It’s definitely possible I’m misunderstanding what you’re trying to do here. However, I think it is usually not the case that if you attempt to do an impartial assessment of a yes-no question, all the possible factors point in the same direction.
I mean, I don’t know this for sure, but I imagine if you were to ask me to closely investigate a cause area that I haven’t thought about much before (wild animal suffering, say, or consciousness research, or Alzheimer’s mitigation), and I investigated 10 sub-questions, I don’t think all 10 of them will point in the same way. My intuition is that it’s much more likely that I’d either find 1 or 2 overwhelming factors, or many weak arguments in favor or against, and some in the other direction.
I feel bad for picking on you here. I think it is likely the case that other EAs (myself included) have historically made this mistake, and I will endeavor to be more careful about this in the future.
I ended up proposing that I could write a new post, this post. The event was created with a title of “Is climate change neglected within EA?” and I originally intended to give this post the same title. However, I realized that I really wanted to argue a particular side of this question and so I posted this article under a more appropriate title.
You are correct to call out that I haven’t actually offered a balanced argument. Climate change is not ignored by EA. As is clear in Appendix A, there have been quite a few posts about climate change in recent years. The purpose of this post was to draw out some particular trends about how I see climate change being discussed by EA.
You are correct to call out that I haven’t actually offered a balanced argument. Climate change is not ignore by EA. As is clear in Appendix A, there have been quite a few posts about climate change in recent years. The purpose of this post was to draw out some particular trends about how I see climate change being discussed by EA.
I think I and others here would have reacted much better if this post felt more curious/exploratory and less arguments-are-solders.
That doesn’t mean you can’t come down on a side. You can definitely come down on a side. But a good post should either make it’s clear that it’s only arguing for one side (and so only trying to be part of a whole) or it should reflect the entirety of your position, not just the points on one side. And if the entirety of your position is only points on one side, then either your argumentation had better be iron-solid or a lot of people are going to suspect your impartiality.
It’s definitely possible I’m misunderstanding what you’re trying to do here. However, I think it is usually not the case that if you attempt to do an impartial assessment of a yes-no question, all the possible factors point in the same direction.
I mean, I don’t know this for sure, but I imagine if you were to ask me to closely investigate a cause area that I haven’t thought about much before (wild animal suffering, say, or consciousness research, or Alzheimer’s mitigation), and I investigated 10 sub-questions, I don’t think all 10 of them will point in the same way. My intuition is that it’s much more likely that I’d either find 1 or 2 overwhelming factors, or many weak arguments in favor or against, and some in the other direction.
I feel bad for picking on you here. I think it is likely the case that other EAs (myself included) have historically made this mistake, and I will endeavor to be more careful about this in the future.
That’s a fair point. As per the facebook event description, I was originally asked to discuss two posts:
Louis Dixon—Does climate change deserve more attention within EA?
Me—Updated Climate Change Problem Profile
I ended up proposing that I could write a new post, this post. The event was created with a title of “Is climate change neglected within EA?” and I originally intended to give this post the same title. However, I realized that I really wanted to argue a particular side of this question and so I posted this article under a more appropriate title.
You are correct to call out that I haven’t actually offered a balanced argument. Climate change is not ignored by EA. As is clear in Appendix A, there have been quite a few posts about climate change in recent years. The purpose of this post was to draw out some particular trends about how I see climate change being discussed by EA.
I think I and others here would have reacted much better if this post felt more curious/exploratory and less arguments-are-solders.
That doesn’t mean you can’t come down on a side. You can definitely come down on a side. But a good post should either make it’s clear that it’s only arguing for one side (and so only trying to be part of a whole) or it should reflect the entirety of your position, not just the points on one side. And if the entirety of your position is only points on one side, then either your argumentation had better be iron-solid or a lot of people are going to suspect your impartiality.