Thank you for writing this, and I’m really sorry you experienced it. I’m really disappointed that Manifold have learnt absolutely nothing after inviting Hanania last year, and that Lightcone are fine having such horrible people at their events. These organisations are, knowingly or not, actively making their communities unwelcoming to people of colour and other underrepresented groups. I personally think CEA and other major organisations like Open Philanthropy ought to cut all ties with Manifold/Lightcone.
Events hosted at Lighthaven are not generally “our events”. I am not going to ban people I disagree with from hosting events at Lighthaven, that would be both a dumb economic decision and a dumb moral decision.
As I said before, I would be surprised if we never end up hosting events for scaling lab teams at Lighthaven. If they pay us a fair price (and maybe somewhat more as a tax), I will rent to them.
As far as I can tell this is standard practice for practical all hotels and event venues I have ever heard about. Indeed it would be kind of weird for an event venue to ask detailed question about who I am inviting to an event (and this has never happened before), and very rare and weird for them to block someone from running an event because of an attendee (not unprecedented, but very weird).
I feel like you are basing this reaction on something more than Manifest events and less.online. Is this correct? I feel like Habryka or the Lightcone team haven’t really done anything that registers as clearly wrong to me in this case. What you are suggesting sounds extreme based on what information I have.
(Side note regarding the karma system and this comment being at like −30: I think the right response to this comment is “upvote, because it concretely and clearly answers the question, and then if you also disagree, use the ‘disagree’ react button”. It’s not a bad contribution to the discourse, which is what I think the downvote button should be used for)
(Edit: the comment is at +26 now. Karma here really is a rollercoaster, lol.)
To give some agreement, I too was sad that Hanania was given special guest billing last year. Not being racist isn’t particularly hard and Hanania seems to me to do it egregiously. Also it led to several people I actually wanted to hear from pulling out (as was their right).
For those not on Twitter, note that the above commenter seems to be pursuing an active campaign against Manifold and Lightcone. See these two twitter threads [1], [2].
Quotes include being “glad to see” the Guardian running their piece and being “delighted” with the part on Brian Chau, “a big chunk of the rationalist community is just straight up racist”, and “the entire ‘truth seeking’ approach is often a thinly veiled disguise for indulging in racism.”
He doesn’t present it as an opinion. He doesn’t even present it as an argument. It would be a stretch even to say he presents his opinions as fact. He sees a word that represents his ideological enemies, and he sees a word that causes visceral reactions of disgust in bystanders, and he resolves to use those two words in the same sentence as often as possible, so that the connotations of one will bleed into the other. There’s a reason this kind of attack is called a `smear.′
In this thread, he takes questions of the actual harms as settled, and concludes that taking the most extreme and divisive action possible is the only possible option. MOST NOTABLY, he says nothing about Austin, who was the one making the decision to invite Hanania because he wanted Hanania at the event. Instead he goes after Oliver, who is multiple levels removed the decision, and only provides `solutions’ focused on harming Oliver’s career and personal reputation.
I didn’t mention Habryka in any of my tweets. I mentioned him in this forum comment because he is the only person in this situation who I know is involved in EA “leadership”.
It also just occurred to me that Shakeel’s first tweet about the article was I think(?) the first time it appeared on Twitter. It was actually made before the author’s themselves retweeted it. And also before any of the “hit piece” pushback had appeared.
I agree that framing is a bit intense, but noting that:
He mentions “I’ve long expressed my disgust at how Lightcone/Manifold indulge abhorrent ideas and people, both while I was at CEA and after.”
The opinions are sometimes really just wrappers around imperative claims (“I think that… you ought to X”)
He also appears to support the journalistic methodology of the Guardian piece. That piece, of course, is not expressing opinions; it is adversarially designed to cause reputational damage.
I’ve seen Shakeel’s comments in other places before, and I used to think that he (or well, you, if you’re reading this) just had opinions different than mine. And if he would’ve said “This piece lacks journalistic integrity and is clearly a hit piece, but some of the underlying concerns are valid”, I think it would’ve been more fair to describe as “expressing an opinion”.
Now, however, seeing the combination of data points, I update that he is not just “analysing”, but rather quite actively saying these things with a political intent that can be described as a “campaign”.
You’ve misleadingly quoted me here. I said I was delighted to see The Guardian pick up my reporting on Brian Chau, not that I was delighted with the piece overall. I’m surprised that someone committed to truth-seeking would mislead forum users like this.
In the follow-up tweet you say: “Glad to see the press picking [this story] up (though wish they made the rationalist/EA distinction clearer!)”
So far as I’ve found, you’ve made no comments indicating that you disagree with the problematic methodology of the piece, and two comments saying you were “delighted” and “glad” with parts of it. I think my quote is representative. I’ve updated my comment for clarity.
Nonetheless: how would you prefer to be quoted?
EDIT: Shakeel posted a comment pointing to a tweet of his “mistakes” in the post, and I was wrong to claim there were no comments.
Ah! I was wrong to claim you made “no” such comments. I’ve edited my above comment.
Now, I of course notice how you only mention “lots of mistakes” after Jeffrey objects, and after it’s become clear that there is a big outpouring of hit piece criticism, and only little support.
Why were you glad about it before then?
Did you:
...not think it was a hit piece? (I think you’re a smart guy, and even a journalist yourself, so I’m kind of incredulous about you not picking up on the patterns here)
...or were you okay with the-amount-of-hit-piece-you-thought-it-was? (this is of course what I’m worried about, and why I am pursuing this so vigorously. I think this article crossed several very important epistemic red lines, and I will fight for those lines to remain intact, and will be very vocal about confronting journalists close to the community who don’t seem to respect them)
...or something else? (reality might of course be more complicated than my neatly packaged options above, so do feel free to explain)
To sort of steelman a defence here, shouldn’t we be glad that Shakeel is publicly expressing the views he actually holds. To my understanding, he doesn’t like how rationalists behave in this area and so has said so, both on twitter and on the forum.
Perhaps you might have preferred he did it differently, but it seems like he could have done it much worse and given it’s a thing he actually believes, it seems better that he said it than that he didn’t.
(I’m not sure I fully endorse this, nor do I endorse shakeel’s position in general, but like I’m glad he’s said it on the forum)
It’s indeed helpful that Shakeel expressed those views, because now it’s clear where he’s at, and it will make it easier to relate to him as a journalist in future.
Thank you for writing this, and I’m really sorry you experienced it. I’m really disappointed that Manifold have learnt absolutely nothing after inviting Hanania last year, and that Lightcone are fine having such horrible people at their events. These organisations are, knowingly or not, actively making their communities unwelcoming to people of colour and other underrepresented groups. I personally think CEA and other major organisations like Open Philanthropy ought to cut all ties with Manifold/Lightcone.
Events hosted at Lighthaven are not generally “our events”. I am not going to ban people I disagree with from hosting events at Lighthaven, that would be both a dumb economic decision and a dumb moral decision.
As I said before, I would be surprised if we never end up hosting events for scaling lab teams at Lighthaven. If they pay us a fair price (and maybe somewhat more as a tax), I will rent to them.
You are of course entitled to that view, but I find it morally wrong!
As far as I can tell this is standard practice for practical all hotels and event venues I have ever heard about. Indeed it would be kind of weird for an event venue to ask detailed question about who I am inviting to an event (and this has never happened before), and very rare and weird for them to block someone from running an event because of an attendee (not unprecedented, but very weird).
What does “cut all ties” mean, concretely?
Cease funding, stop giving them booths at EAG, stop inviting Habryka et al to EA leadership events like Meta Coordination Forum.
I feel like you are basing this reaction on something more than Manifest events and less.online. Is this correct? I feel like Habryka or the Lightcone team haven’t really done anything that registers as clearly wrong to me in this case. What you are suggesting sounds extreme based on what information I have.
(Side note regarding the karma system and this comment being at like −30: I think the right response to this comment is “upvote, because it concretely and clearly answers the question, and then if you also disagree, use the ‘disagree’ react button”. It’s not a bad contribution to the discourse, which is what I think the downvote button should be used for)
(Edit: the comment is at +26 now. Karma here really is a rollercoaster, lol.)
Thanks. Do you think you should be invited to EA leadership events?
now that I no longer work at CEA, no
I’m not aware of any clear ties between Manifold and OP although I could have missed them.
To give some agreement, I too was sad that Hanania was given special guest billing last year. Not being racist isn’t particularly hard and Hanania seems to me to do it egregiously. Also it led to several people I actually wanted to hear from pulling out (as was their right).
I agree almost entirely. I would only change “knowingly or not” to “knowingly”; there’s no argument from ignorance at this point.
For those not on Twitter, note that the above commenter seems to be pursuing an active campaign against Manifold and Lightcone. See these two twitter threads [1], [2].
Quotes include being “glad to see” the Guardian running their piece and being “delighted” with the part on Brian Chau, “a big chunk of the rationalist community is just straight up racist”, and “the entire ‘truth seeking’ approach is often a thinly veiled disguise for indulging in racism.”
“Pursuing an active campaign” is kind of a weird way to frame someone writing a few tweets and comments about their opinion on something
He doesn’t present it as an opinion. He doesn’t even present it as an argument. It would be a stretch even to say he presents his opinions as fact. He sees a word that represents his ideological enemies, and he sees a word that causes visceral reactions of disgust in bystanders, and he resolves to use those two words in the same sentence as often as possible, so that the connotations of one will bleed into the other. There’s a reason this kind of attack is called a `smear.′
In this thread, he takes questions of the actual harms as settled, and concludes that taking the most extreme and divisive action possible is the only possible option. MOST NOTABLY, he says nothing about Austin, who was the one making the decision to invite Hanania because he wanted Hanania at the event. Instead he goes after Oliver, who is multiple levels removed the decision, and only provides `solutions’ focused on harming Oliver’s career and personal reputation.
I didn’t mention Habryka in any of my tweets. I mentioned him in this forum comment because he is the only person in this situation who I know is involved in EA “leadership”.
It also just occurred to me that Shakeel’s first tweet about the article was I think(?) the first time it appeared on Twitter. It was actually made before the author’s themselves retweeted it. And also before any of the “hit piece” pushback had appeared.
Someone sent the article to me, I thought it was interesting and tweeted about it. I live in the UK so maybe I saw it before others woke up?
I agree that framing is a bit intense, but noting that:
He mentions “I’ve long expressed my disgust at how Lightcone/Manifold indulge abhorrent ideas and people, both while I was at CEA and after.”
The opinions are sometimes really just wrappers around imperative claims (“I think that… you ought to X”)
He also appears to support the journalistic methodology of the Guardian piece. That piece, of course, is not expressing opinions; it is adversarially designed to cause reputational damage.
I’ve seen Shakeel’s comments in other places before, and I used to think that he (or well, you, if you’re reading this) just had opinions different than mine. And if he would’ve said “This piece lacks journalistic integrity and is clearly a hit piece, but some of the underlying concerns are valid”, I think it would’ve been more fair to describe as “expressing an opinion”.
Now, however, seeing the combination of data points, I update that he is not just “analysing”, but rather quite actively saying these things with a political intent that can be described as a “campaign”.
You’ve misleadingly quoted me here. I said I was delighted to see The Guardian pick up my reporting on Brian Chau, not that I was delighted with the piece overall. I’m surprised that someone committed to truth-seeking would mislead forum users like this.
In the follow-up tweet you say: “Glad to see the press picking [this story] up (though wish they made the rationalist/EA distinction clearer!)”
So far as I’ve found, you’ve made no comments indicating that you disagree with the problematic methodology of the piece, and two comments saying you were “delighted” and “glad” with parts of it. I think my quote is representative. I’ve updated my comment for clarity.
Nonetheless: how would you prefer to be quoted?
EDIT: Shakeel posted a comment pointing to a tweet of his “mistakes” in the post, and I was wrong to claim there were no comments.
It seems you didn’t look very hard! https://x.com/shakeelhashim/status/1802493753841594711?s=46
Ah! I was wrong to claim you made “no” such comments. I’ve edited my above comment.
Now, I of course notice how you only mention “lots of mistakes” after Jeffrey objects, and after it’s become clear that there is a big outpouring of hit piece criticism, and only little support.
Why were you glad about it before then?
Did you:
...not think it was a hit piece? (I think you’re a smart guy, and even a journalist yourself, so I’m kind of incredulous about you not picking up on the patterns here)
...or were you okay with the-amount-of-hit-piece-you-thought-it-was? (this is of course what I’m worried about, and why I am pursuing this so vigorously. I think this article crossed several very important epistemic red lines, and I will fight for those lines to remain intact, and will be very vocal about confronting journalists close to the community who don’t seem to respect them)
...or something else? (reality might of course be more complicated than my neatly packaged options above, so do feel free to explain)
To sort of steelman a defence here, shouldn’t we be glad that Shakeel is publicly expressing the views he actually holds. To my understanding, he doesn’t like how rationalists behave in this area and so has said so, both on twitter and on the forum.
Perhaps you might have preferred he did it differently, but it seems like he could have done it much worse and given it’s a thing he actually believes, it seems better that he said it than that he didn’t.
(I’m not sure I fully endorse this, nor do I endorse shakeel’s position in general, but like I’m glad he’s said it on the forum)
It’s indeed helpful that Shakeel expressed those views, because now it’s clear where he’s at, and it will make it easier to relate to him as a journalist in future.