So, I downvoted this post, and wanted to explain why.
First though, I’d like to acknowledge that Manifest sure seems by far the most keen to invite “edgy” speakers out of any Lighthaven guests. Some of them seem like genuinely curious academics with an interest bound to get them into trouble (like Steve Hsu), whereas others seem like they’re being edgy for edges sake, in a way that often makes me cringe (like Richard Hanania last year). Seems totally fair to discuss what’s up with that speaker choice.
However, the way you engage in that discussion gives me pause.
I’m happy to cut you some slack, because having a large community discussion about these topics in a neutral and detached way is super hard. Sometimes you just gotta get your thoughts out there, and can’t be held to everything under a microscope. And in general, that’s ok. Nonetheless, I feel kind of obliged to point out a bunch of things that make me uncomfortable about your post.
The title itself describes Manifest as controversial as though it was an objectively verifiable descriptive term (such as “green”). This gives me an immune reaction, feeling something like “Well show me the evidence and allow me to decide for myself whether it seems controversial”.
The ever-changing landscape of euphemisms for I-am-kinda-racist-but-in-a-high-IQ-way have seemed to converge to a stated interest in “demographics”–or in less sophisticated cases the use of edgy words like “based”, “fag”, or “retarded” is more than enough to do the trick.
Again, this section plainly asserts that some people are “racist” without really arguing for or substantiating that claim. And what does “racist” even mean here? I’m worried that there’s a bait-and-switch going on, where this term is being used as an ambiguous combination of grave, derogatory accusation; and descriptive of a set of empirical beliefs about demographics and genetics. (Or to clarify: there’s of course absolutely such a bait-and-switch going on, in the Guardian article and lots of broader discourse, my worry is about it also leaking into EA forum discussion via your post.)
Despite this, this article doesn’t really feel like a hit-piece to me. [...]
...what?
The piece was inaccurate in almost every paragraph. Whether it be easily verifiable factual claims; or its confused attempt to designate a section of social reality (most notably bundling accelerationism and alignment folks into one group).
It used the exact pattern you outlined: bundling a set of unrelated facts to make the receipient look bad. I don’t see why they would make this be a weird Frankenstein-combination of article about SBF and article about HBD, unless it was a deliberate attempt to cause maximum reputational damage to the recipient. (Though I have hypotheses about what’s up.)
Take for example this:
The screenshot says:
A “walled, surveilled compound”… come on, it’s a Hansel and Gretel looking old inn with a fence around it:
Another key piece of evidence is how the article decides to use Scott Alexander’s real name, even though it is largely unknown, doesn’t have any impact on the reported story, and was at the heart of a large blow-up a few years ago where New York Times decided to doxx Scott, against his strong preference to remain pseudonymous.
Judging from their tweets, the author of the article is deliberately adversarial:
Sure, I’m hammering in the point here. But given the blood, sweat and tears my team poured into making Lighthaven great; I care a lot about being very clear that yes, this was a hit piece: a piece of writing deliberately designed to cause damage, rather than conveying information.
I would probably go again, especially if whoever is responsible for choosing the speakers tones it down with the controversial special guests. But who knows, maybe next time half the people there will consist of Republicans and the Thielosphere.
What’s up with the use of “Republicans” here? Am I misunderstanding something, or is it being used interchangeably with “the cluster of people you want to distance yourself from with the post”? That seems… kind of intense? (I’d get this a bit more if you were from Europe originally, like myself, where being a “Republican” is sometimes seen as a kind of unbelievable American thing extremely far from most people’s political beliefs… but in an American context, the quoted section sounds crazy)
It is probably wise to have a stronger separation between EA and rationalism.
In the context of the above epistemic moves, it’s definitely uncomfortable to me that the post then engages in these pretty sweeping proposals. What exactly is the intended separation here?
Distancing from Lighthaven (because we rented our venue to a paying customer and gave them large freedom to invite the speakers they desire)?
Distancing from Manifold, the prediction market website (whose utility is completely independent of who they invite to Manifest)?
Distancing from Manifest (seems maybe more fair given your beliefs, though I personally disagree)?
Distancing from anything vaguely rationalism-adjacent...?
I think controversial is a totally fair and accurate description of the event given that it was the subject of a very critical story from a major newspaper, which then generated lots of heated commentary online.
And just as a data point, there is a much larger divide between EAs and rationalists in NYC (where I’ve been for 6+ years), and I think this has made the EA community here more welcoming to types of people that the Bay has struggled with. I’ve also heard of so many people who have really negative impressions of EA based on their experiences in the Bay which seem specifically related to elements of the rationalist community/culture.
Idk what caused this to be the case, and I’m not suggesting that rationalists should be purposefully excluded from EA spaces/events, but I think there are major risks to EA to be closely identified with the rationality community.
I think controversial is a totally fair and accurate description of the event given that it was the subject of a very critical story from a major newspaper, which then generated lots of heated commentary online.
No, this argument is importantly invalid.
It was not a “critical story”. It was a hit piece engineered to cause reputational damage. This distinction really matters. (For people who wanted more receipts than my above comment about the adversarial intent, the journalist behind the article now also has sent a cryptic message eerily similar to a death threat(!!) in response to discussion of the article, by what appears to a political rival of theirs. This is not neutral reporting)
The majority of commentary I saw was complaining about the piece being a hit piece. See [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] … . The piece was also community noted on twitter.
The event series LessOnline, Summer Camp, Manifest in total had 500+ guests, 500+ sessions, 70+ invited speakers, across a 10 day stretch. It was a large festival with a ton of different content.
I strongly reject the norm whereby a belligerent writer at a small news outlet can pick out a small slice of a large event, write an adversarial hit piece on it, have people complain about the piece’s journalistic integrity, get some activity as a result; and then have people claim the whole event could be “fairly and accurately” described as controversial(!)
The term is not fair and it is not accurate. Manifest was not controversial; I reject the label. Closest I think is right is “Manifest invited some controversial speakers”. Like this new article from today, for example, which says “the venue’s owners played host to a conference with controversial attendees”. That seems right, and that I encourage a conversation about!
You might want to make your point by appealing to the conference itself, but appealing to the guardian article and its effects really is not a valid argument. For the epistemic health of the community, I think it would be wise to stay way clear of the process that generated that term here.
No. You pointing a finger and yelling “controversial!” doesn’t make something controversial any more than you yelling “racist” at people makes them racist.
I think if the only thing claiming controversy was the article, it might make sense to call that fabricated/false claim by an outsider journalist, but given this post and the fact many people either disapprove or want to avoid Manifest, (and also that Austin writes about consciously deciding to invite people they thought were edgy,) means I think it’s just actually just a reasonable description.
And there’s disanalogy there. Racism is about someone’s beliefs and behaviors, and I can’t change those of someone’s else’s with a label. But controversy means people disagree, disapprove, etc. and someone can make someone else’s belief controversial just by disagreeing with it (or if one disagreement isn’t enough to be controversy, a person contributes to it with their disagreement).
Claiming that Manifest is controversial because of the Guardian reporting—I’ll argue against this pretty strongly
Claiming that Manifest is controversial because of an independent set of good faith accounts from EA forum members—more legit and I can see the case (though I personally disagree)
Very importantly, Garrison’s comment was arguing using 1, not 2.
To perhaps help clarify the discourse, I’ll leave a comment below where people can react to signal “I think the argument for controversy from the Guardian article is invalid; but I do think Manifest should be labeled controversial for other arguments that I think are valid”
“I think the argument for controversy from the Guardian article is invalid; but I do think Manifest should be labeled controversial for other arguments that I think are valid”
The definition of “controversial” is “giving rise or likely to give rise to controversy or public disagreement”. The definition of “controversy” is “prolonged public disagreement or heated discussion”. This unusually active thread is, quite clearly, an example of “prolonged public disagreement or heated discussion”.
I think the really key thing here is the bait-and-switch at play.
Insofar as “controversial” means “heated discussion of subject x”, let’s call that “x-controversial”.
Now the article generates heated discussion because of “being a hit piece”, and so is “hit-piece-controversial”. However, there’s then also heated discussion of racism on the forum, call that “racism-controversial”.
If we then unpack the argument made by Garrison above, it reads as “It is fair and accurate to label Manifest racism-controversial, because of a piece of reporting that was hit-piece controversial”—clearly an invalid argument.
Moreover, I don’t know that the forum discourse was necessarily that heated; and seems like there could be a good faith conversation here about an important topic (for example the original author has been super helpful in engaging with replies, I think). So it also seems lots of “heat” got imported from a different controversy.
Crucially, I think part of the adversarial epistemic playbook of this article, the journalist behind it, as well as your own Tweets and comments supporting it, is playing on ambiguities like this (bundling a bunch of different x-controversial and y-controversial things into one label “controversial”), and then using those as the basis to make sweeping accusations that “organisations [...] cut all ties with Manifold/Lightcone”.
What would you suggest as an alternative title? I don’t feel very strongly about that particular choice of word and would be happy to change the title.
I considered changing the title to “My experience with racism at Manifest 2024”, but that feels like it might invite low quality discussion and would probably be bad.
I’d suggest link searching stories on Twitter to see what their general response is. My Twitter feed was also full of people picking the story apart, but that’s clearly more a reflection of who I follow! Many people were critical (for very good reason, mind you!), but many praised it (see for yourself). There were a ton of mistakes in the article, and I agree that the authors seemed to have a major axe to grind with the communities involved. I’m a journalist myself, and I would be deeply embarrassed to publish a story with so many errors.
I didn’t claim that the event was controversial solely because of the Guardian article — I also mentioned the ensuing conversation, which includes this extremely commented and voted upon post.
And whether you like it or not, The Guardian is one of the largest newspapers in the world, with half of the traffic of the NY Times!
First, this was published in the Guardian US, not the Guardian.
The Guardian US does not have half the traffic of the NYTimes. It has about 15% the traffic, far as I can tell (source). The GuardianUS has 200k Twitter followers; The Guardian has 10M Twitter followers (so 2% of the following).
Second, I scrolled through all the tweets in the link you sent showing “praise”. I see the following:
So I think this just clearly proves my point: the majorty of engagement of this article on Twitter is just commenting on it being a terrible hit piece.
The tiny wave of praise came mostly from folks well known for bad faith attacks on EA, a strange trickle of no-to-low engagement retweets, 1-2 genuine professors, and, well, Shakeel.
My mistake on the guardian US distinction but to call it a “small newspaper” is wildly off base, and for anyone interacting with the piece on social media, the distinction is not legible.
Candidly, I think you’re taking this topic too personally to reason clearly. I think any reasonable person evaluating the online discussion surrounding manifest would see it as “controversial.” Even if you completely excluded the guardian article, this post, Austin’s, and the deluge of comments would be enough to show that.
It’s also no longer feeling like a productive conversation and distracts from the object level questions.
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?
And what does “racist” even mean here? I’m worried that there’s a bait-and-switch going on, where this term is being used as an ambiguous combination of grave, derogatory accusation; and descriptive of a set of empirical beliefs about demographics and genetics. (Or to clarify: there’s of course absolutely such a bait-and-switch going on, in the Guardian article and lots of broader discourse, my worry is about it also leaking into EA forum discussion via your post.)
I think the fact that you said “ambiguous combination of grave, derogatory accusation” is a problem for your argument, because it suggests that you don’t have anything in mind that racism could mean other than a set of empirical beliefs about demographics and genetics. If this is the only actual thing that comes to mind for people, then presumably the grave/derogatory aspect is just a result of how they view those empirical beliefs about demographics and genetics.
I say this as one of the people who started HBD conversations at less.online (main one being a conversation about this paper—I didn’t do the whole fishing-for-compatibility thing that OP mentioned). Or I would be inclined to call them racist conversations, though if I was to propose an alternate meaning of “racist” where I don’t count as a racist, it would be something like: someone whose political theories find it infeasible to work with different races. White separatists would be a central example, in that they decide it’s too infeasible to work with black people and therefore want their own society. And e.g. cops who aren’t accountable to black communities would also be an example of racism.
But this would exclude some things that I think people would typically agree is racism, e.g. cops who do racial profiling but don’t conspire to protect each other when one of them abused a black person who is seeking accountability. So I wouldn’t really push this definition so hard.
In my opinion, a more productive line of inquiry is that a lot of HBD claims are junk/bullshit. From a progressive perspective, that’s problematic because there’s this giant edifice of racist lies that’s getting enabled by tolerating racism, and from the perspective of someone who is interested in understanding race, that’s problematic because HBD will leave you with lots of abd flaws in your understanding. Progressives would probably be inclined to say that this means HBD should be purged from these places, but that’s hypocritical because at least as many progressive claims about race are junk/bullshit. My view of the productive approach would be to sort out the junk from the gems.
They didn’t doxx scott alexander—his name is public knowledge now. He doxxed himself a couple of years back. But you’re right that that was probably deliberately adversarial.
Yeah. I am aware of the story. (I was in fact the person who made this site, together with my colleague Ben.) Updated my comment for clarity.
(For people who don’t know all the details: Scott didn’t just voluntarily doxx himself. He only did it in a kind of judo-move response to the New York Times informing him they were going to proceed with doxxing him, against his repeatedly strongly expressed wishes.)
So, I downvoted this post, and wanted to explain why.
First though, I’d like to acknowledge that Manifest sure seems by far the most keen to invite “edgy” speakers out of any Lighthaven guests. Some of them seem like genuinely curious academics with an interest bound to get them into trouble (like Steve Hsu), whereas others seem like they’re being edgy for edges sake, in a way that often makes me cringe (like Richard Hanania last year). Seems totally fair to discuss what’s up with that speaker choice.
However, the way you engage in that discussion gives me pause.
I’m happy to cut you some slack, because having a large community discussion about these topics in a neutral and detached way is super hard. Sometimes you just gotta get your thoughts out there, and can’t be held to everything under a microscope. And in general, that’s ok. Nonetheless, I feel kind of obliged to point out a bunch of things that make me uncomfortable about your post.
The title itself describes Manifest as controversial as though it was an objectively verifiable descriptive term (such as “green”). This gives me an immune reaction, feeling something like “Well show me the evidence and allow me to decide for myself whether it seems controversial”.
Again, this section plainly asserts that some people are “racist” without really arguing for or substantiating that claim. And what does “racist” even mean here? I’m worried that there’s a bait-and-switch going on, where this term is being used as an ambiguous combination of grave, derogatory accusation; and descriptive of a set of empirical beliefs about demographics and genetics. (Or to clarify: there’s of course absolutely such a bait-and-switch going on, in the Guardian article and lots of broader discourse, my worry is about it also leaking into EA forum discussion via your post.)
...what?
The piece was inaccurate in almost every paragraph. Whether it be easily verifiable factual claims; or its confused attempt to designate a section of social reality (most notably bundling accelerationism and alignment folks into one group).
It used the exact pattern you outlined: bundling a set of unrelated facts to make the receipient look bad. I don’t see why they would make this be a weird Frankenstein-combination of article about SBF and article about HBD, unless it was a deliberate attempt to cause maximum reputational damage to the recipient. (Though I have hypotheses about what’s up.)
Take for example this:
The screenshot says:
A “walled, surveilled compound”… come on, it’s a Hansel and Gretel looking old inn with a fence around it:
Another key piece of evidence is how the article decides to use Scott Alexander’s real name, even though it is largely unknown, doesn’t have any impact on the reported story, and was at the heart of a large blow-up a few years ago where New York Times decided to doxx Scott, against his strong preference to remain pseudonymous.
Judging from their tweets, the author of the article is deliberately adversarial:
Sure, I’m hammering in the point here. But given the blood, sweat and tears my team poured into making Lighthaven great; I care a lot about being very clear that yes, this was a hit piece: a piece of writing deliberately designed to cause damage, rather than conveying information.
What’s up with the use of “Republicans” here? Am I misunderstanding something, or is it being used interchangeably with “the cluster of people you want to distance yourself from with the post”? That seems… kind of intense? (I’d get this a bit more if you were from Europe originally, like myself, where being a “Republican” is sometimes seen as a kind of unbelievable American thing extremely far from most people’s political beliefs… but in an American context, the quoted section sounds crazy)
In the context of the above epistemic moves, it’s definitely uncomfortable to me that the post then engages in these pretty sweeping proposals. What exactly is the intended separation here?
Distancing from Lighthaven (because we rented our venue to a paying customer and gave them large freedom to invite the speakers they desire)?
Distancing from Manifold, the prediction market website (whose utility is completely independent of who they invite to Manifest)?
Distancing from Manifest (seems maybe more fair given your beliefs, though I personally disagree)?
Distancing from anything vaguely rationalism-adjacent...?
I think controversial is a totally fair and accurate description of the event given that it was the subject of a very critical story from a major newspaper, which then generated lots of heated commentary online.
And just as a data point, there is a much larger divide between EAs and rationalists in NYC (where I’ve been for 6+ years), and I think this has made the EA community here more welcoming to types of people that the Bay has struggled with. I’ve also heard of so many people who have really negative impressions of EA based on their experiences in the Bay which seem specifically related to elements of the rationalist community/culture.
Idk what caused this to be the case, and I’m not suggesting that rationalists should be purposefully excluded from EA spaces/events, but I think there are major risks to EA to be closely identified with the rationality community.
No, this argument is importantly invalid.
It was not a “critical story”. It was a hit piece engineered to cause reputational damage. This distinction really matters. (For people who wanted more receipts than my above comment about the adversarial intent, the journalist behind the article now also has sent a cryptic message eerily similar to a death threat(!!) in response to discussion of the article, by what appears to a political rival of theirs. This is not neutral reporting)
The majority of commentary I saw was complaining about the piece being a hit piece. See [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] … . The piece was also community noted on twitter.
The event series LessOnline, Summer Camp, Manifest in total had 500+ guests, 500+ sessions, 70+ invited speakers, across a 10 day stretch. It was a large festival with a ton of different content.
I strongly reject the norm whereby a belligerent writer at a small news outlet can pick out a small slice of a large event, write an adversarial hit piece on it, have people complain about the piece’s journalistic integrity, get some activity as a result; and then have people claim the whole event could be “fairly and accurately” described as controversial(!)
The term is not fair and it is not accurate. Manifest was not controversial; I reject the label. Closest I think is right is “Manifest invited some controversial speakers”. Like this new article from today, for example, which says “the venue’s owners played host to a conference with controversial attendees”. That seems right, and that I encourage a conversation about!
You might want to make your point by appealing to the conference itself, but appealing to the guardian article and its effects really is not a valid argument. For the epistemic health of the community, I think it would be wise to stay way clear of the process that generated that term here.
Of course Manifest is controversial; the very active and heated debate on this post is evidence of that!
No. You pointing a finger and yelling “controversial!” doesn’t make something controversial any more than you yelling “racist” at people makes them racist.
I think if the only thing claiming controversy was the article, it might make sense to call that fabricated/false claim by an outsider journalist, but given this post and the fact many people either disapprove or want to avoid Manifest, (and also that Austin writes about consciously deciding to invite people they thought were edgy,) means I think it’s just actually just a reasonable description.
And there’s disanalogy there. Racism is about someone’s beliefs and behaviors, and I can’t change those of someone’s else’s with a label. But controversy means people disagree, disapprove, etc. and someone can make someone else’s belief controversial just by disagreeing with it (or if one disagreement isn’t enough to be controversy, a person contributes to it with their disagreement).
To clarify:
Claiming that Manifest is controversial because of the Guardian reporting—I’ll argue against this pretty strongly
Claiming that Manifest is controversial because of an independent set of good faith accounts from EA forum members—more legit and I can see the case (though I personally disagree)
Very importantly, Garrison’s comment was arguing using 1, not 2.
To perhaps help clarify the discourse, I’ll leave a comment below where people can react to signal “I think the argument for controversy from the Guardian article is invalid; but I do think Manifest should be labeled controversial for other arguments that I think are valid”
React to this comment to convey opinions on:
“I think the argument for controversy from the Guardian article is invalid; but I do think Manifest should be labeled controversial for other arguments that I think are valid”
The definition of “controversial” is “giving rise or likely to give rise to controversy or public disagreement”. The definition of “controversy” is “prolonged public disagreement or heated discussion”. This unusually active thread is, quite clearly, an example of “prolonged public disagreement or heated discussion”.
I think the really key thing here is the bait-and-switch at play.
Insofar as “controversial” means “heated discussion of subject x”, let’s call that “x-controversial”.
Now the article generates heated discussion because of “being a hit piece”, and so is “hit-piece-controversial”. However, there’s then also heated discussion of racism on the forum, call that “racism-controversial”.
If we then unpack the argument made by Garrison above, it reads as “It is fair and accurate to label Manifest racism-controversial, because of a piece of reporting that was hit-piece controversial”—clearly an invalid argument.
Moreover, I don’t know that the forum discourse was necessarily that heated; and seems like there could be a good faith conversation here about an important topic (for example the original author has been super helpful in engaging with replies, I think). So it also seems lots of “heat” got imported from a different controversy.
Crucially, I think part of the adversarial epistemic playbook of this article, the journalist behind it, as well as your own Tweets and comments supporting it, is playing on ambiguities like this (bundling a bunch of different x-controversial and y-controversial things into one label “controversial”), and then using those as the basis to make sweeping accusations that “organisations [...] cut all ties with Manifold/Lightcone”.
That is what I’m objecting so strongly against.
What does “controversial” mean, according to you?
I think Shakeel’s cited definition with my clarification here seems good; https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MHenxzydsNgRzSMHY/my-experience-at-the-controversial-manifest-2024?commentId=rB6pq5guAWcsAJrWx
What would you suggest as an alternative title? I don’t feel very strongly about that particular choice of word and would be happy to change the title.
I considered changing the title to “My experience with racism at Manifest 2024”, but that feels like it might invite low quality discussion and would probably be bad.
“My experience at Manifest 2024”
“My experience with controversial speakers at Manifest 2024”
“My perception of HBD discourse at and around Manifest 2024”
I’d suggest link searching stories on Twitter to see what their general response is. My Twitter feed was also full of people picking the story apart, but that’s clearly more a reflection of who I follow! Many people were critical (for very good reason, mind you!), but many praised it (see for yourself). There were a ton of mistakes in the article, and I agree that the authors seemed to have a major axe to grind with the communities involved. I’m a journalist myself, and I would be deeply embarrassed to publish a story with so many errors.
I didn’t claim that the event was controversial solely because of the Guardian article — I also mentioned the ensuing conversation, which includes this extremely commented and voted upon post.
And whether you like it or not, The Guardian is one of the largest newspapers in the world, with half of the traffic of the NY Times!
No, I think this is again importantly wrong.
First, this was published in the Guardian US, not the Guardian.
The Guardian US does not have half the traffic of the NYTimes. It has about 15% the traffic, far as I can tell (source). The GuardianUS has 200k Twitter followers; The Guardian has 10M Twitter followers (so 2% of the following).
Second, I scrolled through all the tweets in the link you sent showing “praise”. I see the following:
Emile Torres with 250 likes.
Timnit Gebru’s new research org retweeting, 27 likes
A professor I don’t know supporting it, 117 likes
Shakeel being “glad to see the press picking it up”, 14 likes
A confusing amount of posts, maybe 10+, which retweet and get 0 likes and no engagement, and 10 that get 1-10 likes
Original tweet by the author of the article, 500 likes
Another journalist praising, 60 likes
You can of course compare this to:
Tweet from a usually EA-critical account with 161 likes, “This is just bad assignment work for whoever wrote this beat.”
Theo Jaffe critical tweet, 144 likes
Robin Hanson with 400 likes, complaining about defamation.
Byrne Hobart critical tweet, 500 likes
Multiple Kelsey tweets, with 300 likes
Habryka’s refutation, 450 likes
Quilette editor critical tweet, 100 likes
So I think this just clearly proves my point: the majorty of engagement of this article on Twitter is just commenting on it being a terrible hit piece.
The tiny wave of praise came mostly from folks well known for bad faith attacks on EA, a strange trickle of no-to-low engagement retweets, 1-2 genuine professors, and, well, Shakeel.
My mistake on the guardian US distinction but to call it a “small newspaper” is wildly off base, and for anyone interacting with the piece on social media, the distinction is not legible.
Candidly, I think you’re taking this topic too personally to reason clearly. I think any reasonable person evaluating the online discussion surrounding manifest would see it as “controversial.” Even if you completely excluded the guardian article, this post, Austin’s, and the deluge of comments would be enough to show that.
It’s also no longer feeling like a productive conversation and distracts from the object level questions.
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?
I think the fact that you said “ambiguous combination of grave, derogatory accusation” is a problem for your argument, because it suggests that you don’t have anything in mind that racism could mean other than a set of empirical beliefs about demographics and genetics. If this is the only actual thing that comes to mind for people, then presumably the grave/derogatory aspect is just a result of how they view those empirical beliefs about demographics and genetics.
I say this as one of the people who started HBD conversations at less.online (main one being a conversation about this paper—I didn’t do the whole fishing-for-compatibility thing that OP mentioned). Or I would be inclined to call them racist conversations, though if I was to propose an alternate meaning of “racist” where I don’t count as a racist, it would be something like: someone whose political theories find it infeasible to work with different races. White separatists would be a central example, in that they decide it’s too infeasible to work with black people and therefore want their own society. And e.g. cops who aren’t accountable to black communities would also be an example of racism.
But this would exclude some things that I think people would typically agree is racism, e.g. cops who do racial profiling but don’t conspire to protect each other when one of them abused a black person who is seeking accountability. So I wouldn’t really push this definition so hard.
In my opinion, a more productive line of inquiry is that a lot of HBD claims are junk/bullshit. From a progressive perspective, that’s problematic because there’s this giant edifice of racist lies that’s getting enabled by tolerating racism, and from the perspective of someone who is interested in understanding race, that’s problematic because HBD will leave you with lots of abd flaws in your understanding. Progressives would probably be inclined to say that this means HBD should be purged from these places, but that’s hypocritical because at least as many progressive claims about race are junk/bullshit. My view of the productive approach would be to sort out the junk from the gems.
They didn’t doxx scott alexander—his name is public knowledge now. He doxxed himself a couple of years back. But you’re right that that was probably deliberately adversarial.
Yeah. I am aware of the story. (I was in fact the person who made this site, together with my colleague Ben.) Updated my comment for clarity.
(For people who don’t know all the details: Scott didn’t just voluntarily doxx himself. He only did it in a kind of judo-move response to the New York Times informing him they were going to proceed with doxxing him, against his repeatedly strongly expressed wishes.)