I’m skeptical friction between EA and actors who misunderstand so much has consequences bad enough to worry about, since I don’t expect the criticism would be taken so seriously by anyone else to the point it would have much of an impact at all.
Assuming that one cares about their definition of “disability rights”—i.e., disabled people have a right to lots of healthcare and social services, and any de-emphasis for the sake of helping more able people is a violation—their criticism and understanding of EA are correct. In the public eye, it’s definitely catchy, this sort of suspicion of utilitarian cost-benefit analysis runs deep. Some weeks ago the opinion journalist Dylan Matthews mentioned that he wanted to write an article about it, and I expect that he would give a very kind platform to the detractors.
Depending on what considers an x-risk, popular support for right-wing politicians that pursue counterproductive climate change or other anti-environmental policies, or who tend to be more hawkish, jingoistic, and nationalistic in ways that will increase the chances of great-power conflict, negatively impacts x-risk reduction efforts. It’s not clear that this has a direct impact on any EA work focused on x-risks, though, which is the kind of impacts you meant to assess.
Assuming that one cares about their definition of “disability rights”—i.e., disabled people have a right to lots of healthcare and social services, and any de-emphasis for the sake of helping more able people is a violation—their criticism and understanding of EA are correct. In the public eye, it’s definitely catchy, this sort of suspicion of utilitarian cost-benefit analysis runs deep. Some weeks ago the opinion journalist Dylan Matthews mentioned that he wanted to write an article about it, and I expect that he would give a very kind platform to the detractors.
Right, for that broad sort of thing, I would direct people to my Candidate Scoring System: https://1drv.ms/b/s!At2KcPiXB5rkvRQycEqvwFPVYKHa