This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Yes, GiveWell doesn't send rice but the malaria medicine and vitamins do the same thing.
This is where EA gets really grotesque and why I said it was an abomination. So we're giving supplies to Africans and notice that the effect is more Africans who need more supplies. The solution? Let's just get them to have less kids! Does it not seem crazy to you to that EA basically declares itself the captain of these Africans? Why do they even need malaria medicine? It's always been there. Maybe their mortality rate is a bit too high for Western sensibilities, but what do they think? And if they're unable to influence their mortality rate on their own, maybe that's the way it should be?
Heck, I would quantify a marginal African life as negative and even I'm creeped out by this "we know best, we will do it for you" attitude.
The people who are "unable to influence their mortality rate on their own," in the AMF's model, are children under five years old. So yes. I would say they are unable to influence their mortality rate on their own, and I don't think "that's the way it should be" is a particularly likely conclusion for them any more than it is for any other four year old on the planet. If you think that's a likely conclusion, then I suppose we have completely incompatible moral principles.
An analogy: if aliens showed up and started handing out some crazy technology we can't replicate that cured any disease for 5 year olds and younger, do you think that would be good or bad? I think bad.
I think good, as the children would then live, and children dying is bad. It is a pretty foundational moral intuition on my part that children dying is bad and things that exclusively cause children to not die are good, and I'm pretty sure it's extremely widespread, to the point I would very seriously have to rethink my model of the general population if normies disagreed.
If this were to happen, we would no longer be sovereign. These aliens are basically superior, so instead of building our own capacity from the ground up, one can skip all that by currying favour with said aliens. Our rulers are now also subservient to the aliens, lest they do something the aliens don't like and we lose access to this special alien technology that we never had in the first place.
Change out aliens for a rival power, like the Chinese. Suppose for COVID they came up with a vaccine that actually works and gave it to us for free, but we did not have the ability to manufacture it. Say Biden or whoever decided that we would accept this gift. The Chinese now own us. Nobody who will turn down these vaccines can get elected, and it goes without saying that not pissing off China would be a requirement for shipments to continue.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's not terribly clear it does, in the same degree or extent; the demographic collapse when countries have child mortality drop isn't perfectly reliable, but neither is it some unlikely possibility.
If I thought any GiveWell cause was going to strap Africans to the table and chop their balls off, perhaps. When they're basically looking at providing condoms and LARCs, I'm a little less concerned about whether it would be Better if sub-Saharan African instead 'should' be reinventing premarin or making its own rubber.
... having actually spoken with a number of people there, they're not especially predisposed to a lack of running water, to blindness, or to malaria. (Or a wide variety of other issues: a local guide complained at length that he was sick of having to get treated for dysentery, so don't trust that particular bottled water company).
And if the moon were made of cheese, they'd never be hungry.
There may well be some situation where merely providing optional resources overwhelms internal agency -- indeed, my willingness to put the threshold for direct food aid points to a pretty low bar! -- but I don't think any GiveWell programs here have gotten anywhere close.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link