I find that a good way to make statements criticizing individuals or organizations less provocative is to frame your criticism as a confusion. This simultaneously allows you to demonstrate that you’ve thought about their reasoning for more than five minutes and tends to make any further discussion less adversial.
The abstract reasoning about why prison reform is a bipartisan cause makes sense to me: prisons cost lots of money (bad conservative metric) and they’re disproportionately inhabited by minorities (bad liberal metric), but if your descriptions of their recommended organizations are charitable, then I too am confused right now.
The fact that they let this stuff through reduces my confidence in 80,000 hours and the EA movement as a whole.
...I hope we are also able to post an opposite message (that something increased someone’s confidence in EA) when an opposite situation happens. Otherwise we have yet another case of why our kind can’t cooperate.
if your descriptions of their recommended organizations are charitable, then I too am confused right now.
Please check the links and report back, I am one person working alone so it is possible I have missed something important.
frame your criticism as a confusion.
Well I have been accused of being a concern troll in the past for doing exactly that. So, I am being up-front: this is a critical article with that caveat that criticism of professional altruists is a necessary evil.
No, concern-trolling is when you say “You’re doing X, but it would be sooo much better for your case if you did Y instead” where Y is “nicer” than X but probably actually less effective.
(Tentatively upvoted.)
I find that a good way to make statements criticizing individuals or organizations less provocative is to frame your criticism as a confusion. This simultaneously allows you to demonstrate that you’ve thought about their reasoning for more than five minutes and tends to make any further discussion less adversial.
The abstract reasoning about why prison reform is a bipartisan cause makes sense to me: prisons cost lots of money (bad conservative metric) and they’re disproportionately inhabited by minorities (bad liberal metric), but if your descriptions of their recommended organizations are charitable, then I too am confused right now.
Similarly, whe I see statements like this...
...I hope we are also able to post an opposite message (that something increased someone’s confidence in EA) when an opposite situation happens. Otherwise we have yet another case of why our kind can’t cooperate.
Well there are definitely a lot of good things about the EA movement, and people who choose to be a part of it should be proud of its achievements.
Please check the links and report back, I am one person working alone so it is possible I have missed something important.
Well I have been accused of being a concern troll in the past for doing exactly that. So, I am being up-front: this is a critical article with that caveat that criticism of professional altruists is a necessary evil.
I believe that’s called a “concern troll”.
It also means that people with actual confusion will no longer be able to get answers because they will be mistaken for people like you.
No, concern-trolling is when you say “You’re doing X, but it would be sooo much better for your case if you did Y instead” where Y is “nicer” than X but probably actually less effective.