Improving signaling seems like a positive-sum change. Continuing to have open debate despite people self-reporting harm is consistent with both caring a lot about the truth and also with not caring about harm. People often assume the latter, and given the low base rate of communities that actually care about truth they arenât obviously wrong to do so. So signaling the former would be nice.
Note: you talked about systemic racism but a similar phenomenon seems to happen anywhere laymen profess expertise they donât have. E.g. if someone tells you that they think eating animals is morally acceptable, you should probably just ignore them because most people who say that havenât thought about the issue very much. But there are a small number of people who do make that statement and are still worth listening to, and they often intentionally signal it by saying âI think factory farming is terrible but XYZâ instead of just âXYZâ.
Improving signaling seems like a positive-sum change. Continuing to have open debate despite people self-reporting harm is consistent with both caring a lot about the truth and also with not caring about harm. People often assume the latter, and given the low base rate of communities that actually care about truth they arenât obviously wrong to do so. So signaling the former would be nice.
Note: you talked about systemic racism but a similar phenomenon seems to happen anywhere laymen profess expertise they donât have. E.g. if someone tells you that they think eating animals is morally acceptable, you should probably just ignore them because most people who say that havenât thought about the issue very much. But there are a small number of people who do make that statement and are still worth listening to, and they often intentionally signal it by saying âI think factory farming is terrible but XYZâ instead of just âXYZâ.