Jasnah Kholin
Comments4
well, I personally don't talk about animal rights because I don't believe in animal rights, and find the way most right discussions go bad and mind-killed. I also don't talk about right when talking about malaria in Africa! people don't have "right" to not be sick. I want people not to be sick and die, and willing to pay for that.
I just generally don't look on the world using right-glasses, and don't find those googles helpful. quit the opposite.
my question is the opposite - why do you want to talk about rights? In my model, EAs tend talk less about right, because the sort of people who tend to become EAs tend to think less in framework of rights, and more in the EA framework. that the default EA reaction to sentence like "animals should have rights to wellbeing" should be "taboo the word right".
(I don't personally active in anything, i give 29.5% of my donations to Animal Welfare. and this is the name i use in a file that I created for myself, to describe the categories the way i think about them.)
"It seems obvious, though, that it would not be prudentially rational for Tim to make either choice."
It is indeed seem obvious - to the other direction! people make this choice, and encourage others to make this choice, all the time!
you can disagree with the mainstream view here, but there is something that is very disconnected from... normal society, in this claim.
The Tortured Toms of the world actually exist, mostly don't want to die, and a lot of time will object at any attempt to describe their life as net-negative.
more then it's look like analysis, it's look like formalized failure in theory of mind, and of just... not knowing people with sucky lives. It's read as if the writers never talked to such person, or read their post in facebook, or read their books.
assume we are right and everyone else is wrong. then, we are right and everyone else is wrong. but why would I assume that?
I find the luck of self awareness in this post really concerning and discrediting.
I came to EA from the rationalshpere, and I find all the first part both untrue for me, and worrying. It's important part of my life to not be a person like that. and indeed, I had instinctive (or maybe socialstinctive) opinion pro-socialism as a child, and I changed her when I encountered evidence.
In a similar way, I just fail to imagine how can you believe you faction is the weakestin Starcraft. like, you already said it's not! It's obvious! I can understand aliefing it, but not believing it. and there is a difference, and big one.
and it's not even what happening in EA. what I see happening is people look on the evidence, and change their mind. (when there are factions of EA that behave in mindkilled way I find it deeply concerning.)
so, the way I observe EA work in practice, and way I expect it to work in this toy example, is the same - EA will start with the believe that their favorite politic idea is most effective, then go and search for evidence, not find good enough evidence, and go for global health and not torturing animals and not destroying all humanity and maybe AI (this actually look like historical incident to me, but even that is contestable - It's not an accident that the same sort of people that interested in AI is interested in EA. there is a thoughts generator that generate both).
I see this post as giving up on some really basic rationality skill, with the implicit claim it's impossible to do. when people in real life have this skill and use it all the time!
so while I support tugging sideways, I find this post worrying. EA is based on having better judgment, not on giving up or claiming it's impossible to have better judgment. especially in a world where the possibility was proven again and again. be more ambitious! what you implicitly claim is impossible look like pretty basic skill for me, and one that really worth acquiring. ES are much worst then EA as it exist today.
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.