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Comment by lanfeust6 | Hacker News Reader

The guys who were obsessed with maximizing efficacy of charitable giving, and then later AI risk, are "justifying bad behavior". Right.

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I am not familiar with their beliefs (open to learning). But what circulates is troubling. E.g. statistically optimising for future even if it means harming current can be bad dressed in an excuse. Assigning value e.g. to lives (from prawns to humans) can also be a statistical way to do harm with an excuse. Overall, if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck…

This reads more like an orchestrated proxy smear campaign to attack the actual thing they're after: the opposition to unrestricted AI.

The smear campaign will work if that’s all that’s out there. Are they public with their beliefs/principles or does someone need to go through levels of billions valuation to know the truth.

The article here pretty much debunks itself given the over-the-top absurdity and irrationality of its "arguments". But of course only when read critically in the first place.

When two opposing forces meet, you don’t get truth from either side, you get it by critically looking at what’s left between the lines. And it doesn’t look good for EA if I go by the discussion here. Lots of pushing problematic to crazies and anecdotal altruism that is not in any way related to EA principles specifically. I don’t judge. Everyone is entitled to do what they think is best. But we can also be concerned on our side on the impact EAs actions can have on us who are not in agreement with the vagueness of it. And we can say that it is looking as much about altruism as Scientology is about science.

> I am not familiar with their beliefs (open to learning)

That much is clear. No one "owns" or "leads" EA, it's not a monolith; people have their own beliefs and co-opt it, including crazies. The only common tenet is in the name.

Notwithstanding that "shrimp welfare" and the like is in the margins, it does not preclude the overwhelmingly anthropocentric charitable giving by most members.

I mean, the most popular writer associated with that world, Scott Alexander, donated his kidney just to help others. Knowing the good people are trying to do, it's unseemly to me for EA not only to be discarded but viciously attacked because of "vibes" and weirdos who associate themselves with it.

You used the term "an excuse" twice; for what, a hidden motive to do harm? I think some types like Bentham's Bulldog are wrong or misguided in some respects, that doesn't mean you can leap to some notion that they want to harm humanity in the most stupid way possible: donating a meagre sum to shrimp welfare.

I wouldn’t be against the co opt interpretation and I do believe people will be co opting something both with good and bad or crazy intentions. The thing is, if a fraction that co opts is so overwhelmingly outranks everyone else, then the original intent may end up the fringe. From my perspective the issue starts with the name. Why effective? The moment you introduce an optimisation problem you open the back door to biases. I would suggest blind altruism. Engineers can accept readily that random processes can optimise. Let the randomness optimise blindly and just be altruistic. You don’t have to publish an altruism balance sheet.

Well... look at the behavior, it is bad. They use the things you say here to justify it, soo... yes.

Look up ‘earning to give’ and think about the implications of that when a few thousand worth of mosquito nets buys a human life.

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