EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

I even listened to his podcast interview with MacAskill when it dropped, while on a pleasant late summer walk.

should listen to podcasts while snaking your sink, bathtub, and sewer lines to make sure you're not letting the outside leak in

I even listened to his podcast interview with MacAskill when it dropped, while on a pleasant late summer walk.

― jaymc, Thursday, December 1, 2022 8:31 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

the people demand to know what ezra thinks about effective altruism

marveling at how incredible it is that matty's podcast is called bad takes. is he trolling his haters? or just his archetypal obliviousness as always

genuinely surprised you think he has any self-awareness

matt is 100% a troll hes being doing it his whole career and its worked out very well for him

tho i do think hes gone too far since going on substack, he is no doubt making some obscene high six figures salary, but he seems to have totally lost all his peers in the thinky bloggy community, like jeet heer who is someone that has in the past engaged with matty is now regularly calling him a piece of shit on main just total disrespect, long term careerwise it doesnt seem great

the people demand to know what ezra thinks about effective altruism

― lag∞n, Friday, December 2, 2022 10:21 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'd say he's largely sympathetic, if not entirely bought in. Or at least he was. IIRC, he didn't talk about his own broad views on the movement too much in the MacAskill interview, which was mostly about MacAskill's new book. But about a year ago, he interviewed another EA figure, Holden Karnofsky, and said this up front:

Over the past — I don’t know — five, six years, I’ve been very influenced by the effective altruism movement. On one level, effective altruism is simple. It asks, how do we do the most good we can with the money and the resources we have? That turns out to be, one, a deceptively difficult question and, two, weirdly, one that we don’t ask all that often, one that oftentimes you think people are asking and they are not.

But the difficult parts are maybe more interesting. How do you measure the most good? What about when you think something is good, but it cannot really be measured? Who defines good? Who verifies impact? How do you judge the value of, say, supporting art against the value of building housing for the poor?

Effective altruism has roots in the academy. Philosophers like Toby Ord and Will MacAskill and Peter Singer, they’ve been central in creating the movement. And importantly, they’re central in the way the movement thinks and reasons. The culture of effective altruism, in my experience — and this is both its best and worst quality, in a way — can feel like a philosophy grad seminar that never ends.

By that, I mean it delights in taking the logic of its questions as far as it will go. It’s unafraid, even ecstatic, to follow answers that strike others as very strange or unintuitive, sometimes even cruel. It’s always, always questioning its own assumptions and everyone else’s. It can, in my view, sometimes be performatively cold or logical in a way that’s actually quite narrow about human flourishing. But as I’ve said, I have learned a lot from these thinkers.

lmao perfect ezra no notes

a man can go far in life by simply never asking the question "is this just eugenics"

Peter Singer has a lot to answer for

Because that excerpt reads like a This American Life parody voiceover I’m now with lagoon on Ezra being worse.

tho i do think hes gone too far since going on substack, he is no doubt making some obscene high six figures salary, but he seems to have totally lost all his peers in the thinky bloggy community, like jeet heer who is someone that has in the past engaged with matty is now regularly calling him a piece of shit on main just total disrespect, long term careerwise it doesnt seem great

― lag∞n, Friday, December 2, 2022 11:50 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

eh i think this is a bit of a misread. the center-left/left split in media has polarized a lot in the last few years--matt got pushed out of vox for being too far to the right of its younger staff--and matt has clearly gone "mask off" since the 2020 election, during which he randomly endorsed Bernie (a position he's since recanted). but matt was always the troll/contrarian attack dog of the center-left/technocratic wonk faction who would frequently (and gleefully) punch left. but he's still in good standing with all people (eric levitz, matthew zeitlin, john chait, josh barro, noah smith, kevin drum, josh marshall, dave weigel, paul krugman and all other media-adjacent economists). but jeet heer was never really part of that crew. he started out somewhat unaligned (before being a pundit he was an indie-comics critic) but after getting bullied on twitter for writing a critical article of chapo sided with the left, and is now on staff at the nation

jeet is just an example of a guy who was matty tolerant in the past but now considers him a total clown you could slot any number of writers in there

i dont follow that group containing many of the worst guys online too closely but it would be hard to see that as anything but a narrowing audience for mattys schtick considering he used to play pretty much clear across the technocratbloggosphere

o to be in good standing with this chucklehead

"Conservative" should mean what it meant in 2003 -- a chubby middle-aged real estate guy watching Fox News while chopping meat on his granite kitchen island, complaining about welfare moms and crime and kids these days just hooking up instead of settling down with a real job.

— Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 (@Noahpinion) December 3, 2022

Ezra Klein still finds value in effective altruism, though offers some critiques in his latest column:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/opinion/charity-holiday-gift-givewell.html

Velvet-gloved eugenics imo

Ezra seems disinclined to recognize that the whole concept is just telling people that their greed is, in fact, good.

ezra is a classic npr paradox, like how with david sedaris it needs to be true to be funny, you have to believe he tried to understand his topic when any normal person would be incredulous at effective altruism, coddled oxford professors, crypto con men and so forth; its no more than entertainment, low quality too

selling some ersatz thoughtfulness, lol sad

Ezra seems disinclined to recognize that the whole concept is just telling people that their greed is, in fact, good.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Sunday, December 4, 2022 10:11 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think that's the whole concept.

I think Ezra is attracted to the idea that some forms of altruism are more effective than others, in terms of where an individual can make the most impact. He likes GiveWell because it assesses charities on those kinds of metrics and thus helps him and others decide where their charitable spending will go the furthest. But in that column he is explicitly critical of the "earn to give" philosophy, which "adds a darker possibility of rationalizing unethical means in service of virtuous ends."

hes a professional apologist for power, no more and no less

That's a bizarre takeaway

apologetics is an interesting an i think under examined aspect of media, its imho prob the primary form of the opinon economy or whatever you want to call it, like for instance if i made the same claim about daivd brooks no one on here would bat an eye, but the posters to ilx are not the target audience for david brooks apologetics, our parents are, theyd say hes reasonable

people are generally blind to apologetics aimed at them, its entertainment but its serous but dont take it too serious its just entertainment, a podcast to fall asleep to, but in order for it to work you have to believe its serious ideas, but also its just to fall asleep to so dont take it too serious

ezra klein is exactly as much of a serious thinker as daivd brook, which is to say not at all, they are both completely vacuous, they exist to compliment their audience for listening to their podcasts/opinon columns

this is obvious to me since im not their audience

anyone who took sam bankman fried, various effective altruists, paul ryan (had graphs) etc etc is it should go without saying not worth dirt, they did let him interview obama tho lol

*scales fall from my eyes*

But in that column he is explicitly critical of the "earn to give" philosophy

Which is the key to 'effective altruism,' given the prior existence of rating charities on how much money goes to salaries and advertising or simply running cost benefit analyses on various policy strategies.

The encouragement of leeches like SBF is the intellectual project of 'effective altruism.' Which is, for the reasons lagoon notes, perhaps why it is ultimately appealing to him - his job is also to encourage those same leeches but he has to be a bit more cowardly about it to suit his audience.

*scales fall from my eyes*

― flopson, Monday, December 5, 2022 12:42 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

if only one were so cutting re shitty dudes in the thread title

lag∞tm

there are a bunch of different strands that make up effective altruism - the givewell side that truly does focus on evidence-based outcomes & cost-effectiveness is fine (although it has its issues where they've developed their own weird biases about things but the basic principles are fine), but the 'earn to give' stuff is just comically self-serving, and the longtermist nonsense that came out of all the rationalist idiots from lesswrong who are heavily involved in it all is unbelievably stupid and falls over if anyone normal thinks about it for a second

like i'm no fan of klein but he's mostly just endorsing the givewell side of things which is pretty reasonable. the main dumb thing in the piece is 'Effective altruists have fought hard to persuade people to worry more about artificial intelligence, and they have been right to do so' which is right out of the longtermist rationalist stuff and while ai ethics is certainly something that's important to work on, the rationalists' worries are bizarrely disproportionate (worrying about superhuman intelligence that could enslave us all or whatever) and are not who should be listened to at all here.

ah very interesting point from the man who is famously fine with the risk of foreign garment workers dying in building collapses

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FjN2OQPXoAE6qrk?format=jpg&name=900x900

I don't think he's the greatest intellectual of our time, and I don't agree with him on everything, but I still do like Ezra and his podcast and find myself generally on his wavelength. Sorry you find him vacuous.

to be precise hes professionally vacuous, its his job

yglesias on ai, his future unemployment

We are on the brink of an unprecedented explosion in the pace at which people can produce midwit opinions and mediocre writing.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 3, 2022

lol

matty almost hit the mark there on accident!

longtermism re: AI paranoia is probably one of the best examplars of the genre. a bunch of bozos fawning over every model trained on stolen text and images or cars that keep running over pedestrians while pretending that skynet is going to pop up and nuke our asses. the problem's right in front of you, stop worrying about skynet while creating dumb skynet

Absolutely stunning that the Centre for Effective Altruism *bought* this place. #effectivealtruism pic.twitter.com/0az4ilPvuT

— Émile P. Torres 🏳️‍⚧️ (@xriskology) December 4, 2022

they think they're the X-Men

absolutely the best thing abt the jeet-yggy feud is how much jeet (who is generally good at getting on with ideological foes) is getting to yggy (who is generally p amiable abt even quite sharp criticism)

pic.twitter.com/SnaGpAC1QO

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) December 5, 2022

LMAO. pic.twitter.com/Oqnoq3nbD5

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) December 5, 2022

The mistake @mattyglesias and popularists generally keep making is assuming that reactionary politics are the result of leftist overreach. They aren't.

55-year-old+ white dudes have *always* been uncomfortable with young people and social progress. They still are. /1

— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) December 5, 2022

...

What's particularly sad about this is that a lot of biggest media people involved in this (Yglesias, Shor, Klein, etc.) had some bad experiences in internal liberal org Slack channels and listservs, then extrapolated their own niche resentments to the broader electorate. /4

— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) December 5, 2022

Not to keep being Cap'n Save-an-Ezra, but he has voiced skepticism about popularism:

And this is a place where I think I end up having a real disagreement with the David Shors, and my friend Matthew Yglesias and others, who — I’m a policy guy. I’ve been covering policy my whole career. I think they’ve become too literal about policy, and too literal about how much voters know about policy and how much policy positioning matters.

I think a lot of things are tributaries into this overall gut sense of whether or not this politician is like you, and they like you, which are different ideas.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-aaron-retica.html

hes good at voicing mild skepticism, as is the job of the thoughtful apologist, the problem of course is that shors claims are total self serving bullshit, pure advertising for his company backed up only by extremely shaky data, ygelgais is in it i guess just cause he likes shoddy centrist nonsense

the whole argument comes out totally garbled and confused cause its resting on a foundation of jello and promoted by people who dont care much about whats true or not, like what is this lol

I think a lot of things are tributaries into this overall gut sense of whether or not this politician is like you, and they like you, which are different ideas.

tfw a politician is like me and as a very justifiable consequence hates me

lol

I mean, it's a podcast transcript, read the rest of it to find out what he means.

nah lol

Here's that whole Ezra quote, this feels like popularism. . . appealing to "people" vs. appealing to "the elite" and definitely not anything about policy unless you count bar fights as policy

EZRA KLEIN: Yeah. And he probably does, weirdly enough, knowing a little bit about him. But Fetterman has the aesthetic, right? And this is a place where I think I end up having a real disagreement with the David Shors, and my friend Matthew Yglesias and others, who — I’m a policy guy. I’ve been covering policy my whole career. I think they’ve become too literal about policy, and too literal about how much voters know about policy and how much policy positioning matters.

I think a lot of things are tributaries into this overall gut sense of whether or not this politician is like you, and they like you, which are different ideas. You know, are they like you? Do they come from the world you come from? Do they understand you? And also, how do they feel about you? And Fetterman, who I think in a lot of ways is more liberal than Ryan, Fetterman visually and communicatively signals like he’s a guy who not only would be at the bar, but would be in the bar fight.

And that’s not Tim Ryan. And so Fetterman is a kind of visual of this — rightly or wrongly, whether or not you believe this to be true about him — this sort of working-class aesthetic. And so will that work in Ohio? It’s interesting. It’s an interesting question. But if you’re comparing the two of them, I think you’re comparing trying to signal whose side you’re on through the positions you take and the things you say versus who you are, how you move through the world, how you dress, what your temperament and comportment as a person are.

And I think at a candidate level, the latter set of qualities tend to trump it.

the unwashed masses want a big boy who wears shorts in the winter