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JGWeissman comments on Efficient Charity - Less Wrong
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Comments (182)
Even when the point you are making happens to be correct, please don't complain that the people your are trying to convince did not do the (possibly trivial) work to gather supporting evidence you did not include in your argument.
This is general background knowledge everybody should have. It was pretty much like saying "we don't know if more people live in China or Japan". Well, except we do, and it's trivial to find.
The very "trying to convince" approach is highly counterproductive, what we should be trying is finding truth.
I agree with JGWeissman here. You have a lot to offer in the way of knowledge and clear thinking and on the whole I enjoy reading your comments, but I feel that the net value of your contributions to LessWrong would be enhanced if you took to heart the points that Alicorn makes in her article titled A Suite of Pragmatic Considerations in Favor of Niceness.
I've read it, but I'm not a big fan of niceness in this context. There's a reason why all groups that try to get things done effectively seem to drift towards blunt and rude end of the spectrum. Niceness is an overhead, but it's also a highly asymmetric overhead - some points of view are taxed by niceness requirements far worse than others, so it ends up introducing a pretty drastic bias. For example status quo supporters tend to have least trouble being "nice".
Alicorn might be well-meaning here, but I haven't seen any decent evidence that niceness is appropriate in this context.
I do not consider regional life expectancies, or historical limiting factors on lifespan, to be general background knowledge that everybody has.
Questioning perceived flaws in an argument is a tool of truth seeking, as is strengthening the argument to address those questions. But complaining that the questioner should have strengthened the argument themselves is a status play that serves to discourage questioning.