This reminds me of the libertarians who poke fun at Bernie Sanders for being a millionaire, taking it to implicitly discredit his egalitarianism.
While it's obviously fine to criticize behavior you think poorly of (in either case!), I do worry - in both cases - about the rhetorical role such discourse plays, if the mockery acts as a *substitute* for seriously engaging with the "discredited" target's ideas and arguments. (Mockery can be employed against counterintuitively true positions about as easily as it can against false ones. Careful argument is what's needed to actually distinguish the two -- as I hope philosophers generally would agree.)
If you're at all interested in following this up with a more substantive post sometime, I'm always curious to hear which of the claims in my below-linked post critics of effective altruism actually disagree with (and why):
I have always thought EA was a reductio ad absurdum for number crunching utilitarianism. I realise that is wishful thinking on my part; I have met enough EA acolytes. I also have trouble believing there are any actual numbers involved in the calculation.
I'm so glad to read your take on this and in such a fun style. Working in the actual research side of AI, I find very few that are into these ideologies, but have encountered so many in the broader ecosystem (venture, engineers, business execs, etc.) that do and I don't really understand this strange conviction.
This reminds me of the libertarians who poke fun at Bernie Sanders for being a millionaire, taking it to implicitly discredit his egalitarianism.
While it's obviously fine to criticize behavior you think poorly of (in either case!), I do worry - in both cases - about the rhetorical role such discourse plays, if the mockery acts as a *substitute* for seriously engaging with the "discredited" target's ideas and arguments. (Mockery can be employed against counterintuitively true positions about as easily as it can against false ones. Careful argument is what's needed to actually distinguish the two -- as I hope philosophers generally would agree.)
If you're at all interested in following this up with a more substantive post sometime, I'm always curious to hear which of the claims in my below-linked post critics of effective altruism actually disagree with (and why):
https://rychappell.substack.com/p/what-effective-altruism-means-to
I have always thought EA was a reductio ad absurdum for number crunching utilitarianism. I realise that is wishful thinking on my part; I have met enough EA acolytes. I also have trouble believing there are any actual numbers involved in the calculation.
Pig out and get to play altruist at the same time?
I'm so glad to read your take on this and in such a fun style. Working in the actual research side of AI, I find very few that are into these ideologies, but have encountered so many in the broader ecosystem (venture, engineers, business execs, etc.) that do and I don't really understand this strange conviction.
😆