Interesting, I wonder if anyone can explain why this post received such a negative reaction (all the downmods)? As someone new to the community, and who’s trying hard to keep an open mind and not revert to his natural cynicism, I’m struggling to come across any interpretation of this result beyond people either wrongly concluding I’m a troll (so not giving me the benefit of the doubt and ignoring my (admittedly limited) linked evidence), or bandwagoning and refusing to try and override their natural defend-the-women evolutionary biases. This would seem to play into the posts about EA groupthink that seem to occasionally pop up here.
Isn’t the purpose of these forums to discuss how to be altruistic effectively? As in, achieve the best result with the least effort/expense? My post is attempting to raise discuss that. Is any part of it wrong? I’ve received no responses so don’t know.
Maybe I summed up my post wrongly, so I’ll try again: The purpose of this thread is to abate violence against women, yet an objectively much bigger problem is violence overall. It would seem reasonable to conclude that maybe trying to solve the later will help with the former. I am unclear why trying to point this out has met with such a hostile (all the downmods) reaction.
Here are some responses, one by Jason, and one by Lizka.
I am unclear why trying to point this out has met with such a hostile (all the downmods) reaction.
I’ll pick out some excerpts because it seems like you haven’t read those messages:
“the discussion in this comment is getting into comparing two populations and asking which of them has it worse, which might make people feel like the issues are being trivialized or dismissed. I think it might be best to evaluate the issues separately and see if they are promising as cause areas (e.g. via the ITN framework).”
there’s a tendency to contrast “violence against women” with “violence against men.” I think this is a false comparison, no truer than contrasting “violence against women” with “air pollution.”
The question isn’t “do men or women more frequently face violence.” It’s, “where are there effective interventions?” This post lists potentially-effective interventions for preventing violence against women and girls, and all of them are quite specific to the kind of violence that women face.
None of [your comment] is really relevant to whether we should support the interventions OP mentions. It at most suggests there might be another cause area that might be worth studying.
More generally , when someone posts an intervention suggesting impact of one DALY per $13-$260, I don’t think “hypothetically, there might be even better spends out there” is a particularly helpful response.
Isn’t the purpose of these forums to discuss how to be altruistic effectively? As in, achieve the best result with the least effort/expense?
It is! Feel free to write up a post about why you think interventions that abate violence overall is a highly cost-effective thing to do.
You haven’t done this though. What you have done is bring up the violence that men face in response to a post exploring interventions around the violence that women face, without engaging with ~any of the object level claims mentioned by the author.
Your suggestion isn’t well argued for (it’s unclear that UK men being 2x likely to be the victim of violent crime means that you can have an intervention that will avert a DALY for ~$200), and it doesn’t seem like you have actually done much work on this yourself, (since you ask “Has anyone tried to quantify ways of solving [violence against men]?”)
This means that it’s easy for people to interpret your comment not as trying to “achieve the best result with the least expense”, but simply using it as a way to suggest VAWG interventions are not worth considering, because you think another group has it ‘worse’.
For someone asking for the “benefit of the doubt” and not wanting to be ignored, it doesn’t help your case that you have in fact missed both of the responses you received, and are assuming that anyone who downvotes you are dismissing you as a troll or “bandwagoning and refusing to try and override their natural defend-the-women evolutionary biases”.
Interesting, I wonder if anyone can explain why this post received such a negative reaction (all the downmods)?
As someone new to the community, and who’s trying hard to keep an open mind and not revert to his natural cynicism, I’m struggling to come across any interpretation of this result beyond people either wrongly concluding I’m a troll (so not giving me the benefit of the doubt and ignoring my (admittedly limited) linked evidence), or bandwagoning and refusing to try and override their natural defend-the-women evolutionary biases.
This would seem to play into the posts about EA groupthink that seem to occasionally pop up here.
Isn’t the purpose of these forums to discuss how to be altruistic effectively? As in, achieve the best result with the least effort/expense? My post is attempting to raise discuss that. Is any part of it wrong? I’ve received no responses so don’t know.
Maybe I summed up my post wrongly, so I’ll try again: The purpose of this thread is to abate violence against women, yet an objectively much bigger problem is violence overall. It would seem reasonable to conclude that maybe trying to solve the later will help with the former. I am unclear why trying to point this out has met with such a hostile (all the downmods) reaction.
Here are some responses, one by Jason, and one by Lizka.
I’ll pick out some excerpts because it seems like you haven’t read those messages:
“the discussion in this comment is getting into comparing two populations and asking which of them has it worse, which might make people feel like the issues are being trivialized or dismissed. I think it might be best to evaluate the issues separately and see if they are promising as cause areas (e.g. via the ITN framework).”
there’s a tendency to contrast “violence against women” with “violence against men.” I think this is a false comparison, no truer than contrasting “violence against women” with “air pollution.”
The question isn’t “do men or women more frequently face violence.” It’s, “where are there effective interventions?” This post lists potentially-effective interventions for preventing violence against women and girls, and all of them are quite specific to the kind of violence that women face.
None of [your comment] is really relevant to whether we should support the interventions OP mentions. It at most suggests there might be another cause area that might be worth studying.
More generally , when someone posts an intervention suggesting impact of one DALY per $13-$260, I don’t think “hypothetically, there might be even better spends out there” is a particularly helpful response.
It is! Feel free to write up a post about why you think interventions that abate violence overall is a highly cost-effective thing to do.
You haven’t done this though. What you have done is bring up the violence that men face in response to a post exploring interventions around the violence that women face, without engaging with ~any of the object level claims mentioned by the author.
Your suggestion isn’t well argued for (it’s unclear that UK men being 2x likely to be the victim of violent crime means that you can have an intervention that will avert a DALY for ~$200), and it doesn’t seem like you have actually done much work on this yourself, (since you ask “Has anyone tried to quantify ways of solving [violence against men]?”)
This means that it’s easy for people to interpret your comment not as trying to “achieve the best result with the least expense”, but simply using it as a way to suggest VAWG interventions are not worth considering, because you think another group has it ‘worse’.
For someone asking for the “benefit of the doubt” and not wanting to be ignored, it doesn’t help your case that you have in fact missed both of the responses you received, and are assuming that anyone who downvotes you are dismissing you as a troll or “bandwagoning and refusing to try and override their natural defend-the-women evolutionary biases”.