Personally I have found that getting too attached the supposed goodness of my intentions as a guide to my moral character has been a distraction, in times when my behavior has not actually been that good.
I’ve not looked into it in great detail, but I think of it as a classically Christian idea to try to evaluate if someone is a good or a bad person internally, and give reward/punishment based on that. In contrast, I believe it’s mostly better to punish people based on their behavior, often regardless of whether you judge them to internally be ‘selfish’ or ‘altruistic’. If MacAskill has repeatedly executed a lot of damaging prestige-seeking strategies and behaved in selfish ways, I think it’s worthwhile to punish the behavior. And in that case I think it’s worthwhile to punish the behavior regardless of whether he is open to change, regardless of whether the behavior is due to fundamental personality traits, and regardless of whether he reflectively endorses the decisions.
Ubuntu writes that they read Habryka as saying “Will is so selfish” rather than “Will and I have major disagreements on the strategies he should pursue but I believe he’s well-intentioned”. But I don’t Habryka’s comment to be saying either of these. I read the comment to simply be saying “Will has repeatedly behaved in ways that trade off integrity for popularity and prestige”. This is also my read of multiple behaviors of Will, and cost him a great deal of respect from me for his personal integrity and as a leader, and this is true regardless of the intentions.
Personally I have found that getting too attached the supposed goodness of my intentions as a guide to my moral character has been a distraction, in times when my behavior has not actually been that good.
I’ve not looked into it in great detail, but I think of it as a classically Christian idea to try to evaluate if someone is a good or a bad person internally, and give reward/punishment based on that. In contrast, I believe it’s mostly better to punish people based on their behavior, often regardless of whether you judge them to internally be ‘selfish’ or ‘altruistic’. If MacAskill has repeatedly executed a lot of damaging prestige-seeking strategies and behaved in selfish ways, I think it’s worthwhile to punish the behavior. And in that case I think it’s worthwhile to punish the behavior regardless of whether he is open to change, regardless of whether the behavior is due to fundamental personality traits, and regardless of whether he reflectively endorses the decisions.
Ubuntu writes that they read Habryka as saying “Will is so selfish” rather than “Will and I have major disagreements on the strategies he should pursue but I believe he’s well-intentioned”. But I don’t Habryka’s comment to be saying either of these. I read the comment to simply be saying “Will has repeatedly behaved in ways that trade off integrity for popularity and prestige”. This is also my read of multiple behaviors of Will, and cost him a great deal of respect from me for his personal integrity and as a leader, and this is true regardless of the intentions.