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Are EA billionaire philanthropists actually effective in their 'altruism'? (spoilers: no)
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this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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SneerClub
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.
AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)
This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.
[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]
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My argument is that if he hasn't spoken out on Gaza, if he hasn't urged people to do what he thinks would be the best way to stop the genocide, then he is either a fool who can't see what is in front of him or a moral coward who can't act on his convictions.
Either way it makes him a poor ethics philosopher. We can be pretty sure that unless he himself is an experienced life guard, he would in fact not dive in to the river to save the child.
If he wouldn't save the drowning child, does that mean I shouldn't? Does his potential personal failings really invalidate his ideas and arguments?
No. That's exactly the ad hominem fallacy.
Does moral cowardice matter in someone teaching about ethics? Yes, just as much as physical cowardice matters for a life guard. (The other way is fine.)
Does he express his ideas and teachings as something that it would be good if people did, but he totally wouldn't if it causes himself a smidgen of inconvenience? If he didn't, we now know that he was lying. Which matters if your moral framework cares about truth.
If you have to read his works for some reason, do it with open eyes and try to figure out who and what he is lying in service of.
Nothing about a philosopher's person matters as long as they're able to put forward coherent philosophical arguments. If a conclusion follows from a set of assumptions and an argument, what does it matter if a five year old or a tree presented that argument?
Sure, if you distrust the source, that invites deeper scrutiny, but it cannot in itself invalidate an argument.
That's first-order ethics. Some of us have second-order ethics. The philosophical introduction to this is Smilansky's designer ethics. The wording is fairly odious, but the concept is simple: e.g. Heidegger was a Nazi, and that means that his opinions are suspect even if competently phrased and argued. A common example of this is discounting scientific claims put forth by creationists, intelligent-design proponents, and other apologists; they are arguing with a bias and it is fair to examine that bias.
“What do you mean the clock is broken? It’s 12 now, and the clock says 12!”
@SmoothOperator @mountainriver
What's your position on Codes Of Conduct for free software projects? Just trying to confirm some prejudices here
Could you elaborate? I'm not sure I know what you're referring to, I'm not a software developer.
@SmoothOperator OK, how do you feel about the statement "technology is politically neutral"?