But even if someone said something monstrous, I’m still willing to hear them out, to attend a conference with them, and to attempt to persuade them otherwise (if it comes up). And who knows, maybe some belief of mine might turn out to seem monstrous to other people. I should hope they’d try to engage with me.
Trying to cancel folks because they spoke at an event but another speaker said a bad thing 15 years ago—that’s an absurd level of guilt by association.
Trying to cancel folks because they spoke at an event but another speaker said a bad thing 15 years ago—that’s an absurd level of guilt by association.
This is a very uncharitable, bordering on dishonest, interpretation of the critics of this event.
Like, even if you’re talking about the guardian article, which definitely has an anti-EA stance, I would describe their main “cancellation” (not a fan of how this word is used) targets as Lightcone and manifest. The charge is that lightcone hosted a conference filled with racist speakers at the lighthaven campus, and that manifest invited said speakers to the conference.
I don’t see them cancelling, say, nate silver, who fills your description of “spoke at the event but another speaker said a bad thing 15 years ago”.
Also, “said a bad thing 15 years ago” is an absurd twisting of the accusations. Hanania said some really, really racist things under a pseudonym up to 2012 (12 years ago, not 15) that he apologises for, but even the OP admits that he still says “distasteful” things today on twitter, and I personally think he’s still pretty racist. And most of the other controversial speakers have never apologised for anything, and plenty of the things they said were recent, like the comments of brian chau.
For context, Daniel Penny (white) killed Jordan Neely, a homeless black man, who had been shouting at penny on the subway. Hanania is generally supportive of harsher measures against crime and this tweet (and Hanania’s history) make it likely to me that he is describing black people as animals, rather than Penny, who wasn’t harassing someone in the subway or to my knowledge wearing a suit and who Hanania probably supports. This is a gross thing to say[1]. And if Hanania wanted to clarify it, he could, but hasn’t.
In Hanania’s defence, he hasn’t said anything this racist more recently. But that’s a low bar.
There is some kind of clarification here that we are all animals and that being an animal isn’t bad, but Hanania isn’t doing some “all people are animals and that’s good” bit, he’s probably being very racist.
He wasn’t referring to black people. I reached out to Hanania and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
I recommend editing your comment to update it based on new information.
Signal boosting incorrect and damaging information about somebody is bad for discourse.
And there’s a real difference between—for example—inviting someone to talk about AI safety and inviting someone to talk about their belief that human infants might be susceptible to killing up to 18 months.
To me, whether to deplatform someone due to unrelated speech or conduct that is sufficiently objectionable is a much more difficult question than whether to allow them to present said objectionable views at one’s conference (or views that are adjacent to said views).
The main debate here is whether people who ever aid controversial things should be allowed to attend an event at all, and/or to give a talk about unrelated issues.
I think that characterization collapses some nuances that I think are relevant, in a way that takes some of the heat off of Manifest.
We can envision a continuum of potential organizer actions with respect to individuals with problematic views; the example I gave had the lower end of the continuum in mind while Manifest organizers took actions further along the continuum. I’m keeping “problematic views” pretty vague at most levels here because I’m trying to expose some cruxes at a high level.
The first levels involve ordinary invitees:
Organizers hold a ~open-admission event with no speakers or promotion targeted to problematic views; people with problematic views decide to buy tickets. Organizers do not create a special exception to their generally-applicable rules to exclude them.
Organizers hold a selective-admission event with no speakers or promotion targeted to problematic views; people with problematic views decide to apply without organizer encouragement. Organizers decide to admit them.
Organizers directly or indirectly recruit people with problematic views to attend (e.g., individual outreach, promoting the event in certain places).
Above that, we have special invitees and presenters:
4. Organizers give individuals with problematic views public special guest status and use their attendance to promote the event. In addition to making the event more attractive to people with problematic views more, this may reasonably cause people in the groups targeted by the problematic views to feel emotionally unwelcome at the event.
5. Organizers platform individuals with problematic views on topics clearly unrelated to their problematic views. Having someone with problematic views about race talk about prediction markets will often fall into this category. We might split it into 5A or 5B, depending on whether pre-event publicity makes the specific topic on which the person will be speaking very clear.
6. Organizers platform individuals with problematic views on topics that are potentially or somewhat related to their problematic views. Having someone with problematic views about race talk about biology in the next century will often fall into this category. I’d have to hear the individual’s presentation to know how related it was to the problematic views. Of course, a potential Manifest attendee who is a person of color won’t have this luxury.
7. Organizers platform individuals with problematic views on topics that are related to their problematic views.
In general, my view of how problematic is too problematic will tighten as we move across the continuum. In contrast, I see “whether people who ever aid controversial things should be allowed to attend an event at all” as grounded at levels 1 and 2, and “unrelated” doesn’t address that there’s a continuum of relatedness that separates my 5th and 6th levels.
Great comment and overview of the event, which I very much enjoyed.
Was anyone there who had ever uttered a previous phrase or sentence with which I might disgree, even firmly so? Almost certainly.
I mean, Eliezer was there, and he has suggested that human infants might be susceptible to killing up to 18 months (https://x.com/antoniogm/status/1632162012229693440), which I regard as unbelievably monstrous.
But even if someone said something monstrous, I’m still willing to hear them out, to attend a conference with them, and to attempt to persuade them otherwise (if it comes up). And who knows, maybe some belief of mine might turn out to seem monstrous to other people. I should hope they’d try to engage with me.
Trying to cancel folks because they spoke at an event but another speaker said a bad thing 15 years ago—that’s an absurd level of guilt by association.
This is a very uncharitable, bordering on dishonest, interpretation of the critics of this event.
Like, even if you’re talking about the guardian article, which definitely has an anti-EA stance, I would describe their main “cancellation” (not a fan of how this word is used) targets as Lightcone and manifest. The charge is that lightcone hosted a conference filled with racist speakers at the lighthaven campus, and that manifest invited said speakers to the conference.
I don’t see them cancelling, say, nate silver, who fills your description of “spoke at the event but another speaker said a bad thing 15 years ago”.
Also, “said a bad thing 15 years ago” is an absurd twisting of the accusations. Hanania said some really, really racist things under a pseudonym up to 2012 (12 years ago, not 15) that he apologises for, but even the OP admits that he still says “distasteful” things today on twitter, and I personally think he’s still pretty racist. And most of the other controversial speakers have never apologised for anything, and plenty of the things they said were recent, like the comments of brian chau.
Hanania has said racist things last year
For context, Daniel Penny (white) killed Jordan Neely, a homeless black man, who had been shouting at penny on the subway. Hanania is generally supportive of harsher measures against crime and this tweet (and Hanania’s history) make it likely to me that he is describing black people as animals, rather than Penny, who wasn’t harassing someone in the subway or to my knowledge wearing a suit and who Hanania probably supports. This is a gross thing to say[1]. And if Hanania wanted to clarify it, he could, but hasn’t.
In Hanania’s defence, he hasn’t said anything this racist more recently. But that’s a low bar.
There is some kind of clarification here that we are all animals and that being an animal isn’t bad, but Hanania isn’t doing some “all people are animals and that’s good” bit, he’s probably being very racist.
I’d bet that he didn’t mean black people here.
Ah, that is a fair point!
He wasn’t referring to black people. I reached out to Hanania and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
I recommend editing your comment to update it based on new information.
Signal boosting incorrect and damaging information about somebody is bad for discourse.
And there’s a real difference between—for example—inviting someone to talk about AI safety and inviting someone to talk about their belief that human infants might be susceptible to killing up to 18 months.
To me, whether to deplatform someone due to unrelated speech or conduct that is sufficiently objectionable is a much more difficult question than whether to allow them to present said objectionable views at one’s conference (or views that are adjacent to said views).
The main debate here is whether people who ever aid controversial things should be allowed to attend an event at all, and/or to give a talk about unrelated issues.
I think that characterization collapses some nuances that I think are relevant, in a way that takes some of the heat off of Manifest.
We can envision a continuum of potential organizer actions with respect to individuals with problematic views; the example I gave had the lower end of the continuum in mind while Manifest organizers took actions further along the continuum. I’m keeping “problematic views” pretty vague at most levels here because I’m trying to expose some cruxes at a high level.
The first levels involve ordinary invitees:
Organizers hold a ~open-admission event with no speakers or promotion targeted to problematic views; people with problematic views decide to buy tickets. Organizers do not create a special exception to their generally-applicable rules to exclude them.
Organizers hold a selective-admission event with no speakers or promotion targeted to problematic views; people with problematic views decide to apply without organizer encouragement. Organizers decide to admit them.
Organizers directly or indirectly recruit people with problematic views to attend (e.g., individual outreach, promoting the event in certain places).
Above that, we have special invitees and presenters:
4. Organizers give individuals with problematic views public special guest status and use their attendance to promote the event. In addition to making the event more attractive to people with problematic views more, this may reasonably cause people in the groups targeted by the problematic views to feel emotionally unwelcome at the event.
5. Organizers platform individuals with problematic views on topics clearly unrelated to their problematic views. Having someone with problematic views about race talk about prediction markets will often fall into this category. We might split it into 5A or 5B, depending on whether pre-event publicity makes the specific topic on which the person will be speaking very clear.
6. Organizers platform individuals with problematic views on topics that are potentially or somewhat related to their problematic views. Having someone with problematic views about race talk about biology in the next century will often fall into this category. I’d have to hear the individual’s presentation to know how related it was to the problematic views. Of course, a potential Manifest attendee who is a person of color won’t have this luxury.
7. Organizers platform individuals with problematic views on topics that are related to their problematic views.
In general, my view of how problematic is too problematic will tighten as we move across the continuum. In contrast, I see “whether people who ever aid controversial things should be allowed to attend an event at all” as grounded at levels 1 and 2, and “unrelated” doesn’t address that there’s a continuum of relatedness that separates my 5th and 6th levels.
OK, fair enough, what I said was perhaps a bit overstated. It is even more overstated to refer to a “conference filled with racist speakers” etc.