“Influence-seeking” doesn’t quite resonate with me as a description of the virtue on the other end of “truth-seeking.”
What’s central in my mind when I speak out against putting “truth-seeking” above everything else is mostly a sentiment of “I really like considerate people and I think you’re driving out many people who are considerate, and a community full of disagreeable people is incredibly off-putting.”
Also, I think considerateness axis is not the same as the decoupling axis. I think one can be very considerate and also great at decoupling; you just have to be able to couple things back together as well.
I feel like the controversy over the conference has become a catalyst for tensions in the involved communities at large (EA and rationality).
It has been surprisingly common for me to make what I perceive to be totally sensible point that isn’t even particularly demanding (about, e.g., maybe not tolerating actual racism) and then the “pro truth-seeking faction” seem to lump me together with social justice warriors and present analogies that make no sense whatsoever. It’s obviously not the case that if you want to take a principled stance against racism, you’re logically compelled to have also objected to things that were important to EA (like work by Singer, Bostrom/Savulescu human enhancement stuff, AI risk, animal risk [I really didn’t understand why the latter two were mentioned], etc.). One of these things is not like the others. Racism is against universal compassion and equal consideration of interests (also, it typically involves hateful sentiments). By contrast, none of the other topics are like that.
To summarize, it seems concerning if the truth-seeking faction seems to be unable to understand the difference between, say, my comments, and how a social justice warrior would react to this controversy. (This isn’t to say that none of the people who criticized aspects of Manifest were motivated by further-reaching social justice concerns; I readily admit that I’ve seen many comments that in my view go too far in the direction of cancelling/censorship/outrage.)
Ironically, I think this is very much an epistemic problem. I feel like a few people have acted a bit dumb in the discussions I’ve had here recently, at least if we consider it “dumb” when someone repeatedly fails at passing Ideological Turing Tests or if they seemingly have a bit of black-and-white thinking about a topic. I get the impression that the rationality community has suffered quite a lot defending itself against cancel culture, to the point that they’re now a bit (low-t) traumatized. This is understandable, but that doesn’t change that it’s a suboptimal state of affairs.
Offputting to whom?
If it bothers me, I can assume that some others will react similarly.
You don’t have to be a member of the specific group in question to find it uncomfortable when people in your environment say things that are riling up negative sentiments against that group. For instance, twelve-year-old children are unlikely to attend EA or rationality events, but if someone there talked about how they think twelve-year olds aren’t really people and their suffering matters less, I’d be pissed off too.
All of that said, I’m overall grateful for LW’s existence; I think habryka did an amazing job reviving the site, and I do think LW has overall better epistemic norms than the EA forum (even though I think most of the people who I intellectually admire the most are more EAs than rationalists, if I had to pick only one label, but they’re often people who seem to fit into both communities).
Well we agree that it doesn’t feel great to feel misunderstood.
It has been surprisingly common for me to make what I perceive to be totally sensible point that isn’t even particularly demanding (about, e.g., maybe not tolerating actual racism) and then the “pro truth-seeking faction” seem to lump me together with social justice warriors and present analogies that make no sense whatsoever.
Okay, what does not tolerating actual racism look like to you? What is the specific thing you’re asking for here?
Okay, what does not tolerating actual racism look like to you? What is the specific thing you’re asking for here?
Up until recently, whenever someone criticized rationality or EA for being racist or for supporting racists, I could say something like the following:
“I don’t actually know of anyone in these communities who is racist or supports racism. From what I hear, some people in the rationality community occasionally discuss group differences in intelligence, because this was discussed in writings by Scott Alexander, which a lot of people have read and so it gives them shared context. But I think this doesn’t come from a bad place. I’m pretty sure people who are central to these communities (EA and rationality) would pretty much without exception speak up strongly against actual racists.”
It would be nice if I could still say something like that, but it no longer seems like I can, because a surprising number of people have said things like “person x is quite racist, but [...] interesting ideas.”
I really like considerate people and I think you’re driving out many people who are considerate, and a community full of disagreeable people is incredibly off-putting.
I don’t really think it’s this. I think it is “I don’t want people associating me with people or ideas like that so I’d like you to stop please”.
But let’s take your case, that means you think that on the margin some notion of considerateness/kindness/agreeableness is more important than truth-seeking. Is that right?
And if so, why should EA be pushing for that at the margin. I get why people would push for influence over truth and I get why considerateness is valuable. But on the margin I would pick more truth. It feels like in the past, more considerateness might have led to less hard discussions about AI or even animal welfare. Seems those discussions have generally led us to positions we agree with in hindsight.
It feels like in the past, more considerateness might have led to less hard discussions about AI or even animal welfare.
Could you say more about why you feel that way?
Certainly lots of people would have concluded that WAW and AI as subjects of inquiry and action were weird, pointless, stupid, etc. But that’s quite different from the reactions to scientific racism.
Completely agree with Jason. I don’t think those two discussions you are mentioning Nathan actually carry much risk of influence loss, and with AI maybe there has Even been meet influence gain. Things like that that 95 percent of people consider “weird, pointless and stupid” don’t actually have a serious risk of reputational loss. I think looking at most past wins and saying “oh we might not have talked about that is we had been worried about influence” can be a bit of a strawman
It can’t be a strawman if I am arguing it. I am the man.
We can disagree, but I think a move from truthseeking in the past would probably have led to a less-endorsed present (unless it turned off SBF somehow).
I might just not understand the strawman concept properly then, I thought someone could hold a position which was a “strawman” while they were arguing it but uncertain...
Anyway regardless my point is I don’t think we have an example of truth seeking which led a serious cause area which then turned out to cause major influence loss for the community.
I think it’s just really hard to say “don’t discuss that” without nixing a lot of other useful discussion too. I wish there were a way to stop just racism, but already it’s been implied that guests associated with genetics (Steve Hsu, the Collinses, etc) are also trafficking in unacceptable ideas. Should that be banned as well?
And if we’d taken this view 20 years ago we could be in a different place today. Singer advocates for disabled children to be killed, Bostrom partly advocates for a global police state, Yudkowsky doesn’t think that babies are conscious. If we ignored all ideas that came from or near people with awful ideas, we would have lost a lot of ideas we now value.
If you want me to say “I don’t like Hanania” I will say it. But if you want me to say “Manifest is bad because they invited 40 people who could conceivably be racist” then no, I don’t endorse that.
.I don’t really think it’s this. I think it is “I don’t want people associating me with people or ideas like that so I’d like you to stop please”.
It might be what you say for some people, but that doesn’t ring true for my case (at all). (But also, compared to all the people who complained about stuff at Manifest or voiced negative opinions from the sidelines as forum users, I’m pretty sure I’m in the 33% that felt the least strongly and had fewer items to pick at.)
But let’s take your case, that means you think that on the margin some notion of considerateness/kindness/agreeableness is more important than truth-seeking. Is that right?
I don’t like this framing/way of thinking about it.
For one thing, I’m not sure if I want to concede the point that it is the “maximally truth-seeking” thing to risk that a community evaporatively cools itself along the lines we’re discussing.
Secondly, I think the issues around Manifest I objected to weren’t directly about “what topics are people allowed to talk about?.”
If some person with a history of considerateness and thoughtfulness wanted to do a presentation on HBD at Manifest, or (to give an absurd example) if Sam Harris (who I think is better than average at handling delicate conversations like that) wanted to interview Douglas Murray again in the context of Manifest, I’d be like “ehh, not sure that’s a good idea, but okay...” And maybe also “Well, if you’re going to do this, at least think very carefully about how to communicate about why you’re talking about this/what the goal of the session is.” (It makes a big difference whether the framing of the session is “We know this isn’t a topic most people are interested in, but we’ve had some people who are worried that if we cannot discuss every topic there is, we might lose what’s valuable about this community, so this year, we decided to host a session on this; we took steps x, y, and z to make sure this won’t become a recruiting ground for racists;” or whether the framing is “this is just like every other session.”) [But maybe this example is beside the point, I’m not actually sure whether the objectionable issue was sessions on HBD/intelligence differences among groups, or whether it was more just people talking about it during group conversations.]
By contrast, if people with a history of racism or with close ties to racists attend the conference and it’s them who want to talk about HBD, I’m against it. Not directly because of what’s being discussed, but because of how and by whom. (But again, it’s not my call to make and I’m just stating what I would do/what I think would lead to better outcomes.)
(I also thought people who aren’t gay using the word “fag” sounded pretty problematic. Of course, this stuff can be moderated case-by-case and maybe a warning makes more sense than an immediate ban. Also, in fairness, it seems like the conference organizers would’ve agreed with that and they simply didn’t hear the alleged incident when it allegedly happened.)
For one thing, I’m not sure if I want to concede the point that it is the “maximally truth-seeking” thing to risk that a community evaporatively cools itself along the lines we’re discussing.
Another way to frame it is through the concept of collective intelligence. What is good for developing individual intelligence may not be good for developing collective intelligence.
Think, for example, of schools that pit students against each other and place a heavy emphasis on high-stakes testing to measure individual student performance. This certainly motivates people to personally develop their intellectual skills; just look at how much time, e.g. Chinese children are spending on school. But is this better for the collective intelligence?
High-stakes testing often leads to a curriculum that is narrowly focused on intelligence-focused skills that are easily measurable by tests. This can limit the development of broader, harder-to-measure social skills that are vital for collective intelligence, such as communication, group brainstorming, deescalation, keeping your ego in check, empathy...
And such a testing-focused environment can discourage collaborative learning experiences because the focus is on individual performance. This reduction in group learning opportunities and collaboration limits overall knowledge growth.
It can exacerbate educational inequalities by disproportionately disadvantaging students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, who may have less access to test preparation resources or supportive learning environments. This can lead to a segmented education system where collective intelligence is stifled because not all members have equal opportunities to contribute and develop.
And what about all the work that needs to be done that is not associated with high intelligence? Students who might not excel in what a given culture considers high-intelligence (such as the arts, practical skills, or caretaking work) may feel undervalued and disengage from contributing their unique perspectives. Worse, if they continue to pursue individual intelligence, you might end up with a workforce that has a bad division of labor, despite having people that theoretically could have taken up those niches. Like what’s happening in the US:
If you want to have more truth-seeking, you first have to make sure that your society functions. (E.g. if everyone is a college professor, who’s making the food?) To have a collective be maximally truth-seeking in the long run, you have to not solely focus on truth-seeking.
I would guess that the manifest crowd meaningfully adds to the decisionmaking capabilities of EA by sometimes coming up with very valuable ideas, so I think I disagree with the conclusion here.
It feels like in the past, more considerateness might have led to less hard discussions about AI or even animal welfare.
I think factory farmed animals is the better example here. It can be pretty hurtful to tell someone you think a core facet of their life (meat eating) has been a horrendous moral error, just as was slavery or genocide. It seems we all feel fine putting aside the considerateness consideration when the stakes are high enough.
It seems to me that being considerate of others is still valuable even (especially!) if you’re trying to convince them that they’re making a horrendous moral error. Almost all attempts to change someone’s mind in this way don’t work, and failed attempts often contribute to memetic immunity. History is full of disagreeable-but-morally-correct people being tragically unpersuasive.
“Influence-seeking” doesn’t quite resonate with me as a description of the virtue on the other end of “truth-seeking.”
What’s central in my mind when I speak out against putting “truth-seeking” above everything else is mostly a sentiment of “I really like considerate people and I think you’re driving out many people who are considerate, and a community full of disagreeable people is incredibly off-putting.”
Also, I think considerateness axis is not the same as the decoupling axis. I think one can be very considerate and also great at decoupling; you just have to be able to couple things back together as well.
Let’s try this again.
Offputting to whom? The vast majority of people arguing here are people who would never attend manifest. I’m not super worried if they are put off.
I imagine the view that many people have of the event is not how it was at all.
I feel like the controversy over the conference has become a catalyst for tensions in the involved communities at large (EA and rationality).
It has been surprisingly common for me to make what I perceive to be totally sensible point that isn’t even particularly demanding (about, e.g., maybe not tolerating actual racism) and then the “pro truth-seeking faction” seem to lump me together with social justice warriors and present analogies that make no sense whatsoever. It’s obviously not the case that if you want to take a principled stance against racism, you’re logically compelled to have also objected to things that were important to EA (like work by Singer, Bostrom/Savulescu human enhancement stuff, AI risk, animal risk [I really didn’t understand why the latter two were mentioned], etc.). One of these things is not like the others. Racism is against universal compassion and equal consideration of interests (also, it typically involves hateful sentiments). By contrast, none of the other topics are like that.
To summarize, it seems concerning if the truth-seeking faction seems to be unable to understand the difference between, say, my comments, and how a social justice warrior would react to this controversy. (This isn’t to say that none of the people who criticized aspects of Manifest were motivated by further-reaching social justice concerns; I readily admit that I’ve seen many comments that in my view go too far in the direction of cancelling/censorship/outrage.)
Ironically, I think this is very much an epistemic problem. I feel like a few people have acted a bit dumb in the discussions I’ve had here recently, at least if we consider it “dumb” when someone repeatedly fails at passing Ideological Turing Tests or if they seemingly have a bit of black-and-white thinking about a topic. I get the impression that the rationality community has suffered quite a lot defending itself against cancel culture, to the point that they’re now a bit (low-t) traumatized. This is understandable, but that doesn’t change that it’s a suboptimal state of affairs.
If it bothers me, I can assume that some others will react similarly.
You don’t have to be a member of the specific group in question to find it uncomfortable when people in your environment say things that are riling up negative sentiments against that group. For instance, twelve-year-old children are unlikely to attend EA or rationality events, but if someone there talked about how they think twelve-year olds aren’t really people and their suffering matters less, I’d be pissed off too.
All of that said, I’m overall grateful for LW’s existence; I think habryka did an amazing job reviving the site, and I do think LW has overall better epistemic norms than the EA forum (even though I think most of the people who I intellectually admire the most are more EAs than rationalists, if I had to pick only one label, but they’re often people who seem to fit into both communities).
Edited to be about 1 thing.
Well we agree that it doesn’t feel great to feel misunderstood.
Okay, what does not tolerating actual racism look like to you? What is the specific thing you’re asking for here?
Up until recently, whenever someone criticized rationality or EA for being racist or for supporting racists, I could say something like the following:
“I don’t actually know of anyone in these communities who is racist or supports racism. From what I hear, some people in the rationality community occasionally discuss group differences in intelligence, because this was discussed in writings by Scott Alexander, which a lot of people have read and so it gives them shared context. But I think this doesn’t come from a bad place. I’m pretty sure people who are central to these communities (EA and rationality) would pretty much without exception speak up strongly against actual racists.”
It would be nice if I could still say something like that, but it no longer seems like I can, because a surprising number of people have said things like “person x is quite racist, but [...] interesting ideas.”
I don’t really think it’s this. I think it is “I don’t want people associating me with people or ideas like that so I’d like you to stop please”.
But let’s take your case, that means you think that on the margin some notion of considerateness/kindness/agreeableness is more important than truth-seeking. Is that right?
And if so, why should EA be pushing for that at the margin. I get why people would push for influence over truth and I get why considerateness is valuable. But on the margin I would pick more truth. It feels like in the past, more considerateness might have led to less hard discussions about AI or even animal welfare. Seems those discussions have generally led us to positions we agree with in hindsight.
Could you say more about why you feel that way?
Certainly lots of people would have concluded that WAW and AI as subjects of inquiry and action were weird, pointless, stupid, etc. But that’s quite different from the reactions to scientific racism.
Well had the consensus around WAW and AI taken longer to appear we might endorse the situation we are in less than we currently do.
Completely agree with Jason. I don’t think those two discussions you are mentioning Nathan actually carry much risk of influence loss, and with AI maybe there has Even been meet influence gain. Things like that that 95 percent of people consider “weird, pointless and stupid” don’t actually have a serious risk of reputational loss. I think looking at most past wins and saying “oh we might not have talked about that is we had been worried about influence” can be a bit of a strawman
It can’t be a strawman if I am arguing it. I am the man.
We can disagree, but I think a move from truthseeking in the past would probably have led to a less-endorsed present (unless it turned off SBF somehow).
You’re the man Nathan :D love it!
I might just not understand the strawman concept properly then, I thought someone could hold a position which was a “strawman” while they were arguing it but uncertain...
Anyway regardless my point is I don’t think we have an example of truth seeking which led a serious cause area which then turned out to cause major influence loss for the community.
I think it’s just really hard to say “don’t discuss that” without nixing a lot of other useful discussion too. I wish there were a way to stop just racism, but already it’s been implied that guests associated with genetics (Steve Hsu, the Collinses, etc) are also trafficking in unacceptable ideas. Should that be banned as well?
And if we’d taken this view 20 years ago we could be in a different place today. Singer advocates for disabled children to be killed, Bostrom partly advocates for a global police state, Yudkowsky doesn’t think that babies are conscious. If we ignored all ideas that came from or near people with awful ideas, we would have lost a lot of ideas we now value.
If you want me to say “I don’t like Hanania” I will say it. But if you want me to say “Manifest is bad because they invited 40 people who could conceivably be racist” then no, I don’t endorse that.
It might be what you say for some people, but that doesn’t ring true for my case (at all). (But also, compared to all the people who complained about stuff at Manifest or voiced negative opinions from the sidelines as forum users, I’m pretty sure I’m in the 33% that felt the least strongly and had fewer items to pick at.)
I don’t like this framing/way of thinking about it.
For one thing, I’m not sure if I want to concede the point that it is the “maximally truth-seeking” thing to risk that a community evaporatively cools itself along the lines we’re discussing.
Secondly, I think the issues around Manifest I objected to weren’t directly about “what topics are people allowed to talk about?.”
If some person with a history of considerateness and thoughtfulness wanted to do a presentation on HBD at Manifest, or (to give an absurd example) if Sam Harris (who I think is better than average at handling delicate conversations like that) wanted to interview Douglas Murray again in the context of Manifest, I’d be like “ehh, not sure that’s a good idea, but okay...” And maybe also “Well, if you’re going to do this, at least think very carefully about how to communicate about why you’re talking about this/what the goal of the session is.” (It makes a big difference whether the framing of the session is “We know this isn’t a topic most people are interested in, but we’ve had some people who are worried that if we cannot discuss every topic there is, we might lose what’s valuable about this community, so this year, we decided to host a session on this; we took steps x, y, and z to make sure this won’t become a recruiting ground for racists;” or whether the framing is “this is just like every other session.”) [But maybe this example is beside the point, I’m not actually sure whether the objectionable issue was sessions on HBD/intelligence differences among groups, or whether it was more just people talking about it during group conversations.]
By contrast, if people with a history of racism or with close ties to racists attend the conference and it’s them who want to talk about HBD, I’m against it. Not directly because of what’s being discussed, but because of how and by whom. (But again, it’s not my call to make and I’m just stating what I would do/what I think would lead to better outcomes.)
(I also thought people who aren’t gay using the word “fag” sounded pretty problematic. Of course, this stuff can be moderated case-by-case and maybe a warning makes more sense than an immediate ban. Also, in fairness, it seems like the conference organizers would’ve agreed with that and they simply didn’t hear the alleged incident when it allegedly happened.)
Another way to frame it is through the concept of collective intelligence. What is good for developing individual intelligence may not be good for developing collective intelligence.
Think, for example, of schools that pit students against each other and place a heavy emphasis on high-stakes testing to measure individual student performance. This certainly motivates people to personally develop their intellectual skills; just look at how much time, e.g. Chinese children are spending on school. But is this better for the collective intelligence?
High-stakes testing often leads to a curriculum that is narrowly focused on intelligence-focused skills that are easily measurable by tests. This can limit the development of broader, harder-to-measure social skills that are vital for collective intelligence, such as communication, group brainstorming, deescalation, keeping your ego in check, empathy...
And such a testing-focused environment can discourage collaborative learning experiences because the focus is on individual performance. This reduction in group learning opportunities and collaboration limits overall knowledge growth.
It can exacerbate educational inequalities by disproportionately disadvantaging students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, who may have less access to test preparation resources or supportive learning environments. This can lead to a segmented education system where collective intelligence is stifled because not all members have equal opportunities to contribute and develop.
And what about all the work that needs to be done that is not associated with high intelligence? Students who might not excel in what a given culture considers high-intelligence (such as the arts, practical skills, or caretaking work) may feel undervalued and disengage from contributing their unique perspectives. Worse, if they continue to pursue individual intelligence, you might end up with a workforce that has a bad division of labor, despite having people that theoretically could have taken up those niches. Like what’s happening in the US:
If you want to have more truth-seeking, you first have to make sure that your society functions. (E.g. if everyone is a college professor, who’s making the food?)
To have a collective be maximally truth-seeking in the long run, you have to not solely focus on truth-seeking.
I would guess that the manifest crowd meaningfully adds to the decisionmaking capabilities of EA by sometimes coming up with very valuable ideas, so I think I disagree with the conclusion here.
I think factory farmed animals is the better example here. It can be pretty hurtful to tell someone you think a core facet of their life (meat eating) has been a horrendous moral error, just as was slavery or genocide. It seems we all feel fine putting aside the considerateness consideration when the stakes are high enough.
It seems to me that being considerate of others is still valuable even (especially!) if you’re trying to convince them that they’re making a horrendous moral error. Almost all attempts to change someone’s mind in this way don’t work, and failed attempts often contribute to memetic immunity. History is full of disagreeable-but-morally-correct people being tragically unpersuasive.
What do you think a community ought to value more than truth-seeking? What might you call the value you think trades off?