I didn’t change my opinions based on the post. I took it as a bit of surprising evidence that someone is actually anti-private-philanthropy in a way that Scott took seriously enough to write about, and thought maybe it’d be a convenient thing I could link to if I did come across a rational-ish friend or acquaintance who was toying with or including altruism in their hatred of billionaires. It could save a bit of time in my own marshaling of arguments in such a case.
That case hasn’t occurred, so it may have been a low-value post on that front. I haven’t seen any backfire either, so I’m currently of the opinion that it’s a blog post, and it’s OK if it doesn’t change the world.
I also think you’re using “mistake-theory vs conflict-theory” in a confusing way. These are two ways that one might model someone who holds an opposing viewpoint, not descriptions of those who hold opposing viewpoint. I think you’re making the argument that conflict theory is a better fit for this disagreement than mistake theory. That’s an argument about how you and Scott and I should approach the topic, and the choice of theory applies to us. The anti-billionaire crowd is lumping in billionaire altruism as part of their worldview of bad billionaire things, and approaching it as a necessary conflict. The theory we should apply is conflict-theory. The theory they are applying is “none”—they’re not engaging in a theory of mind for their opponents.
(note: I don’t personally like the conflict-vs-mistake framing, as every significant disagreement has elements of both).
I’ve come around to the “conflict-vs-mistake framing” in particular because “every significant disagreement has elements of both”.
It must be the case, in some sense anyways, that every ‘conflict theory’ begins its (epistemic) existence as a ‘mistake theory’ and is thus, hopefully, at least somewhat amenable to being considered ‘mistaken’ later given sufficient contrary evidence.
In general too, conflict theories seem to have a ‘memetic’ advantage in being ‘epistemically totalitarian’, i.e. subsuming all subsequent evidence (until the existence of the conflict is itself later considered mistaken).
It’s also true that something like philanthropy could be both net-positive for everyone and net-negative for a particular political coalition.
I didn’t change my opinions based on the post. I took it as a bit of surprising evidence that someone is actually anti-private-philanthropy in a way that Scott took seriously enough to write about, and thought maybe it’d be a convenient thing I could link to if I did come across a rational-ish friend or acquaintance who was toying with or including altruism in their hatred of billionaires. It could save a bit of time in my own marshaling of arguments in such a case.
That case hasn’t occurred, so it may have been a low-value post on that front. I haven’t seen any backfire either, so I’m currently of the opinion that it’s a blog post, and it’s OK if it doesn’t change the world.
I also think you’re using “mistake-theory vs conflict-theory” in a confusing way. These are two ways that one might model someone who holds an opposing viewpoint, not descriptions of those who hold opposing viewpoint. I think you’re making the argument that conflict theory is a better fit for this disagreement than mistake theory. That’s an argument about how you and Scott and I should approach the topic, and the choice of theory applies to us. The anti-billionaire crowd is lumping in billionaire altruism as part of their worldview of bad billionaire things, and approaching it as a necessary conflict. The theory we should apply is conflict-theory. The theory they are applying is “none”—they’re not engaging in a theory of mind for their opponents.
(note: I don’t personally like the conflict-vs-mistake framing, as every significant disagreement has elements of both).
I’ve come around to the “conflict-vs-mistake framing” in particular because “every significant disagreement has elements of both”.
It must be the case, in some sense anyways, that every ‘conflict theory’ begins its (epistemic) existence as a ‘mistake theory’ and is thus, hopefully, at least somewhat amenable to being considered ‘mistaken’ later given sufficient contrary evidence.
In general too, conflict theories seem to have a ‘memetic’ advantage in being ‘epistemically totalitarian’, i.e. subsuming all subsequent evidence (until the existence of the conflict is itself later considered mistaken).
It’s also true that something like philanthropy could be both net-positive for everyone and net-negative for a particular political coalition.