Thanks for your comment! I think most of these issues stem from the fact that I am not a very good writer or a communicator, and because I tried to be funny at the same time. I hope you can cut me some slack, like you said. Rest assured I haven’t written this post as a bad-faith hit piece, but as a collection of grievances that expand upon some of the core claims The Guardian article made. I am quite a conlfict averse person, so doing this in the first place is pretty nerve wrecking and I’m sure I made a bunch of mistakes or framed things in a sub-optimal way.
I’ll try to reply to some of your points here:
Title describes the conference as controversial
My original draft had a different title, but the release of the Guardian article and subsequent Twitter discussion among EAs and rationalists made me change the title. It felt like an appropriate adjective, and I am somewhat surprised that you don’t feel like these things could be called controversy or warrant the use of that word. I don’t feel very strongly on this, though, and am happy to change the title if you feel like it is inappropriate.
this section plainly asserts that some people are “racist” without really arguing for or substantiating that claim
I agree that I have not spent much time actually listing out specific instances that I felt were racist, and I am trusting the reader to simply believe me when I say that depending on the level of comfort some participants said some pretty racist things, or have backgrounds in HBD stuff (which I consider to racist by nature, as by default this stuff does not improve the lives of minorities, but does the very opposite). I am afraid that if I list specific takes or topics I will be blowing my anonymity pretty fast.
If the event organizers wish to substantiate the claim that many people experienced racist discourse, they could make an anonymous survey for the event attendees. I can believe that one probably can go through the collection of events without noticing that a lot of the attendees seem to hold quite unsavory views, but especially for the people who took part in all three events I feel like that would require quite a bit of naivety. I would love to hear from other attendees as well.
Article not feeling like a hit-piece
Thank you for objecting to this and providing receipts. I will edit the post to reflect what David Mathers said along the lines of “a core argument of the article about the event featuring HBD and otherwise problematic people remains true”. You are correct that the article does appear biased. I am not sure I would still label the post under “hit-piece”, but regardless of that keeping that word in the text would be a distraction and will be changed.
Mention of Republicans
Many of the values many Republicans hold are incompatible with the values of EA. In addition, there was at least one Republican working in politics present at the event, who engaged in transphobic discourse. I would rather not see more of this.
I’d get this a bit more if you were from Europe originally
I was born outside of US and have lived outside of it for most of my life. When in the US, I have not interacted much with people who strongly identify as Republicans. I agree that this might make me biased.
Intended distancing
I agree that this was kind of vague, and I am finding it difficult to turn this into actionable interventions. In order to do something like that properly I feel like we’d need more people dedicating way more time to think about this.
The idea here in short is:
A lot of rationalist are keen on discussing controversial ideas beyond the current Overton window.
This attracts people who are mostly drawn to controversy, and who hold controversial views.
Platforming these people affects both how the community will look like in the future, and how the community is perceived by outsiders.
Due to community overlaps, both the community make-up and the perceptions will reflect on EA as well.
EAs should demand rationalists and other overlapping communities to at least not platform (for example, not an exhaustive list) bigots, race scientists, or otherwise highly problematic people who hold views incompatible with EA.
If this is not possible, EAs should add some distance between the communities, avoid advertising adjacent community events, and go to adjacent community events less.
I do not think that Lighthaven or the people running it have done anything wrong. I think whoever was in charge of inviting special guests for the three events shouldn’t have platformed many of the people, and someone should have vetted the special guest list.
EAs should demand rationalists and other overlapping communities to at least not platform
I am open to trade, but I would like something in return, and my guess is it would have to be pretty valuable since option value and freedom of expression is quite valuable to me. I don’t see a basis on which the EA community would have any right to “demand” such a thing from rationalists like myself.
Thanks for the reply, it feels like you’re engaging in good faith and I really appreciate that!
Brief notes --
The word “controversy”: Thanks. I think the issue with some of these media things is that they feed off of themselves. Something becomes a controversy merely because everyone believes it’s controversial; even though it really might not have to be. (For a longer explanation of this phenomenon, search for “gaffe” here)
People you met: I believe you that you met people who were into HBD. I saw at least one comment in Manifest discord last year that weirded me out. I’m pro people discussing that and how to relate to that. (I’m just worried how the term “racist” easily steers this off the rails, as seen in some of the other comments on this post)
Republicans: I’ll be blunt, but I think you’re way off base here. Being a republican is equally as compatible with EA as being a Democrat. Lots of people on both sides have incompatible views. I honestly think you just haven’t met enough Republicans! (Maybe some could introduce themselves in reply to this comment? :) )
Distancing: I think some version of the “platforming” concept makes sense. I currently don’t think Lighthaven should be die hard free speech absolutists. We’re freer than most—but there’s some limit. Yet platforming rules are really tricky to apply. To me, the trickiest part is that deplatforming not self-correcting: by removing someone’s ability to speak, you also risk removing their ability to complain about being removed. This freaks me out.
>I’m just worried how the term “racist” easily steers this off the rails, as seen in some of the other comments on this post
Not many terms are more gerrymandered or more “powerful.” Overuse and lack of clarity are degrading its usefulness.
>(Maybe some could introduce themselves in reply to this comment? :) )
Doing so seems like a good way to get put on some EA watchlist of who shouldn’t be invited to future events, or at least put under greater scrutiny :p Maybe after the election season you’ll have better luck...
Being a republican is equally as compatible with EA as being a Democrat.
Have you had a look at things like project 2025? Because I’ll be honest, if EAs despite that think that “being a republican is equally as compatible with EA as being a Democrat” (as the agree-votes seem to indicate) then I don’t think I want to be an EA.
Maybe useful: “Latently controversial” – there’s no public controversy because people didn’t know about it, but if people had more information, there would be public controversy. I think this would perhaps be more the case with Manifest if the article hadn’t come out, but it’s still reasonable to consider Manifest to have some inherent potential “controversialness” given choice of speakers.
HBD stuff (which I consider to racist by nature, as by default this stuff does not improve the lives of minorities, but does the very opposite)
This is an opinion of yours for which counterarguments exist.
If HBD happens to be broadly correct then having people act under that assumption likely DOES improve the lives of minorities, at least compared to the mainstream alternative world in which HBD is taboo and we try to pretend every group is perfectly equal to every other group in every possible way so it must be fixed when group differences pop up.
The main HBD response to group differences existing is to ALLOW group differences to exist.
That’s a policy which is inexpensive, noncoercive, doesn’t require extra bigotry to be imposed from outside, doesn’t undermine the success of the few high-achieving minorities in relevant fields, doesn’t set up underqualified minority representatives for failure, doesn’t promote resentment against structurally unfair treatment, doesn’t deepen existing bigotry…the way the DEI/AA approach does.
Pounding square pegs into round holes is rarely good for the pegs.
So it’s okay for you to BELIEVE that HBD doesn’t improve the lives of minorities but you shouldn’t take that belief as axiomatic—it’s something that needs arguing for.
And wouldn’t it be kinda hard to HAVE that argument if you start by banning from discussion everyone who disagrees with you?
Can you tell us what you mean by HBD? Like give definition? Is it just the idea that there sometimes are statistical, genetic differences between groups, such as racial groups?
HBD is mainly the idea that different groups of people are different. And should be expected to differ; Humans are Bio-Diverse.
Different groups differ along every axis—anything you can measure, you should expect measurable differences. Different skills, different abilities, different interests. HBD is understanding and accepting that as a base fact about the world and taking it into account. Your null hypothesis should never be that all groups are exactly the same unless bigotry or structural racism causes them to be different—rather it should be that different groups differ. If anything, we should be surprised and suspect bias if they don’t differ!
This does apply when the groups are “races” but also applies with groups we’d categorize as the same “race”. German-Americans are different from Italian-Americans are different from Swedish-Americans. If anyone bothered to look we’d also find those kinds of groups differ by income, by wealth and—most of all—by representation level in various professions or college majors.
Men differ from women, Red Sox fans differ from Giants fans, people from group A are different from people in group B and that is okay—viva la difference!
Group differences can be genetic or cultural or both. And yes, IQ is one of the zillion things that differs. But it doesn’t really matter why groups differ so much as that they do and that fact has implications: it means in the absence of bias we still shouldn’t expect absolute equality of outcome to be possible or even a good idea, which makes DEI efforts likely to become an unending black hole sucking up resources without improving the world.
For example, let’s consider the representation level of Asians among professional basketball players: Asians are 6% of Americans but only 0.4% of the NBA. That means a lot of Asian people who COULD be going into basketball are doing something else instead—they must have some other career they enjoy more or are better at than basketball. Suppose we wanted to “fix” this “underrepresentation”. If we poured enough resources into it we probably could! We could bribe or shame teams into lowering their standards so as to accept more mediocre Asian players and subsidize their salaries to take the job. What does that immediately do? It validates and reinforces the stereotype that Asians are bad at basketball while creating racial resentment. Everyone rejected from a team now hates Asians for taking their spot; everyone in a team now expects their Asian players to not be very good. Since the new players are people who wouldn’t otherwise have played basketball at all they’re less likely to succeed at it; they’re likely to find they would have been better off going straight into law or medicine or whatever their other option was. DEI made them choose a worse career where everyone hates them whereas HBD would have allowed them to follow a course better suited to their height and other relevant attributes. In this case, HBD makes the minority in question better off in the long run by leaving them alone.
Thank you for your explanation. One thing that stands out to me is that “human biodiversity” is a phrase that uses the language of science, yet you seem less interested in the scientific questions and much more interested in the policy questions. To continue with your example of Asians in the NBA, that seems to point at any number of purely factual scientific questions that could be explored. Are Asians generally lacking in some relevant physical characteristic, such as height, agility, or reflex speed? Are they better at something else, creating higher opportunity costs for them, and if so, what and why? Yet your seem to focus less on these scientific factual sorts of questions, and more on how we should respond to the observed difference on a policy level. Am I correct in reading that HBD is more a policy stance than an area of science?
> Are Asians generally lacking in some relevant physical characteristic, such as height, agility, or reflex speed?
Great question! To answer a question like that you might want to seek out some sort of researcher who studies diversity in humans, right? Somebody who looks at different populations and studies out how they differ in various ways? That’s HBD.
Because NBA membership criteria hasn’t yet been politically weaponized the way other fields are it’s possible to ask questions like those that just occurred to you—does this group tend to have characteristics well-suited to the task? Maybe not, in which case trying to cram more of them into the NBA would be a bad idea, right?
The most obvious characteristic here is height. The average American male is 5′9“ but the average Asian American male is under 5′7”. Since height follows something resembling a bell curve, when the NBA (correctly) selects way out on the right edge for very tall people, any group whose mean is more than 2″ less than the norm is likely to underrepresent so we shouldn’t be surprised to see Asian underrepresentation in the NBA.
Because we know that people differ in height and weight and agility and reflex speed and muscle mass and more, when we see some level of “underrepresentation” in sports we tend to figure there’s probably genetic factors explaining a good fraction of it. Which suggests the possibility of doing research to see what those factor are. What we shouldn’t do is automatically label the disparity—or research into it—“racist” and denounce it and institute policies to “address” it.
> you seem less interested in the scientific questions and much more interested in the policy questions
In the context of underrepresentation, the scientific question is “Do relevant differences exist that might help explain this disparity? If so, what are they?” The first question is boring because the answer is always “Yes”—different groups differ. Figuring out the precise nature and amount of differences tends to get researchers denounced as “racist” if they take it at all seriously, so precise estimates can be hard to find and harder to defend in public.
HBD gets demonized because once you accept that different groups are different in ways that can affect their interests and job performance, that has implications beyond sports. It implies that when you see some race “underrepresented” among, say, computer programmers or brain surgeons, this also might have to do with different groups being different. Which destroys the naive case for “addressing disparities”. Without doing the work to figure out what the important factors are and how much they matter, we can’t reasonably assume that forcing more people of type X into job Y is making those people better off...even if it “reduces disparities”. Does that make sense?
Thanks for your comment! I think most of these issues stem from the fact that I am not a very good writer or a communicator, and because I tried to be funny at the same time. I hope you can cut me some slack, like you said. Rest assured I haven’t written this post as a bad-faith hit piece, but as a collection of grievances that expand upon some of the core claims The Guardian article made. I am quite a conlfict averse person, so doing this in the first place is pretty nerve wrecking and I’m sure I made a bunch of mistakes or framed things in a sub-optimal way.
I’ll try to reply to some of your points here:
My original draft had a different title, but the release of the Guardian article and subsequent Twitter discussion among EAs and rationalists made me change the title. It felt like an appropriate adjective, and I am somewhat surprised that you don’t feel like these things could be called controversy or warrant the use of that word. I don’t feel very strongly on this, though, and am happy to change the title if you feel like it is inappropriate.
I agree that I have not spent much time actually listing out specific instances that I felt were racist, and I am trusting the reader to simply believe me when I say that depending on the level of comfort some participants said some pretty racist things, or have backgrounds in HBD stuff (which I consider to racist by nature, as by default this stuff does not improve the lives of minorities, but does the very opposite). I am afraid that if I list specific takes or topics I will be blowing my anonymity pretty fast.
If the event organizers wish to substantiate the claim that many people experienced racist discourse, they could make an anonymous survey for the event attendees. I can believe that one probably can go through the collection of events without noticing that a lot of the attendees seem to hold quite unsavory views, but especially for the people who took part in all three events I feel like that would require quite a bit of naivety. I would love to hear from other attendees as well.
Thank you for objecting to this and providing receipts. I will edit the post to reflect what David Mathers said along the lines of “a core argument of the article about the event featuring HBD and otherwise problematic people remains true”. You are correct that the article does appear biased. I am not sure I would still label the post under “hit-piece”, but regardless of that keeping that word in the text would be a distraction and will be changed.
Many of the values many Republicans hold are incompatible with the values of EA. In addition, there was at least one Republican working in politics present at the event, who engaged in transphobic discourse. I would rather not see more of this.
I was born outside of US and have lived outside of it for most of my life. When in the US, I have not interacted much with people who strongly identify as Republicans. I agree that this might make me biased.
I agree that this was kind of vague, and I am finding it difficult to turn this into actionable interventions. In order to do something like that properly I feel like we’d need more people dedicating way more time to think about this.
The idea here in short is:
A lot of rationalist are keen on discussing controversial ideas beyond the current Overton window.
This attracts people who are mostly drawn to controversy, and who hold controversial views.
Platforming these people affects both how the community will look like in the future, and how the community is perceived by outsiders.
Due to community overlaps, both the community make-up and the perceptions will reflect on EA as well.
EAs should demand rationalists and other overlapping communities to at least not platform (for example, not an exhaustive list) bigots, race scientists, or otherwise highly problematic people who hold views incompatible with EA.
If this is not possible, EAs should add some distance between the communities, avoid advertising adjacent community events, and go to adjacent community events less.
I do not think that Lighthaven or the people running it have done anything wrong. I think whoever was in charge of inviting special guests for the three events shouldn’t have platformed many of the people, and someone should have vetted the special guest list.
I am open to trade, but I would like something in return, and my guess is it would have to be pretty valuable since option value and freedom of expression is quite valuable to me. I don’t see a basis on which the EA community would have any right to “demand” such a thing from rationalists like myself.
Thanks for the reply, it feels like you’re engaging in good faith and I really appreciate that!
Brief notes --
The word “controversy”: Thanks. I think the issue with some of these media things is that they feed off of themselves. Something becomes a controversy merely because everyone believes it’s controversial; even though it really might not have to be. (For a longer explanation of this phenomenon, search for “gaffe” here)
People you met: I believe you that you met people who were into HBD. I saw at least one comment in Manifest discord last year that weirded me out. I’m pro people discussing that and how to relate to that. (I’m just worried how the term “racist” easily steers this off the rails, as seen in some of the other comments on this post)
Republicans: I’ll be blunt, but I think you’re way off base here. Being a republican is equally as compatible with EA as being a Democrat. Lots of people on both sides have incompatible views. I honestly think you just haven’t met enough Republicans! (Maybe some could introduce themselves in reply to this comment? :) )
Distancing: I think some version of the “platforming” concept makes sense. I currently don’t think Lighthaven should be die hard free speech absolutists. We’re freer than most—but there’s some limit. Yet platforming rules are really tricky to apply. To me, the trickiest part is that deplatforming not self-correcting: by removing someone’s ability to speak, you also risk removing their ability to complain about being removed. This freaks me out.
>I’m just worried how the term “racist” easily steers this off the rails, as seen in some of the other comments on this post
Not many terms are more gerrymandered or more “powerful.” Overuse and lack of clarity are degrading its usefulness.
>(Maybe some could introduce themselves in reply to this comment? :) )
Doing so seems like a good way to get put on some EA watchlist of who shouldn’t be invited to future events, or at least put under greater scrutiny :p Maybe after the election season you’ll have better luck...
Have you had a look at things like project 2025? Because I’ll be honest, if EAs despite that think that “being a republican is equally as compatible with EA as being a Democrat” (as the agree-votes seem to indicate) then I don’t think I want to be an EA.
Maybe useful: “Latently controversial” – there’s no public controversy because people didn’t know about it, but if people had more information, there would be public controversy. I think this would perhaps be more the case with Manifest if the article hadn’t come out, but it’s still reasonable to consider Manifest to have some inherent potential “controversialness” given choice of speakers.
FWIW I found your writing in this post better and more honest and to-the-point than most of what’s on the forum.
This is an opinion of yours for which counterarguments exist.
If HBD happens to be broadly correct then having people act under that assumption likely DOES improve the lives of minorities, at least compared to the mainstream alternative world in which HBD is taboo and we try to pretend every group is perfectly equal to every other group in every possible way so it must be fixed when group differences pop up.
The main HBD response to group differences existing is to ALLOW group differences to exist.
That’s a policy which is inexpensive, noncoercive, doesn’t require extra bigotry to be imposed from outside, doesn’t undermine the success of the few high-achieving minorities in relevant fields, doesn’t set up underqualified minority representatives for failure, doesn’t promote resentment against structurally unfair treatment, doesn’t deepen existing bigotry…the way the DEI/AA approach does.
Pounding square pegs into round holes is rarely good for the pegs.
So it’s okay for you to BELIEVE that HBD doesn’t improve the lives of minorities but you shouldn’t take that belief as axiomatic—it’s something that needs arguing for.
And wouldn’t it be kinda hard to HAVE that argument if you start by banning from discussion everyone who disagrees with you?
Can you tell us what you mean by HBD? Like give definition? Is it just the idea that there sometimes are statistical, genetic differences between groups, such as racial groups?
HBD is mainly the idea that different groups of people are different. And should be expected to differ; Humans are Bio-Diverse.
Different groups differ along every axis—anything you can measure, you should expect measurable differences. Different skills, different abilities, different interests. HBD is understanding and accepting that as a base fact about the world and taking it into account. Your null hypothesis should never be that all groups are exactly the same unless bigotry or structural racism causes them to be different—rather it should be that different groups differ. If anything, we should be surprised and suspect bias if they don’t differ!
This does apply when the groups are “races” but also applies with groups we’d categorize as the same “race”. German-Americans are different from Italian-Americans are different from Swedish-Americans. If anyone bothered to look we’d also find those kinds of groups differ by income, by wealth and—most of all—by representation level in various professions or college majors.
Men differ from women, Red Sox fans differ from Giants fans, people from group A are different from people in group B and that is okay—viva la difference!
Group differences can be genetic or cultural or both. And yes, IQ is one of the zillion things that differs. But it doesn’t really matter why groups differ so much as that they do and that fact has implications: it means in the absence of bias we still shouldn’t expect absolute equality of outcome to be possible or even a good idea, which makes DEI efforts likely to become an unending black hole sucking up resources without improving the world.
For example, let’s consider the representation level of Asians among professional basketball players: Asians are 6% of Americans but only 0.4% of the NBA. That means a lot of Asian people who COULD be going into basketball are doing something else instead—they must have some other career they enjoy more or are better at than basketball. Suppose we wanted to “fix” this “underrepresentation”. If we poured enough resources into it we probably could! We could bribe or shame teams into lowering their standards so as to accept more mediocre Asian players and subsidize their salaries to take the job. What does that immediately do? It validates and reinforces the stereotype that Asians are bad at basketball while creating racial resentment. Everyone rejected from a team now hates Asians for taking their spot; everyone in a team now expects their Asian players to not be very good. Since the new players are people who wouldn’t otherwise have played basketball at all they’re less likely to succeed at it; they’re likely to find they would have been better off going straight into law or medicine or whatever their other option was. DEI made them choose a worse career where everyone hates them whereas HBD would have allowed them to follow a course better suited to their height and other relevant attributes. In this case, HBD makes the minority in question better off in the long run by leaving them alone.
Thank you for your explanation. One thing that stands out to me is that “human biodiversity” is a phrase that uses the language of science, yet you seem less interested in the scientific questions and much more interested in the policy questions. To continue with your example of Asians in the NBA, that seems to point at any number of purely factual scientific questions that could be explored. Are Asians generally lacking in some relevant physical characteristic, such as height, agility, or reflex speed? Are they better at something else, creating higher opportunity costs for them, and if so, what and why? Yet your seem to focus less on these scientific factual sorts of questions, and more on how we should respond to the observed difference on a policy level. Am I correct in reading that HBD is more a policy stance than an area of science?