Having read through them, I’m still not convinced that today’s conditions are worse than those of other eras. It is very easy to find horrible stories of bad epistemics now, but is that because there are more such stories per capita, or because more information is being shared per capita than ever before?
(I should say, before I continue, that many of these stories horrify me — for example, the Yale Halloween incident, which happened the year after I graduated. I’m fighting against my own inclination to assume that things are worse than ever.)
Take John McWhorter’s article. Had a professor in the 1950s written a similar piece, what fraction of the academic population (which is, I assume, much larger today than it was then) might have sent messages to them about e.g. being forced to hide their views on one of that era’s many taboo subjects? What would answers to the survey in the article have looked like?
Or take the “Postcard from Pre-Totalitarian America” you referenced. It’s a chilling anecdote… but also seems wildly exaggerated in many places. Do those young academics actually all believe that America is the most evil country, or that the hijab is liberating? Is he certain that none of his students are cynically repeating mantras the same way he did? Do other professors from a similar background also think the U.S. is worse than the USSR was? Because this is one letter from one person, it’s impossible to tell.
Of course, it could be that things really were better then, but the lack of data from that period bothers me, given the natural human inclination to assume that one’s own time period is worse than prior time periods in various ways. (You can see this on Left Twitter all the time when today’s economic conditions are weighed against those of earlier eras.)
But whether this is the worst time in general isn’t as relevant as:
If you’re not sure whether EA can avoid sharing this fate, shouldn’t figuring that out be like your top priority right now as someone specializing in dealing with the EA culture and community, instead of one out of “50 or 60 bullet points”?
Taking this question literally, there are a huge number of fates I’m not sure EA can avoid sharing, because nothing is certain. Among these fates, “devolving into cancel culture” seems less prominent than other failure conditions that I have also not made my top priority.
This is because my top priority at work is to write and edit things on behalf of other people. I sometimes think about EA cultural/community issues, but mostly because doing so might help me improve the projects I work on, as those are my primary responsibility. This Forum post happened in my free time and isn’t connected to my job, save for that my job led me to read that Twitter thread in the first place and has informed some of my beliefs.
(For what it’s worth, if I had to choose a top issue that might lead EA to “fail”, I’d cite “low or stagnant growth,” which is something I think about a lot, inside and outside of work.)
There are people whose job descriptions include “looking for threats to EA and trying to plan against them.” Some of them are working on problems like the ones that concern you. For example, many aspects of 80K’s anonymous interview series gets into questions about diversity and groupthink (among other relevant topics).
Of course, the interviews are scattered across many subjects, and many potentially great projects in this area haven’t been done. I’d be interested to see someone take on the “cancel culture” question in a more dedicated way, but I’d also like to see someone do this for movement growth, and that seems even more underworked to me.
I know some of the aforementioned people have read this discussion, and I may send it to others if I see additional movement in the “cancel culture” direction. (The EA Munich thing seems like one of a few isolated incidents, and I don’t see a cancel-y trend in EA right now.)
I think the biggest reason I’m worried is that seemingly every non-conservative intellectual or cultural center has fallen prey to cancel culture, e.g., academia, journalism, publishing, museums/arts, tech companies, local governments in left-leaning areas, etc. There are stories about it happening in a crochet group, and I’ve personally seen it in action in my local parent groups. Doesn’t that give you a high enough base rate that you should think “I better assume EA is in serious danger too, unless I can understand why it happened to those places, and why the same mechanisms/dynamics don’t apply to EA”?
Your reasoning (from another comment) is “I’ve seen various incidents that seem worrying, but they don’t seem to form a pattern.” Well if you only get seriously worried once there’s a clear pattern, that may well be too late to do anything about it! Remember that many of those intellectual/cultural centers were once filled with liberals who visibly supported free speech, free inquiry, etc., and many of them would have cared enough to try to do something about cancel culture once they saw a clear pattern of movement in that direction, but that must have been too late already.
For what it’s worth, if I had to choose a top issue that might lead EA to “fail”, I’d cite “low or stagnant growth,” which is something I think about a lot, inside and outside of work.
“Low or stagnant growth” is less worrying to me because that’s something you can always experiment or change course on, if you find yourself facing that problem. In other words you can keep trying until you get it right. With cancel culture though, if you don’t get it right the first time (i.e., you allow cancel culture to take over) then it seems very hard to recover.
I know some of the aforementioned people have read this discussion, and I may send it to others if I see additional movement in the “cancel culture” direction.
Thanks for this information. It does makes it more understandable why you’re personally not focusing on this problem. I still think it should be on or near the top of your mind too though, especially as you think about and discuss related issues like this particular cancellation of Robin Hanson.
Thanks for linking to those discussions.
Having read through them, I’m still not convinced that today’s conditions are worse than those of other eras. It is very easy to find horrible stories of bad epistemics now, but is that because there are more such stories per capita, or because more information is being shared per capita than ever before?
(I should say, before I continue, that many of these stories horrify me — for example, the Yale Halloween incident, which happened the year after I graduated. I’m fighting against my own inclination to assume that things are worse than ever.)
Take John McWhorter’s article. Had a professor in the 1950s written a similar piece, what fraction of the academic population (which is, I assume, much larger today than it was then) might have sent messages to them about e.g. being forced to hide their views on one of that era’s many taboo subjects? What would answers to the survey in the article have looked like?
Or take the “Postcard from Pre-Totalitarian America” you referenced. It’s a chilling anecdote… but also seems wildly exaggerated in many places. Do those young academics actually all believe that America is the most evil country, or that the hijab is liberating? Is he certain that none of his students are cynically repeating mantras the same way he did? Do other professors from a similar background also think the U.S. is worse than the USSR was? Because this is one letter from one person, it’s impossible to tell.
Of course, it could be that things really were better then, but the lack of data from that period bothers me, given the natural human inclination to assume that one’s own time period is worse than prior time periods in various ways. (You can see this on Left Twitter all the time when today’s economic conditions are weighed against those of earlier eras.)
But whether this is the worst time in general isn’t as relevant as:
Taking this question literally, there are a huge number of fates I’m not sure EA can avoid sharing, because nothing is certain. Among these fates, “devolving into cancel culture” seems less prominent than other failure conditions that I have also not made my top priority.
This is because my top priority at work is to write and edit things on behalf of other people. I sometimes think about EA cultural/community issues, but mostly because doing so might help me improve the projects I work on, as those are my primary responsibility. This Forum post happened in my free time and isn’t connected to my job, save for that my job led me to read that Twitter thread in the first place and has informed some of my beliefs.
(For what it’s worth, if I had to choose a top issue that might lead EA to “fail”, I’d cite “low or stagnant growth,” which is something I think about a lot, inside and outside of work.)
There are people whose job descriptions include “looking for threats to EA and trying to plan against them.” Some of them are working on problems like the ones that concern you. For example, many aspects of 80K’s anonymous interview series gets into questions about diversity and groupthink (among other relevant topics).
Of course, the interviews are scattered across many subjects, and many potentially great projects in this area haven’t been done. I’d be interested to see someone take on the “cancel culture” question in a more dedicated way, but I’d also like to see someone do this for movement growth, and that seems even more underworked to me.
I know some of the aforementioned people have read this discussion, and I may send it to others if I see additional movement in the “cancel culture” direction. (The EA Munich thing seems like one of a few isolated incidents, and I don’t see a cancel-y trend in EA right now.)
I think the biggest reason I’m worried is that seemingly every non-conservative intellectual or cultural center has fallen prey to cancel culture, e.g., academia, journalism, publishing, museums/arts, tech companies, local governments in left-leaning areas, etc. There are stories about it happening in a crochet group, and I’ve personally seen it in action in my local parent groups. Doesn’t that give you a high enough base rate that you should think “I better assume EA is in serious danger too, unless I can understand why it happened to those places, and why the same mechanisms/dynamics don’t apply to EA”?
Your reasoning (from another comment) is “I’ve seen various incidents that seem worrying, but they don’t seem to form a pattern.” Well if you only get seriously worried once there’s a clear pattern, that may well be too late to do anything about it! Remember that many of those intellectual/cultural centers were once filled with liberals who visibly supported free speech, free inquiry, etc., and many of them would have cared enough to try to do something about cancel culture once they saw a clear pattern of movement in that direction, but that must have been too late already.
“Low or stagnant growth” is less worrying to me because that’s something you can always experiment or change course on, if you find yourself facing that problem. In other words you can keep trying until you get it right. With cancel culture though, if you don’t get it right the first time (i.e., you allow cancel culture to take over) then it seems very hard to recover.
Thanks for this information. It does makes it more understandable why you’re personally not focusing on this problem. I still think it should be on or near the top of your mind too though, especially as you think about and discuss related issues like this particular cancellation of Robin Hanson.