because it encourages people to get entrenched in their own positions, and because it encourages people to see things as a combat amongst causes. (In the end I think EA Global Ox did a good job of getting people to steel man different views, and of concentrating on the debates rather than pitches—I actually ended up steelmanning movement building on that panel, and giving a separate talk steelmanning the case against movement building. But this is the kind of example I was thinking of where people are expected to defend the cause area they work in.)
As you say, to new / potential GWWCers this doesn’t come up.
I also wonder whether the ‘equal and oppositely partisan’ approach is a good way of getting to the fact of the matter. Apart from the detriments you mention, Michelle, it simply may not be a good way of getting to the best reasons than having panellests trying to be impartial.
(I also wonder whether steelmanning, although much better than the strawmanning, might be inferior to ‘realmanning’).
Sorry it was rather unclear. I wasn’t thinking of my post as disagreeing with Greg. I was trying to make two points: 1) Sometimes, when it seems like someone is saying ‘eradicating existing extreme poverty is the best way to improve the far future’ (which you might think seems plausibly caused by bias because you wouldn’t expect the two to be strongly correlated), they might actually be saying ‘here is the argument for why eradicating existing extreme poverty might be the best way to improve the far future’. 2) One of the causal mechanisms by which people come to believe the strong causal correlation in cases where that doesn’t seem plausible is that by virtue of working in a particular cause area, they are often called on to defend that cause area as being also the best way of doing other things.
The kinds of cases I was thinking of: for EA Global I was asked to be on a panel as the person defending poverty as the most important cause area (where there were other panellists defending animal suffering and x-risk). The idea is that you get the best arguments coming out if you get one person to steel man each position, and then have a discussion amongst panellists, and the people most likely to be able to present a good case for a cause are those who spend their whole day thinking about that cause. I actually dislike this format, both because it encourages people to get entrenched in their own positions, and because it encourages people to see things as a combat amongst causes. (In the end I think EA Global Ox did a good job of getting people to steel man different views, and of concentrating on the debates rather than pitches—I actually ended up steelmanning movement building on that panel, and giving a separate talk steelmanning the case against movement building. But this is the kind of example I was thinking of where people are expected to defend the cause area they work in.) As you say, to new / potential GWWCers this doesn’t come up.
I also wonder whether the ‘equal and oppositely partisan’ approach is a good way of getting to the fact of the matter. Apart from the detriments you mention, Michelle, it simply may not be a good way of getting to the best reasons than having panellests trying to be impartial.
(I also wonder whether steelmanning, although much better than the strawmanning, might be inferior to ‘realmanning’).