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.
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.