[plants]

I didn’t listen to this, but the essay is full of straw men and contrived arguments about how utilitarianism is a bad moral philosophy. While utilitarianism is not perfect, this essay just regurgitates others’ criticisms of it and provides no useful alternative. As an aside that bothered me (but not related to the content directly), the tone of the article also wants to be scholarly so badly, which made it really long-winded and hard to read.

>> Indeed, this very essay, which I’d long planned to write some version of, is coming out now because the same effective altruist organization is offering a $20,000 prize to whomever gives the best critique of effective altruism this month.

I think this sentence tells you everything you need to know about this guy’s philosophy. The article also ends with him suggesting, as an “alternative”, to give a money to fundamentally utilitarian/effectively altruistic sources (AI safety research) and to fund projects that he’s interested in under the premise that these underfunded scientific fields are “awesome and epic”.

[refurb]

What you call strawmen are just example of where the philosophy falls apart. i mean, how else do you test a philosophy other than throwing all possibly scenarios at it and see what comes out?