> My plan was then to invite & highlight folks who could balance this out
I think this is basically a misconception of how the social dynamics at play work. People aren’t worried about the relative number of “racists”, they’re worried about the absolute number. The primary concern is not that they will exposed to racism at the conference itself, but rather that attending a conference together will be taken as a signal of support for the racists, saying that they are welcome in the community.
To pick Hanania as an example, since he has the most clearly documented history of racist statements, I have peers who would absolutely see me choosing to attend the same conference as him as a sign that I don’t think he’s too bad. And if I know that expectation and chose to go anyway, there would be additional merit to that reading.
To an extent, the more that Manifest is focused on discussions of prediction, the more leeway there is to invite controversial speakers. You can say make a case for ignoring views that are not relevant to the topic at hand. But as Saul says in his other post “although manifest is nominally about prediction markets, it’s also about all the ideas that folks who like prediction markets are also into — betting, philosophy, mechanism design, writing, etc”. In other words, it’s about forming a broader intellectual community. And people are obviously going to be uncomfortable identifying with an intellectual community that includes people that they, and the broader world, consider to be racist.
And even if it were possible to “balance out”, the examples given don’t exactly fill me with confidence this was given serious consideration. Someone known primarily[1] for being an angry culture warrior like Hanania isn’t “balanced out” by the presence of “gracious” longtermists who are unlikely to have written anything racist,[2] he’d “balanced out” by getting a culture warrior from the other side, whether in open debate or purely speaking about markets but making it clear the organizers definitely weren’t endorsing a particular side...
The Guardian may not always capture the nuance, but there’s a difference between inviting someone known primarily for his controversial views who incidentally also favours prediction markets and inviting, say, notable prediction market proponent Robin Hanson who incidentally also said questionable things in the past
Indeed if I wanted to organize a conference with the explicit purpose of covertly promoting fringe views to a largely unrelated audience (which I don’t think was actually the case here FWIW), this is exactly how I’d stack the speakers for faux balance: a few people on my side to insinuate the fringe views and a bunch of harmless intellectuals talking about unrelated subject matter to lend the fringe views an air of respectability.
I agree. I think we have to understand that “balancing out” Hanania plays into his game. He’s an intentional provocateur—he says edgy things for attention.
And then he uses that attention to build a platform.
And his explicit intention with that platform is to overturn the US Civil Rights Act.
I don’t want to play any part in enabling that and that’s what “balancing out” does.
The Guardian may not always capture the nuance, but there’s a difference between inviting someone known primarily for his controversial views who incidentally also favours prediction markets and inviting, say, notable prediction market proponent Robin Hanson who incidentally also said questionable things in the past
It’s been a long time since AP Chemistry, but to deploy an imperfect metaphor: Adding water to a strong acid merely makes the solution somewhat less acidic; it does not make it balanced in pH.
Mm, what you’re describing sounds consistent, but do you think that your peers are right to have that expectation? Like, is society a better place if we enforce a norm that attending a conference constitutes support for the others in attendance?
In general, I’m much less concerned about the optics of the event “how does Manifest look”, and much more concerned about the concrete question, “how did it feel to attend Manifest”? For this reason, the Guardian article didn’t bother me very much, but the attendee’s report on Manifest did prompt some soul-searching among our team and led me to write this post.
We don’t get to decide what society’s norms are, though. To be clear, nor do members of the ideological left with their demands for an ideological purity culture.
Looking at ~the middle 75% of society, [1]I think it’s clear that (metaphorically) breaking bread with a group of people has some social meaning. “Support” is too strong, but it does convey a sense of toleration, non-condemnation, and minimum acceptability of the group’s views. I can’t speak to non-Western cultures, but my understanding is this view is of long standing in places like classical Greece and Rome.
If one is interested in cross-pollination with diverse sectors of society, I submit that failing to reckon with commonly-accepted cultural norms like the breaking-bread norm would be an excellent way to ensure that one remains in a limited bubble.
I’m in the US, so this does have a US flavor. But I don’t have any reason to think things are different in Western Europe. I’d defer to those with more relevant knowledge and experience to discuss other cultures.
Maybe I’m naive, but I think we do get to decide society’s norms! We do so in explicit discussions like this one, for example. Or hypothetically if a friend asks “why did you go to that event with all the racists”, you could let them know of your disapproval of the stances of some of the invited guests, while also highlighting that you attended because of specific talks or events or other friends you were excited for.
We collectively (the members of the society) get to decide society’s norms. But it’s also true that U.S. citizens collectively get to decide who the President is, and look where that gets tens of millions of people each election cycle. People individually or in small groups ordinarily have only a slight influence on society’s norms., and I think what you’re suggesting is sufficiently far afield from current norms for small movements to make a material difference.
Of course, it’s possible for social norms to shift considerably. But it takes a lot of both time and concentrated effort. The end objective would presumably be a mass social movement engaged in advocacy for that interpretation of free speech and free association. I don’t see that kind of theory of change being worked toward, so I don’t see any reason to believe isolated, less systematic attempts to change norms will have much overall effect.
On the merits, I think I’m more open to informal societal pressure as a manner of social control (as opposed to censorship by governments or big corporations). I think it’s good that people incur serious social costs from attending (e.g.) neo-Nazi or KKK events. For some particularly dangerous ideas, social pressure is a fairly modest way of mitigating that harm without giving any entity a concentrated and/or too-strong censorship power. Moreover, I think failing to socially stigmatize certain types of speech sends a problematic message to groups who are the target of the particularly problematic speech. If one reaches that conclusion, then we have a line-drawing exercise about whether any given event is problematic enough to justify a social sanction on attendees.
If we decide that attendance at some events should be stigmatized, then that raises the question about what to do about mixed events (with significant objectionable and significant non-objectionable content.) My view is that we would stigmatize attendance at such events. Doing so would likely cause events to unmix quickly, so we wouldn’t lose the social value of content we didn’t want to stigmatize. And I think any other answer gives plausible deniability to people seeking to avoid the social pressure that we had decided was warranted.
I think my peers would factually right, at least directionally, in that attending with someone who has controversial views is evidence of favoring those views.
As for whether society is a better place if we enforce the norm, I think there’s a couple relevant considerations. The first is the degree of abhorrence. To pull Godwin’s Law, I think that knowingly attending a conference with literal neo-Nazis should be seen as support for their views. The second is the degree of focus. Where it should be fine to attend an academic conference with subject matter experts talking about their work, choosing to attend a “fun forecasting-adjacent festival” where attendees are encouraged to pal around with each other is more deserving of judgment.
I would also like to clarify, when I talk about peer judgments, I’m not making a point about how Manifest looks to those people. I’m making a point about how it would feel for them to attend. While I understand there are tradeoffs involved and you can’t make the event welcoming to arbitrary potential attendees, I would say by the time you’ve lost Peter Wildeford you’ve gone too far. I would also throw my hat in the ring as someone who works on prediction science and would be hesitant to attend the next Manifest if it had a similar invitee list.
(separate comment for separate thought to allow agree/disagree voting)
How much weight would you give to the following question: “how did it feel for some people to feel unwelcome at Manifest, and not attend, because of the controversial attendees—either due to reputational risk issues or discomfort at sharing space with those attendees?”
> My plan was then to invite & highlight folks who could balance this out
I think this is basically a misconception of how the social dynamics at play work. People aren’t worried about the relative number of “racists”, they’re worried about the absolute number. The primary concern is not that they will exposed to racism at the conference itself, but rather that attending a conference together will be taken as a signal of support for the racists, saying that they are welcome in the community.
To pick Hanania as an example, since he has the most clearly documented history of racist statements, I have peers who would absolutely see me choosing to attend the same conference as him as a sign that I don’t think he’s too bad. And if I know that expectation and chose to go anyway, there would be additional merit to that reading.
To an extent, the more that Manifest is focused on discussions of prediction, the more leeway there is to invite controversial speakers. You can say make a case for ignoring views that are not relevant to the topic at hand. But as Saul says in his other post “although manifest is nominally about prediction markets, it’s also about all the ideas that folks who like prediction markets are also into — betting, philosophy, mechanism design, writing, etc”. In other words, it’s about forming a broader intellectual community. And people are obviously going to be uncomfortable identifying with an intellectual community that includes people that they, and the broader world, consider to be racist.
And even if it were possible to “balance out”, the examples given don’t exactly fill me with confidence this was given serious consideration. Someone known primarily[1] for being an angry culture warrior like Hanania isn’t “balanced out” by the presence of “gracious” longtermists who are unlikely to have written anything racist,[2] he’d “balanced out” by getting a culture warrior from the other side, whether in open debate or purely speaking about markets but making it clear the organizers definitely weren’t endorsing a particular side...
The Guardian may not always capture the nuance, but there’s a difference between inviting someone known primarily for his controversial views who incidentally also favours prediction markets and inviting, say, notable prediction market proponent Robin Hanson who incidentally also said questionable things in the past
Indeed if I wanted to organize a conference with the explicit purpose of covertly promoting fringe views to a largely unrelated audience (which I don’t think was actually the case here FWIW), this is exactly how I’d stack the speakers for faux balance: a few people on my side to insinuate the fringe views and a bunch of harmless intellectuals talking about unrelated subject matter to lend the fringe views an air of respectability.
I agree. I think we have to understand that “balancing out” Hanania plays into his game. He’s an intentional provocateur—he says edgy things for attention.
And then he uses that attention to build a platform.
And his explicit intention with that platform is to overturn the US Civil Rights Act.
I don’t want to play any part in enabling that and that’s what “balancing out” does.
Yeah I dislike being part of something that rewards Hanania for the worst of his behaviour, which on balance I would guess Manifest currently does.
Well put.
It’s been a long time since AP Chemistry, but to deploy an imperfect metaphor: Adding water to a strong acid merely makes the solution somewhat less acidic; it does not make it balanced in pH.
Mm, what you’re describing sounds consistent, but do you think that your peers are right to have that expectation? Like, is society a better place if we enforce a norm that attending a conference constitutes support for the others in attendance?
In general, I’m much less concerned about the optics of the event “how does Manifest look”, and much more concerned about the concrete question, “how did it feel to attend Manifest”? For this reason, the Guardian article didn’t bother me very much, but the attendee’s report on Manifest did prompt some soul-searching among our team and led me to write this post.
We don’t get to decide what society’s norms are, though. To be clear, nor do members of the ideological left with their demands for an ideological purity culture.
Looking at ~the middle 75% of society, [1]I think it’s clear that (metaphorically) breaking bread with a group of people has some social meaning. “Support” is too strong, but it does convey a sense of toleration, non-condemnation, and minimum acceptability of the group’s views. I can’t speak to non-Western cultures, but my understanding is this view is of long standing in places like classical Greece and Rome.
If one is interested in cross-pollination with diverse sectors of society, I submit that failing to reckon with commonly-accepted cultural norms like the breaking-bread norm would be an excellent way to ensure that one remains in a limited bubble.
I’m in the US, so this does have a US flavor. But I don’t have any reason to think things are different in Western Europe. I’d defer to those with more relevant knowledge and experience to discuss other cultures.
Maybe I’m naive, but I think we do get to decide society’s norms! We do so in explicit discussions like this one, for example. Or hypothetically if a friend asks “why did you go to that event with all the racists”, you could let them know of your disapproval of the stances of some of the invited guests, while also highlighting that you attended because of specific talks or events or other friends you were excited for.
We collectively (the members of the society) get to decide society’s norms. But it’s also true that U.S. citizens collectively get to decide who the President is, and look where that gets tens of millions of people each election cycle. People individually or in small groups ordinarily have only a slight influence on society’s norms., and I think what you’re suggesting is sufficiently far afield from current norms for small movements to make a material difference.
Of course, it’s possible for social norms to shift considerably. But it takes a lot of both time and concentrated effort. The end objective would presumably be a mass social movement engaged in advocacy for that interpretation of free speech and free association. I don’t see that kind of theory of change being worked toward, so I don’t see any reason to believe isolated, less systematic attempts to change norms will have much overall effect.
On the merits, I think I’m more open to informal societal pressure as a manner of social control (as opposed to censorship by governments or big corporations). I think it’s good that people incur serious social costs from attending (e.g.) neo-Nazi or KKK events. For some particularly dangerous ideas, social pressure is a fairly modest way of mitigating that harm without giving any entity a concentrated and/or too-strong censorship power. Moreover, I think failing to socially stigmatize certain types of speech sends a problematic message to groups who are the target of the particularly problematic speech. If one reaches that conclusion, then we have a line-drawing exercise about whether any given event is problematic enough to justify a social sanction on attendees.
If we decide that attendance at some events should be stigmatized, then that raises the question about what to do about mixed events (with significant objectionable and significant non-objectionable content.) My view is that we would stigmatize attendance at such events. Doing so would likely cause events to unmix quickly, so we wouldn’t lose the social value of content we didn’t want to stigmatize. And I think any other answer gives plausible deniability to people seeking to avoid the social pressure that we had decided was warranted.
I think my peers would factually right, at least directionally, in that attending with someone who has controversial views is evidence of favoring those views.
As for whether society is a better place if we enforce the norm, I think there’s a couple relevant considerations. The first is the degree of abhorrence. To pull Godwin’s Law, I think that knowingly attending a conference with literal neo-Nazis should be seen as support for their views. The second is the degree of focus. Where it should be fine to attend an academic conference with subject matter experts talking about their work, choosing to attend a “fun forecasting-adjacent festival” where attendees are encouraged to pal around with each other is more deserving of judgment.
I would also like to clarify, when I talk about peer judgments, I’m not making a point about how Manifest looks to those people. I’m making a point about how it would feel for them to attend. While I understand there are tradeoffs involved and you can’t make the event welcoming to arbitrary potential attendees, I would say by the time you’ve lost Peter Wildeford you’ve gone too far. I would also throw my hat in the ring as someone who works on prediction science and would be hesitant to attend the next Manifest if it had a similar invitee list.
(separate comment for separate thought to allow agree/disagree voting)
How much weight would you give to the following question: “how did it feel for some people to feel unwelcome at Manifest, and not attend, because of the controversial attendees—either due to reputational risk issues or discomfort at sharing space with those attendees?”