I think it’s important to consider the general principles in question even if the particular instrumental claim ‘defending accused witches doesn’t do as much good, as you would in expectation be prevented from doing via your work on slavery if you defended accused witches.’
This seems to imply some general principles which don’t seem that attractive, i.e. “Don’t speak out against/defend against/protest one injustice if you think it will get in the way of working on injustices you care about more.′
This seems like the kind of violation of commonsense morality in the name of utilitarian instrumental goals that the EA community generally warns against. (I also worry that this specific violation of normal moral obligations like ‘defend the innocent’ ‘speak the truth’, makes it more likely that people will generally violate such norms in pursuit of their utilitarian goals).
This stance also seems quite shaky, since it seems like we would not generally support such reasoning if the cases were changed just a little bit e.g.:
“We should not speak out against slavery, because it would get in the way of our important anti-poverty work.”
“We should not defend or associate with controversial _racial justice activists_, because it will reduce our other EA work.”
This also seems bad from a reciprocity standpoint i.e. if slavery activists don’t defend or associate with witch defenders, then witch defenders, by the same token may not defend or associate with slavery activists (and so on for other controversial groups). These reciprocity considerations might apply either directly and instrumentally or indirectly via defending the general norm.
Your position also seems even more extreme than how I described it above at points, i.e. “it seems much better for most people in the community to watch what they say in public somewhat, _be careful with their public associations_, and _minimize public contact with any associations that could be seen as potentially problematic_.” This goes beyond merely not publicly defending groups. Add “minimiz[ing] public contact” with the groups I gave as examples above and this position seems even more problematic.
That said I think one part of your somewhat concessive, but somewhat ambiguous final paragraph is potentially true:
Individuals can do so… but doing so as a group is a dangerous correlated risk to the movement.
I think it’s good to grant that individuals can stand up for accused individuals. I still think that a statement warning off EAs “as a group” is potentially problematic, because this could mean “It’s OK for a small number of EAs to do this but not too many”, which seems as objectionable as “It’s OK for a small number of EAs to publicly oppose slavery, but not too many.” But if “as a group” meant “The EA community shouldn’t make official public statements as a whole on the political debates of the day or on other controversial issues, and nor should official EA orgs’ (which I don’t think was your intended meaning), then I would agree with this principle.
I didn’t find this review very helpful. Hopefully I’ll be able to explain why and hopefully people will read Cummings’s essay for themselves.
As you note, this is not (straightforwardly) an essay about education. It’s a wide-ranging discussion of his views on a handful of core themes, and a series of disconnected thoughts on many topics. You might think these are vices in an essay, but I think it’s only fair to evaluate the essay in terms of what it’s actually trying to do.
As far as I can tell, it’s not trying to be a comprehensive political manifesto, but most of your criticisms seem to simply be objecting that he’s not talking about things you’d like him to talk about (or just not talking about them as much as you’d like):
- “One of the great failings of the piece is his failure to engage with climate change (while space exploration gets three full pages).”
- “Yet carbon emissions get very little airtime in his discussion of energy systems, and the impacts of climate change (heatwaves, floods, food shortages, and others) are not discussed at any point in the 235-page essay.”
- “There’s no discussion of the societal impact of advancing technologies… There’s nothing on how algorithms are interacting with our social structures, locking in biases, and systematically discriminating against women. Cumming’s essay has no real discussion of people, or reflection on lived experiences.”
- “Notably vacant from Cummings’ essay is any discussion of political representation, democracy, or even voting systems, which are in desperate need of reform.”
You also complain that “Often the text moves on to another topic without linking to the previous one, and without having developed the ideas much further.” But this is inevitable given that the essay ranges across an enormous variety of different topics of discussion. It might be frustrating to you as a reader if you didn’t want to read a loose collection of Dominic Cummings’s personal thoughts about multiple topics, but that’s what you signed up for in reading the essay. There’s nothing wrong with writing a personal essay which alludes to a wide range of topics without going into depth on most of them.
Notably, practically the only specific concrete criticism of anything in Cummings’s essay that I found in your review was concerning one of these many digressions on technical issues of interest to him that he goes into: “he draws false equivalences between the count of neurons in a brain and the processing power of computers, when this field still has many deep uncertainties” which, for one, is a fairly mild objection but also seems only tangential to the main themes (to the extent there are any) of the essay.
I think it would have been more useful if you engaged substantively with some of the arguments Cummings makes and explained specifically where you think he goes wrong. For example, you grant that “[Cummings] agrees that markets can fail, need to be regulated, and that the government plays an important role in fostering innovation.” But then you write “even advocates of market approaches, like Harvard academics Iversen and Soskice (2019) argue that successful capitalism has to always be embedded in the institutional features of democratic states” as though this you are pointing out a flaw in Cummings’s position. As it stands, if I hadn’t read Cummings’s essay, I would have virtually no idea from reading your review what his distinctive views are and I barely know what you actually disagree with him about.