To be honest, I didn’t intend to focus primarily on what an exclusionary belief is, as much as highlight that many controversial beliefs are not exclusionary. If we want to get more precise about it, I’m saying something like: all the objectionable beliefs here are beliefs about people who are also (perhaps prospectively) participating in the discussion, and this is a key thing that distinguishes them from like 95% of controversial (in the sense of heated disagreement) beliefs, and that’s a whole lot of baby that we risk throwing out with the bathwater if we keep saying “controversial” like the controversy itself is the problem.
There are many anti-nuclear and green energy activists who would not attend a conference with a speaker who has advocated nuclear energy as a necessary part of the transition away from fossil fuels. There are surely researchers who do gain of function research, or who view it as essential to protecting against future pandemics, who would not attend a conference with a speaker advocating against gain of function research.
I think this is mostly just arguing over hypotheticals, so it’s pretty impossible to adjudicate, but I want to highlight a difference between “I’m not going to this conference because it’s a waste of time, because they are discussing ideas that are obviously (to me) wrong”, and “I’m not going to this conference because it’s supporting and strengthening people who are actively hostile towards me, on the basis of characteristics that I can’t change, and is thereby either hostile to me itself or at least indifferent to hostility towards me”.
To be honest, I didn’t intend to focus primarily on what an exclusionary belief is, as much as highlight that many controversial beliefs are not exclusionary. If we want to get more precise about it, I’m saying something like: all the objectionable beliefs here are beliefs about people who are also (perhaps prospectively) participating in the discussion, and this is a key thing that distinguishes them from like 95% of controversial (in the sense of heated disagreement) beliefs, and that’s a whole lot of baby that we risk throwing out with the bathwater if we keep saying “controversial” like the controversy itself is the problem.
I think this is mostly just arguing over hypotheticals, so it’s pretty impossible to adjudicate, but I want to highlight a difference between “I’m not going to this conference because it’s a waste of time, because they are discussing ideas that are obviously (to me) wrong”, and “I’m not going to this conference because it’s supporting and strengthening people who are actively hostile towards me, on the basis of characteristics that I can’t change, and is thereby either hostile to me itself or at least indifferent to hostility towards me”.