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Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them

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Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them

#51

Post by bjt2n3904 »

Naturally a pessimist on these issues. Listening to graduation speeches on how we're gonna change the world, as if it were this one weird tip discovered by a student. (Philosophers hate him!)

Bleh. You'll change the world alright. Likely, not for the better.

Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them

#52

Post by SolaceQuantum »

tomp wrote: post #35
kineticdial wrote: post #7

I feel weirdly (perhaps irrationally) about the effective altruism people including 80,000 hours. I just can't shake the cult-y vibes they give off. Am I alone in this?

No... I, for one, would really like to know what the actual (measurable, practical) effect of effective altruism is. I definitely hope that it's not just like, we do nothing but more effectively . I likewise question the efficacy of efforts like eradicating malaria. I can't help but feel all that money would be better spent on technology (not startups, but like fusion and other energy research, nanotech, space indust…

Malaria is one of the biggest issues preventing Africa as a continent from going forward. Where it’s worst, malaria contributes significantly to childhood brain damage, causing untold amounts of lost economic growth as generations after generation are stunted for life with the disease. 12 billion usd annually is spent on directly treating malaria patients, with many times that being lost due to long term damage. [0]

Because of this, I’m very skeptical of the idea that dealing with malaria isn’t one of the most effective use of resources in improving countless lives right now.

[0]https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/impact.html

Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them

#54

Post by Vinnl »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #39

Well I read a bit, then thought "things like being verbose, generic, and over-guarded in offering advice and so wasting lots of readers time without making an impact on their behaviour"? If they'd given one direct piece of easily actionable advice the actual impact might have been far larger ... "So what?" - a Church sermon I heard well over decade ago, the speaker said basically if there's nothing that listeners wil…

Luckily, they do state the lessons to be learned up front:

> In brief, it raises the importance of finding good mentors, consistently seeking advice and feedback from experienced colleagues, and ensuring you’re a good fit for a project before you take actions with potentially large or long-term consequences.

Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them

#55

Post by unparagoned »

apathy wrote: post #42

You’ll never get anything done if you give in to this sort of analysis paralysis.

They are just some factors you may want to take into account. Usually things like this have some clear cut answers. If these questions require real thought and potential paralysis then that's a good thing. If you are paralysed by the fact you aren't sure what you are doing may actually do more harm than good that's good.

Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them

#57

Post by tw1010 »

drchiu wrote: post #53

I think a lot of this boils down to having the right amount of introspection and insight on the part of the individual.

True introspection turns into a math puzzle when you want to go really deep. (It requires constant monitoring and logging of your own mind, and requires an insane amount of tests against self deception if you want to do it properly. Both of which are constrained by memory and compute power, which will likely not be sufficient if for no other reason than that you need to allocate some of it to other priorities.) I think it's a sign of wisdom to admit that it's too big of a challenge for an individual to rely on as a substitute for resources like this.

Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them

#58

Post by YinglingLight »

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #19
hueving wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who criticize tone police are technically right that the content of an argument is what should matter, but that smacks of ignorance of how humans engage in conversation. If someone is screaming at me and ending every sentence with, "you fucking moron!", there is approximately a 0% chance I'm going to take them seriously and I'm going to assume emotional outbursts will be sent in return to any responses I care…

How many pro-choice people do you think are persuaded by Symmetrically, how many pro-life people do you think are persuaded by the people screaming "woman-hater/sexist/misogynist" outside of Planned Parenthood? If you can't explain your argument in a calm, rational manner, You overestimate the efficacy of explaining in a calm, rational manner. As a university teacher with > 10 years experience, I can tell you with ex…

"An interesting article in The Atlantic talks about studies showing that liberals think in terms of fairness while conservatives think in terms of morality. So if you want to persuade someone on the other team, you need to speak in their language. We almost never do that. That’s why you rarely see people change their opinions...

...If your aim is to persuade, you have to speak the language of the other. Talking about fairness to a conservative, or morality to a liberal, fails at the starting gate. The other side just can’t hear what you are saying."

http://blog.dilbert.com/2017/02/15/how-to-persuade-the-other...

Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them

#59

Post by wisty »

chrisseaton wrote: post #8

This is very interesting! But I've seen a lot of push back against this kind of thinking in some political groups. For example saying that you should follow norms of niceness when promoting a cause - people call that tone policing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing You could say you should criticise the people who are tone policing rather than the people who are worked up about a cause that personally effec…

Here we go: "Why Diversity Programs Fail" https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail

There's a ton of data. Compulsory implicit bias training, for example, will most likely be bad for diversity (and whether implicit bias exists itself is another whole kettle of fish).

Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them

#60

Post by taneq »

bartread wrote: post #14
hueving wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who criticize tone police are technically right that the content of an argument is what should matter, but that smacks of ignorance of how humans engage in conversation. If someone is screaming at me and ending every sentence with, "you fucking moron!", there is approximately a 0% chance I'm going to take them seriously and I'm going to assume emotional outbursts will be sent in return to any responses I care…

> People who criticize tone police are technically right that the content of an argument is what should matter, but that smacks of ignorance of how humans engage in conversation. Absolutely nailed it. If you're unpleasant/uncivilised to deal with then the content of your argument becomes irrelevant because a decent portion - and perhaps even the majority - of people won't want to have anything to do with you. Being o…

It also depends hugely on context. A well placed "you might have a point but you're acting like a dick" might bring a discussion back into civility, but then you also get people trying to shut down a discussion that they find uncomfortable by focusing exclusively on criticizing incidental word or phrase choice.
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