....which makes no mention of the neo-nazi views of Nya Dagbladet, and does not condemn them. That section reads to me as almost an afterthought to their response, which is a rant about how Expo.se is unfairly criticising FLI, and how Nya Dagbladet is not neo-nazi.
Here’s that quote in context:
We will continue to engage the broadest sample of humankind, whether or not we are criticized by anyone who questions our motives, or who may have their own agendas. And in this effort, the Future of Life Institute stands and will always stand emphatically against racism, bigotry, bias, injustice and discrimination at all times and in all forms.
This is very vague and makes no mention of Nya Dagbladet! In fact, when read immediately after the sentence before it, it could appear to be a kind of hit back at Expo.se’s criticism of FLI in a ‘those damn intolerant liberal bigots’ kind of way.
This is why I take issue with FLI talking about engaging ‘across the immensely diverse political spectrum’ and standing again ‘discrimination at all times and in all forms’ - it’s ok to discriminate against neo-nazis! In fact, it’s completely necessary, in order for a tolerant society to survive.
Platitudes like ‘we stand against injustice and discrimination’ do not cut it when your organisation has ben accused of offering funding to neo-nazis. FLI needs to explicitly condemn and disavow Nya Dagbladet and neo-nazi ideas.
Added Jan 16: Just to be absolutely unambiguous: FLI finds Nazi, neo-Nazi or pro-Nazi groups or ideologies despicable and would never knowingly support them. In case FLI’s past work, its website and the lifetime work, writing, and talks by FLI leadership left any doubt about that, we included this final sentence in our statement above just to be 100% clear: “the Future of Life Institute stands and will always stand emphatically against racism, bigotry, bias, injustice and discrimination at all times and in all forms. They are antithetical to our mission to safeguard the future of life and to advance human flourishing.” In terms of Nya Dagbladet, further investigation of them has only further validated our November decision to reject their proposal, and we regret that we did not understand their organization and history better sooner, so as to reject them earlier in the process. We will be improving our processes to reduce the risk of anything like this ever happening again.
For what it’s worth, as someone who mentioned the possibility that Tegmark was “partway down some sort of far-right pipeline” elsewhere in this thread, I found the addition reassuring.
My personal best guess is now that FLI made an honest mistake, and we are reaching diminishing returns on litigating this further. My sense is that it is incredibly difficult to please everyone with this kind of statement. It doesn’t seem like any of the recent statements by major EA organizations or figures have been well-received overall. I think devoting a lot of energy to dissecting public statements does not achieve much & is bad for the community’s social capital, and we should be a bit more reluctant to publish dissections.
I think the “dissection” produced good results here—it seems to have triggered a helpful revision that acknowledges a failure to adequately vet earlier in the process, which is much more reassuring than other possibilities the original statement left open. It also includes a promise to improve processes to mitigate the risk of this happening again. I’m not 100 percent happy with the revised version, but it is much better.
Also, as far as “social capital,” comments from this forum are regularly reposted as evidence of what “EA thinks” of a given controversy. If an apology is insufficient and we are all silent, the inference that we think the apology sufficient will be drawn.
Also, as far as “social capital,” comments from this forum are regularly reposted as evidence of what “EA thinks” of a given controversy. If an apology is insufficient and we are all silent, the inference that we think the apology sufficient will be drawn.
Thankyou for linking that. I’m glad FLI has issued that statement, and it reassures me somewhat. I’d still like to hear more detail of FLI’s logic around this grant—why it was considered in the first place, what FLI’s pipeline for considering grants is, at what stage Nya Dagblade was rejected, and why. (Hopefully the ‘why’ part is obvious, but it would be good to understand what information they received that changed their minds, that they didn’t have in the first place).
Taking both parts of that paragraph seriously, I think the statement is best read as saying (1) we condemn neo-nazism but (2) we’re okay with partnering with neo-nazis if it helps achieve our goals. I agree it would have been much better to specifically condemn neo-nazism by name, but I find the existence of (2) to be the most alarming part of the statement.
There’s also a failure to reckon with how vile the material Nya Dagbladet has published is and instead legitimate it as an organization (e.g., look, they got $30K in public funding!).
....which makes no mention of the neo-nazi views ofNya Dagbladet,and does not condemn them. That section reads to me as almost an afterthought to their response, which is a rant about how Expo.se is unfairly criticising FLI, and howNya Dagbladetis not neo-nazi.Here’s that quote in context:This is very vague and makes no mention ofNya Dagbladet! In fact, when read immediately after the sentence before it, it could appear to be a kind of hit back at Expo.se’s criticism of FLI in a‘those damn intolerant liberal bigots’kind of way.This is why I take issue with FLI talking about engaging ‘across the immensely diverse political spectrum’ and standing again ‘discrimination at all times and in all forms’ - it’s ok to discriminate against neo-nazis! In fact,it’s completely necessary, in order for a tolerant society to survive.Platitudes like ‘we stand against injustice and discrimination’ do not cut it when your organisation has ben accused of offering funding to neo-nazis. FLI needs to explicitly condemn and disavowNya Dagbladetand neo-nazi ideas.It appears that a paragraph was added to the statement today:
For what it’s worth, as someone who mentioned the possibility that Tegmark was “partway down some sort of far-right pipeline” elsewhere in this thread, I found the addition reassuring.
My personal best guess is now that FLI made an honest mistake, and we are reaching diminishing returns on litigating this further. My sense is that it is incredibly difficult to please everyone with this kind of statement. It doesn’t seem like any of the recent statements by major EA organizations or figures have been well-received overall. I think devoting a lot of energy to dissecting public statements does not achieve much & is bad for the community’s social capital, and we should be a bit more reluctant to publish dissections.
Others are free to disagree, of course.
Thanks for pointing this out!
I think the “dissection” produced good results here—it seems to have triggered a helpful revision that acknowledges a failure to adequately vet earlier in the process, which is much more reassuring than other possibilities the original statement left open. It also includes a promise to improve processes to mitigate the risk of this happening again. I’m not 100 percent happy with the revised version, but it is much better.
Also, as far as “social capital,” comments from this forum are regularly reposted as evidence of what “EA thinks” of a given controversy. If an apology is insufficient and we are all silent, the inference that we think the apology sufficient will be drawn.
And arguably rightly, IMO.
Thankyou for linking that. I’m glad FLI has issued that statement, and it reassures me somewhat. I’d still like to hear more detail of FLI’s logic around this grant—why it was considered in the first place, what FLI’s pipeline for considering grants is, at what stage Nya Dagblade was rejected, and why. (Hopefully the ‘why’ part is obvious, but it would be good to understand what information they received that changed their minds, that they didn’t have in the first place).
Taking both parts of that paragraph seriously, I think the statement is best read as saying (1) we condemn neo-nazism but (2) we’re okay with partnering with neo-nazis if it helps achieve our goals. I agree it would have been much better to specifically condemn neo-nazism by name, but I find the existence of (2) to be the most alarming part of the statement.
There’s also a failure to reckon with how vile the material Nya Dagbladet has published is and instead legitimate it as an organization (e.g., look, they got $30K in public funding!).