Other people being mislead is how I read “Claims to the contrary are either obvious nonsense, or marketing copy by the same people who brought you the obvious nonsense. Spend money on taking care of yourself and your friends and the people around you and your community and trying specific concrete things that might have specific concrete benefits. And try to fix the underlying systems problems that got you so confused in the first place.”
I don’t think the two reasons for Ben’s actions you suggested are mutually inconsistent. He may want to emotionally reject EA style giving arguments, think of arguments that could justify this, and then get frustrated by what he sees as poor arguments for EA or against his arguments. This outcome (frustration and worry with the EA community’s epistemic health) seems likely to me for someone who starts off emotionally wanting to reject certain arguments. He could also have identified genuine flaws in EA that both make him reject EA and make him frustrated by the epistemic health of EA.
I don’t feel inclined to get into this, but FWIW I have read a reasonable amount of Ben’s writings on both EA and non-EA topics, and I do not find it obvious that his main, subconscious motivation is epistemic health rather than a need to reject EA.
So you think he’s worried about other people being misled?
Other people being mislead is how I read “Claims to the contrary are either obvious nonsense, or marketing copy by the same people who brought you the obvious nonsense. Spend money on taking care of yourself and your friends and the people around you and your community and trying specific concrete things that might have specific concrete benefits. And try to fix the underlying systems problems that got you so confused in the first place.”
Also worried about the overall epistemic health of EA – if it’s reliably misleading people, it’s much less useful as a source of information.
I don’t think the two reasons for Ben’s actions you suggested are mutually inconsistent. He may want to emotionally reject EA style giving arguments, think of arguments that could justify this, and then get frustrated by what he sees as poor arguments for EA or against his arguments. This outcome (frustration and worry with the EA community’s epistemic health) seems likely to me for someone who starts off emotionally wanting to reject certain arguments. He could also have identified genuine flaws in EA that both make him reject EA and make him frustrated by the epistemic health of EA.
I think if you’ve read Ben’s writings, it’s obvious that the prime driver is about epistemic health.
I don’t feel inclined to get into this, but FWIW I have read a reasonable amount of Ben’s writings on both EA and non-EA topics, and I do not find it obvious that his main, subconscious motivation is epistemic health rather than a need to reject EA.