“Moral Misdirection (full post)” by Richard Y Chappell

This is a link post. I previously included a link to this as part of my trilogy on anti-philanthropic misdirection, but a commenter asked me to post the full text here for the automated audio conversion. This forum post combines my two substack posts on 'Moral Misdirection' and on 'Anti-Philanthropic Misdirection'. Apologies to anyone who has already read them. Moral Misdirection One can lie—or at least misdirect—by telling only truths. Suppose Don shares news of every violent crime committed by immigrants (while ignoring those committed by native-born citizens, and never sharing evidence of immigrants positively contributing to society). He spreads the false impression that immigrants are dangerous and do more harm than good. Since this isn’t true, and promulgates harmful xenophobic sentiments, I expect most academics in my social circles would judge Don very negatively, as both (i) morally bad, and (ii) intellectually dishonest. It would not be a convincing [...] ---Outline:(00:28) Moral Misdirection(02:07) Defining Moral Misdirection(05:08) Three Examples(05:12) (1) Anti-Woke Culture Warriors(07:01) (2) Media Misdirection: “But Her Emails!”(08:23) (3) Anti-Vax scaremongering(11:15) Misleading Appeals to Complexity(12:38) How to Criticize Good Things Responsibly(14:01) Anti-Philanthropic Misdirection(14:36) What's Important(16:14) Responsible Criticism(19:04) Wenar's Counterpart on “Deaths from Vaccines”The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 14th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SmwFg2GMCedvcwxEw/moral-misdirection-full-post --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.