Actually, no, the topic of this post is *not* an invitation to brainstorm "fundamental conditions for the minimization of suffering", so that is still (very obviously) off-topic. The topic is "anti-philanthropic misdirection". Comments should engage with WHAT I WROTE. Period.
If you disagree with a specific claim I made in the post, then …
Actually, no, the topic of this post is *not* an invitation to brainstorm "fundamental conditions for the minimization of suffering", so that is still (very obviously) off-topic. The topic is "anti-philanthropic misdirection". Comments should engage with WHAT I WROTE. Period.
If you disagree with a specific claim I made in the post, then by all means explain your disagreement. But if you can't tell the difference between *engaging with the SPECIFICS of what I wrote* and *a random rant about Scott Alexander*, then I can only reiterate that this is not the comments section for you. (If you don't already have a blog, you can always start one.)
Bottom line, you're in charge of declaring which Russian nesting dolls you'll abide in this space. But I reject your insinuations that I'm too feebleminded to discern the topic at hand. My scope is not yours, but that doesn't mean it's "random." You were discussing the biased, harmful effects of warped "pragmatic" reasoning. And then you referenced a long, colorful Scott rant to bolster your argument about how despicable it is to use bad reasoning to avoid giving (or, I would say, to avoid helping). I pointed out that Scott provides a great living example of warped pragmatic reasoning, due to his uninterrogated biases, and that in so doing he undermines the broadly stated goals of EA, even while writing quite reasonably in certain nesting dolls -- incidentally exemplifying the ongoing fungibility/subjectivity challenges of EA.
Though Scott's misdirection is anti-democratic (rather than "anti-philanthropic"), my point is certainly relevant, enough for a comment section anyway, since the shape is exactly the same: missing the forest for the trees, obsessing over emotionalized, anecdotal grievances (like a bad action by a charity, or a "woke" student) to nihilistically dismiss institutions meant to reduce suffering. Importantly, this particular flavor of misdirection is currently at the center of the most salient fight of our age, and EA is becoming a safe harbor for those whose bad reasoning tells them it's okay not to care when bad actors want to blow up centuries of progress because hip influencers assure them that all that progress was just a horrible wrong turn.
I would also submit that when you ban a commenter, you are navigating your own biases, which means you risk carelessly limiting diversity of thought and experience in exchange for the comfort of intellectual/aesthetic familiarity and control. I don't think it's good for expansive dialogue, and I think it leads to a dialectically incestuous community, but that's your business, I've offered my two cents, and you're right, it's not the kind of space I find valuable enough to keep returning to.
Actually, no, the topic of this post is *not* an invitation to brainstorm "fundamental conditions for the minimization of suffering", so that is still (very obviously) off-topic. The topic is "anti-philanthropic misdirection". Comments should engage with WHAT I WROTE. Period.
If you disagree with a specific claim I made in the post, then by all means explain your disagreement. But if you can't tell the difference between *engaging with the SPECIFICS of what I wrote* and *a random rant about Scott Alexander*, then I can only reiterate that this is not the comments section for you. (If you don't already have a blog, you can always start one.)
Bottom line, you're in charge of declaring which Russian nesting dolls you'll abide in this space. But I reject your insinuations that I'm too feebleminded to discern the topic at hand. My scope is not yours, but that doesn't mean it's "random." You were discussing the biased, harmful effects of warped "pragmatic" reasoning. And then you referenced a long, colorful Scott rant to bolster your argument about how despicable it is to use bad reasoning to avoid giving (or, I would say, to avoid helping). I pointed out that Scott provides a great living example of warped pragmatic reasoning, due to his uninterrogated biases, and that in so doing he undermines the broadly stated goals of EA, even while writing quite reasonably in certain nesting dolls -- incidentally exemplifying the ongoing fungibility/subjectivity challenges of EA.
Though Scott's misdirection is anti-democratic (rather than "anti-philanthropic"), my point is certainly relevant, enough for a comment section anyway, since the shape is exactly the same: missing the forest for the trees, obsessing over emotionalized, anecdotal grievances (like a bad action by a charity, or a "woke" student) to nihilistically dismiss institutions meant to reduce suffering. Importantly, this particular flavor of misdirection is currently at the center of the most salient fight of our age, and EA is becoming a safe harbor for those whose bad reasoning tells them it's okay not to care when bad actors want to blow up centuries of progress because hip influencers assure them that all that progress was just a horrible wrong turn.
I would also submit that when you ban a commenter, you are navigating your own biases, which means you risk carelessly limiting diversity of thought and experience in exchange for the comfort of intellectual/aesthetic familiarity and control. I don't think it's good for expansive dialogue, and I think it leads to a dialectically incestuous community, but that's your business, I've offered my two cents, and you're right, it's not the kind of space I find valuable enough to keep returning to.