> A UBI experiment, in contrast, might be a good way to convince people of the folly of the UBI. For a modest cost, you could persuasively demonstrate the stro

> A UBI experiment, in contrast, might be a good way to convince people of the folly of the UBI. For a modest cost, you could persuasively demonstrate the strong disincentive effects, reducing support for this massive waste of resources. This response is insidious, but not because of the professor's position on UBI. If we already had overwhelming evidence that a new UBI study would "persuasively demonstrate the strong disincentive effects", then that evidence would by itself "persuasively demonstrate the strong disincentive effects." Furthermore, if such evidence existed, the proponents of UBI would already be ignoring it. Therefore, the first strike against the suggested response is that it lacks basic logic: either the professor lacks enough evidence to knows the outcome of the study before it is done, or the professor is not justified in asserting that more such evidence will be persuasive. The second strike is this: If the professor expected students to be familiar with the evidence against UBI, then we should expect the professor to be looking for the students to demonstrate that familiarity by referencing it in support of their conclusion (i.e. that a UBI study would have a certain outcome.) That the professor does not expect this indicates that he is not training students to make arguments based on evidence. The final strike is the evaluation of the UBI as a persuasive tool. Even if we assume that the professor is correct on both counts (i.e. that a UBI study will be negative and persuasive), that by itself isn't a justification for a "modest cost" in an Effective Altruism framework. I wouldn't spend a "modest amount" to convince some people that the earth is not flat, for example, because it would have no real impact on any of the metrics Effective Altruists use. Because the professor stops short of connecting the educational outcome to the EA metrics, he has presented a failure of a response as a suggested response. So to summarize: the response is internally incoherent, expects authoritative phrasing over evidence, and ultimately fails to directly connect the claims to the question.