On one side, we’ve had multiple posts talking about the risks of an incipient new Cultural Revolution; on the other, we’ve had someone accuse a widely-admired writer associated with the movement of abetting some pretty abhorrent worldviews.
I’m not sure what contrast you are trying to make here:
The first post argues that, while SJ cancellations are a problem, we should not fight back against them because it would be too expensive. The second post agrees that SJ cancellations are a problem that could become much worse, but argues we should try to do something about it.
The third post is an example of an attempted SJ cancellation, criticizing the community for being insufficiently zealous in condemning the outgroup. (It was downvoted into oblivion for being dishonest and nasty).
The first two are motivated by concern over the rise of bullying and its ability to intimidate people from communicating honestly about important issues, and discuss what we should do in response. The third article is… an example of this bad behaviour?
For the symmetry argument you want to make, it seems like you would need a right-wing version of the third post—like an article condemning the community for not doing enough to distance itself from communists and failing to constantly re-iterate its support for the police. Then it would make sense to point out that, despite the conflict, both sides were earnestly motivated by a desire to make the world a better place and avoid bad outcomes, and we should all remember this and respect each other.
But to my knowledge, no such article exists, partly because there are very few right-wing EAs. Rather, the conflict is between the core EA movement of largely centre-left people who endorse traditional enlightenment values of debate, empiricism and universalism, vs the rise of extreme-left ‘woke’ culture, which frequently rejects such ideals. Accusing the moderate left of being crypto-fascists is one of the standard rhetorical moves the far-left uses against the centre-left, and one they are very vulnerable to.
Note that I removed the link to the attack article because I think it is probably a violation of implicit forum norms to promote content with more than 100 net downvotes. If it hadn’t been linked in this article I would not have come across it, which is probably desirable from the perspective of the moderators and the community.
Edit: the OP was edited between when I opened the page and starting writing this comment, and when I hit publish; at the request of the author I have updated the quote to reflect his edits, though I think this makes the comment a little harder to understand.
This comment does a good job of summarising the “classical liberal” position on this conflict, but makes no effort to imagine or engage with the views of more moderate pro-SJ EAs (of whom there are plenty), who might object strongly to cultural-revolution comparisons or be wary of SSC given the current controversy.
As I already said in response to Buck’s comment:
I agree that post was very bad (I left a long comment explaining part of why I strong-downvoted it). But I think there’s a version of that post, that is phrased more moderately and tries harder to be charitable to its opponents, that I think would get a lot more sympathy from the left of EA. (I expect I would still disagree with it quite strongly.)
As you say, there aren’t many right-wing EAs. The key conflict I’m worried about is between centre/centre-left/libertarian-leaning EAs and left-wing/SJ-sympathetic EAs[1]. So suggesting I need to find a right-wing piece to make the comparison is missing the point.
(This comment also quotes an old version of my post, which has since been changed on the basis of feedback. I’m a bit confused about that, since some of the changes were made more than a day ago – I tried logging out and the updated version is still the one I see. Can you update your quote?)
I’m not sure what contrast you are trying to make here:
The first post argues that, while SJ cancellations are a problem, we should not fight back against them because it would be too expensive. The second post agrees that SJ cancellations are a problem that could become much worse, but argues we should try to do something about it.
The third post is an example of an attempted SJ cancellation, criticizing the community for being insufficiently zealous in condemning the outgroup. (It was downvoted into oblivion for being dishonest and nasty).
The first two are motivated by concern over the rise of bullying and its ability to intimidate people from communicating honestly about important issues, and discuss what we should do in response. The third article is… an example of this bad behaviour?
For the symmetry argument you want to make, it seems like you would need a right-wing version of the third post—like an article condemning the community for not doing enough to distance itself from communists and failing to constantly re-iterate its support for the police. Then it would make sense to point out that, despite the conflict, both sides were earnestly motivated by a desire to make the world a better place and avoid bad outcomes, and we should all remember this and respect each other.
But to my knowledge, no such article exists, partly because there are very few right-wing EAs. Rather, the conflict is between the core EA movement of largely centre-left people who endorse traditional enlightenment values of debate, empiricism and universalism, vs the rise of extreme-left ‘woke’ culture, which frequently rejects such ideals. Accusing the moderate left of being crypto-fascists is one of the standard rhetorical moves the far-left uses against the centre-left, and one they are very vulnerable to.
Note that I removed the link to the attack article because I think it is probably a violation of implicit forum norms to promote content with more than 100 net downvotes. If it hadn’t been linked in this article I would not have come across it, which is probably desirable from the perspective of the moderators and the community.
Edit: the OP was edited between when I opened the page and starting writing this comment, and when I hit publish; at the request of the author I have updated the quote to reflect his edits, though I think this makes the comment a little harder to understand.
This comment does a good job of summarising the “classical liberal” position on this conflict, but makes no effort to imagine or engage with the views of more moderate pro-SJ EAs (of whom there are plenty), who might object strongly to cultural-revolution comparisons or be wary of SSC given the current controversy.
As I already said in response to Buck’s comment:
As you say, there aren’t many right-wing EAs. The key conflict I’m worried about is between centre/centre-left/libertarian-leaning EAs and left-wing/SJ-sympathetic EAs[1]. So suggesting I need to find a right-wing piece to make the comparison is missing the point.
(This comment also quotes an old version of my post, which has since been changed on the basis of feedback. I’m a bit confused about that, since some of the changes were made more than a day ago – I tried logging out and the updated version is still the one I see. Can you update your quote?)
I also don’t want conservative-leaning EAs to be driven from the movement, but that isn’t the central thing I’m worried about here.
What current controversy are you saying might make moderate pro-SJ EAs more wary of SSC?