I really can’t express clearly how badly I think of FLI’s non-apology.
Why on earth would they think a neo-nazi publication would ever be a good thing to fund?
The Future of Life Institute makes no apologies for engaging with many people across the immensely diverse political spectrum, because our mission is so important that it needs broad support from all sectors of society
Why on earth would they put this in their response, rather than condemning neo-nazism?
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. They are antithetical to our mission to safeguard the future of life and to advance human flourishing.
....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!).
Although I still think the original statement was not good, reading the FAQ and comments in the linked post have helped me have more empathy for the difficulties of releasing a PR when under public pressure to say something urgently.
I think my tone here was too confrontational and demanding, and I’m sorry if that caused additional stress for FLI.
Thankyou to FLI for updating both the initial statement, and putting out the FAQ, which clears things up.
The bad thing would be if FLI funded them. FLI did not fund them due to things discovered due to due diligence. So FLI literally did nothing wrong, and literally has nothing to apologize for.
Unless we actually are saying that talking with ‘bad people’ is automatically bad and something you should apologize to all your right thinking friends for having contaminated them with proximity to badness afterwards .
Is there a principled argument that thinking about funding a group like that, and then changing your mind is bad?
Unless we actually are saying that talking with ‘bad people’ is automatically bad and something you should apologize to all your right thinking friends for having contaminated them with proximity to badness afterwards.
This is putting it very, very euphemistically, if you want to call ‘offering $100,000 in funding to a neo-Nazi publication’ ,‘talking with bad people’.
Is there a principled argument that thinking about funding a group like that, and then changing your mind is bad?
Yes. Even if they thankfully never granted the money, the question remains—why was Nya Dagbladet ever anywhere near a shortlist of things that FLI would consider funding?
The fact remains that FLI has not disavowed Nya Dagbladet for their neo-nazi views. This is the most FLI gave as an explanation for them rescinding the offer of funding:
we ultimately decided to reject it because of what our subsequent due diligence uncovered
This is incredibly vague and could be talking about almost anything! Other parts of their non-apology seem to hint that they consider Nya Dagbladet’s political views are acceptable, and ok to be engaging with. Again, this is taken from their apology:
The Future of Life Institute makes no apologies for engaging with many people across the immensely diverse political spectrum, because our mission is so important that it needs broad support from all sectors of society...
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.
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but some political views should be roundly rejected and never considered acceptable when thinking about the future of humankind. Holocaust deniers should be top of that list, and FLI needs to say as such ASAP.
FLI “approved” the grant, as documented by a letter Expo published, and then walked back the approval. I don’t see “thinking about funding” or “talking with ‘bad people’” as accurate characterizations of what happened.
We also don’t know if FLI walked the grant back because they learned more about the vile views expressed by the everyone associated with the foundation, or for some other reason. For instance, the Nya Dagbladet website contains advocacy for a political party that several dozen US lawmakers have called to be identified as a foreign terrorist group. Although supporting neo-nazis is constitutionally protected in the US and raises no legal concerns, few organizations want to be anywhere in the same ballpark as a potential foreign terrorist organization.
I really can’t express clearly how badly I think of FLI’snon-apology.Why on earth would they think a neo-nazi publication would ever be a good thing to fund?Why on earth would they put this in their response, rather than condemning neo-nazism?@TegmarkThere was this section:
....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!).
Update: FLI FAQ on the rejected grant proposal controversy.
Although I still think the original statement was not good, reading the FAQ and comments in the linked post have helped me have more empathy for the difficulties of releasing a PR when under public pressure to say something urgently.
I think my tone here was too confrontational and demanding, and I’m sorry if that caused additional stress for FLI.
Thankyou to FLI for updating both the initial statement, and putting out the FAQ, which clears things up.
I am confused.
The bad thing would be if FLI funded them. FLI did not fund them due to things discovered due to due diligence. So FLI literally did nothing wrong, and literally has nothing to apologize for.
Unless we actually are saying that talking with ‘bad people’ is automatically bad and something you should apologize to all your right thinking friends for having contaminated them with proximity to badness afterwards .
Is there a principled argument that thinking about funding a group like that, and then changing your mind is bad?
This is putting it very, very euphemistically, if you want to call ‘offering $100,000 in funding to a neo-Nazi publication’ ,‘talking with bad people’.Yes. Even if they thankfully never granted the money, the question remains—why wasNya Dagbladetever anywhere near a shortlist of things that FLI would consider funding?The fact remains that FLI has not disavowedNya Dagbladetfor their neo-nazi views. This is the most FLI gave as an explanation for them rescinding the offer of funding:This is incredibly vague and could be talking about almost anything! Other parts of their non-apology seem to hint that they considerNya Dagbladet’spolitical viewsare acceptable, and ok to be engaging with. Again, this is taken from their apology:I can’t believe I’m writing this, but some political views should be roundly rejected and never considered acceptable when thinking about the future of humankind. Holocaust deniers should be top of that list, and FLI needs to say as such ASAP.FLI “approved” the grant, as documented by a letter Expo published, and then walked back the approval. I don’t see “thinking about funding” or “talking with ‘bad people’” as accurate characterizations of what happened.
We also don’t know if FLI walked the grant back because they learned more about the vile views expressed by the everyone associated with the foundation, or for some other reason. For instance, the Nya Dagbladet website contains advocacy for a political party that several dozen US lawmakers have called to be identified as a foreign terrorist group. Although supporting neo-nazis is constitutionally protected in the US and raises no legal concerns, few organizations want to be anywhere in the same ballpark as a potential foreign terrorist organization.