Economics/āpolicy student. President of the EA club at the University of Western Australia.
jordanvešø
Karma: 403
Thatās unreal. I thought for sure it would have been the profile on you and SWP in Bregmanās moral ambition. One of their staff reads Benthamās Bulldog? Not on my bingo card.
(Iām sorry that Iām a bit late to this. I moved my comment from your newer post back to this one.)
I really appreciate your work :) I used to consider myself socialist, and Iāve read all the authors that you recommend and more (Cohen, Piketty, Rawls, Wright, Hickel, Harrington, Russell, Hobsbawm, Eagleton, Davis, Robinson, heaps of Chomsky, Scott, Harvey, Fisher, Burgis, Torres). I ran a leftist book club in Brisbane for a couple years. I spent most of my philosophy undergrad writing essays defending socialismāeven anarchism. Eventually, I realised a few things about what I was doing:
Nirvana fallacy: I was looking for what seemed like the best possible version of socialism, and comparing it to really existing capitalism. I did not think about the best possible versions of capitalism, really existing versions of socialism, or broaden my scope to other alternatives. I loved Cohenās Why Not Socialism, and I was disappointed when Jason Brennan correctly pointed out that the whole essay is an exercise in nirvana-reasoning that does not ask remotely the same question of each system (roughly: does capitalism have major flaws? does socialism have major appeals? can we conceive of a plausible way to make socialism viable?).
Plannerās fallacy: I was highly attentive to the potential benefits of my socialism that hadnāt been tried yet, without being sensitive to the costs and enormous risks of transformative departures from the current system that has been serving humans much better than previous systems. I would not have had this double standard for projects under any other labels, let alone ideas that were centuries old.
No true scottsman: I rejected all previous major socialist projects, with extremely niche exceptions like Catalonia, Mondragon, or Sweden in the 1970s. Crucially, the projects I rejected (Soviets, Cuba, China, Venezuela) are exactly the projects that we can properly evaluate with full information, unlike exciting proposals. I somehow had so much confidence even though I had such tiny or short-lived examples. This is particularly limiting for conclusions about international socialism and global cooperation, since we have no examples to work with. Itās also nearly impossible to disentangle what is causing outcomes when you change an entire complex system quickly, or even gradually. My definition of socialism, then, became basically privateāeven semantic. The line between myself and non-socialist left-liberals was blurry to non-existent, but it was an important part of my identity that I was socialist, while others were not. I should have taken comfort that, under such a broad and flexible definition, the world was already socialist. For ~untested proposals, I donāt think we should treat the ones labeled socialist as somehow warranting our attention before the randomly selected/āgenerated non-socialist ones.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater: Itās absolutely true that capitalism is flawed and causes serious problems. Every system will have flaws, harms, and trade-offs. For each of the problems prominently and plausibly attributed to capitalism, I think itās the case that (1) any given socialism would either perform only marginally better, or possibly worse, and/āor (2) there is a much more direct policy solution with far fewer risks and costs, that is much more likely to succeed and much more likely to be implemented. For example, even though you can make an excellent case that capitalism is responsible for factory farming (even though socialists/ācommunists have factory farms, too), it does not follow that we must abolish capitalism rather than regulate it. Even after a socialist election/ārevolution, you would still need to fight for animal protection policies anyway, so socialism is a high-risk scenic route at best. For these reasons, I think itās better to directly address problems with the scalpel of evidence-based policy, rather than indirectly influencing them through the sledgehammer of transformative political economy. The latter approach, and socialism in general, is rooted in conflict theory, where problems are seen as being caused by certain groups of people that must be disenfranchised, rather than illnesses that we can treat for everyoneās benefit. Conflict theory, in my view, reliably leads to bad outcomes, and makes it nearly impossible to embrace reasoned politics.
Unreasoned politics: In sum, I was giving socialism special treatment, including essentially all of my attention. I would now encourage people to instead embrace scout mindset, and reasoned politics as a priority over any of my own political conclusions. Like Chomsky, I think that we should test plausible-sounding reforms on a small scale, carefully monitor the effects, and carefully scale up the most successful ones. Unlike Chomsky, I donāt reject charter cities, or fields of study I donāt like (e.g., economics) and what their insights reveal about my ideology.
After spending this much time thinking about socialism, I eventually came to the conclusion that the best arguments against the right (e.g., confidence =/ā= supporting evidence; old rigidities donāt work for current or future problems; we shouldnāt play russian roulette with society to test an educated wish) were also defeaters for socialism. I also think that socialism is probably optimising for the wrong things in the first place. I should say that I think that Erik Olin Wright and Thomas Piketty are well within the zone of reasonable disagreement. I hope that this is reassuring (in a weird way); there are EAs who have extensively engaged with socialism, given it years of more than fair consideration, and reached a conclusion thatās as informed as one could (reasonably) ask for. I hope that, like me, you donāt discount that someone could go through the process you recommend and reach the opposite conclusion. I doubt that socialism (especially any kind incompatible with liberalism) makes sense as a pressing cause area, even for longtermists.
For university group organisers like myself with more limited personal capacity and a limited executive team, Iāll also encourage people to consider a minimalist version of this. Iāve been running weekly social lunches at a cafe every week that are open to everyone interested in the club. The only ongoing effort it requires of me is to turn up, and I always enjoy the discussions. I have plans to scale up to a maximalist version of this once the capacity of the executive team increases.
Wow, thank you for this. Youāre far more across this topic than I am, haha.
As for the effects of family planning on population levels, itās interesting that thereās such wide disagreement, although maybe itās just that the Collinsā are mistaken (wouldnāt shock me). Iād have to dig into the underlying research.
I distrust self-reports as a reliable guide in this case due to various biases (discussed by Kahneman), and my thoughts on that have been much better expressed in chapter 4 of the human predicament. Iāll need to revisit chapter 9 of WWOTF and see how their arguments and evidence compare. I would agree that an absence of positive lives (wherever the right line is) is somewhat bad, and should be a factor in decision making, although I am not a totalist or even a consequentialist (for example, I think the threshold for a live worth starting is quite above a life worth continuing). I agree that for totalists, this issue matters a lot, and for anyone uncertain about population ethics, it matters somewhat.
To clarify for certain readers, I think that the right of the woman to family planning comes first and shouldnāt be restricted. I think that foregone positive lives only has implications for prioritising among our positive obligations, not negative rights or liberties. Iām sure you agree.
I remember the Collinsā being emphatically pro abortion and contraception to increase the cultural prestige and frequency of having childrenāso the poster couple of population=good seems to think contraception and abortion access does not reduce the population, all things considered. Iām not sure if the lives of unwanted children are worth starting, but I should flag that Iām generally pessimistic about which lives are worth starting.
Edit: Iām not familiar with the culture of Nigeria. My intuitions about this developed in a western context and maybe there are relevant differences in Nigeria.
Iāve heard positive things about how to be perfect from friends. Schur wrote the foreword to the life you can save, but the way he used the most good you can do in the good place was pretty annoying. The character apparently inspired by it lives in the woods off grid drinking rainwater doing the least good you can do.
Anyway, I think that justice by michael sandel is a brilliant introduction to ethics (I studied ethics in my philosophy undergrad). Itās focused on many real-world applied cases to explore principles, arguments, theories, thinkers, etc. The thesis of the book is that we cannot avoid engaging in value theory when discussing real world dilemmas or politics, but this engagement can be done well or poorly.
I love that you shared this. Iāve just finished reading it, youāve done a fantastic job. Thank you for so clearly distilling the problems with such widespread objections. My highlights were the revolutionaryās dilemma, EA as the minimisation of abandonment, the reputational threat that EA poses to traditional altruists, and the political critique.
Francione did this in his 2007 article āWeāre all Michael Vickā. He calls it moral schizophrenia. Singer calls it secondary speciesism: prioritising some non-human animals over others. I donāt know if anyone has made a habit of it, I think itās a good idea. Iād be interested to see someone try to measure the effects this kind of argument has on the audience.
I am a pretty committed vegan advocate, and have been for over six years ever since I started engaging with animal ethics.
I wanted to say that I share your frustrations exactly, and that solider veganism has been driving me up the wall ever since I joined the vegan community. Seeking truth and justice is what led me to veganism in the first place. It disgusts me when solider vegans seem to believe that veganism cannot survive truth-seeking. There are very obvious trade-offs, compromises, constraints, inconveniences, annoyances, costs, learning curves and sacrifices involved in veganism. An infinite number of ideological assurances and hand waving wonāt stop a new vegan from confronting them in the real world. As for persuasionā¦ the truth is enough. People will either hear about these trade-offs from vegans or from anti-vegans, who could seem more truth-seeking by contrast.
I go back and forth between thinking that this problem is especially bad in vegan advocacy, and thinking itās just sturgeonās lawāwhere 90% of everything is crap, including communities such as vegan advocates, with no exception for EAs. Iād like to know others thoughts about this.
I can see that youāve been getting a lot of flak for your posts on veganism, including that they might have negative consequences. My best guess is that they would have overwhelmingly positive consequences for farmed animals. Youāve presented pro-vegan arguments in their most informed and defensible version. To the extent that people identify the dominant naive arguments as being āthe case for veganismā, they will be less persuaded to adopt veganism, their veganism will be at high risk of being unsustainable, and their views on veganism will be vulnerable to basic factual challenges. This naive culture will also pollute the data on the epidemiology of veganism, making veganism look worse than it should be.
If you think it would be beneficial to how vegan advocates receive your work, I would be happy for you to add to your posts that youāve received support from extremely grateful vegan advocates, who are absolutely fed up with naive/āsoldier veganism.
Thank you for writing this book, Iām looking forward to reading it. How does it contrast with jacy reeseās the end of animal farming? I notice that itās focused on america, but would you still recommend it for advocates in other countries?
I think that a huge chunk of charity is pretty thoughtless, and that many viewers in absolute terms would have felt some sympathy for shrimps, even though theyāre speciesist. Most donors also like splitting across different problems out of some sense of fairness. Putting these together, I can easily see many non-EA viewers donating to SWP soon out of guilt, at least as a once-off. The segment ended on the website link in huge font, and I think that was a significant prompt.