I struggle reconciling implied takeaways from two discourse crises on EA forum.
When I read SBF stuff, I get the sense that we want to increase integrity-maxing unstrategic practices.
When I read about male misbehavior, it is suggested that we want to decrease adjacency to the radical honesty cluster of practices.
I think it might feel obvious enough to me which takeaway should apply to which cases, but I still fear the overall message may be confused and I don’t know if expectations are being set appropriately in a way that lots of people can be expected to converge on.
Hmm, that’s interesting. I guess I had seen both of those discourses as having similar messages—something like ‘it doesn’t matter how “effective” you are, common sense virtue is important!’ or ‘we are doing a bad job at protecting our community from bad actors in it, we should do better at this’. (Obv SBF’s main bad impact wasn’t on EA community members, but one of the early red flags was that a bunch of people left Alameda because he was bad to work with. And his actions and gendered harassment/abuse both harm the community through harming its reputation).
I do think it’s reasonable to worry that these things trade off, fwiw. I’m just not convinced that they do in this domain—like, integrity-maxxing certainly involves honesty, but I don’t see why it involves the sort of radical-honesty, “blurting out” thing described in the post.
It seems that you, correct me if I’m wrong, along with many who agree with you, are looking to further encourage a norm within this domain (on the basis of at least one example, i.e. the one example from the blog post, that challenged it).
This might benefit some individuals by reducing their emotional distress. But strengthening such a norm that already seems strong/largely uncontroversial/to a large extent popular in the context of this community, especially one within this domain, makes me concerned in several ways:
Norms like these that target expression considered offensive seem to often evolve into/come in the form of restrictions that require enforcement. In these cases, enforcement often results in:
“Assholes”/”bad people” (and who may much later even be labeled “criminals” through sufficient gradual changes) endure excessive punishments, replacing what could have been more proportionate responses. Being outside of people’s moral circles/making it low status to defend them makes it all too easy.
Well-meaning people get physically or materially (hence also emotionally) punished for honest mistakes. This may happen often—as it’s easy for humans to cause accidental emotional harm.
Enforcement can be indeed more directed but this is not something we can easily control. Even if it is controlled locally, it can go out of control elsewhere.
Individuals who are sociopolitically savvy and manipulative may exploit their environment’s aversion of relatively minor issues to their advantage. This allows them to appear virtuous without making substantial contributions or sacrifices.
At best, this is inefficient. At worst, to say the least—it’s dangerous.
Restrictions in one domain often find their way into another. Particularly, it’s not challenging to impose restrictions that are in line with illegitimate authority as well as power gained through intimidation.
This can lead people to comfortably dismiss individuals who raise valid but uncomfortable concerns, by labeling them as mere “assholes”. To risk a controversial, but probably illuminating example, people often unfairly dismiss Ayaan Hirsi Ali as an “Islamophobe”.
This burdens the rest of society with those other restrictions and their consequences. Those other restrictions can range from being a mere annoyance to being very bad.
I’d be less worried (and possibly find it good) if such a norm was strengthened in a context where it isn’t strong, which gives us more indication that the changes are net positive. However, it’s evident that a large number of individuals here already endorse some version of this norm, and it is quite influential. Enthusiasm could easily become excessive. I sincerely doubt most people intend to bring about draconian restrictions/punishments (on this or something else), but those consequences can gradually appear despite that.
(So my aim was less to propose a norm, more to challenge an implicit preconception I’ve heard of (elsewhere in EA too!) - that a person who highly values honesty will, necessarily, end up hurting others’ feelings. I don’t really agree with “proposing norms” as an activity—I’m just reacting a certain way to certain people, and they can react to my reaction my changing their behaviour, or not doing that.
You seem to be worried that advocating for a norm that’s already strong critiques tends to lead to unfair punishments for transgressors. I don’t really think there’s a basis for this. Are there many instances in EA where you think people have been punished excessively and disproportionately for minor transgressions? Is this a pattern? Fwiw I don’t want to “punish” people who radically honest in hurtful ways—I just want them to understand that they can be honest and also kind/empathetic.
In general, I think that the way norms stay strong is by people advocating for them, even if people already mostly agree. It teaches newcomers the norm and reminds older community members. It can be worth stating the obvious. But my original point doesn’t seem to be that obvious, given that the original letter-writer was having problems with people “breaking” this supposed “norm”.
You seem to have written against proposing norms in the past. So apologies for my mistake and I’m glad that’s not your intention.
To be clear, I think we should be free to write as we wish. Regardless, it still seems to me that voicing support for an already quite popular position on restricting expression comes with the risk of strengthening associated norms and bringing about the multiple downsides I mentioned.
Among the downsides, yes, the worry that strengthening strong norms dealing with ‘offensive’ expression can lead to unfair punishments. This is not a baseless fear. There are historical examples of norms on restricting expression leading to unfair punishments; strong religious and political norms have allowed religious inquisitors and political regimes to suppress dissenting voices.
I don’t think EA is near the worst forms of it. In my previous comment, I was only pointing to a worrying trend towards that direction. We may (hopefully) never arrive at the destination. But along the way, there are more mild excesses. There have been a few instances where, I believe, the prevailing culture has resulted in disproportionate punishment either directly from the community or indirectly from external entities whose actions were, in part, enabled by the community’s behavior. I probably won’t discuss this too publicly but if necessary we can continue elsewhere.
I see how both are related to honestly saying things unprompted.
One difference is whether the honesty is necessary for someone to make an important decision.
If we want to increase our transparency as a community and reduce the risk of bad actors gaining undue influence, someone needs to say “I know no one asked, but I had a concerning experience with this person.” And then some people will hopefully say, “Thanks, I was going to make a deal with this person or rely on them for something, and now I won’t.”
But if someone just came up to me and said “I like how your body looks” or something, I would probably say, “I wasn’t planning on making any decisions relating to you and my body, and I continue to not plan on doing that. Why are you telling me? Who is this supposed to benefit?”
I struggle reconciling implied takeaways from two discourse crises on EA forum.
When I read SBF stuff, I get the sense that we want to increase integrity-maxing unstrategic practices.
When I read about male misbehavior, it is suggested that we want to decrease adjacency to the radical honesty cluster of practices.
I think it might feel obvious enough to me which takeaway should apply to which cases, but I still fear the overall message may be confused and I don’t know if expectations are being set appropriately in a way that lots of people can be expected to converge on.
Hmm, that’s interesting. I guess I had seen both of those discourses as having similar messages—something like ‘it doesn’t matter how “effective” you are, common sense virtue is important!’ or ‘we are doing a bad job at protecting our community from bad actors in it, we should do better at this’. (Obv SBF’s main bad impact wasn’t on EA community members, but one of the early red flags was that a bunch of people left Alameda because he was bad to work with. And his actions and gendered harassment/abuse both harm the community through harming its reputation).
I do think it’s reasonable to worry that these things trade off, fwiw. I’m just not convinced that they do in this domain—like, integrity-maxxing certainly involves honesty, but I don’t see why it involves the sort of radical-honesty, “blurting out” thing described in the post.
It seems that you, correct me if I’m wrong, along with many who agree with you, are looking to further encourage a norm within this domain (on the basis of at least one example, i.e. the one example from the blog post, that challenged it).
This might benefit some individuals by reducing their emotional distress. But strengthening such a norm that already seems strong/largely uncontroversial/to a large extent popular in the context of this community, especially one within this domain, makes me concerned in several ways:
Norms like these that target expression considered offensive seem to often evolve into/come in the form of restrictions that require enforcement. In these cases, enforcement often results in:
“Assholes”/”bad people” (and who may much later even be labeled “criminals” through sufficient gradual changes) endure excessive punishments, replacing what could have been more proportionate responses. Being outside of people’s moral circles/making it low status to defend them makes it all too easy.
Well-meaning people get physically or materially (hence also emotionally) punished for honest mistakes. This may happen often—as it’s easy for humans to cause accidental emotional harm.
Enforcement can be indeed more directed but this is not something we can easily control. Even if it is controlled locally, it can go out of control elsewhere.
Individuals who are sociopolitically savvy and manipulative may exploit their environment’s aversion of relatively minor issues to their advantage. This allows them to appear virtuous without making substantial contributions or sacrifices.
At best, this is inefficient. At worst, to say the least—it’s dangerous.
Restrictions in one domain often find their way into another. Particularly, it’s not challenging to impose restrictions that are in line with illegitimate authority as well as power gained through intimidation.
This can lead people to comfortably dismiss individuals who raise valid but uncomfortable concerns, by labeling them as mere “assholes”. To risk a controversial, but probably illuminating example, people often unfairly dismiss Ayaan Hirsi Ali as an “Islamophobe”.
This burdens the rest of society with those other restrictions and their consequences. Those other restrictions can range from being a mere annoyance to being very bad.
I’d be less worried (and possibly find it good) if such a norm was strengthened in a context where it isn’t strong, which gives us more indication that the changes are net positive. However, it’s evident that a large number of individuals here already endorse some version of this norm, and it is quite influential. Enthusiasm could easily become excessive. I sincerely doubt most people intend to bring about draconian restrictions/punishments (on this or something else), but those consequences can gradually appear despite that.
(So my aim was less to propose a norm, more to challenge an implicit preconception I’ve heard of (elsewhere in EA too!) - that a person who highly values honesty will, necessarily, end up hurting others’ feelings. I don’t really agree with “proposing norms” as an activity—I’m just reacting a certain way to certain people, and they can react to my reaction my changing their behaviour, or not doing that.
You seem to be worried that advocating for a norm that’s already strong critiques tends to lead to unfair punishments for transgressors. I don’t really think there’s a basis for this. Are there many instances in EA where you think people have been punished excessively and disproportionately for minor transgressions? Is this a pattern? Fwiw I don’t want to “punish” people who radically honest in hurtful ways—I just want them to understand that they can be honest and also kind/empathetic.
In general, I think that the way norms stay strong is by people advocating for them, even if people already mostly agree. It teaches newcomers the norm and reminds older community members. It can be worth stating the obvious. But my original point doesn’t seem to be that obvious, given that the original letter-writer was having problems with people “breaking” this supposed “norm”.
You seem to have written against proposing norms in the past. So apologies for my mistake and I’m glad that’s not your intention.
To be clear, I think we should be free to write as we wish. Regardless, it still seems to me that voicing support for an already quite popular position on restricting expression comes with the risk of strengthening associated norms and bringing about the multiple downsides I mentioned.
Among the downsides, yes, the worry that strengthening strong norms dealing with ‘offensive’ expression can lead to unfair punishments. This is not a baseless fear. There are historical examples of norms on restricting expression leading to unfair punishments; strong religious and political norms have allowed religious inquisitors and political regimes to suppress dissenting voices.
I don’t think EA is near the worst forms of it. In my previous comment, I was only pointing to a worrying trend towards that direction. We may (hopefully) never arrive at the destination. But along the way, there are more mild excesses. There have been a few instances where, I believe, the prevailing culture has resulted in disproportionate punishment either directly from the community or indirectly from external entities whose actions were, in part, enabled by the community’s behavior. I probably won’t discuss this too publicly but if necessary we can continue elsewhere.
I see how both are related to honestly saying things unprompted.
One difference is whether the honesty is necessary for someone to make an important decision.
If we want to increase our transparency as a community and reduce the risk of bad actors gaining undue influence, someone needs to say “I know no one asked, but I had a concerning experience with this person.” And then some people will hopefully say, “Thanks, I was going to make a deal with this person or rely on them for something, and now I won’t.”
But if someone just came up to me and said “I like how your body looks” or something, I would probably say, “I wasn’t planning on making any decisions relating to you and my body, and I continue to not plan on doing that. Why are you telling me? Who is this supposed to benefit?”