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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   31477 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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  1. This is sort of an ad argumentum to make the point that the problem is not that EA fails to communicate values. I don't think EA comes into this saga at all.

  2. I get what you're saying about second order effects, but it sort of makes the whole thing banal. Once you start justifying things by second and third order effects, you just get all the way back to deontology.

When EA or EA-affiliated started getting involved in politics, or trying to, with the Carrick Flynn race then that was a very big red flag. That is moving away from the original principles into "well you know how do we really do the most good, isn't it getting guys elected who can make laws and commit funding to our pet projects?"

And that makes you the same as the guys lobbying for grants for farm subsidies, or tobacco companies against legislation banning their advertising, or every other group out there wanting the government to pass laws and give money to their pet projects.

On reflection I think EA as a tribal signifier has come to mean a whole bunch of different things to different people, from "we should value the lives of future people more than our own" to "maybe we should think for two seconds about cost efficiency" to "defrauding people can be good, actually" to "just donate to whoever Givewell says." This is unhelpful.

Agreed. I am not a strict utilitarian but still support EA more on the “think for two seconds on cost efficiency” side, and the idea that the first world has a moral obligation to help lift the rest of the world out of poverty.

I don’t buy into longtermism or AI doom scenarios at all though, and find them rather annoying. People forget that most of the work done in EA and most of the money spent is on global development. Unfortunately controversy drives headlines so most don’t see that.

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