SneerClub

Moral uncertainty is reason to become pro-life? We do morally uncertain things every day. That's no reason to legislate.

@lobotomy42 @dgerard Well eventually, because of roko's basilisk and on a long enough timeline I am bored of this argument let's just do awful things and justify them later like we used to.

Such lovely people. Ugh.

power trip unit testing PASSED

thank you for flying Awfulflot

The opening line is... certainly a phrase.

I have been working on a research project into the scale, tractability and neglectedness of child marriage.

Later:

Some studies even showed that child marriage was associated with more positive outcomes, such as higher contraceptive use

Ummmmmmmmmm

Lmao I thought this was satire

This is the push/pull abusive dynamic: feign sensitivity, deny negative implications as not their intention, but demand positive feedback for dangerous takes. EA believes that not being wrong or held accountable is the most important optimization, so all their positions come from having absolutely no stake in the real world consequences.

Every ends-justify-the-means worldview has a defense for terrorism readily baked in.

I remember when LW at least tried to prevent this by doing the 'epistemic status' thing (which was a bit silly as it depended on the honesty of the author but at least they tried, and I am annoyed they gave up on that).

Edit: I was looking up a source for what you said (and discovered Miller has deleted his twitter) and came across this: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpk3gZqLkQ1/ "Ever wondered what it's like to be pro-life and in the medical sphere? Look no further and join Alexandra as she speaks to the UK's most prolife-ic (see what we did there) doctor against abortion, Calum Miller." yeah really something he should have disclosed.

Edit 2: lol ow god he didn't delete his twitter he actually renamed it from cdoggmiller to DrCalumMiller but forgot to update his own blog. 'cdogg' ow god. He is also a pretty vocal anti leftwinger (at least in his student days). Edit 3 No wait, he still is

He says like "well actually having access to abortion doesn't make women happier" , as if abortion isn't pretty essential to the happiness of SOME women. But he thinks if women are forced to have babies they'll realize that they really like it actually, because he's a wretched dog.

EA is a movement for rich philanthropists to justify whatever they want to do, with data* and studies**. It's literally ends justifying the means.

*data it's heavily cherry picked for whatever you, the powerful and so smart philanthropist, want to accomplish

**studies are funded to guarantee results that you want

Is this a correct characterisation of the EA community? That they all harbour anti-abortion sentiment but for whatever reason permit abortion?

I actually wouldn't be surprised if this were the case -- the whole schtick of a lot of these people is "worrying about increasing the number of future possibly-existing humans, even at the cost of the suffering of actually-existing humans", so being anti-abortion honestly seems not too far out of their wheelhouse?

Like I think in the EAverse you can just kinda go "well this makes people have less kids which means less QALYs therefore we all know it's obviously bad and I don't really need to justify it." (with bonus internet contrarian points if you are justifying some terrible thing using your abstract math, because that means you're Highly Decoupled and Very Smart.) See also the quote elsewhere in this thread about the guy defending child marriage for similar reasons.

increases existential risk, obviously

now, child brides