I agree that the right strategy to deal with threats is substantially different than the right strategy to deal with warnings. I think it’s 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 “fervid hyperbole”.
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 don’t 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 can’t 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 doesn’t 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 right—despite the highlighted ‘very explicit threat’ which is also very plausibly not blackmail, despite the other ‘threats’ alluded to which seem also plausibly not blackmail and ‘fair game’ 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.
That’s OK. We can read the evidence in separate ways. I’ve 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 don’t know which direction would be more fruitful to go into.
I agree that the right strategy to deal with threats is substantially different than the right strategy to deal with warnings. I think it’s 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 “fervid hyperbole”.
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 don’t 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 can’t 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 doesn’t 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.
That’s OK. We can read the evidence in separate ways. I’ve 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 don’t know which direction would be more fruitful to go into.