Some (fairly minor) points, given I generally agree:
1) A critic taking the second option doesn’t need to say “We will never discover any pond-like acts”, but something like “The likelihood of such a discovery is sufficiently low (either because in fact such acts are rare or because whether or not they are there we cannot expect good access to them)”. The bare possibility we might discover a pond-like act in the future doesn’t make EA worth one’s attention.
2) I am hesitant to make the move that all criticism of EA ‘as practiced’ is inapposite. For caricature, if most EAs decided they’d form a spree-killing ring, a reply along the lines of that this mere concretum bears no relevance to the platonic ideal of EA (alas poorly instantiated in this case) doesn’t seem to cut it. If EA is generally going wrong so badly its worse than the counterfactual, this seems entirely fair to criticise (I agree this looks unlikely by the lights of any sensible moral view).
It also seems fair to criticise EA if a substantial minority are doing something you deem stupid (e.g. “Look at those muppets who think giving to MIRI 10^ridiculous times more important than stopping kids starving”). If I think some significant subset of people who believe X are doing (because of said belief) something silly or objectionable, it seems fair to have it as a black mark against X, even if it doesn’t mean I think it makes them bad all things considered: “Yeah EA is good when it gets people giving more to charity—it’s a shame it seems to lead people up the garden path to believe ridiculous stuff like killer robots and what-not”. (N.B. I picked AI risk as it hits the ‘unsweet spot’ of being fairly popular in EA yet pretty outlandish outside it—these are not criticisms I endorse myself).
2) I may have misunderstood, but I think these would fall under the third way of criticising EA I mentioned:
The third, and most promising option in my mind, is to accept that effective altruism as an idea is correct—accepting the general pond argument—but deny that effective altruism as a movement will succeed in doing a lot of good. Perhaps it’s just too hard to persuade people to do the right thing, or the current leaders of the movement will fail, or we’re bad at working out which actions are pond-like. Or perhaps there’s some much more important way of doing good that we should do instead.
But such a critique also falls under the second kind of critique that you said would be a “misfire”. Perhaps you meant that it’s a misfire only if the critic is trying to argue against ideal EA, but in my experience most critics are not trying to do that, they’re arguing against the EA movement.
Some (fairly minor) points, given I generally agree:
1) A critic taking the second option doesn’t need to say “We will never discover any pond-like acts”, but something like “The likelihood of such a discovery is sufficiently low (either because in fact such acts are rare or because whether or not they are there we cannot expect good access to them)”. The bare possibility we might discover a pond-like act in the future doesn’t make EA worth one’s attention.
2) I am hesitant to make the move that all criticism of EA ‘as practiced’ is inapposite. For caricature, if most EAs decided they’d form a spree-killing ring, a reply along the lines of that this mere concretum bears no relevance to the platonic ideal of EA (alas poorly instantiated in this case) doesn’t seem to cut it. If EA is generally going wrong so badly its worse than the counterfactual, this seems entirely fair to criticise (I agree this looks unlikely by the lights of any sensible moral view).
It also seems fair to criticise EA if a substantial minority are doing something you deem stupid (e.g. “Look at those muppets who think giving to MIRI 10^ridiculous times more important than stopping kids starving”). If I think some significant subset of people who believe X are doing (because of said belief) something silly or objectionable, it seems fair to have it as a black mark against X, even if it doesn’t mean I think it makes them bad all things considered: “Yeah EA is good when it gets people giving more to charity—it’s a shame it seems to lead people up the garden path to believe ridiculous stuff like killer robots and what-not”. (N.B. I picked AI risk as it hits the ‘unsweet spot’ of being fairly popular in EA yet pretty outlandish outside it—these are not criticisms I endorse myself).
1) I agree—I was speaking loosely.
2) I may have misunderstood, but I think these would fall under the third way of criticising EA I mentioned:
But such a critique also falls under the second kind of critique that you said would be a “misfire”. Perhaps you meant that it’s a misfire only if the critic is trying to argue against ideal EA, but in my experience most critics are not trying to do that, they’re arguing against the EA movement.