3 ms·
I think the connections with the Effective Altruism community would make for a really amazing think-piece on conflicting ethics, circuitous reasoning, and moral
by saurik 4y ago
I think the connections with the Effective Altruism community would make for a really amazing think-piece on conflicting ethics, circuitous reasoning, and moral rationalization.
- tptacek 4y agoI don't understand it. I haven't ever done a deep dive on EA, but at first blush it seems like such a benign, banal idea: direct charity money effectively and pragmatically. Sure! How does it end up so weird and broken?
- pvg 4y agoHow does it end up so weird and broken? Rationalists, basically. It sound thoroughly glib but is the actual answer.
- idlewords 4y agoYou get the usual brainiacs who integrate over the total happiness of imaginary future humanity (trillions of generations colonizing the galaxy) and decide that safeguarding that future justifies doing basically anything in the present day.
- tptacek 4y agoYeah, I didn't dig into EA that much after asking, but then I read the insane Sequoia-commissioned Bankman-Fried piece and it clicked immediately after the part about how William McCaskill convinced Bankman-Fried to go work for Jane Street so he could "earn to give". Oh. You can justify anything that way! You could murder hobos, if it jazzed you up for really hardcore day of trading or whatever. I get it. Like utilitarianism itself, it makes a lot of sense in the small and like zero sense at all generalized.