Comment on Open thread, July 28 - August 3, 2014

Tue, 29 Jul 2014 20:55:44 GMT

If you're using the Christian argument for charity to talk effective altruism, you are implicitly accepting the authority of Jesus.

Yes, you are. That's a price you need to pay if you want to get something out of mindkilled people, which incidentally tends to be the first step in introducing outside ideas and thereby making them less mindkilled. Reject it in favor of some kind of radical honesty policy, and unless you're very lucky and very charismatic you'll find yourself with no allies and few friends. But hey, you'll have the moral high ground! I hear that and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee.

(My argument in the ancestor wasn't really about fighting the white male patriarchy, though; the rhetoric about that is just gingerbread, like appending "peace be upon him" to the name of the Prophet. It's about the importance of subjective experience and a more general contrarianism -- which are also SJ themes, just less obvious ones.)

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