Maybe I'm wrong, but my guess is that if someone wrote "Life is neutral; some states are worse than death, and adding new happy people is nice but not important", that person would be called out, and the post would receive a large portion of downvotes. I'm not sure about the downvotes (personally I didn't even downvote the OP), but I think pointing out the somewhat controversial nature of such a blanket statement is definitely a good thing. Would you oppose this as well (similarly aggressively)?
We could talk about whether my view of what's controversial or not is biased. I would not object to someone saying "Murder is bad" without prefacing it with "Personally, I think", even though I'm sure most uncontrolled AIs will disagree with this for reasons I cannot find any faults in. But assuming that we're indeed talking about an issue where there's no consensus among EAs, then to me it seems epistemically appropriate to at least hint at this lack of consensus, just like you do when you talk about a scientific hypothesis that is controversial among experts. And it makes even more sense to hint at this, if some people don't even realize that there's a lack of consensus. For whatever reason, EAs that came to EA through LW care much more about preventing death than EAs that found to EA through e.g. Peter Singer's books. And I thought it might be interesting to LW-originating EAs that a significant fraction of EAs "from elsewhere" feel alienated by the way some issues are being discussed on LW. Whether they give a shit about it is a different question of course.
See, the issue is that you think the downvotes were because of your views. I can't speak for other people, but I downvoted you because you were engaging in behaviors I prefer to discourage; namely, ignoring the substantive thrust of a post to nitpick at a relatively insignificant comment made in the middle whose absence wouldn't affect the post as a whole. And, as we see here, you made that comment not because it was substantive or seriously detracted from the post, but because it was an ideological matter with which you disagreed with the author. Hence...
Cross-posted from my blog here.
One of the greatest successes of mankind over the last few centuries has been the enormous amount of wealth that has been created. Once upon a time virtually everyone lived in grinding poverty; now, thanks to the forces of science, capitalism and total factor productivity, we produce enough to support a much larger population at a much higher standard of living.
EAs being a highly intellectual lot, our preferred form of ritual celebration is charts. The ordained chart for celebrating this triumph of our people is the Declining Share of People Living in Extreme Poverty Chart.
(Source)
However, as a heretic, I think this chart is a mistake. What is so great about reducing the share? We could achieve that by killing all the poor people, but that would not be a good thing! Life is good, and poverty is not death; it is simply better for it to be rich.
As such, I think this is a much better chart. Here we show the world population. Those in extreme poverty are in purple – not red, for their existence is not bad. Those who the wheels of progress have lifted into wealth unbeknownst to our ancestors, on the other hand, are depicted in blue, rising triumphantly.
Long may their rise continue.