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?”
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?”