Bostrom could have written a better apology, but I think that may have required dishonesty about his beliefs, and I think such dishonesty would have been really bad.
Leaving aside some object-level stuff about Bostrom’s views, I still think the apology could be much better without any dishonesty on his part. This is somewhat subjective but things that I think could have been better:
Don’t frame the apology at the beginning as almost purely instrumental i.e. not like “I will get smeared soon, so I want to get ahead of the game”. This makes everything come across as less genuine.
“What about eugenics? Do I support eugenics? No, not as the term is commonly understood.”—This is just not a useful thing to mention in an apology about racism, or at least, not in this way. Usually, if someone says “Don’t think of an elephant” then you do think of an elephant. The consequence is now people are probably more likely to think there is a link between Bostrom and eugenics than if this was written differently.
And some other points that Habiba mentioned in her post e.g. “I am deeply uncomfortable with a discussion of race and intelligence failing to acknowledge the historical context of the ideas’ origin and the harm they can and have caused.”
In my opinion it just highlights some basic misunderstandings about communication and our society today, which (I think) was proven by the fairly widespread negative backlash to this incident.
Don’t frame the apology at the beginning as almost purely instrumental i.e. not like “I will get smeared soon, so I want to get ahead of the game”. This makes everything come across as less genuine.
What other reason is there to apologize?
This framing was obviously a bad idea instrumentally, but the fact that Bostrom chose this framing sends some signal that he has some standards of integrity that he’s not willing to compromise for instrumental goals. I have previously criticized other thought leaders in EA for not having any such standards, and the fact that Bostrom does seem to have them is encouraging.
And some other points that Habiba mentioned in her post e.g. “I am deeply uncomfortable with a discussion of race and intelligence failing to acknowledge the historical context of the ideas’ origin and the harm they can and have caused.”
Is she also deeply uncomfortable with a discussion of, say, French people that fails to acknowledge the historical context of their origin and the harm they can and have caused? I’m guessing not.
Again, from a power-seeking perspective her point is correct, but I’m sure that’s not the sense in which she meant it.
In my opinion it just highlights some basic misunderstandings about communication and our society today, which (I think) was proven by the fairly widespread negative backlash to this incident.
It’s him maximizing some combination of honesty and instrumental value because he’s not willing to completely lie about his views in order to improve his public image. That’s a good trait and one you should be encouraging, not criticizing. EA has enough problems with people lying and deceiving to try to accumulate more power, more resources, and more influence. We don’t need any more of this behavior.
This seems too simple. The email was going to be made public, which would (and did) cause harm to many people, so an apology could try to mitigate the harm of his words being shared in 2022. His apology largely failed on this point (in my opinion).
This is a universal argument that can be used to stop literally any action you don’t like, or at least cause people to apologize for any such action, because any nontrivial action taken in the world is going to cause harm to at least some people, and probably many people. For this reason it should be rejected out of hand unless it is supported by context-specific details that make it more compelling in this case than it would be in the abstract.
No such details have been forthcoming from the proponents of this argument, most likely because they don’t actually exist and therefore can’t be supplied on demand.
I am not clear to the extent to which his email actually harmed people.
I agree that he did not optimise for mitigating the harm caused, but I don’t grant much weight to that because it’s very ambiguous to me to what extent harm was caused.
“What about eugenics? Do I support eugenics? No, not as the term is commonly understood.”—This is just not a useful thing to mention in an apology about racism, or at least, not in this way
I actually think this was quite reasonable. He’s a bioethicist, after all – ‘eugenics’ has a bunch of different meanings in that field and it’s important to distinguish between them
Bostrom could have written a better apology, but I think that may have required dishonesty about his beliefs, and I think such dishonesty would have been really bad.
Leaving aside some object-level stuff about Bostrom’s views, I still think the apology could be much better without any dishonesty on his part. This is somewhat subjective but things that I think could have been better:
Don’t frame the apology at the beginning as almost purely instrumental i.e. not like “I will get smeared soon, so I want to get ahead of the game”. This makes everything come across as less genuine.
“What about eugenics? Do I support eugenics? No, not as the term is commonly understood.”—This is just not a useful thing to mention in an apology about racism, or at least, not in this way. Usually, if someone says “Don’t think of an elephant” then you do think of an elephant. The consequence is now people are probably more likely to think there is a link between Bostrom and eugenics than if this was written differently.
And some other points that Habiba mentioned in her post e.g. “I am deeply uncomfortable with a discussion of race and intelligence failing to acknowledge the historical context of the ideas’ origin and the harm they can and have caused.”
In my opinion it just highlights some basic misunderstandings about communication and our society today, which (I think) was proven by the fairly widespread negative backlash to this incident.
What other reason is there to apologize?
This framing was obviously a bad idea instrumentally, but the fact that Bostrom chose this framing sends some signal that he has some standards of integrity that he’s not willing to compromise for instrumental goals. I have previously criticized other thought leaders in EA for not having any such standards, and the fact that Bostrom does seem to have them is encouraging.
Is she also deeply uncomfortable with a discussion of, say, French people that fails to acknowledge the historical context of their origin and the harm they can and have caused? I’m guessing not.
Again, from a power-seeking perspective her point is correct, but I’m sure that’s not the sense in which she meant it.
It’s him maximizing some combination of honesty and instrumental value because he’s not willing to completely lie about his views in order to improve his public image. That’s a good trait and one you should be encouraging, not criticizing. EA has enough problems with people lying and deceiving to try to accumulate more power, more resources, and more influence. We don’t need any more of this behavior.
A desire to mitigate the harm that one’s comments have caused.
Bostrom’s email did not actually cause any harm (as far as we know) as at the time it was written.
This seems too simple. The email was going to be made public, which would (and did) cause harm to many people, so an apology could try to mitigate the harm of his words being shared in 2022. His apology largely failed on this point (in my opinion).
This is a universal argument that can be used to stop literally any action you don’t like, or at least cause people to apologize for any such action, because any nontrivial action taken in the world is going to cause harm to at least some people, and probably many people. For this reason it should be rejected out of hand unless it is supported by context-specific details that make it more compelling in this case than it would be in the abstract.
No such details have been forthcoming from the proponents of this argument, most likely because they don’t actually exist and therefore can’t be supplied on demand.
I am not clear to the extent to which his email actually harmed people.
I agree that he did not optimise for mitigating the harm caused, but I don’t grant much weight to that because it’s very ambiguous to me to what extent harm was caused.
Can you point to any specific physical harm that was caused by Bostrom’s comments that goes beyond “some people were upset”?
I actually think this was quite reasonable. He’s a bioethicist, after all – ‘eugenics’ has a bunch of different meanings in that field and it’s important to distinguish between them