I agree with the sentiment that the community discussion was tending towards judgment a bit too quickly.
Yeah, I agree! I think my main point is to illustrate that the impression you got of the community discussion “tending towards judgement a bit too quickly” is pretty reasonable despite the technically true statements that they made, because of a reading of a subtext, including what they didn’t say or choose to focus on, instead of the literal text alone, which I felt like was a major crux between those who thought Bostrom’s apology was largely terrible VS. those who thought Bostrom’s apology was largely acceptable.
“Technically not saying anything untrue” isn’t the same as “exhibiting a truth-seeking attitude.”
Likewise, I also agree with this! I think what I’m most interested in here is like, what you (or others) think separates the two in general, because my guess is those who were upset with Bostrom’s apology would also agree with this statement. I think the crux is more likely that they would also think this statement applies to Bostrom’s comments (i.e. they were closer to “technically not saying anything untrue”, rather than “exhibiting a truth-seeking attitude”), while those who disagree would think “Bostrom is actually exhibiting a truth-seeking attitude”.
For example, if I apply your statement to Bostrom’s apology: ”I’d say truth-seeking attitude would have been more like: “Before I make a comment that’s strongly suggestive of a genetic difference between races, or easily misinterpreted to be a racist dogwhistle, let’s make sure I understand their perspective and can assess how this apology might actually be interpreted”, perhaps accompanied by “I think I should make true statements if I can make sure they will be interpreted to mean what my actual views are, and I know they are the true statements that are most relevant and important for the people I am apologizing to.”
Similar statement, different emphasis. Bostrom’s comment was “technically true”, but its main content was less about an apology and more about raising questions around a genetic component of intelligence, expression of support for some definition of eugenics and some usage of provocative communication.”
I think my point is less that “Shakeel and Jason’s comments are fine because they were hedged”, and less about pointing out the empirical fact that they were hedged, and more that “Shakeel and Jason’s comments were not fine just because they contained true statements, but this standard should be applied similarly to Bostrom’s apology, which was also not fine just because it contained true statements”.
More speculative: Like, part of me gets the impression this is in part modulated by a dislike of the typical SJW cancel culture (which I can resonate with), and therefore the truth-seeking defence is applied more strongly against condemnation of any kind, as opposed to just truth-seeking for truth’s sake. But I’m not sure that this, if true, is actually optimizing for truth, nor that it’s necessarily the best approach on consequentialist grounds, unless there’s good reason to think that a heuristic to err on the side of anti-condemnation in every situation is preferable to evaluating each on a case-by-case basis.
That makes sense – I get why you feel like there are double standards.
I don’t agree that there necessarily are.
Regarding Bostrom’s apology, I guess you could say that it’s part of “truth-seeking” to dive into any mistakes you might have made and acknowledge everything there is to acknowledge. (Whether we call it “truth-seeking” or not, that’s certainly how apologies should be, in an ideal world.) On this point, Bostrom’s apology was clearly suboptimal. It didn’t acknowledge that there was more bad stuff to the initial email than just the racial slur.
Namely, in my view, it’s not really defensible to say “technically true” things without some qualifying context, if those true things are easily interpreted in a misleadingly-negative or harmful-belief-promoting way on their own or even interpreted as, as you say, “racist dogwhistles.” (I think that phrase is sometimes thrown around so lightly that it seems a bit hysterical, but it does seem appropriate for the specific example of the sentence Bostrom claimed he “likes.”)
Take for example a newspaper reporting on a person with autism who committed a school shooting. Given the widespread stigma against autism, it would be inappropriate to imply that autism is linked to these types of crimes without some sort of very careful discussion that doesn’t make readers prejudiced against people on the spectrum. (I don’t actually know if there’s any such link.)
What I considered bad about Bostrom’s apology was that he didn’t say more about why his entire stance on “controversial communication” was a bad take.
Context matters: The initial email was never intended to be seen by anyone who wasn’t in that early group of transhumanists. In a small, closed group, communication functions very differently. For instance, among EA friends, I’ve recently (after the FTX situation) made a joke about how we should run a scam to make money. The joke works because my friends have enough context to know I don’t mean it. I wouldn’t make the same joke in a group where it isn’t common knowledge that I’m joking. Similarly, while I don’t know much about the transhumanist reading list, it’s probably safe to say that “we’re all high-decouplers and care about all of humanity” was common knowledge in that group. Given that context, it’s sort of defensible to think that there’s not that much wrong with the initial email (apart from cringiness) other than the use of the racial slur. Bostrom did apologize for the latter (even viscerally, and unambiguously).
I thought there was some ambiguity in the apology about whether he was just apologizing for the racial slur, or whether he also meant just the general email when he described how he hated re-reading it. When I said that the apology was “reasonable,” I interpreted him to mean the general email. I agree he could have made this more clear.
In any case, that’s one way to interpret “truth-seeking” – trying to get to the bottom of any mistakes that were made when apologizing.
That said, I think almost all the mentions of “truth-seeking is important” in the Bostrom discussion were about something else.
There was a faction of people who thought that people should be socially shunned for holding specific views on the underlying causes of group differences. Another faction that was like “it should be okay to say ‘I don’t know’ if you actually don’t know.”
While a few people criticized Bostrom’s apology for reasons similar to the ones I mentioned above (which I obviously think is reasonable!), my impression is that the people who were most critical of it did so for the “social shunning for not completely renouncing a specific view” reason.
For what it’s worth, I agree that emphasis on truth-seeking can go too far. While I appreciated this part of EA culture in the discussion around Bostrom, I’ve several times found myself accusing individual rationalists of fetishizing “truth-seeking.” :)
So, I certainly don’t disagree with your impression that there can be biases on both sides.
Thanks for the engagement Lukas, have upvoted.
Yeah, I agree! I think my main point is to illustrate that the impression you got of the community discussion “tending towards judgement a bit too quickly” is pretty reasonable despite the technically true statements that they made, because of a reading of a subtext, including what they didn’t say or choose to focus on, instead of the literal text alone, which I felt like was a major crux between those who thought Bostrom’s apology was largely terrible VS. those who thought Bostrom’s apology was largely acceptable.
Likewise, I also agree with this! I think what I’m most interested in here is like, what you (or others) think separates the two in general, because my guess is those who were upset with Bostrom’s apology would also agree with this statement. I think the crux is more likely that they would also think this statement applies to Bostrom’s comments (i.e. they were closer to “technically not saying anything untrue”, rather than “exhibiting a truth-seeking attitude”), while those who disagree would think “Bostrom is actually exhibiting a truth-seeking attitude”.
For example, if I apply your statement to Bostrom’s apology:
”I’d say truth-seeking attitude would have been more like: “Before I make a comment that’s strongly suggestive of a genetic difference between races, or easily misinterpreted to be a racist dogwhistle, let’s make sure I understand their perspective and can assess how this apology might actually be interpreted”, perhaps accompanied by “I think I should make true statements if I can make sure they will be interpreted to mean what my actual views are, and I know they are the true statements that are most relevant and important for the people I am apologizing to.”
Similar statement, different emphasis. Bostrom’s comment was “technically true”, but its main content was less about an apology and more about raising questions around a genetic component of intelligence, expression of support for some definition of eugenics and some usage of provocative communication.”
I think my point is less that “Shakeel and Jason’s comments are fine because they were hedged”, and less about pointing out the empirical fact that they were hedged, and more that “Shakeel and Jason’s comments were not fine just because they contained true statements, but this standard should be applied similarly to Bostrom’s apology, which was also not fine just because it contained true statements”.
More speculative:
Like, part of me gets the impression this is in part modulated by a dislike of the typical SJW cancel culture (which I can resonate with), and therefore the truth-seeking defence is applied more strongly against condemnation of any kind, as opposed to just truth-seeking for truth’s sake. But I’m not sure that this, if true, is actually optimizing for truth, nor that it’s necessarily the best approach on consequentialist grounds, unless there’s good reason to think that a heuristic to err on the side of anti-condemnation in every situation is preferable to evaluating each on a case-by-case basis.
That makes sense – I get why you feel like there are double standards.
I don’t agree that there necessarily are.
Regarding Bostrom’s apology, I guess you could say that it’s part of “truth-seeking” to dive into any mistakes you might have made and acknowledge everything there is to acknowledge. (Whether we call it “truth-seeking” or not, that’s certainly how apologies should be, in an ideal world.) On this point, Bostrom’s apology was clearly suboptimal. It didn’t acknowledge that there was more bad stuff to the initial email than just the racial slur.
Namely, in my view, it’s not really defensible to say “technically true” things without some qualifying context, if those true things are easily interpreted in a misleadingly-negative or harmful-belief-promoting way on their own or even interpreted as, as you say, “racist dogwhistles.” (I think that phrase is sometimes thrown around so lightly that it seems a bit hysterical, but it does seem appropriate for the specific example of the sentence Bostrom claimed he “likes.”)
Take for example a newspaper reporting on a person with autism who committed a school shooting. Given the widespread stigma against autism, it would be inappropriate to imply that autism is linked to these types of crimes without some sort of very careful discussion that doesn’t make readers prejudiced against people on the spectrum. (I don’t actually know if there’s any such link.)
What I considered bad about Bostrom’s apology was that he didn’t say more about why his entire stance on “controversial communication” was a bad take.
Given all of the above, why did I say that I found Bostrom’s apology “”reasonable”″?
“Reasonable” is a lower bar than “good.”
Context matters: The initial email was never intended to be seen by anyone who wasn’t in that early group of transhumanists. In a small, closed group, communication functions very differently. For instance, among EA friends, I’ve recently (after the FTX situation) made a joke about how we should run a scam to make money. The joke works because my friends have enough context to know I don’t mean it. I wouldn’t make the same joke in a group where it isn’t common knowledge that I’m joking. Similarly, while I don’t know much about the transhumanist reading list, it’s probably safe to say that “we’re all high-decouplers and care about all of humanity” was common knowledge in that group. Given that context, it’s sort of defensible to think that there’s not that much wrong with the initial email (apart from cringiness) other than the use of the racial slur. Bostrom did apologize for the latter (even viscerally, and unambiguously).
I thought there was some ambiguity in the apology about whether he was just apologizing for the racial slur, or whether he also meant just the general email when he described how he hated re-reading it. When I said that the apology was “reasonable,” I interpreted him to mean the general email. I agree he could have made this more clear.
In any case, that’s one way to interpret “truth-seeking” – trying to get to the bottom of any mistakes that were made when apologizing.
That said, I think almost all the mentions of “truth-seeking is important” in the Bostrom discussion were about something else.
There was a faction of people who thought that people should be socially shunned for holding specific views on the underlying causes of group differences. Another faction that was like “it should be okay to say ‘I don’t know’ if you actually don’t know.”
While a few people criticized Bostrom’s apology for reasons similar to the ones I mentioned above (which I obviously think is reasonable!), my impression is that the people who were most critical of it did so for the “social shunning for not completely renouncing a specific view” reason.
For what it’s worth, I agree that emphasis on truth-seeking can go too far. While I appreciated this part of EA culture in the discussion around Bostrom, I’ve several times found myself accusing individual rationalists of fetishizing “truth-seeking.” :)
So, I certainly don’t disagree with your impression that there can be biases on both sides.
I found myself agreeing with a lot of this. Thanks for your nuanced take on truth-seeking ideals, I appreciated the conversation!