BTW I want to add—to all those who champion Hanania because they think free speech should mean that anyone should be able to be platformed without criticism or condemnation, Hanania is no ally to those principles:
Here’s Hanania:
I don’t feel particularly oppressed by leftists. They give me a lot more free speech than I would give them if the tables were turned. If I owned Twitter, I wouldn’t let feminists, trans activists, or socialists post. Why should I? They’re wrong about everything and bad for society. Twitter [pre-Musk] is a company that is overwhelmingly liberal, and I’m actually impressed they let me get away with the things I’ve been saying for this long.
Has anyone said he should be platformed without criticism? The point of contention seems to be that many people think he shouldn’t have been a speaker at all and that everyone who interacts with him is tainted. That is not a subtle difference.
As HL Mencken famously said, “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
If principles only apply to the people that uphold them, then they’re not principles: they’re just another word for tribalism. Lovely conflict theory you’ve got there.
One of the reasons I’ve been distancing myself from EA in the last year or so is that it feels like the much celebrated ‘openness to all new ideas’ is a fake cover for the fact that many EAs are racists/euginicists and want to have such opinions around them. In other words, they don’t really champion free speech, but rather just pretend to in order to keep the eugenics talk going.
Edit: while there are some forum users that I’m sure are in the group I described, I don’t know any of the Manifest team and am not ascribing them in particular any beliefs or intentions.
I don’t think anyone heavily involved in global health stuff has ever said they endorse scientific racism. But I don’t think this is true about eugenics. Of the two people most associated with the founding of GWWC, you’ve criticized Will yourself here on the grounds that you thought some of the stuff he says in WWOTF about cloning scientific geniuses is too eugenicist. And Toby Ord was Bostrom’s co-author on a paper defending attempts to increase the average IQ, through genetic engineering, that I’m guessing you would oppose: https://nickbostrom.com/ethics/statusquo.pdf
(As I’ve said elsewhere, I have more complicated feelings about genetic enhancement. I think it is potentially beneficial, but also tends to be correlated with bad politics, and it could be the negative social effects of allowing it outweigh the benefits.)
As I’ve said elsewhere, I have more complicated feelings about genetic enhancement. I think it is potentially beneficial, but also tends to be correlated with bad politics, and it could be the negative social effects of allowing it outweigh the benefits.
I appreciate you keeping on open mind on genetic enhancement (i.e., not grouping it with racism and fascism, or immediately calling for it to be banned). Nevertheless, it fills me with a sense of hopelessness to consider that one of the most thoughtful groups of people on Earth (i.e., EAs) might still realistically decide to ban the discussion of human genetic enhancement (I’m assuming that’s the implied alternative to “allowing it”), on the grounds that it “tends to be correlated with bad politics”.
When I first heard about the idea of greater than human intelligence (i.e., superintelligence), I imagined that humanity would approach it as one of the most important strategic decision we’ll ever face, and there would be worldwide extensive debates about the relative merits of each possible route to achieving that, such as AI and human genetic enhancement. Your comment represents such a divergence from that vision, and occurring in a group like this...
If even we shy away from discussing a potentially world-altering technology simply because of its political baggage, what hope is there for broader society to engage in nuanced, good-faith conversations about these issues?
Thanks for correcting me.
I do believe they’re much less involved in these things nowadays, but I might be wrong.
I indeed haven’t seen any expression of racism from either, but I chose carefully to write “racist/euginicist” before for this kind of reason exactly. I personally believe even discussing such interventions in the way that they have been in EA has risks (of promoting racist policies by individuals, organizations, governments) that far outweigh any benefits. Such a discussion might be possible privately between people who all know each other very well and can trust each other’s good intentions, but otherwise it is too dangerous.
I agree people are too open to racism, but I don’t think most of them are consciously deceiving people in the manner suggested by calling one thing a cover for another.
Yes I think. Conscious strategic deception is shady regardless of the goal being served, whereas a certain amount of self-deception is kind of inevitable.
I also do think most rationalists would object to demands that some other group didn’t invite left-wing speakers. (Maybe I’m too generous.) Like I think if there was some very left-wing speaker at an EA-adjacent animal activism conference, (edit:) and people wanted them disinvited as too controversial I think rationalists would mostly oppose that. I think they’d oppose a professor being deplatformrd from an academic conference for Black Power-style attacks on white people.
More generally, I think they have a genuinely content-neutral dislike of people being told they can’t say true (as they see it) things because they are offensive. Maybe I am typical-minding here, but my experience growing up with autism in a neurotypical world is that a distates for white lies, and people fooling themselves about what is true to avoid non-conformity, or upsetting group bonding, or just to avoid feeling bad about themselves, is a central experience for people with a broadly autistic type personality. (Never mind whether they are autistic enough to be diagnosable.) I think this far predates people forming their specific political views, rather than being a post-hoc excuse for them. (Actually I also suspect a lot of the incredibly high value rationalists put on “rationality” as they understand is them compensating psychologically for feelings of social inferiority people with this sort of personality type often grow up with. But maybe that’s just me!).
Where I do think they are being (unconsciously) a bit disingenuous is when they imply that the presence of far-right views in their community is just a product of their commitment to openess or imply that they are just as open to radical left or super woke ideas. (Maybe that’s not quite the way to put it: I feel like they’d say something directionally like that but milder and more plausible.)
I appreciate you sharing your experience. It’s different from mine and so it can be that I’m judging too many people too harshly based on this difference.
That said, I suspect that it’s not enough to have this aversion. The racism I often see requires a degree of indifference to the consequences of one’s actions and discourse, or maybe a strong naivety that makes one unaware of those consequences.
I know I can’t generalize from one person, but if you see yourself as an example of the different mindset that might lead to the behaviour I observed—notice that you yourself seem to be very aware of the consequences of your actions, and every bit of expression from you I’ve seen has been the opposite of what I’m condemning.
Edit: for those downvoting, I would appreciate feedback on this comment, either here or in a PM.
BTW I want to add—to all those who champion Hanania because they think free speech should mean that anyone should be able to be platformed without criticism or condemnation, Hanania is no ally to those principles:
Here’s Hanania:
(Source)
Has anyone said he should be platformed without criticism? The point of contention seems to be that many people think he shouldn’t have been a speaker at all and that everyone who interacts with him is tainted. That is not a subtle difference.
As HL Mencken famously said, “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
If principles only apply to the people that uphold them, then they’re not principles: they’re just another word for tribalism. Lovely conflict theory you’ve got there.
One of the reasons I’ve been distancing myself from EA in the last year or so is that it feels like the much celebrated ‘openness to all new ideas’ is a fake cover for the fact that many EAs are racists/euginicists and want to have such opinions around them. In other words, they don’t really champion free speech, but rather just pretend to in order to keep the eugenics talk going.
Edit: while there are some forum users that I’m sure are in the group I described, I don’t know any of the Manifest team and am not ascribing them in particular any beliefs or intentions.
I think this is both rather uncharitable and implausible
I maintain that it’s neither, but I’m particularly curious to hear why you think it’s implausible.
The movement that quite famously spends 2⁄3 of its funding on improving health outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa is too racist?
Alas, big movements do struggle to maintain purity, don’t they?
I don’t think the movement can be ascribed a stance on this. What I said, rather, is:
And I stand behind this. They just aren’t the people responsible for the interventions you mentioned.
I don’t think anyone heavily involved in global health stuff has ever said they endorse scientific racism. But I don’t think this is true about eugenics. Of the two people most associated with the founding of GWWC, you’ve criticized Will yourself here on the grounds that you thought some of the stuff he says in WWOTF about cloning scientific geniuses is too eugenicist. And Toby Ord was Bostrom’s co-author on a paper defending attempts to increase the average IQ, through genetic engineering, that I’m guessing you would oppose: https://nickbostrom.com/ethics/statusquo.pdf
(As I’ve said elsewhere, I have more complicated feelings about genetic enhancement. I think it is potentially beneficial, but also tends to be correlated with bad politics, and it could be the negative social effects of allowing it outweigh the benefits.)
I appreciate you keeping on open mind on genetic enhancement (i.e., not grouping it with racism and fascism, or immediately calling for it to be banned). Nevertheless, it fills me with a sense of hopelessness to consider that one of the most thoughtful groups of people on Earth (i.e., EAs) might still realistically decide to ban the discussion of human genetic enhancement (I’m assuming that’s the implied alternative to “allowing it”), on the grounds that it “tends to be correlated with bad politics”.
When I first heard about the idea of greater than human intelligence (i.e., superintelligence), I imagined that humanity would approach it as one of the most important strategic decision we’ll ever face, and there would be worldwide extensive debates about the relative merits of each possible route to achieving that, such as AI and human genetic enhancement. Your comment represents such a divergence from that vision, and occurring in a group like this...
If even we shy away from discussing a potentially world-altering technology simply because of its political baggage, what hope is there for broader society to engage in nuanced, good-faith conversations about these issues?
Thanks for correcting me. I do believe they’re much less involved in these things nowadays, but I might be wrong.
I indeed haven’t seen any expression of racism from either, but I chose carefully to write “racist/euginicist” before for this kind of reason exactly. I personally believe even discussing such interventions in the way that they have been in EA has risks (of promoting racist policies by individuals, organizations, governments) that far outweigh any benefits. Such a discussion might be possible privately between people who all know each other very well and can trust each other’s good intentions, but otherwise it is too dangerous.
I agree people are too open to racism, but I don’t think most of them are consciously deceiving people in the manner suggested by calling one thing a cover for another.
Maybe not consciously. Does that make it any better?
Yes I think. Conscious strategic deception is shady regardless of the goal being served, whereas a certain amount of self-deception is kind of inevitable.
I also do think most rationalists would object to demands that some other group didn’t invite left-wing speakers. (Maybe I’m too generous.) Like I think if there was some very left-wing speaker at an EA-adjacent animal activism conference, (edit:) and people wanted them disinvited as too controversial I think rationalists would mostly oppose that. I think they’d oppose a professor being deplatformrd from an academic conference for Black Power-style attacks on white people.
More generally, I think they have a genuinely content-neutral dislike of people being told they can’t say true (as they see it) things because they are offensive. Maybe I am typical-minding here, but my experience growing up with autism in a neurotypical world is that a distates for white lies, and people fooling themselves about what is true to avoid non-conformity, or upsetting group bonding, or just to avoid feeling bad about themselves, is a central experience for people with a broadly autistic type personality. (Never mind whether they are autistic enough to be diagnosable.) I think this far predates people forming their specific political views, rather than being a post-hoc excuse for them. (Actually I also suspect a lot of the incredibly high value rationalists put on “rationality” as they understand is them compensating psychologically for feelings of social inferiority people with this sort of personality type often grow up with. But maybe that’s just me!).
Where I do think they are being (unconsciously) a bit disingenuous is when they imply that the presence of far-right views in their community is just a product of their commitment to openess or imply that they are just as open to radical left or super woke ideas. (Maybe that’s not quite the way to put it: I feel like they’d say something directionally like that but milder and more plausible.)
I appreciate you sharing your experience. It’s different from mine and so it can be that I’m judging too many people too harshly based on this difference.
That said, I suspect that it’s not enough to have this aversion. The racism I often see requires a degree of indifference to the consequences of one’s actions and discourse, or maybe a strong naivety that makes one unaware of those consequences.
I know I can’t generalize from one person, but if you see yourself as an example of the different mindset that might lead to the behaviour I observed—notice that you yourself seem to be very aware of the consequences of your actions, and every bit of expression from you I’ve seen has been the opposite of what I’m condemning.
Edit: for those downvoting, I would appreciate feedback on this comment, either here or in a PM.