I’m not really interested in debating this on LessWrong, for basically the exact reasons that I stated in the first place, which is that I don’t really think these sorts of conversations can be done effectively online. Thus, I probably won’t try to respond to any replies to this comment.
At the very least, though, I think it’s worth clarifying that my position is certainly not “assume what you’re doing is the most important thing and run with it.” Rather, I think that trying to think really hard about the most important things to be doing is an incredibly valuable exercise, and I think the effective altruism community provides a great model of how I think that should be done. The only thing I was advocating was not discussing hot-button political issues specifically online. I think to the extent that those sorts of things are relevant to doing the most good, they should be done offline, where the quality of the discussion can be higher and nobody ends up tainted by other people’s beliefs by association.
I’m not really interested in debating this on LessWrong, for basically the exact reasons that I stated in the first place, which is that I don’t really think these sorts of conversations can be done effectively online. Thus, I probably won’t try to respond to any replies to this comment.
At the very least, though, I think it’s worth clarifying that my position is certainly not “assume what you’re doing is the most important thing and run with it.” Rather, I think that trying to think really hard about the most important things to be doing is an incredibly valuable exercise, and I think the effective altruism community provides a great model of how I think that should be done. The only thing I was advocating was not discussing hot-button political issues specifically online. I think to the extent that those sorts of things are relevant to doing the most good, they should be done offline, where the quality of the discussion can be higher and nobody ends up tainted by other people’s beliefs by association.