I think other than the meat one, your along the lines of how some people are thinking, albeit described in a very polemical and pejorative way, that probably isn't  particularly fair. But also, a lot of these people see any obviously and transparently "elite" group* as dodgy, not to mention that EAs tend to think like economists and don't want to abolish capitalism which to makes them "neoliberal" to a lot of leftists (not unfairly I don't think, though whether "neoliberalism" in this weak sense is obviously bad and evil is another matter). And as Titotal as already mentioned there are people kicking around the general EA scene with views on race that are to the right of what is acceptable even in some mainstream conservative contexts. 

More generally, if you see the left/right division as about whether we want to keep or get rid of current hierarchies, EAs are associated with things the top of current hierarchies-like big tech firms and Oxford University-and don't seem very ashamed about it. And then when we actually think about improving the world "how do we get rid of current hierarchies" isn't usually our starting question. Also, for the sort of leftists who try and explain disagreement with leftism in terms of false consciousness, there seems to be a constant temptation to see anything that isn't explicitly about getting rid of current unjust hierarchies as a ploy to distract people from current unjust hierarchies, especially if it has billionaire backing. (Of course, many things other than EA receive money from >3 billionaires, but are not perceived as "billionaire" backed to the same degree.) 

*that isn't humanities profs, but I would argue they aren't really "elite" in the same way as some EA leaders-Holden Karnofsky is married to the President of Anthropic after all, which is a hell of a lot more elite than "went to a fancy grad school, but now teaches history at mid-ranking state uni

My guess (I have no hard data) is that many people on the left (or at least many of the minority of people on the left who have heard of EA at all) already (mostly wrongly) perceive EA as "conservative" or at least (much more fairly) "neoliberal". It could be that engaging with conservatives more increases that impression, and leads to reduce recruitment amongst left-wingers, without drawing in enough more conservative people to compensate. I'm not saying don't engage with conservatives, just that there might be unintended consequences. 

I haven't read the paper, but a simple objection is that you're never going to be certain your actions only have finite effects, because you should only assign credence 0 to contradictions. (I don't actually know the argument for the latter, but some philosophers believe it.) So you have to deal with the very, very small but not literally 0 chance that your actions will have an infinitely good/bad outcome because your current theories of how the universe works are wrong. However, anything with a chance of bringing about an infinitely good or bad outcome has an infinite expected value or an undefined one. So unless all expected values are undefined (which brings it own problems) you have to deal with infinite expected values, which is enough to cause trouble. 

Yeah, I think this is probably right. My point isn't that there is nothing troubling or potentially dangerous about Vasco's reasoning-that's clearly not true-but just that people should be careful in how they describe it, and not claim it rests on more controversial starting premises than it actually does. (I.e. in particular that it doesn't have hedonism or consequentialism as a starting premise; obviously it does make some controversial assumptions.)

Not giving to global health charities.

In any case though, I think what I mostly object to isn't the claim that if you endorse Vasco's reasoning because you are a utilitarian that counts as "naive", but rather the use of the "naive utilitarian" label to imply that his reasoning:

a) is distinctively utilitarian rather than being compatible with a variety of moral views

b) commits you to being prepared to use violence/deception.

I'd distinguish here between actions and reasons for action. The action is not conventionally immoral, but the reason for action is. I think this is probably a significant distinction, though how it is significant doesn't feel very clear to me.

I think Vasco's personal strong endorsement of hedonistic utilitarianism has maybe caused confusion about the degree to which the meat eating problem can be avoided just by abandoning utilitarianism for standard reasons. And I also worry some of the criticism of Vasco is stretching the term "naive utilitarian" beyond its standard meaning.

On the first point, an overall ethical view could imply that global health donations are bad for the reasons Vasco gives, even if it was quite distant from hedonistic utilitarianism in a number of ways:

-Firstly, this doesn't really seem to be a question of preference versus hedonistic utilitarianism. Presumably there is some sense in which preference utilitarianism counts animal suffering as frustrated preference and still bad. So the frustration of animal preferences caused by meat eating could still outweigh the value in terms of satisfied preference from saving human lives. It's unclear to me which of preference or hedonistic utilitarianism is more likely to deliver this result, but I don't see an obvious reason why hedonistic utilitarianism is more likely to.

-Secondly, and more importantly, just valuing other things apart from pleasure and suffering won't necessarily reverse Vasco's conclusion that meat consumption patterns mean saving human lives does more harm than good, though you'd need to re-do the analysis. On any sane pluralist view where things other than pleasure and suffering matter (and as it happens, I fairly strongly reject pure hedonism), suffering is still bad. So it could still be the case that the badness of suffering caused by the average human through meat consumption outweighs the value of the hedonic and non-hedonic goods that the typical beneficiary of life-saving global health charities will experience in a lifetime. It is likely true that bringing in non-hedonic goods makes it more likely that the goods experience in a human lifetime come out as outweighing the suffering caused by meat consumption, but more likely doesn't mean "guaranteed" or even "probability above 50%", it's purely relative. 

-Thirdly, nothing about Vasco's reasoning here implies the controversial consequentialist claim that you should murder people or otherwise violate human rights, or break standard commonsense moral rules whenever that produces the best consequences. It's perfectly coherent to think that a human life continuing is net harmful because of meat consumption, but also you shouldn't murder that person, or try and bring about their death through conventionally immoral means like lying, law-breaking etc., because consequentialism is false, and the ends don't justify the means. It's true that Vasco is (effectively) recommending one particular action that would bring about deaths in response to the harms humans would cause, namely, not donating to global health charities. But this is not a conventionally immoral or obviously rights-violating action. Common sense morality says that you are allowed not to give to global health charities for any number of reasons: you want to spend the money on your own children, you want to give to research into the rare cancer that killed your Dad etc. So common sense morality is consistent with the recipients of global health charities not having a right to our help, and with it being morally permissible to withhold that help even if it leads to their deaths*. 

The meat eater/eating problem is an issue for anyone who

A) Donates to global health

B) Thinks that animal suffering can in principle be compared to, and sometimes outweigh large benefits to humans

C) Thinks we shouldn't make donations that are net harmful.

That is surely a far wider group than "hedonistic utilitarians", not just in principle, but in practice. I say this not to defend Vasco's personal honor-I find total commitment to hedonistic utilitarianism a bit scary as it happens, but because I don't think other people should avoid thinking about the potential inconsistency in their views here. Even if, like Karthik, you are 100% certain that the correct reaction to any inconsistency can't possibly be deciding that it is net good when the average child dies, it is probably still good to think about which of your other commitments you want to give up to avoid inconsistency. 

As for "naive utilitarianism", as I understood this term it doesn't mean "embracing any conclusion that conflicts with common sense, because you are a utilitarian and believe it is correct from a utilitarian point of view." Rather, as I understood it a "naive utilitarian" was a utilitarian who:

A) Tries to make moral decisions on the basis of explicit utility calculations
and
B) Is prepared to perform conventionally highly immoral and norm-breaking actions like stealing and murder, if an explicit utility calculation implies they are optimal.

And part of the point of calling this "naive" was that such a decision procedure was not only contrary to common sense, but also unlikely to actually maximize utility. 

Vasco's post isn't a clear example of naive utilitarianism in this sense because he isn't recommending any action that is clearly highly conventionally immoral and norm-breaking. The only action he is recommending, if any, is not donating to global health charities. His reasons for thinking this are definitely extremely inconsistent with common sense, but that's not enough to make it "naive utilitarianism" as I understand the term, because I understand it, naive utilitarianism is distinctively about pursuing utilitarian ends through ruthless/violent/deceptive means. 


*(I'm not denying there might be some less common sense non-consequentialist moral views on which aid recipients do have a right to our help.) 

"I think your posting about him undermines your credibility elsewhere." This seems worryingly like epistemic closure to me (though it depends a bit what "elsewhere" refers to.) A lot of Thorstad's work is philosophical criticism of longtermist arguments, and not super-technical criticism either. You can surely just assess that for yourself rather than discounting it because of what he said about an unrelated topic, unless he was outright lying. I mostly agree with Thorstad's conclusions about Scott's views on HBD, but whilst that makes me distrust Scott's political judgement, it doesn't effect my (positive) view of the good stuff Scott has written about largely unrelated topics like whether antidepressants work, or the replication crisis.  

I'd also say that the significance of Scott sometimes pushing back against HBD stuff is very dependent on why he pushes back. Does he push back because he thinks people are spreading harmful ideas? Or does he push back because he thinks if the blog becomes too associated with taboo claims it will lose influence, or bring him grief personally? The former would perhaps indicate unfairness in Thorstad's portrayal of him, but the latter certainly would not. In the leaked email (which I think is likely genuine, or he'd say it wasn't, but of course we can't be 100% sure) he does talk about stratigising to maintain his influence with liberals on this topic. My guess, as a long-time reader is that it's a bit of both. I don't think Scott is sympathetic to people genuinely wanting to hurt Black people, and I'm sure there are Reactionary claims about race that he thinks are just wrong. But he's also very PR conscious on this topic in my view. And it's hard to see why he's had so many HBD-associated folk on his blogroll if he doesn't want to quietly spread some of the ideas. 

It's easy for both to be true at the same time right? That is skeptics tone it down within EA, and believers tone it down when dealing with people *outside* EA.