Nobody denies that systemic factors can be important - that's not "nuance", it's utterly trite. The challenge is in identifying promising systemic *interventions* (that are likely to do good, and aren't even more likely to do harm). And I think EA does this far, far better than Crary does.
I'm not sure why you think my analysis of Crary's…
Nobody denies that systemic factors can be important - that's not "nuance", it's utterly trite. The challenge is in identifying promising systemic *interventions* (that are likely to do good, and aren't even more likely to do harm). And I think EA does this far, far better than Crary does.
I'm not sure why you think my analysis of Crary's motivations is "just a personal attack", or that I lack supporting evidence. I've read a lot of what she's written on the topic, and I shared what I sincerely judge to be the best explanation of her behavior. Consider her article on the OUP blog:
There, Crary et al. lament EA funding priorities in the animal welfare sphere. EA funders want systemic change, and fund things (like corporate campaigns and transformative alt-meat research) that have a chance of achieving and accelerating the needed big changes. But Crary et al. complain that EA won't fund sanctuaries for individual rescued animals: "covering the costs of caring for survivors of industrial animal farming in sanctuaries is seen as a bad use of funds."
This is the *opposite* of advocating for systemic change. Crary's attacks on EA are thus seen to be opportunistic rather than principled. She explicitly *doesn't want* to prioritize funding for systemic change (of a sort that her friends aren't into). She wants funding for her friends and co-authors, and she doesn't want it to have to pass any kind of rigorous evaluation for cost-effectiveness relative to competing uses of the available funds.
Have you read Crary et al's book? As they tell the story, it grew out of a conference where a bunch of political allies were grousing together about how EA wouldn't fund their work, and so they decided that this proved that EA was too closed-minded, racist (!!), and "grievously harmful". They wrote the book to share their collective complaints. (I reviewed it.) It's all quite transparent. It's hardly "bad epistemics" to notice when people are engaged in transparently motivated reasoning.
Anyway, I won't have time to pursue this disagreement further. I'll just close by flagging that your criticisms rest on baseless, unsupported assumptions. You imagine that you're in a position to judge that I "lack evidence" for my negative judgment of Crary's motivations. But you don't know all my evidence. All you can say is that I didn't, in my post, share enough of my background evidence to convince you. But that's rather different.
You're exactly right though. I'm not saying you lack evidence _in general_ for your negative judgement of Crary. I know you've engaged very substantailly with her work and have put forth strong arguments, in other places, and including in this specific comment. I'm saying you lack evidence in this specific post, and that your tone in this post was overly harsh. That, is bad epistemics. I do think there's a bit of 'devil effect' (opposite of halo) going on too, but perhaps that's another argument.
> "And I think EA does this far, far better than Crary does."
And to this, I also agree. But the point to me is not comparing how good each person does it, but how they could be improved. The value I see in engaging with Crary's argument is realizing out that EA should engage with even more systemic factors, _especially_ those which are not easily captured through EA's methodology (as Singer points out in response to your question).
Anyways, I'm also happy to close things off here. Thank you for engaging. I apprecite this and have gotten value out of it.
Nobody denies that systemic factors can be important - that's not "nuance", it's utterly trite. The challenge is in identifying promising systemic *interventions* (that are likely to do good, and aren't even more likely to do harm). And I think EA does this far, far better than Crary does.
I'm not sure why you think my analysis of Crary's motivations is "just a personal attack", or that I lack supporting evidence. I've read a lot of what she's written on the topic, and I shared what I sincerely judge to be the best explanation of her behavior. Consider her article on the OUP blog:
https://blog.oup.com/2022/12/the-predictably-grievous-harms-of-effective-altruism/
There, Crary et al. lament EA funding priorities in the animal welfare sphere. EA funders want systemic change, and fund things (like corporate campaigns and transformative alt-meat research) that have a chance of achieving and accelerating the needed big changes. But Crary et al. complain that EA won't fund sanctuaries for individual rescued animals: "covering the costs of caring for survivors of industrial animal farming in sanctuaries is seen as a bad use of funds."
This is the *opposite* of advocating for systemic change. Crary's attacks on EA are thus seen to be opportunistic rather than principled. She explicitly *doesn't want* to prioritize funding for systemic change (of a sort that her friends aren't into). She wants funding for her friends and co-authors, and she doesn't want it to have to pass any kind of rigorous evaluation for cost-effectiveness relative to competing uses of the available funds.
Have you read Crary et al's book? As they tell the story, it grew out of a conference where a bunch of political allies were grousing together about how EA wouldn't fund their work, and so they decided that this proved that EA was too closed-minded, racist (!!), and "grievously harmful". They wrote the book to share their collective complaints. (I reviewed it.) It's all quite transparent. It's hardly "bad epistemics" to notice when people are engaged in transparently motivated reasoning.
Anyway, I won't have time to pursue this disagreement further. I'll just close by flagging that your criticisms rest on baseless, unsupported assumptions. You imagine that you're in a position to judge that I "lack evidence" for my negative judgment of Crary's motivations. But you don't know all my evidence. All you can say is that I didn't, in my post, share enough of my background evidence to convince you. But that's rather different.
You're exactly right though. I'm not saying you lack evidence _in general_ for your negative judgement of Crary. I know you've engaged very substantailly with her work and have put forth strong arguments, in other places, and including in this specific comment. I'm saying you lack evidence in this specific post, and that your tone in this post was overly harsh. That, is bad epistemics. I do think there's a bit of 'devil effect' (opposite of halo) going on too, but perhaps that's another argument.
> "And I think EA does this far, far better than Crary does."
And to this, I also agree. But the point to me is not comparing how good each person does it, but how they could be improved. The value I see in engaging with Crary's argument is realizing out that EA should engage with even more systemic factors, _especially_ those which are not easily captured through EA's methodology (as Singer points out in response to your question).
Anyways, I'm also happy to close things off here. Thank you for engaging. I apprecite this and have gotten value out of it.