lukeprog comments on A critique of effective altruism - Less Wrong

64 Post author: benkuhn 02 December 2013 04:53PM

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Comment author: lukeprog 01 December 2013 11:39:01PM *  18 points [-]

Good work! Though, this is much weaker than my model of a hypothetical apostasy, which is informed by my actual deconversion from Christianity, which involved writing a thoroughly withering critique of theism and Christianity, not a "here's how Christianity could be tweaked and improved."

If I were to write a hypothetical apostasy for EA, I might take the communism part further and try to argue that enacting global policies on the basis of unpopular philosophical views was likely to be disastrous. Or maybe that real-world utilitarianism is so far from intuitive human values (which have lots of emotional deontological principles and so on) that using it in the real world would cause the humans to develop all kinds of pathologies. Or something more damning that what you've written. But if you published such a thing then you'd have lots more people misunderstand it and be angry at you, too. :)

Edit: I see that Carl has said this better than I did.

Comment author: benkuhn 02 December 2013 12:06:27AM 1 point [-]

Since you delegated to Carl, I responded to him.