I think there’s a relatively clear sense in which Arkhipov, Borlaug, and similar figures (e.g. winners of the Future of Life Award, names included in Scientists Greater than Einstein, and related characters profiled in Doing Good Better or the 80,000 Hours blog) count as having had an extraordinary positive impact and Pearce does not, namely, the sense in which also Ord, MacAskill, Tomasik, etc. don’t count. I think it’s probably unnecessary to try to specify in great detail what the criterion is, but the core element seems to be that the former are all examples of do-gooding that is extraordinary from both an EA and a common-sense perspective, whereas if you wanted to claim that e.g. Shulman or Christiano are among humanity’s greatest benefactors, you’d probably need to make some arguments that a typical person would not find very persuasive. (The arguments for that conclusion would also likely be very brittle and fail to persuade most EAs, but that doesn’t seem to be so central.)
So I think it really boils down to the question of how core a figure Pearce is in the EA movement, and as noted, my impression is that he just isn’t a core enough figure. I say this, incidentally, as someone who admires him greatly and who has been profoundly influenced by his writings (some of which I translated into Spanish a long time ago), although I have also developed serious reservations about various aspects of his work over the years.
If you mean that the vast majority of EAs would agree that Arkhipov, Borlaug, Zhdanov, and similar figures count as having had an extraordinary positive impact, or that that’s the only reasonable position one could hold, I disagree, for reasons I’ll discuss below.
But if you just mean that a significant fraction of EAs would agree that those figures count as having had an extraordinary impact, I agree. And, as noted in my previous comment, I think that using a phrasing like “people who are widely discussed in EA and who a significant fraction of EAs see as having had an extraordinary positive impact (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)” would probably work.
And that phrasing also seems fine if I’m wrong about (1), so maybe there’s no real need to debate (1)?
(Relatedly, I also do ultimately agree that Arkhipov etc. should have entries.)
Expanding on (1):
This is mostly due to crucial considerations that could change the sign or (relative) magnitude of the moral value of the near-term effects that these people are often seen as having had. For example:
It’s not obvious that a US-Russia nuclear war during the Cold War would’ve caused a negative long-term future trajectory change.
I expect it would, and, for related reasons, am currently focused on nuclear risk research myself.
But I think one could reasonably argue that the case for this view is brittle and the case for e.g. the extraordinary positive impact of some people focused on AI is stronger (conditioning on strong longtermism).
Some EAs think extinction risk reduction is or plausibly is net negative.
It’s plausible that expected moral impact is dominated by effects on the long-term future, farm animals, wild animals, invertebrates, or similar, in which case it may be both less clear that e.g. Borlaug and Zhdanov had a net positive impact and less clear that it is “extraordinary” relative to the impact of people whose actions were more targeted to helping those populations.
But it’s also because of uncertainties about whether they really had those near-term effects, whether similar things would’ve happened without them, and—at least in Zhdanov’s case—whether they had other near-term effects that may have been very negative. For example:
My understanding is that it’s not actually very clear whether Arkhipov played a crucial role in preventing a launch.
E.g., Baum, de Neufville, and Barrett write “The second captain, Vassily Arkhipov, has been credited with having vetoed the decision to launch the torpedo over the objections of the two other officers (Lloyd 2002). Sources conflict on whether the submarine crew had the authority to launch the torpedo without direct orders from Moscow. The submarine’s communications officer later said in an interview that Arkhipov did play an important role in calming the captain down, but that while there was a danger of an accident or equipment malfunction, they were never close to intentionally launching the nuclear torpedo (Savranskaya 2007).”
Zhdanov also “chaired the Soviet Union’s Interagency Science and Technology Council on Molecular Biology and Genetics, which among its many functions directed the Soviet biological weapons program” (Wikipedia), which I think makes it plausible that his expected impact (evaluated during the Cold War) on the long-term future was very negative.
My more basic point is just that it seems very hard to say with high confidence what actions had net positive vs net negative impacts and how to rank them, and there’s room for reasonable disagreement.
Again, though, I think we can probably sidestep all of this by just saying “people who are widely discussed in EA and who a significant fraction of EAs see as having had an extraordinary positive impact (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)”.
I think there’s a relatively clear sense in which Arkhipov, Borlaug, and similar figures (e.g. winners of the Future of Life Award, names included in Scientists Greater than Einstein, and related characters profiled in Doing Good Better or the 80,000 Hours blog) count as having had an extraordinary positive impact and Pearce does not, namely, the sense in which also Ord, MacAskill, Tomasik, etc. don’t count. I think it’s probably unnecessary to try to specify in great detail what the criterion is, but the core element seems to be that the former are all examples of do-gooding that is extraordinary from both an EA and a common-sense perspective, whereas if you wanted to claim that e.g. Shulman or Christiano are among humanity’s greatest benefactors, you’d probably need to make some arguments that a typical person would not find very persuasive. (The arguments for that conclusion would also likely be very brittle and fail to persuade most EAs, but that doesn’t seem to be so central.)
So I think it really boils down to the question of how core a figure Pearce is in the EA movement, and as noted, my impression is that he just isn’t a core enough figure. I say this, incidentally, as someone who admires him greatly and who has been profoundly influenced by his writings (some of which I translated into Spanish a long time ago), although I have also developed serious reservations about various aspects of his work over the years.
If you mean that the vast majority of EAs would agree that Arkhipov, Borlaug, Zhdanov, and similar figures count as having had an extraordinary positive impact, or that that’s the only reasonable position one could hold, I disagree, for reasons I’ll discuss below.
But if you just mean that a significant fraction of EAs would agree that those figures count as having had an extraordinary impact, I agree. And, as noted in my previous comment, I think that using a phrasing like “people who are widely discussed in EA and who a significant fraction of EAs see as having had an extraordinary positive impact (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)” would probably work.
And that phrasing also seems fine if I’m wrong about (1), so maybe there’s no real need to debate (1)?
(Relatedly, I also do ultimately agree that Arkhipov etc. should have entries.)
Expanding on (1):
This is mostly due to crucial considerations that could change the sign or (relative) magnitude of the moral value of the near-term effects that these people are often seen as having had. For example:
It’s not obvious that a US-Russia nuclear war during the Cold War would’ve caused a negative long-term future trajectory change.
I expect it would, and, for related reasons, am currently focused on nuclear risk research myself.
But I think one could reasonably argue that the case for this view is brittle and the case for e.g. the extraordinary positive impact of some people focused on AI is stronger (conditioning on strong longtermism).
Some EAs think extinction risk reduction is or plausibly is net negative.
Some EAs think population growth is or plausibly is net negative, e.g. for reasons related to the meat-eater problem or to differential progress.
It’s plausible that expected moral impact is dominated by effects on the long-term future, farm animals, wild animals, invertebrates, or similar, in which case it may be both less clear that e.g. Borlaug and Zhdanov had a net positive impact and less clear that it is “extraordinary” relative to the impact of people whose actions were more targeted to helping those populations.
But it’s also because of uncertainties about whether they really had those near-term effects, whether similar things would’ve happened without them, and—at least in Zhdanov’s case—whether they had other near-term effects that may have been very negative. For example:
My understanding is that it’s not actually very clear whether Arkhipov played a crucial role in preventing a launch.
E.g., Baum, de Neufville, and Barrett write “The second captain, Vassily Arkhipov, has been credited with having vetoed the decision to launch the torpedo over the objections of the two other officers (Lloyd 2002). Sources conflict on whether the submarine crew had the authority to launch the torpedo without direct orders from Moscow. The submarine’s communications officer later said in an interview that Arkhipov did play an important role in calming the captain down, but that while there was a danger of an accident or equipment malfunction, they were never close to intentionally launching the nuclear torpedo (Savranskaya 2007).”
Zhdanov also “chaired the Soviet Union’s Interagency Science and Technology Council on Molecular Biology and Genetics, which among its many functions directed the Soviet biological weapons program” (Wikipedia), which I think makes it plausible that his expected impact (evaluated during the Cold War) on the long-term future was very negative.
My more basic point is just that it seems very hard to say with high confidence what actions had net positive vs net negative impacts and how to rank them, and there’s room for reasonable disagreement.
Again, though, I think we can probably sidestep all of this by just saying “people who are widely discussed in EA and who a significant fraction of EAs see as having had an extraordinary positive impact (Arkhipov, Zhdanov, etc.)”.