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That there are some "pure" altruists in EA is not what I am picking at. The essays I reference are targeted at that very phenomenon because it is a thing some people do. Selection effects are what they are. You are making points without the knowledge of what is already been discussed on the topic. Go google "avoiding EA burnout" and you'll find a plenty of stuff on this front.
The thing I am pointing at is that comparing Soviet anything to EA is apples to hand grenades. Donors are not coerced. OpenPhil analysts are not employees of the state, and aimed at "doing the most good" insofar as they can figure that out. The failure mode that is most apt is the standard "NGO Industrial Complex" where organizations exist to exist, not to actually solve the problem in their mission statement.
I think you are empirically wrong on this. E.g., if you go to one of the most upvoted such essays you will see my comment at the top. But it's been a while. Maybe there is much that I have forgotten.
https://www.google.com/search?q=avoiding+effective+altruism+burnout
No, this really wasn't much better than posting a LMGTFY. Don't do this.
When someone obstinately denies easily checked facts what do you suggest?
(a) Let it go and disengage. (b) Provide links to specific citations and proactively provide an explanation of their relevance. (c) Consider the possibility that they are not "ignoring facts" but that you are both interpreting the same evidence in a way that caters to your own biases and that you need to actually make an argument.
You've clearly never debated a flat earther and it shows.
More seriously, the right tool for the job of "is this a pretty common thing or not" was in fact a google search showing a bunch of available examples.
It shouldn't be against the rules to succinctly provide evidence someone is full of BS. When they're denying the very existence of the evidence. When they refuse to confirm their claimed absence of that evidence. Of a pretty simple issue. Trivially demonstrated facts of matter.
Also, my link was on the tail end of a series of arguments. It wasn't just a no-context injection.
"Don't do this" ought to also apply to people who won't do the very basics of epistemic due diligence.
There are many EA thought posts on avoiding purity burnout and mental health crises. There are not very many AC units in Europe. Anyone arguing otherwise is just failing very basic standards of reason.
Wrong.
If a flat earther showed up here, you'd be required to follow the same rules.
I'm telling you what your available options are here. Not everywhere else on the Internet, but here.
Mods do not judge the quality of arguments here. People can make bad arguments. You may point out why they're bad.
If you think the argument is so bad as to not be worth the effort, you may choose not to reply.
Those are your options.
I feel obligated to point out that obviously you do. The rules are full of guidance about specific qualities of arguments. Perhaps you mean to say that the mods aim to evaluate meta argument qualities, not object level.
So, actually, at the risk of being egregiously obnoxious, in the context of that comment chain, which rule(s) exactly did I break? Actually, why don't all mod warnings come with a citation? That's standard in many a Reddit forum. Don't make us guess.
Is it, by definition, always low effort to provide a link for which the context has been established and/or is self-evident? Since this platform does not allow me to provide a screenshot, a link is actually a pretty relevant counterargument for the claim that was being contested.
Would I have been fine if I had merely had a preamble of something like: "If you click on this hyperlink to a google search, as I previously recommended you conduct to evaluate the evidence for yourself, you will be able to see a fair number of posts on the topic you claim does not really get covered in EA circles."
Not very charitable of you regarding my reading comprehension, I must say. I've only been participating since the olden Reddit days. Never even been banned. Perhaps it was only the soft bigoty of low expectations.
God bless the Motte. Mods for, of, and by the people.
EDIT: How could I forget. Is it not implicit in the rules and the epistemic heritage of this forum, the rationality sphere and SSC, that basic norms of logic and reason and evidence are expected? A basic epistemic methodological sanity baseline. Clearly the rules indicate awareness of such concepts, but perhaps they are taken as omissible.
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