Notice what arguments aren’t made (but don’t necessarily go and make them)

[Robert_Wiblin]

The most popular posts on this forum make arguments along the lines of:

• People should be friendly and get along.

• We should be a broad-based and inclusive movement.

• We haven’t yet figured out the answers to lots of questions.

• EA is a research question, not a strong set of demands on people.

• We should be highly supportive of one another.

• We should limit how weirdly we behave.

Two reasons these articles get written and become popular are:

• They make the author look virtuous (e.g. modest, kind, reliable).

• The arguments flatter a large share of readers.

I wrote two highly up-voted pieces along these lines and naturally it feels great to have people piling on in agreement.

Consider alternative arguments that don’t get many people writing or voting in support, and indeed are liable to be condemned:

• We should demand a lot of people—more than most are already doing, or would be willing to do.

• We should be critical of one another in order to push one another to work harder and better.

• We should be fine with being weird because that’s the only way to find the most unreasonably neglected projects.

• We already have much better ideas than the rest of society on a wide range of issues.

• We shouldn’t collaborate as much as we do because the hassle involved is too great.

• It’s good to get angry and be combative with people.

These ideas make the author look like a jerk or radical, and in some cases make readers feel worse about themselves.

This makes them unlikely to attract much support, even if someone volunteers to defend them.

This is a good thing. It’s not wise to write things that make you look like a jerk, and make readers feel bad about themselves, unless there are particularly pressing reasons to do so. This isn’t a recommendation to write publicly in defence of the above—if you’re tempted to do so, meditate on the virtue of silence.

At the same time, privately we should acknowledge that the personal costs involved in publicly supporting unappealing positions means we may not be aware of, or receptive to, the best arguments in their favour. If you can’t think of any supporters or considerations in favour of an unappealing position, worry that you aren’t sampling fairly from both sides of the argument.

(For what it’s worth, because it is sure to come up, I don’t think any of the claims above are plausible—two of them I strongly disagree with, three of them seem very unlikely and one of them merely unlikely. Like everyone, I do have beliefs that might offend others and make me look bad, but those are precisely the ones I wouldn’t include here.)