I think this is super important—criticism of those with the most power is likely to be worthwhile. Like in all politics power can “buy” and create “opinion”. Then, if epistemics is something we value, we have to be super careful of the contribution money makes to truth. Just look at the people in climate change—nowadays nearly anyone can frame their pet project as a climate change intervention and they get funded, as long as they go along with the party line. And in climate change there are huge economic incentives—it is not a false claim by conservatives that many “green” investors stand to gain enormously from a change to the cleantech they invested in. If there is one thing history should have taught us it is that power corrupts and I see no robust immune system in EA against this. At the same time we have to be charitable—there are of course significant chances those with power in the movement both have pure intentions of doing good and are able to resist any influence from personal gains they stand to make from nudging the movement in certain directions.
I think this is super important—criticism of those with the most power is likely to be worthwhile. Like in all politics power can “buy” and create “opinion”. Then, if epistemics is something we value, we have to be super careful of the contribution money makes to truth. Just look at the people in climate change—nowadays nearly anyone can frame their pet project as a climate change intervention and they get funded, as long as they go along with the party line. And in climate change there are huge economic incentives—it is not a false claim by conservatives that many “green” investors stand to gain enormously from a change to the cleantech they invested in. If there is one thing history should have taught us it is that power corrupts and I see no robust immune system in EA against this. At the same time we have to be charitable—there are of course significant chances those with power in the movement both have pure intentions of doing good and are able to resist any influence from personal gains they stand to make from nudging the movement in certain directions.