This intersects with a common criticism against EAs: that utilitarianism doesn’t work and is very silly, because of such problems like eating tuna fish to prevent tunas eating other things. Although maybe this just points out that utilitarian value calculations are just extremely hard, not wrongheaded.
James-Hartree-Law
Karma: 45
I would describe myself as a conservative EA.
I think I got to a conservative political compass because of cause prioritisation. I felt that Liberal political groups were focused on personal identity considerations at the expense of more important goals. An example would be diversity hiring over talent hiring (which might be an overblown, optical concern that doesn’t really exist as much as I think it does.)
My feeling is that dividing up identity groups based on what makes one similar (similar gender identity or sexual orientation) is the wrong way of understanding community. Rather community is predicated on the need for diversity (builder, baker, candlestick makers make community. Not straight men.) I am an EA because of my similarities with EAs, but I am a member of my local community first and foremost. That is the community I need to exist, local community is more important than identity based communities like EA. [I really welcome red-teaming on this!]
I think EA’s have the mental strength to handle diverse political views well. What makes it difficult for conservatives and liberals to have conversations is an unwillingness to view others complexly, and being unwilling to assume good intent. We are EA’s because we care about doing good well. We already assume a certain amount of good intention in interaction with other EA’s. We could signal this to conservative folks. Liberals do not have a monopoly on moral feelings.
That said, a real conservative/liberal divide is the size of one’s circle of moral concern. EA’s have very broad ones, conservatives have very local ones. But this also seems like a general problem with EA, that it can think too large, too broad, too un-local. I’m pretty unsure about that.
I don’t understand what is the thought connecting the death of a chicken and the possible death of a baby (if it is not a fetus). The premise of your account, I thought, is that a fetus is possibly a human life. If it is a human life, then a genocide is happening every year. If it is true that a fetus is a human life, then why is it a relevant comparison that drastically more broiler chickens get killed yearly? On what basis can a comparison of life importance be made? As an aside, I was very interested to learn that “broiler” is a species of chicken. Broil: “to cook (meat or fish) by exposure to direct, intense radiant heat.”
Hi, the link to fellowships is currently broken. Can you please fix it?