On the contrary, JGW posted this top-level post partly in response to my original comment (there were no others calling it an ad at the time, despite his use of the plural). Within it, he explicitly ignores my point:
I won't argue whether or not the post was an ad, but I will say that it belongs on Less Wrong and we should give it a good reception.
The main reason I gave for saying it did not belong on LW was that it was an ad, and a poorly written one at that!
(It's irrelevant even by the most generous possible interpretation of community standards- we routinely have ads for unrelated and commercial products/services, to the extent that there was a highly upvoted official thread for them.)
I also think those ads are abuses of the discussion section, even when they are posted by the SI itself, and I have argued against them in the past, to little avail.
You're also using inaccurate ad hominems- how is this in any way a guilt trip?
What else do you call it when someone complains about downvotes, in order to receive upvotes?
This is becoming somewhat silly. I've already wasted more time arguing against the post than time I would ever possibly save from discussion being ad-free.
On the contrary, JGW posted this top-level post partly in response to my original comment (there were no others calling it an ad at the time, despite his use of the plural). Within it, he explicitly ignores my point:
I won't argue whether or not the post was an ad, but I will say that it belongs on Less Wrong and we should give it a good reception.
The principle reason I give for saying it did not belong on LW was that it was an ad, and a poorly written one at that!
I'm sorry, I misunderstood what you thought JGW was saying. Here's how I interpreted ...
Less Wrong was created to produce rationalists, so that many causes could benefit from the efforts of those rationalists. The point is not just to have nice place to talk about rationality, but to really make ourselves stronger, to apply the lessons that we learn here to improve our own lives, and to improve the world.
80,000 Hours is an organization created to provide direct domain specific help to people who want to support charitable causes, the same causes Less Wrong is supposed to produce rationalists to support. 80,000 Hours has goals clearly aligned with ours. Provided we think they are pursuing their aligned goals effectively, we should be excited about this. We should be happy when they reach out to us, to see how we can work together.
So, I am very disappointed to see the negative reception of a Less Wrong post by 80,000 Hours member Benjamin Todd, asking us what questions we would like 80,000 Hours to answer for us. They are basically offering to do free research for us on things that we care about, because our goals are aligned. And yet, as of this writing, that post has a score of -7, and it has received comments complaining that it is an ad. To be clear, ads of the sort that we want to avoid do not offer free services relevant to a core purpose of our community. I won't argue whether or not the post was an ad, but I will say that it belongs on Less Wrong and we should give it a good reception.
I would like to thank Benjamin Todd and others at 80,000 hours for their work in helping people be more effective philanthropists and otherwise support important causes, and for engaging Less Wrong in this project. I also thank everyone who responded to post with their actual questions about making a difference.
And, please, can we be nice to people who help us?