4 is a great point, thanks.
On 1--3, I definitely agree that I may prudentially prefer some possibilities than others. I’ve been assuming that from a consequentialist moral perspective the distribution of future outcomes still looks like the one I give in this post, but I guess it should actually look quite different. (I think what’s going on is that in some sense I don’t really believe in world A, so haven’t explored the ramifications properly.)
I haven’t downvoted, but this is attracting several downvotes, and I thought I’d try to articulate some negative feelings I have here:
First, as Stefan has noted, the summary seems inaccurate: Zach’s article nowhere claims that Sam was never an effective altruist
I think it’s bad form to put sensationalist takeaways in a summary when they don’t appear in the article, and feel not great about the link as a result
I do think that seeing it linked in this way primed me to be more negative about the article (and the notes below reflect that)
I have mixed feelings about that (maybe it would have been better to see it without anchoring, but also there’s something good about looking at things we love with critical eyes)
Second cluster, some negativity towards the article
Could be summarized as “Except … it’s kind of right, though?” of the summary linked here. While the article never says Sam was never an EA in so many words, that’s kind of the vibe that’s carried through it
It doesn’t acknowledge the (IMO real) possibility that Sam’s errors were in part inspired by misguided readings of effective altruism
The judge slammed Sam in part for “evasive, hairsplitting” testimony and “never a word of remorse”
It seems like maybe Zach’s article errs just a little in these directions (although far less egregiously, and certainly not lying or covering up any crime)
I have some feeling like it may be appropriate to go out of the way now (and especially on this topic) to try not to make any of Sam’s mistakes
I have mixed feelings about the impact I expect this to have on readers
I think it says a lot of true things and I think that if taken at face value will make many people’s impressions more accurate
However, I also think some proportion of insightful readers may pick up on some PR-vibes and have this reinforce an impression that effective altruism may still be vulnerable to some of the errors that Sam made
Probably it’s good overall, compared to no such article? But I wonder if there might have been some version of the article that I’d have felt more straightforwardly good about
I guess that many of the downvotes are likely based on one or the other of these clusters (or both, although the two complaints are in some tension with one another).
(edited for clarity and to restructure the bullet point nesting)