Sure this Bankman guy fucked up, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find any ideology without its share of bad actors. It can be fair to dismiss an ideology at some point based on this heuristic after enough consistent failures with few counterbalancing successes (maybe communism comes to mind as an example of this category). But does EA fit that condition?
Does it consistently lead people to bad actions? More frequently than other systems?
That remains to be established. I hope the answer is "no" because we have enough nicely looking ideological packages leading people into bad places, we don't need more. But my point is not that it's bad, my point is it's not "inert" - we need to watch out and evaluate whether it's bad or not, we can't just rely on the idea that "ideas are inert", because very often they aren't.
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Notes -
Sure this Bankman guy fucked up, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find any ideology without its share of bad actors. It can be fair to dismiss an ideology at some point based on this heuristic after enough consistent failures with few counterbalancing successes (maybe communism comes to mind as an example of this category). But does EA fit that condition?
Does it consistently lead people to bad actions? More frequently than other systems?
That remains to be established. I hope the answer is "no" because we have enough nicely looking ideological packages leading people into bad places, we don't need more. But my point is not that it's bad, my point is it's not "inert" - we need to watch out and evaluate whether it's bad or not, we can't just rely on the idea that "ideas are inert", because very often they aren't.
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