i believe (ironically, in very Marxist way) that it's guns that brought both democracy and rights to various groups.
democracy, at its heart, is counting voices instead of guns. you don't need to train men for years to use guns, and so they equalize the knight and the peasant, the men and the women, and give various minorities power.
there was a lot of peasants revolts through the history, and most of them ended badly to the peasants. what changed in modernity is the invention of guns (and other technologies).
in my model, there are more people who encountered socialist arguments and didn't encounter EA arguments, then there are people who encounter EA but not socialism.
i got converted from socialism to capitalism the first time i encountered arguments for capitalism, that you couldn't find before that. ( i also don't really consider EA as playing the same role as socialism, btw).
The problem is, the median vegan is anti-truth-seeking. Even at EA. And it's very bad, and i see being vegan as signaling denying trade offs and oriratizing purity over consequences.
EA was supposed be the place where i can talk about where to buy humane raised animal products, and i have no such place, and no place to talk to people like me, instead it get to laege extend coopted by the general, nit truth seeking, nit consequencialist, lying, general vegan movment.
And i still disappointed and sad about that.
The principaled thing is not eating factory farmed things. Veganism is prefering purity to the actual good.
Actually, I find eating humane raised animal products the ideal, and find vegan diet obviously inferior. It's pretty important disagreement, and it's look like you unaware of its existence, and assume you are obviously right without arguments (at least, i didn't see any).
it was so weird to read this post, like a glimpse of different world.
my own worries are 180 degrees from this.
i look on my local EA newsletter, and it's look like EA was totally Goodhearted, become from group of people aiming to do the most good, to brand under witch a group of backscratchers can meet each other and help each other, and seek status and money together.
the thing i afraid may happen, already partially happen, maybe already to far gone to save, is EA stop aiming for good and true, and failing the incentive gradient to seek power and money and status, instead of "good".
and this post sound like description of this path.
when academia found that Most Published Research Findings Are False it didn't Halt Melt and Catch Fire, it carried on, as it was long stopped be first and foremost engine for truth-seeking, and become place for status and power seeking, place when smart people come to to meet other smart people.
this is the losing condition, not winning condition! if it happen, it mean EA lose, and next time something good and effective and weird will come, EA will not do it, as it bad politically. it's partially already happened. and then, all that will remain is the shell of EA, while what it once was will be lost.
(there is something to say here about things moving from simulacra level 1 to 3, but the anti-jargon opinion of the post make the idea of making it unpleasant. which is, somewhat ironically, demonstrate part of the point i want to make.)
how exactly the donating related to being able to lobby their congressperson? are you assuming the congressperson checking who donated, for small donations, before reading mails regarding policy?
the point of the example, as i see them, is to demonstrate that the positives are actually really high. it's not situation when the positive is 10 and the negative is -1000, so the in expectation the value is negative.
those are situations when the positive value is 100 and maybe 1000, and it's not clear to me that the -1000 value is good enough reason to avoid the sweet, sweet +1000 value.
so the disagreement is maybe about how high value it actually is. it's not "fine or tolerable" it's really important and valuable, in way that people who advocate against fail to see and account for. and this is why this comment was so valuable. it's demonstrated, with examples, that it's much more then just fine, but actually good. that choosing not-that would have been small tragedy.
well, i think the right framework is net-negative on the margin, and the world will be better place if people will talk less about human rights.
and I'm not... talking about things because they are useful. i also don't think it's fair description to what you do - it's look to me you actually believe in animal rights, and this is why you support it. and i just... don't.
the reason EA don't use this framework, in my model, is that most EA don't believe in animal right. to change that, you need to convince people that it's good framework and they should use it.
and then they will use it, nit because it's useful, but because it's true. which is the right thing to do, in my opinion - saying things because one believe they are true. i don't even start the discussion about "is right talk will help animals and the world", because even if the answer is "yes", i will not be part of it as long as i believe it's wrong framework.
so, in short: EA tend to believe less in the rights framework then the general population and so use it less.
well, the problem is that there are a lot of progressives who find normal conservative values odious, and if you dare to invite conservatives to event there will be posts about how awful it is, and how are they racist-sexist-evil, and people feel unwelcome because of that.
a lot of people make "welcoming" zero-sum game, when you can't have left and right in the same place, because having the right make it unwelcoming to left.
i believe (ironically, in very Marxist way) that it's guns that brought both democracy and rights to various groups.
democracy, at its heart, is counting voices instead of guns. you don't need to train men for years to use guns, and so they equalize the knight and the peasant, the men and the women, and give various minorities power.
there was a lot of peasants revolts through the history, and most of them ended badly to the peasants. what changed in modernity is the invention of guns (and other technologies).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peasant_revolts
why? or maybe, when?
in my model, there are more people who encountered socialist arguments and didn't encounter EA arguments, then there are people who encounter EA but not socialism.
i got converted from socialism to capitalism the first time i encountered arguments for capitalism, that you couldn't find before that. ( i also don't really consider EA as playing the same role as socialism, btw).
The problem is, the median vegan is anti-truth-seeking. Even at EA. And it's very bad, and i see being vegan as signaling denying trade offs and oriratizing purity over consequences.
EA was supposed be the place where i can talk about where to buy humane raised animal products, and i have no such place, and no place to talk to people like me, instead it get to laege extend coopted by the general, nit truth seeking, nit consequencialist, lying, general vegan movment.
And i still disappointed and sad about that.
The principaled thing is not eating factory farmed things. Veganism is prefering purity to the actual good.
If i had the choice of existing some amount of good life and then die, or not exist at all, the first is the obvious choice.
Actually, I find eating humane raised animal products the ideal, and find vegan diet obviously inferior. It's pretty important disagreement, and it's look like you unaware of its existence, and assume you are obviously right without arguments (at least, i didn't see any).
This is bad.
it was so weird to read this post, like a glimpse of different world.
my own worries are 180 degrees from this.
i look on my local EA newsletter, and it's look like EA was totally Goodhearted, become from group of people aiming to do the most good, to brand under witch a group of backscratchers can meet each other and help each other, and seek status and money together.
the thing i afraid may happen, already partially happen, maybe already to far gone to save, is EA stop aiming for good and true, and failing the incentive gradient to seek power and money and status, instead of "good".
and this post sound like description of this path.
when academia found that Most Published Research Findings Are False it didn't Halt Melt and Catch Fire, it carried on, as it was long stopped be first and foremost engine for truth-seeking, and become place for status and power seeking, place when smart people come to to meet other smart people.
this is the losing condition, not winning condition! if it happen, it mean EA lose, and next time something good and effective and weird will come, EA will not do it, as it bad politically. it's partially already happened. and then, all that will remain is the shell of EA, while what it once was will be lost.
(there is something to say here about things moving from simulacra level 1 to 3, but the anti-jargon opinion of the post make the idea of making it unpleasant. which is, somewhat ironically, demonstrate part of the point i want to make.)
I don't actually try to change your mind, but...
how exactly the donating related to being able to lobby their congressperson? are you assuming the congressperson checking who donated, for small donations, before reading mails regarding policy?
the point of the example, as i see them, is to demonstrate that the positives are actually really high. it's not situation when the positive is 10 and the negative is -1000, so the in expectation the value is negative.
those are situations when the positive value is 100 and maybe 1000, and it's not clear to me that the -1000 value is good enough reason to avoid the sweet, sweet +1000 value.
so the disagreement is maybe about how high value it actually is. it's not "fine or tolerable" it's really important and valuable, in way that people who advocate against fail to see and account for. and this is why this comment was so valuable. it's demonstrated, with examples, that it's much more then just fine, but actually good. that choosing not-that would have been small tragedy.
well, i think the right framework is net-negative on the margin, and the world will be better place if people will talk less about human rights.
and I'm not... talking about things because they are useful. i also don't think it's fair description to what you do - it's look to me you actually believe in animal rights, and this is why you support it. and i just... don't.
the reason EA don't use this framework, in my model, is that most EA don't believe in animal right. to change that, you need to convince people that it's good framework and they should use it.
and then they will use it, nit because it's useful, but because it's true. which is the right thing to do, in my opinion - saying things because one believe they are true. i don't even start the discussion about "is right talk will help animals and the world", because even if the answer is "yes", i will not be part of it as long as i believe it's wrong framework.
so, in short: EA tend to believe less in the rights framework then the general population and so use it less.
(it's also, in my opinion, one of the things that define EA, but Ozy explain it better then i can: https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/effective-altruism-maximizing-welfarist )
well, the problem is that there are a lot of progressives who find normal conservative values odious, and if you dare to invite conservatives to event there will be posts about how awful it is, and how are they racist-sexist-evil, and people feel unwelcome because of that.
a lot of people make "welcoming" zero-sum game, when you can't have left and right in the same place, because having the right make it unwelcoming to left.