I don’t think he’s even trying, and maybe he’s trying to deliberately walk as close to the line as possible. What’s the point in that?
I can think of at least three reasons for someone to be “edgy” like that:
To signal intelligence, because it takes knowledge and skill to be able to walk as close to a line as possible without crossing it. This could be the (perhaps subconscious) intent even if the effort ends up failing or backfiring.
To try to hold one end of the overton window in place, if one was worried about the overton window shifting or narrowing.
To try to desensitize people (i.e., reduce their emotional reactions) about certain topics, ideas, or opinions.
One could think of “edgy” people as performing a valuable social service (2 and 3 above) while taking a large personal risk (if they accidentally cross the line), while receiving the personal benefits of intelligence signaling as compensation. On this view, it’s regretable that more people aren’t willing to be “edgy” (perhaps because we as a culture have devalued intelligence signaling relative to virtue signaling), and as a result our society is suffering the negative consequences of an increasingly narrow overton window and an increasingly sensitive populace.
An alternative view would be that there are too many “edgy” people causing damage to society by making the overton window too wide or anchoring it in the wrong place, and causing emotional damage to lots of people who they have no business trying to “desensitize”, and they’re doing that for the selfish benefit of signaling their intelligence to others. Therefore we should coordinate to punish such people by canceling/deplatforming/shaming them, etc.
(You can perhaps tell which view I’m sympathetic to, and which view is the one that the most influential parts of Western civilization have implicitly adopted in recent years.)
Thanks, those are good points. I agree that this is not black and white, that there are some positives to being edgy.
That said, I don’t think you make a good case for the alternative view. I wouldn’t say that the problem with Hanson’s tweets is that they cause “emotional damage.”The problem is that they contribute to the toxoplasmosa of rage dynamics (esp. combined with some people’s impulse to defend everything about them). My intuition is that this negative effect outweighs the positive effects you describe.
The “alternative view” (“emotional damage”) I mentioned was in part trying to summarize the view apparently taken by EA Munich and being defended in the OP: “And yet, many people are actually uncomfortable with Hanson for some of the same reasons brought up in the Slate piece; they find his remarks personally upsetting or unsettling.”
The problem is that they contribute to the toxoplasmosa of rage dynamics (esp. combined with some people’s impulse to defend everything about them). My intuition is that this negative effect outweighs the positive effects you describe.
This would be a third view, which I hadn’t seen anyone mention in connection with Robin Hanson until now. I guess it seems plausible although I personally haven’t observed the “negative effect” you describe so I don’t know how big the effect is.
Signalling frank discussion norms—when the host of a discussion now and then uses words and phrases that would be considered insensitive among a general audience, people in this discussion can feel permitted to talk frankly without having to worry about how the framing of their argument might offend anybody.
Relatedly, I noticed feeling relieved when a person higher in status made a “politically incorrect” joke. I felt like I could relax some part of my brain that worries about saying something that in some context could cause offense and me being punished socially (e.g. being labeled “problematic”, which seems to be happening much quicker than I’d like, also in EA circles).
Only half joking, if somebody would leak the chats I have had with my best friend over the years, there is probably something in there to deeply offend every person on Earth. So maybe another reason to be “edgy” is just that it’s fun for some people to say things in a norm-violating way? I remember laughing out loudly at two of Hanson’s breaches of certain norms. Some part of me is worried about how this makes me look like, here. I think I laughed because it violated some norm in a suprising way (which would relate it to signalling intelligence), and not because I didn’t find the topic serious or wasn’t interested in serious discussion. I don’t want to imply this was intended by Hanson, though. But I can imagine that it draws in some people, too.
I can think of at least three reasons for someone to be “edgy” like that:
To signal intelligence, because it takes knowledge and skill to be able to walk as close to a line as possible without crossing it. This could be the (perhaps subconscious) intent even if the effort ends up failing or backfiring.
To try to hold one end of the overton window in place, if one was worried about the overton window shifting or narrowing.
To try to desensitize people (i.e., reduce their emotional reactions) about certain topics, ideas, or opinions.
One could think of “edgy” people as performing a valuable social service (2 and 3 above) while taking a large personal risk (if they accidentally cross the line), while receiving the personal benefits of intelligence signaling as compensation. On this view, it’s regretable that more people aren’t willing to be “edgy” (perhaps because we as a culture have devalued intelligence signaling relative to virtue signaling), and as a result our society is suffering the negative consequences of an increasingly narrow overton window and an increasingly sensitive populace.
An alternative view would be that there are too many “edgy” people causing damage to society by making the overton window too wide or anchoring it in the wrong place, and causing emotional damage to lots of people who they have no business trying to “desensitize”, and they’re doing that for the selfish benefit of signaling their intelligence to others. Therefore we should coordinate to punish such people by canceling/deplatforming/shaming them, etc.
(You can perhaps tell which view I’m sympathetic to, and which view is the one that the most influential parts of Western civilization have implicitly adopted in recent years.)
Thanks, those are good points. I agree that this is not black and white, that there are some positives to being edgy.
That said, I don’t think you make a good case for the alternative view. I wouldn’t say that the problem with Hanson’s tweets is that they cause “emotional damage.”The problem is that they contribute to the toxoplasmosa of rage dynamics (esp. combined with some people’s impulse to defend everything about them). My intuition is that this negative effect outweighs the positive effects you describe.
The “alternative view” (“emotional damage”) I mentioned was in part trying to summarize the view apparently taken by EA Munich and being defended in the OP: “And yet, many people are actually uncomfortable with Hanson for some of the same reasons brought up in the Slate piece; they find his remarks personally upsetting or unsettling.”
This would be a third view, which I hadn’t seen anyone mention in connection with Robin Hanson until now. I guess it seems plausible although I personally haven’t observed the “negative effect” you describe so I don’t know how big the effect is.
Two other reasons to be “edgy” came to my mind:
Signalling frank discussion norms—when the host of a discussion now and then uses words and phrases that would be considered insensitive among a general audience, people in this discussion can feel permitted to talk frankly without having to worry about how the framing of their argument might offend anybody.
Relatedly, I noticed feeling relieved when a person higher in status made a “politically incorrect” joke. I felt like I could relax some part of my brain that worries about saying something that in some context could cause offense and me being punished socially (e.g. being labeled “problematic”, which seems to be happening much quicker than I’d like, also in EA circles).
Only half joking, if somebody would leak the chats I have had with my best friend over the years, there is probably something in there to deeply offend every person on Earth. So maybe another reason to be “edgy” is just that it’s fun for some people to say things in a norm-violating way? I remember laughing out loudly at two of Hanson’s breaches of certain norms. Some part of me is worried about how this makes me look like, here. I think I laughed because it violated some norm in a suprising way (which would relate it to signalling intelligence), and not because I didn’t find the topic serious or wasn’t interested in serious discussion. I don’t want to imply this was intended by Hanson, though. But I can imagine that it draws in some people, too.