I think reasonable people can disagree about the norms for EA Forum posts. Personally, I’m very happy that posts like this exist amidst the sea of hyperrational evaluation-focused posts. As said in one of my favorite posts:
Sidenote for the rigorous readers of this forum: I ask you to read this essay somewhat impressionistically. “The logic is incomplete, but let’s see if he’s still onto something,” is the attitude I’d suggest.
This post does not have complete logic by any means, but it’s onto something—in my view, it’s onto a moral intuition that we should pay more attention to than we often do. That’s not at odds with rationality, because rationality can only offer limited guidance on what morality should be, it can’t free us from relying on moral intuitions. So posts that are purely evaluative will miss a lot of ground on which people can (and do) make decisions. Put differently, moral intuitions and rational evaluation are complements, not substitutes.
I think the high karma of this post reflects the fact that for many people, including myself, it’s a reminder to keep alive the flame of trying to live ethically.
Fwiw I don’t think forum norms need be doomed to reasonable disagreement. I think someone probably has some vision for why the forum should exists by altruistic lights. It’s probably grounded in some model of the world that we can discuss here.
I don’t think that’s this post is presenting something new or trying to pin down a moral intuition. In fact I don’t think it talks about morality very much at all, it’s more of a list of reasons why the author dislikes factory farming. I think people are mostly upvoting because they agree with it rather than it being very insightful.
I think reasonable people can disagree about the norms for EA Forum posts. Personally, I’m very happy that posts like this exist amidst the sea of hyperrational evaluation-focused posts. As said in one of my favorite posts:
This post does not have complete logic by any means, but it’s onto something—in my view, it’s onto a moral intuition that we should pay more attention to than we often do. That’s not at odds with rationality, because rationality can only offer limited guidance on what morality should be, it can’t free us from relying on moral intuitions. So posts that are purely evaluative will miss a lot of ground on which people can (and do) make decisions. Put differently, moral intuitions and rational evaluation are complements, not substitutes.
I think the high karma of this post reflects the fact that for many people, including myself, it’s a reminder to keep alive the flame of trying to live ethically.
Fwiw I don’t think forum norms need be doomed to reasonable disagreement. I think someone probably has some vision for why the forum should exists by altruistic lights. It’s probably grounded in some model of the world that we can discuss here.
I don’t think that’s this post is presenting something new or trying to pin down a moral intuition. In fact I don’t think it talks about morality very much at all, it’s more of a list of reasons why the author dislikes factory farming. I think people are mostly upvoting because they agree with it rather than it being very insightful.