Thanks very much Aaron, I always appreciate your thoughtful comments. Re: “mind control,” that was intended to be an exaggeration for humorous effect, but I can see how it may reduce the credibility of the post for anyone who might be on the fence about these issues. So point taken and thank you.
Before the original post was taken down, there was an example of an argument that EA’s effectiveness as a movement will be reduced by excessive partisanship. NunoSempere wrote, “I’ve briefly looked at the evolution of past social movements, and I don’t get the sense that doing this kind of thing leads to a social movement being very long lived. One of the long lived movements I’ve studied cultivated (though perhaps not consciously) the skill of having members on both sides of any political conflict. If I imagine EA being very long lived, which seems somewhat valuable, playing politics is not a thing I picture happening in that scenario. See also the intersection between politics and movement collapse scenarios”. I’ll leave it to Nuno to elaborate further if so desired.
Your comments on the structure and positioning of the recommending organization seem reasonable to me, and yes, my assumption is that there should be a fairly high bar for propagating a recommendation.
By the way Ian, I’ve not followed these posts in great detail and I mostly think getting involved in partisan politics in most straightforward ways seems like a bad idea, but I’ve really appreciated the level of effort you’ve put in and are clearly willing to put in to have an actual conversation about this (in comments here, with Wei Dai, with others). It’s made me feel more at home in the Forum. Thank you for that.
Thanks very much Aaron, I always appreciate your thoughtful comments. Re: “mind control,” that was intended to be an exaggeration for humorous effect, but I can see how it may reduce the credibility of the post for anyone who might be on the fence about these issues. So point taken and thank you.
Before the original post was taken down, there was an example of an argument that EA’s effectiveness as a movement will be reduced by excessive partisanship. NunoSempere wrote, “I’ve briefly looked at the evolution of past social movements, and I don’t get the sense that doing this kind of thing leads to a social movement being very long lived. One of the long lived movements I’ve studied cultivated (though perhaps not consciously) the skill of having members on both sides of any political conflict. If I imagine EA being very long lived, which seems somewhat valuable, playing politics is not a thing I picture happening in that scenario. See also the intersection between politics and movement collapse scenarios”. I’ll leave it to Nuno to elaborate further if so desired.
Your comments on the structure and positioning of the recommending organization seem reasonable to me, and yes, my assumption is that there should be a fairly high bar for propagating a recommendation.
By the way Ian, I’ve not followed these posts in great detail and I mostly think getting involved in partisan politics in most straightforward ways seems like a bad idea, but I’ve really appreciated the level of effort you’ve put in and are clearly willing to put in to have an actual conversation about this (in comments here, with Wei Dai, with others). It’s made me feel more at home in the Forum. Thank you for that.
Thank you, Ben, that means a lot to me.
:)