I don’t think this and didn’t say it. If you have any quotes from the post that you think say this, I’d be happy to edit it to be more clear, but from my perspective it feels like you’re inventing a straw man to be mad at rather than actually engaging with what I said.
I mean, the title of your post starts with “We must be very clear”. This at least to me communicated an attitude that discourages people prominently associated with EA going like “I don’t know man, I don’t think I stand behind this”. I don’t really know what other purpose the “we must be very clear” here serves besides trying to indicate that you think it’s very important that EA projects a unified front here.
And I think independently of your intention, I am confident that your post has also not made other people excited about discussing the actual ethical lines here, based on conversations I’ve had with other people about how they relate to your post (many of which like the post, but exactly for the reason that they don’t want to see people defending fraud, which would look quite bad for us).
I think that, for the most part, you should be drawing your ethical boundaries in a way that is logically prior to learning about these sorts of facts. Otherwise it’s very hard to cooperate with you, for example.
Yeah, I think I disagree with this. I think most of my ethical boundaries are pretty contingent on facts about history and what kind of cognitive algorithms seem to be perform well or badly, and indeed almost all my curiosities when trying to actually genuinely answer the question of when fraud is acceptable consist of questions about the empirical details of the world, like “to what degree is your environment coercive so that fraud is justified?” and “to what degree is fraud widespread?” and “how many people does fraud seem to hurt?”, and so on.
I don’t think this makes me harder to coordinate with. Indeed, I think being receptive to empirical feedback about ethical rules is I think quite important for being able to be cooperated with, since it gives people the confidence that I will update on evidence that some cognitive strategy, or some attitude, or some moral perspective causes harm.
I don’t really know what other purpose the “we must be very clear” here serves besides trying to indicate that you think it’s very important that EA projects a unified front here.
I am absolutely intending to communicate that I think it would be good for people to say that they think fraud is bad. But that doesn’t mean that I think we should condemn people who disagree regarding whether saying that is good or not. Rather, I think discussion about whether it’s a good idea for people to condemn fraud seems great to me, and my post was an attempt to provide my (short, abbreviated) take on that question.
I mean, the title of your post starts with “We must be very clear”. This at least to me communicated an attitude that discourages people prominently associated with EA going like “I don’t know man, I don’t think I stand behind this”. I don’t really know what other purpose the “we must be very clear” here serves besides trying to indicate that you think it’s very important that EA projects a unified front here.
And I think independently of your intention, I am confident that your post has also not made other people excited about discussing the actual ethical lines here, based on conversations I’ve had with other people about how they relate to your post (many of which like the post, but exactly for the reason that they don’t want to see people defending fraud, which would look quite bad for us).
Yeah, I think I disagree with this. I think most of my ethical boundaries are pretty contingent on facts about history and what kind of cognitive algorithms seem to be perform well or badly, and indeed almost all my curiosities when trying to actually genuinely answer the question of when fraud is acceptable consist of questions about the empirical details of the world, like “to what degree is your environment coercive so that fraud is justified?” and “to what degree is fraud widespread?” and “how many people does fraud seem to hurt?”, and so on.
I don’t think this makes me harder to coordinate with. Indeed, I think being receptive to empirical feedback about ethical rules is I think quite important for being able to be cooperated with, since it gives people the confidence that I will update on evidence that some cognitive strategy, or some attitude, or some moral perspective causes harm.
I am absolutely intending to communicate that I think it would be good for people to say that they think fraud is bad. But that doesn’t mean that I think we should condemn people who disagree regarding whether saying that is good or not. Rather, I think discussion about whether it’s a good idea for people to condemn fraud seems great to me, and my post was an attempt to provide my (short, abbreviated) take on that question.