I haven’t read the Srinivasan, Gray, and Nussbaum critiques. However, I did read the Krishna critique, and that one uses another rhetorical technique (aside from the sneering dismissal McMahan mentions) to watch out for in critiques of effective altruism. The technique is for the critic of EA to write in as beautiful, literary and nuanced a way possible, in part to subtly frame the EA critic as a much more fully developed, artistic and mature human than the (implied) shallow utilitarian robots who devote their lives to doing a lot of good.
Effective altruism can then be rejected, not on the the basis of logic or anything like that (in fact, caring too much about this kind of logic would be evidence of your lack of humanity), but on grounds that rejecting EA goes along with being nuanced, sophisticated, socially wise, and truly human.
This post leaves some dots unconnected.
Are you suggesting that people pretend to have beliefs they don’t have in order to have a good career and also shift the Republican party from the inside?
Are you suggesting that anyone can be a Republican as long as they have a couple of beliefs or values that are not totally at odds with those of the Republican party — even if the majority of their beliefs and values are far more aligned with another party?
Or by telling people to join the Republican party, are you suggesting they actively change some of their beliefs or stances in order to fit in, but then focus on shaping the party to be aligned with EA values that it is currently kind of neutral about?
It doesn’t seem you’re saying the first thing, because you don’t say anything about hiding one’s true beliefs, and you have the example of the openly left-wing acquaintance who got a job at a conservative NGO.
If you’re saying the second thing, I think this is more difficult then you’re imagining. I don’t mean emotionally difficult because of cold uggies. I mean strategically or practically difficult because participation in certain political parities is generally meant to be constrained by preexisting beliefs. If you are going to join a party and work up a career ladder in that party, you can’t do this without interacting with other people in that party. And those people are going to want to talk to you about your political beliefs. If they find out your political beliefs are mostly or totally unaligned with the Republican party, but you have these other interests (like AI safety) that are for now maybe party neutral — but really you’re joining the party because it is more desperate for young people and/or you want to steer the party away from its current direction — you’re going to have trouble being taken seriously as a Republican, and you could be treated as a hostile invader. That could make it hard to achieve your goals in joining. The example of your acquaintance suggests this may not be impossible, but you haven’t said what she has done within the NGO. Is she changing the NGO to better fit with her values, or does she now have to ignore her own values to keep the job? Did the NGO happen to focus on the one area within the Republican party she already agreed with?
You imply the notion of replaceability to defend joining the Republican party. If your values are aligned with the Democrats, and you become a Democrat and try to get jobs within the Democratic party, then you’ve taken a spot from someone who would have behaved similarly to you. But if your values and beliefs are aligned with the Democrats and you join the Republican party and get Republican jobs, you’ve displaced an actual Republican who would have had worse values and done worse things in the job, and by doing this, you can more drastically change the values of the party than you would change the values of a party you agree with.
This is interesting but I doubt replaceability works in this case. First, it assumes parties and the jobs within them are zero sum. This seems wrong. Parties and the number of jobs within them can grow. There is not an inevitably limited set of Republican spots. There can be more of these if more people join the party. So if your values are unaligned with Republicans, and you join the party to block an actual Republican from getting a job and influencing the party, it may turn out that you’ve blocked no one from anything, and have only grown a party that you think is largely a force for bad.
Second, this isn’t like earning to give by getting a finance job and donating lots of money under the assumption that the next person who would have got that job would not have donated. You don’t actually have to have or pretend to have a certain set of values to work in finance (though some values would make the job more emotionally difficult than others, and certain values will make it easier to get along with co-workers than others). The main thing you have to do is be good at the job. If you donate most of your income from your high paid job, people you work with might find it weird, but they probably won’t treat you as a hostile invader. In contrast, you do need to have certain beliefs or values to be accepted as a Republican.
So, replaceability doesn’t really seem to apply to joining ideological organizations. It doesn’t make sense to join ideological organizations that are unaligned with your own values because of a perceived redundancy in joining an ideological organization you actually agree with. Again, because it’s not zero sum, and because you will not be easily accepted by ideological organizations you disagree with.
Maybe you’re thinking that if young people who don’t like the Republican party join it nevertheless, their values could drift and become more Republican over time, and so they will eventually fit in while hopefully maintaining their concern for AI safety or whatever EA interests they started with. This avoids the hostile invader problem but not the problem of growing a party they were initially at odds with.
You come across as sympathetic to the Republican party. This makes me think you might be telling people to do the third thing: actively change their beliefs to be more Republican, maybe by hanging around Republicans and letting value drift take over, but still trying to hold on to some core EA ideas that have not been politicized yet. Perhaps you even think the value drift itself would be good.
I think this approach would make the most sense to someone who is on the fence between different political ideologies and maybe leans slightly toward the Democrats but doesn’t think Republicans are horrible. Maybe a lot of libertarians would qualify. It would make sense to tell all this to them. But you’ve claimed any young EA who isn’t already on a career track incompatible with the Republican party should join the Republican party. This is unrealistic. I think most people who dislike the Republican Party are not going to want to risk the harm that a future version of themselves could do if they start agreeing with Republicans on a lot of things and help to grow the Republican party. This is not because of cold uggs, but because they might worry that taking your advice could lead them to make the world worse.