I would appreciate an elaboration or restatement of “ii. Avoid bundling normative claims with descriptive claims.”—I felt like I was understanding what you were saying but then “My point was more like:Arguing on the internet about the relative status of things isnot effective altruism” felt like a nonsequitur, so I suspect I was misunderstanding the entire section.
1. Arguing on the internet is about the relative status of groups is not effective altruism.
2. People should be doing effective altruism.
The rest of the original Demon Thread post was (mostly) trying to be a fairly objective description of how internet threads can go bad and why it might not be the best use of your time given your goals, but I was also sneaking in assumptions about what goals you should have.
Yeah, this makes sense now, thanks for the clarification.
(As a post-mortem of my thought process: I think I failed to make the connection that the second part of the segment was referring the previous article as doing the thing. Perhaps I was thinking of i, ii, iii as being things you learned about demon threads, and so the point about article writing was a round peg for a square hole.)
I would appreciate an elaboration or restatement of “ii. Avoid bundling normative claims with descriptive claims.”—I felt like I was understanding what you were saying but then “My point was more like: Arguing on the internet about the relative status of things is not effective altruism” felt like a nonsequitur, so I suspect I was misunderstanding the entire section.
Ah. I had been making a two-step claim:
1. Arguing on the internet is about the relative status of groups is not effective altruism.
2. People should be doing effective altruism.
The rest of the original Demon Thread post was (mostly) trying to be a fairly objective description of how internet threads can go bad and why it might not be the best use of your time given your goals, but I was also sneaking in assumptions about what goals you should have.
Not sure if that clarifies it?
Yeah, this makes sense now, thanks for the clarification.
(As a post-mortem of my thought process: I think I failed to make the connection that the second part of the segment was referring the previous article as doing the thing. Perhaps I was thinking of i, ii, iii as being things you learned about demon threads, and so the point about article writing was a round peg for a square hole.)