Claims to the contrary are either obvious nonsense, or marketing copy by the same people who brought you the obvious nonsense.
In most contexts when language liked this is used, it’s usually pretty clear that you are implying someone is doing something closer to deliberately lying than some softer kind of deception. I am aware Ben might have some model about how Givewell or others in EA are acting in bad faith in some other manner, involving self-deception. If that is what he is implying that Givewell or Good Ventures are doing instead of deliberately lying, that isn’t clear from the OP. He could have also stated the organizations in question are not fully aware they’re just marketing obvious nonsense, and had been immune to his attempts to point this out to them. If that is the case, but he didn’t state that in the OP either.
So, based on their prior experience, I believe it would appear to many people like he was implying Givewell, Good Ventures, and EA are deliberately lying. Deliberate lying is generally seen as a bad thing. So, to imply someone is deliberately lying seems to clearly be an attribution of bad motives to others. So if Ben didn’t expect or think that is how people would construe part of what he was trying to say, I don’t know what he was going for.
When he wrote:
In most contexts when language liked this is used, it’s usually pretty clear that you are implying someone is doing something closer to deliberately lying than some softer kind of deception. I am aware Ben might have some model about how Givewell or others in EA are acting in bad faith in some other manner, involving self-deception. If that is what he is implying that Givewell or Good Ventures are doing instead of deliberately lying, that isn’t clear from the OP. He could have also stated the organizations in question are not fully aware they’re just marketing obvious nonsense, and had been immune to his attempts to point this out to them. If that is the case, but he didn’t state that in the OP either.
So, based on their prior experience, I believe it would appear to many people like he was implying Givewell, Good Ventures, and EA are deliberately lying. Deliberate lying is generally seen as a bad thing. So, to imply someone is deliberately lying seems to clearly be an attribution of bad motives to others. So if Ben didn’t expect or think that is how people would construe part of what he was trying to say, I don’t know what he was going for.