As such, blackmail feels like a totally fair characterization [of a substantial part of the reason for disinviting Hanson (though definitely not 100% of it).]
As your subsequent caveat implies, whether blackmail is a fair characterisation turns on exactly how substantial this part was. If in fact the decision was driven by non-blackmail considerations, the (great-)grandparentâs remarks about it being bad to submit to blackmail are inapposite.
Crucially, (q.v. Danielâs comment), not all instances where someone says (or implies), âIf you do X (which I say harms my interests), Iâm going to do Y (and Y harms your interests)â are fairly characterised as (essentially equivalent to) blackmail. To give a much lower resolution of Danielâs treatment, if (conditional on you doing X) it would be in my interest to respond with Y independent of any harm it may do to you (and any coercive pull it would have on you doing X in the first place), informing you of my intentions is credibly not a blackmail attempt, but a better-faith âYou do X then I do Y is our BATNA here, can we negotiate something better?â (In some treatments these are termed warnings versus threats, or using terms like âspitefulâ, âmaliciousâ or âbad faithâ to make the distinction).
The âvery explicit threatâ of disassociation you mention is a prime example of âplausibly (/âprima facie) not-blackmailâ. There are many credible motivations to (e.g.) renounce (or denounce) a group which invites a controversial speaker you find objectionable independent from any hope threatening this makes them ultimately resile from running the event after all. So too âtrenchantly criticising you for holding the eventâ, âno longer supporting your groupâ, âleaving in protest (and encouraging others to do the same)â etc. etc. Any or all of these might be wrong for other reasonsâbut (again, per Daniels) âtheyâre trying to blackmail us!â is not necessarily one of them.
(Less-than-coincidentally, the above are also acts of protest which are typically considered âfair gameâ, versus disrupting events, intimidating participants, campaigns to get someone fired, etc. I presume neither of us take various responses made to the NYT when they were planning to write an article about Scott to be (morally objectionable) attempts to blackmail them, even if many of them can be called âthreatsâ in natural language).
Of course, even if something could plausibly not be a blackmail attempt, it may in fact be exactly this. I may posture that my own interests would drive me to Y, but I would privately regret having to âfollow throughâ with this after X happens; or I may pretend my threat of Y is âonly meant as a friendly warningâ. Yet although our counterpartyâs mind is not transparent to us, we can make reasonable guesses.
It is important to get this right, as the right strategy to deal with threats is a very wrong one to deal with warnings. If you think Iâm trying to blackmail you when I say âIf you do X, I will do Yâ, then all the usual stuff around âdonât give in to the bulliesâ applies: by refuting my threat, you deter me (and others) from attempting to bully you in future. But if you think I am giving a good-faith warning when I say this, it is worth looking for a compromise. Being intransigent as a matter of policyâat bestâmeans we always end up at our mutual BATNAs even when there were better-for-you negotiated agreements we could have reached.
At worst, it may induce me to make the symmetrical mistakeâwrongly believing your behaviour in is bad faith. That your real reasons for doing X, and for being unwilling to entertain the idea of compromise to mitigate the harm X will do to me, are because youâre actually âout to get meâ. Game theory will often recommend retaliation as a way of deterring you from doing this again. So the stage is set for escalating conflict.
Directly: Widely across the comments here you have urged for charity and good faith to be extended to evaluating Hansonâs behaviour which others have taken exception toâthat adverse inferences (beyond perhaps âinadvertently causes offenceâ) are not only mistaken but often indicate a violation of discourse norms vital for EA-land to maintain. Iâm a big fan of extending charity and good faith in principle (although perhaps putting this into practice remains a work in progress for me). Yet you mete out much more meagre measure to others than you demand from them in turn, endorsing fervid hyperbole that paints those who expressed opposition to Munich inviting Hanson as bullies trying to blackmail them, and those sympathetic to the decision they made as selling out. Beyond this being normatively unjust, it is also prudentially unwiseâpresuming bad faith in those who object to your actions is a recipe for making a lot of enemies you didnât need to, especially in already-fractious intellectual terrain.
You could still be rightâdespite the highlighted âvery explicit threatâ which is also very plausibly not blackmail, despite the other âthreatsâ alluded to which seem also plausibly not blackmail and âfair gameâ protests for them to make, and despite what the organisers have said (publicly) themselves, the full body of evidence should lead us to infer what really happened was bullying which was acquiesced to. But I doubt it.
I agree that the right strategy to deal with threats is substantially different than the right strategy to deal with warnings. I think itâs a fair and important point. I am not claiming that it is obvious that absolutely clear-cut blackmail occured, though I think overall, aggregating over all the evidence I have, it seems very likely (~85%-90%) to me that situation game-theoretically similar enough to a classical blackmail scenario has played out. I do think your point about it being really important to get the assessment of whether we are dealing with a warning or a threat is important, and is one of the key pieces I would want people to model when thinking about situations like this, and so your relatively clear explanation of that is appreciated (as well as the reminder for me to keep the costs of premature retaliation in mind).
Yet you mete out much more meagre measure to others than you demand from them in turn, endorsing fervid hyperbole that paints those who expressed opposition to Munich inviting Hanson as bullies trying to blackmail them, and those sympathetic to the decision they made as selling out.
This just seems like straightforward misrepresentation? What fervid hyperbole are you referring to? I am trying my best to make relatively clear and straightforward arguments in my comments here. I am not perfect and sometimes will get some details wrong, and I am sure there are many things I could do better in my phrasing, but nothing that I wrote on this post strikes me as being deserving of the phrase âfervid hyperboleâ.
I also strongly disagree that I am applying some kind of one-sided charity to Hanson here. The only charity that I am demanding is to be open to engaging with people you disagree with, and to be hesitant to call for the cancellation of others without good cause. I am not even demanding that people engage with Hanson charitably. I am only asking that people do not deplatform others based on implicit threats by some other third party they donât agree with, and do not engage in substantial public attacks in response to long-chained associations removed from denotative meaning. I am quite confident I am not doing that here.
Of course, there are lots of smaller things that I think are good for public discourse that I am requesting in addition to this, but I think overall I am running a strategy that seems quite compatible to me with a generalizable maxim that if followed would result in good discourse, even with others that substantially disagree with me. Of course, that maxim might not be obvious to you, and I take concerns of one-sided charity seriously, but after having reread every comment of mine on this post in response to this comment, I canât find any place where such an accusation of one-sided charity fits well to my behavior.
That said, I prefer to keep this at the object-level, at least given that the above really doesnât feel like it would start a productive conversation about conversation norms. But I hope it is clear that I disagree strongly with that characterization of mine.
You could still be rightâdespite the highlighted âvery explicit threatâ which is also very plausibly not blackmail, despite the other âthreatsâ alluded to which seem also plausibly not blackmail and âfair gameâ protests for them to make, and despite what the organisers have said (publicly) themselves, the full body of evidence should lead us to infer what really happened was bullying which was acquiesced to. But I doubt it.
Thatâs OK. We can read the evidence in separate ways. Iâve been trying really hard to understand what is happening here, have talked to the organizers directly, and am trying my best to build models of what the game-theoretically right response is. I expect if we were to dig into our disagreements here more, we would find a mixture of empirical disagreements, and some deeper disagreements about when something constitutes blackmail, or something game-theoretically equivalent. I donât know which direction would be more fruitful to go into.
As your subsequent caveat implies, whether blackmail is a fair characterisation turns on exactly how substantial this part was. If in fact the decision was driven by non-blackmail considerations, the (great-)grandparentâs remarks about it being bad to submit to blackmail are inapposite.
Crucially, (q.v. Danielâs comment), not all instances where someone says (or implies), âIf you do X (which I say harms my interests), Iâm going to do Y (and Y harms your interests)â are fairly characterised as (essentially equivalent to) blackmail. To give a much lower resolution of Danielâs treatment, if (conditional on you doing X) it would be in my interest to respond with Y independent of any harm it may do to you (and any coercive pull it would have on you doing X in the first place), informing you of my intentions is credibly not a blackmail attempt, but a better-faith âYou do X then I do Y is our BATNA here, can we negotiate something better?â (In some treatments these are termed warnings versus threats, or using terms like âspitefulâ, âmaliciousâ or âbad faithâ to make the distinction).
The âvery explicit threatâ of disassociation you mention is a prime example of âplausibly (/âprima facie) not-blackmailâ. There are many credible motivations to (e.g.) renounce (or denounce) a group which invites a controversial speaker you find objectionable independent from any hope threatening this makes them ultimately resile from running the event after all. So too âtrenchantly criticising you for holding the eventâ, âno longer supporting your groupâ, âleaving in protest (and encouraging others to do the same)â etc. etc. Any or all of these might be wrong for other reasonsâbut (again, per Daniels) âtheyâre trying to blackmail us!â is not necessarily one of them.
(Less-than-coincidentally, the above are also acts of protest which are typically considered âfair gameâ, versus disrupting events, intimidating participants, campaigns to get someone fired, etc. I presume neither of us take various responses made to the NYT when they were planning to write an article about Scott to be (morally objectionable) attempts to blackmail them, even if many of them can be called âthreatsâ in natural language).
Of course, even if something could plausibly not be a blackmail attempt, it may in fact be exactly this. I may posture that my own interests would drive me to Y, but I would privately regret having to âfollow throughâ with this after X happens; or I may pretend my threat of Y is âonly meant as a friendly warningâ. Yet although our counterpartyâs mind is not transparent to us, we can make reasonable guesses.
It is important to get this right, as the right strategy to deal with threats is a very wrong one to deal with warnings. If you think Iâm trying to blackmail you when I say âIf you do X, I will do Yâ, then all the usual stuff around âdonât give in to the bulliesâ applies: by refuting my threat, you deter me (and others) from attempting to bully you in future. But if you think I am giving a good-faith warning when I say this, it is worth looking for a compromise. Being intransigent as a matter of policyâat bestâmeans we always end up at our mutual BATNAs even when there were better-for-you negotiated agreements we could have reached.
At worst, it may induce me to make the symmetrical mistakeâwrongly believing your behaviour in is bad faith. That your real reasons for doing X, and for being unwilling to entertain the idea of compromise to mitigate the harm X will do to me, are because youâre actually âout to get meâ. Game theory will often recommend retaliation as a way of deterring you from doing this again. So the stage is set for escalating conflict.
Directly: Widely across the comments here you have urged for charity and good faith to be extended to evaluating Hansonâs behaviour which others have taken exception toâthat adverse inferences (beyond perhaps âinadvertently causes offenceâ) are not only mistaken but often indicate a violation of discourse norms vital for EA-land to maintain. Iâm a big fan of extending charity and good faith in principle (although perhaps putting this into practice remains a work in progress for me). Yet you mete out much more meagre measure to others than you demand from them in turn, endorsing fervid hyperbole that paints those who expressed opposition to Munich inviting Hanson as bullies trying to blackmail them, and those sympathetic to the decision they made as selling out. Beyond this being normatively unjust, it is also prudentially unwiseâpresuming bad faith in those who object to your actions is a recipe for making a lot of enemies you didnât need to, especially in already-fractious intellectual terrain.
You could still be rightâdespite the highlighted âvery explicit threatâ which is also very plausibly not blackmail, despite the other âthreatsâ alluded to which seem also plausibly not blackmail and âfair gameâ protests for them to make, and despite what the organisers have said (publicly) themselves, the full body of evidence should lead us to infer what really happened was bullying which was acquiesced to. But I doubt it.
I agree that the right strategy to deal with threats is substantially different than the right strategy to deal with warnings. I think itâs a fair and important point. I am not claiming that it is obvious that absolutely clear-cut blackmail occured, though I think overall, aggregating over all the evidence I have, it seems very likely (~85%-90%) to me that situation game-theoretically similar enough to a classical blackmail scenario has played out. I do think your point about it being really important to get the assessment of whether we are dealing with a warning or a threat is important, and is one of the key pieces I would want people to model when thinking about situations like this, and so your relatively clear explanation of that is appreciated (as well as the reminder for me to keep the costs of premature retaliation in mind).
This just seems like straightforward misrepresentation? What fervid hyperbole are you referring to? I am trying my best to make relatively clear and straightforward arguments in my comments here. I am not perfect and sometimes will get some details wrong, and I am sure there are many things I could do better in my phrasing, but nothing that I wrote on this post strikes me as being deserving of the phrase âfervid hyperboleâ.
I also strongly disagree that I am applying some kind of one-sided charity to Hanson here. The only charity that I am demanding is to be open to engaging with people you disagree with, and to be hesitant to call for the cancellation of others without good cause. I am not even demanding that people engage with Hanson charitably. I am only asking that people do not deplatform others based on implicit threats by some other third party they donât agree with, and do not engage in substantial public attacks in response to long-chained associations removed from denotative meaning. I am quite confident I am not doing that here.
Of course, there are lots of smaller things that I think are good for public discourse that I am requesting in addition to this, but I think overall I am running a strategy that seems quite compatible to me with a generalizable maxim that if followed would result in good discourse, even with others that substantially disagree with me. Of course, that maxim might not be obvious to you, and I take concerns of one-sided charity seriously, but after having reread every comment of mine on this post in response to this comment, I canât find any place where such an accusation of one-sided charity fits well to my behavior.
That said, I prefer to keep this at the object-level, at least given that the above really doesnât feel like it would start a productive conversation about conversation norms. But I hope it is clear that I disagree strongly with that characterization of mine.
Thatâs OK. We can read the evidence in separate ways. Iâve been trying really hard to understand what is happening here, have talked to the organizers directly, and am trying my best to build models of what the game-theoretically right response is. I expect if we were to dig into our disagreements here more, we would find a mixture of empirical disagreements, and some deeper disagreements about when something constitutes blackmail, or something game-theoretically equivalent. I donât know which direction would be more fruitful to go into.