I’m a little worried that by not being loud enough with the caveats, the EA movement’s “discourse algorithm” (the collective generalization of “cognitive algorithm”) might be accidentally running a distributed motte-and-bailey, where the bailey is “You are literally responsible for the death of another human being if you don’t donate $5000” and the motte is “The $5000 estimate is plausible, and it’s a really important message to get people thinking about ethics and how they want to contribute.”
I initially wrote a comment engaging with this, I thought that was one of the primary things Ben was trying to talk about in the post, but then Oli persuaded me Ben was just arguing that the cost-effectiveness estimates were false / a lie, so I removed the comment. I’d appreciate an explicit comment on how much this is one of the primary things Ben is trying to say with the essay.
I initially wrote a comment engaging with this, I thought that was one of the primary things Ben was trying to talk about in the post, but then Oli persuaded me Ben was just arguing that the cost-effectiveness estimates were false / a lie, so I removed the comment. I’d appreciate an explicit comment on how much this is one of the primary things Ben is trying to say with the essay.