Addressing My Critics

A little-known fact is that my primary aim in life is to be universally loved on the internet. I read Machiavelli, and concluded that I should either be loved or feared, but I’m not a very scary guy, and fear lowers utils, so I settled for being loved. Tragically, by all accounts, I’m not doing a good job at it. Lots of people on the internet seem to not like me very much! What? For example:

Noooooooooo! The finest mind of our generation deeply dislikes me! Why could this be? I set out to investigate. My sophisticated investigative methods involved asking people who didn’t like me why they don’t like me.

Sadly, the people who disliked me generally didn’t really answer. Instead, most of the answers were along the lines of “I like your blog a lot, but if I had to explain why people don’t like you…” I thought it would be worth discussing some of the answers and explaining my views.

Roman's Attic says:

I guess I don’t really dislike you, but there are 2 things you do that kinda bother me:

1) Distributing charitable donations in a way that doesn’t seem like it has strong theoretical grounding (why not just donate to 1?). I know you’ve talked about why you do this on your blog before, but your response was very unimpressive.

2) Writing posts that aren’t worth reading. These are posts that won’t update the beliefs of the people who agree with them and probably won’t be read by the people who disagree with them. As far as I can tell, the value of these posts is to allow fans to go “look at those other people I dislike! They’re so silly!” and I think this is a pretty useless mission. Here are a list of posts I would consider to be a part of this category:

benthams.substack.com/p…

benthams.substack.com/p…

benthams.substack.com/p…

benthams.substack.com/p…

benthams.substack.com/p…

benthams.substack.com/p… (I like this topic, but I don’t think your argument would persuade a real critic)

I think there’s a not crazy case for giving to multiple places if you’re a public figure. Part of why I donate is to encourage others to do the same. But I agree that if you’re a private individual, the best thing to do in expectation is give to only one charity. Sadly, I’m not a perfect utilitarian robot, nor are most people. I don’t always do what’s best. I don’t give as much as I should, nor do I give as optimally as I should. Sorry!

I agree my political posts are the least careful of my public writings. Ironically, I think my shrimp and insect posts are a lot better argued than my political posts. But people like my political posts because they agree with them more. Still, I don’t think you can expect every article to radically upend a person’s worldview. I write a blog post every day—they can’t be expected all to change people’s lives.

James says:

You are far too confident in the SIA and I have not yet read a great steelman of you of the reasons for believing in the SSA, which many smart philosophers do believe in. This is unironically the most unforgivable thing you have done (to me personally, because I am still confused about anthropics. I don’t know what you get up to in your own time ;) )

I don’t really agree with this criticism. I’ve written repeatedly about the main objection to the self-indication assumption and why I don’t think it is right (see section 4.8). Basically all of the pieces that criticize the SIA just give that one objection. I’ve talked about why I don’t buy that objection, which is pretty much all the critics standardly say. I don’t know what more can be done.

Nate T says:

I think you’re awesome. But I do think you miss an evolutionary angle to morality and ethics. Most humans will always perceive morality as somewhat related to proximity and the ability to reciprocate, because this is how morality evolved.

Thanks Nate!

Don’t really agree with this objection either. I don’t think I miss an evolutionary angle to morality. Of course evolution explains all sorts of features of our moral belief. I often appeal to evolutionary debunking arguments. But just because we evolved to care morally about proximity doesn’t mean we should. We can reflect and come to see that how far away one is doesn’t affect the weight of their interests.

Patrick says:

I think it’d be fruitful to respond to the more thoughtful critics, esp. Lance bush, in his writing and here: youtube.com/watch?v=4nN… starting at around 1hr 21m. Also your responses to critics of the anthropic argument is fairly poor in my view, especially your lack of mathematical rigor combined with your ridiculously strong confidence in fairly difficult and controversial but unaddressed issues lying just underneath in that area. Last, personally I would enjoy if you posted less but higher quality posts. Less politics and clickbait “watch me argue for this ridiculous-sounding view” posts and instead more serious and thoughtful writing would make me want to read more, personally. You’ve written so many articles which are substantively the same on a bunch of topics, which means you should write less if you value long-term or non-imbecilic readers.

I agree that I sometimes write similar things. Partly this is because I often think of new arguments or ways of expressing a point on some topic. Partly this is because I’ll get obsessed with a topic and then write lots of stuff. But I don’t think they’re anything like carbon copies. They make different points even if they’re broadly similar. I’d need to know more specifics about the anthropic point.

Happy to talk to Lance Bush about meta-ethics! I’m not that interested in writing responses to him because I haven’t found it to be that productive (I also just don’t write that much about moral realism these days—I generally find discussions about it not to be productive. It’s also hard to advance the discussion because there’s really only one argument for moral realism). But if someone wants to set up a debate with him or something, happy to do it.

Linch raises a number of points, so let me address them in turn:

(not a hater) I think you’re too confident about wild animal suffering being more prevalent than happiness, and too willing to propose irreversible actions like destroying nature. (fwiw I think my position here is the plurality opinion among EAish ppl who studied the field)

Linch and I disagree about whether wild animals mostly live bad lives. I’m about 70% confident that they do. Linch leans towards thinking they don’t. My most comprehensive case for my position is this one.

I don’t see why destroying nature is irreversible. We can add back nature. I’m not in favor of obliterating all nature—just of reducing it at the margins.

I also am not that concerned that I disagree with the plurality opinion among EAs who have studied the field. First of all, I don’t know if this is true. My sense is there are more people who think wild animal welfare is negative than positive, after studying the field. Second, this is an area where there’s a clear bias towards normality. It’s psychologically disturbing to think we should reduce the amount of nature, so it isn’t surprising that people end up adopting some middling position like that we should do more research.

I generally think you should refrain from being very confident when smart people disagree. But more moderate confidence, like is present here, seems much more reasonable.

I think you don’t sufficiently appreciate that evidence in favor of miracles is substantially selected for, and is still weak despite that. So it’s not just that the strongest arguments aren’t great, but also they should get a heavy penalty because of how weak they are despite people desperately wanting to find evidence for them for centuries.

I agree that selection effects are a strong reason to discount miracles. But I think the miracle evidence is better than I’d have naively expected it to be given atheism. Naively I wouldn’t have expected a person with crippling MS to be unexpectedly healed after hearing what she reports as God, and then for her symptoms to never reoccur, all of them seeming to disappear suddenly, shocking her doctors so much that they write multiple books about it.

I think you’re too willing to believe things because smart people make arguments for them. But conditioning upon the quality of an argument, knowing that a smart person made it should be negative evidence for whether it’s true. (but it feels cool to believe what smart ppl believe).

Disagree that it’s a negative update. If some argument has convinced other smart people, that’s a positive update regarding its quality.

I think you’re wrong about FDT, for the usual reasons.

Disagree! I know lots of people who read this blog love functional-decision theory. Someone else raised the concern that I underrate it. But I really think this is an example of LessWrong types being mind-sniped by a very implausible view for largely sociological reasons. The view is not taken seriously, in general, by decision-theorists. I also think the view is just crazy! It often implies you should pay enormous costs for literally no benefit! It conflates what sort of person you want to be with what’s rational to do.

Taking on Bentham’s name as an ‘objective list’ utilitarian feels a bit off to me.

I was a hedonist when I took on the name. I’m also still a utilitarian, so I think this isn’t really misleading.

Part of me is envious that you’re more popular and prolific than me, despite me being like a decade older. The former is like, whatever. Popularity isn’t everything. The internet hivemind can be fickle. But the latter is embarrassing and cringe.

I agree this is a pretty big problem. Linch’s blog is great, so to help rectify this problem, subscribe!

Mon0 argues:

Too difficult to spell surname

I’m sorry! Will. Do. Better!

My friend Ibrahim Dagher (who also has a great blog that you should subscribe to!) writes:

Most everyone responding to this are people who like you. I am too haha, but if I had to venture a guess, I’m pretty sure the most common objections people have to you is that they (i) find what you argue for deeply abhorrent (eg that insect concerns could outweigh human concerns), (ii) think you’re way too overconfident/easily dismiss stuff, and (iii) quantify things that they think we either cant quantify, or cant know how to quantify.

That seems plausible. I think part of it might be that I write in a very direct way, without couching my claims. I don’t actually think I’m abnormally confident—my credence in utilitarianism, for instance, is only about 70%. I take higher-order evidence pretty seriously. There are few philosophical views that I’m above 90% confident in and few political views I’m above 60% confident in. But I have a pretty direct way of writing which might make me seem to overconfident.

Regarding quantifying things, I recommend this piece by Scott, and regarding insects, I recommend this one.

sunshine moonlight says:

I like you, but you paint with a broad brush when dismissing continental philosophy. Phenomenology is worthwhile

I don’t really like any of continental philosophy, but I basically agree that I was overbroad in criticizing it. Deleuze is way worse than Foucault. Butler is way worse than Hegel. They shouldn’t have been grouped together.

Tom Hitchner says:

Requisite (and honest) disclaimer that I don’t dislike you, but the things you post that I dislike are glib and/or dismissive, sometimes sarcastic. It can feel sometimes like you’re firing back with the first analogy you think of, rather than thinking through how apposite the analogy is and what the other person is likely to say in response. And sometimes it feels like you’re playing to the crowd, or some imaginary debate judge, rather than engaging with what your interlocutor is saying in the hopes of leading them to a clearer understanding (and perhaps refining your own view too).

Something that I think is not annoying in the same way but is a mistake you fall into, is not thinking about (apparent) inconsistencies between different positions you’ve taken. For instance, believing simultaneously that a good God would want to create as many sentient beings as possible but that the vast majority of life on earth would be better off dead, or believing that continental philosophy can be dismissed but theological arguments shouldn’t be. It may be possible to resolve these, but I find your explanations so far have been ad hoc and not convincing.

Generally disagree about analogies. I agree I’m sometimes a bit glib and sarcastic and that some people dislike this style aesthetically. Personally, I like Michael Huemer’s writing because I enjoy the breezy and confident style, but this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

Disagree that these are inconsistencies. I think there’s reason to think God would make a very large multiverse. Then, once he’s made a huge multiverse, he might have reason to allow it to get screwed up (this is something theists have to think to deal with the problem of evil). If things get screwed up, it might be bad to create more sentient beings because their lives aren’t sufficiently good.

I think you shouldn’t dismiss people without reading some of their work or the work of similar people, but you do get to use induction. So if you carefully investigate lots of miracle claims, for instance, and find them not to hold up, you don’t have to keep investigating them (unless you investigate obviously shitty ones. For example, you shouldn’t conclude that because the random account you heard at your Baptist Church of a person praying in the name of Jesus and feeling better was non-miraculous that Fatima is bogus).

Some Guy writes:

I disagree with you sometimes but never dislike you, except that you are eleven years old and I look like a buffalo that ate some poisonous grass and isn’t long for the world

lol

Tony Bozanich writes:

I like you but wish your intellect were less focused on trivial things like shrimp and bugs. But I get that that’s part of the draw, so obviously stick with what’s working.

Unfortunately, I do not plan to change this, because I am correct. (Note: I could have written “because I think I am correct,” and it would have had the same meaning, while adding extra words and seeming less confident.)

Cumulative Balkanization writes:

I’m a fan, but I’d like to see a post on why you don’t accept Pascal’s wager even though you think it’s a good argument.

You’re in luck!

German Alvarez writes:

I still can’t decide if you speak seriously or you are a very elaborated troll.

I’m not an “elaborated” troll!

Human Condition Revisited writes:

I don’t think you suck. “What annoys me” is that you rarely discuss your biases. For example, you weigh the suffering of animals more than their joy when thinking about killing them en masse to prevent large-scale suffering, which is a choice based on personal preference.

I don’t think I have this bias. There might be ways I’m biased to overrate animal suffering. But there are also ways I’m biased to underrate it. For example, I’m pretty naturally optimistic, and this biases me to believe rosy conclusions. There’s also bias from the fact that nature is very pretty and I like it to believe it is good!

There were more objections, but that’s most of them! Overall, I think the main concerns were:

1. People think I’m wrong about stuff.

2. People think I’m too breezy, dismissive, and overconfident.

I think 2 is largely an aesthetic thing. I prefer the style where one is clear and direct rather than adding extra words to hedge. My credences aren’t actually abnormally high. I’m probably wrong about some stuff, but I don’t agree with any of the specific claims about what stuff I was wrong about. Insect welfare really does matter.