My main question: Who are these ‘people’ that you seem to be arguing against?
It sounds like you’re seeing people who believe:
“You—you, personally—are responsible for everything that happens.”
“No one is allowed their own private perspective—everyone must take the public, common perspective.”
Other humans are not independent and therefore warring with them is better than trading with them (“If you don’t treat them as independent… you will default to going to war against them… rather than trading with them”)
To do good, “you will try to minimize others’ agency”
And the people who hold the aforementioned beliefs are:
“the people around me applying utilitarianism”
“many effective altruists”
people with ideas “commonplace in discussions with effective altruists”
I guess I struggled to engage with the piece because my experiences with ‘people’ are very different than your experiences with ‘people.’ I don’t think anyone I know would claim to think the things that you think many effective altruists. I loosely consider myself an effective altruist and I certainly don’t hold those beliefs.
I think one way to get more engagement would be to argue against specific claims that specific people have spoken or written. It would feel more concrete and less strawmanny, I think. That’s a general principle of good writing that I’m trying to employ more myself.
Anyway, great work writing this post and thinking through these issues!
Thanks for the clear criticism! I do plan to try to write more on exactly where I see people making this and related errors. It’s helpful to know that’s a point on which some readers don’t already share my sense.
I’m not saying that people explicitly state that you ought to be in a state of war against everyone else—I’m instead saying that it’s implied by some other things people in EA often believe. For instance, the idea that it’s good for GiveWell to recommend one set of charities to the public, but advise Good Ventures to fund a different set of charities, because the public isn’t smart enough to go for the real best giving opportunities. Or that you should try to get people to give more by running a matching donations fundraiser. Or that you can and should estimate the value of an intervention by assuming it’s equal to the cost. Or that it’s good to exaggerate the effect of an intervention you like because then more people will give to the best charities.
The thing all these have in common is that they ignore the opportunity cost of assuming control of other people’s actions.
Thanks for the long and thoughtful post.
My main question: Who are these ‘people’ that you seem to be arguing against?
It sounds like you’re seeing people who believe:
“You—you, personally—are responsible for everything that happens.”
“No one is allowed their own private perspective—everyone must take the public, common perspective.”
Other humans are not independent and therefore warring with them is better than trading with them (“If you don’t treat them as independent… you will default to going to war against them… rather than trading with them”)
To do good, “you will try to minimize others’ agency”
And the people who hold the aforementioned beliefs are:
“the people around me applying utilitarianism”
“many effective altruists”
people with ideas “commonplace in discussions with effective altruists”
I guess I struggled to engage with the piece because my experiences with ‘people’ are very different than your experiences with ‘people.’ I don’t think anyone I know would claim to think the things that you think many effective altruists. I loosely consider myself an effective altruist and I certainly don’t hold those beliefs.
I think one way to get more engagement would be to argue against specific claims that specific people have spoken or written. It would feel more concrete and less strawmanny, I think. That’s a general principle of good writing that I’m trying to employ more myself.
Anyway, great work writing this post and thinking through these issues!
Thanks for the clear criticism! I do plan to try to write more on exactly where I see people making this and related errors. It’s helpful to know that’s a point on which some readers don’t already share my sense.
I’m not saying that people explicitly state that you ought to be in a state of war against everyone else—I’m instead saying that it’s implied by some other things people in EA often believe. For instance, the idea that it’s good for GiveWell to recommend one set of charities to the public, but advise Good Ventures to fund a different set of charities, because the public isn’t smart enough to go for the real best giving opportunities. Or that you should try to get people to give more by running a matching donations fundraiser. Or that you can and should estimate the value of an intervention by assuming it’s equal to the cost. Or that it’s good to exaggerate the effect of an intervention you like because then more people will give to the best charities.
The thing all these have in common is that they ignore the opportunity cost of assuming control of other people’s actions.