I’m probably pretty close to you but my fears are different:
We decide that anyone who the median EA thinks might be racist cannot been celebrated in any way by a related conference.
Topics of race and genetics are not merely rarely discussed and heavy taxed (as currently) but banned.
Like many other discussions, these very hard to discuss topics never get easier to discuss or come to consensus on. Other discussions include Owen cotton Barrett, bostrom, whether sexism in EA is abnormally bad, whether competence and representation trade off, leverage and CEA drama, icky statusy things within EA, whether Will and Nick made grave errors, why hasn’t there been an FTX investigation and if global health is actually a waste of money compared to other options.
Somewhere in this ball of topics is something that would be really important to discuss well. Or somehow learning to discuss it would give us needed competence around coordination.
We miss out on better decisionmaking because of this.
Like i’d be okay if we picked 3 things you couldn’t discuss. But then when we added a new one, we took one away. It’s that it feels like the list is growing that i dislike.
(merely because i can name a big cluster of costly topics doesn’t mean that i could cheaply write an article or that the forum would discuss them well if it came up)
A more general formulation of this is of ‘1 way vs 2-way doors’ sometimes reference by Jeff Bezos. Here from some article (not by Bezos):
What are one-way and two-way door decisions? One-way door decisions are decisions that you can’t easily reverse. These decisions need to be done carefully. Two-way door decisions can be reversed. You can walk through the door, see if you like it, and if not go back. These decisions can be made fast or even automated.
To me a big part of the disagreement is which parts of this are 1-way or 2-way decisions.
I guess that to some, having racist speakers anywhere near EA feels like a 1-way decision. Once it starts, it won’t unhappen and then there will just be racists around sometimes.
To me, the repeated action of banning topics, often without full agreements on the facts involved (we don’t even agree on Hanania, let alone other speakers and attendees) is a 1-way decision. Once we start doing it, it becomes a tool that we can use that is hard to un-use. I want to be more cautious before we start being like “this person is unacceptable on grounds we don’t all agree on”.
Here then the question is how parties can both have these be 2 way doors. Perhaps we could agree to revisit the issue of racism in EA in a year and see where we think we are, with the power to renegotiate. If I were confident of that, I would be less worried about some more pushy moves now.
I strongly support local bans on particular topics, so long as they are done in a way that doesn’t involve endorsing one side and then refusing to let people who disagree talk.
I am at least pretty relaxed on such bans as long as they are bounded. CEA can ban what they like from EAGs and i feel less bad than if EAs are attempting to ban things generally.
And I would be more relaxed on those things being banned if it were credible that they would be unbanned or that the amount of banned topics overall would be static.
I’m probably pretty close to you but my fears are different:
We decide that anyone who the median EA thinks might be racist cannot been celebrated in any way by a related conference.
Topics of race and genetics are not merely rarely discussed and heavy taxed (as currently) but banned.
Like many other discussions, these very hard to discuss topics never get easier to discuss or come to consensus on. Other discussions include Owen cotton Barrett, bostrom, whether sexism in EA is abnormally bad, whether competence and representation trade off, leverage and CEA drama, icky statusy things within EA, whether Will and Nick made grave errors, why hasn’t there been an FTX investigation and if global health is actually a waste of money compared to other options.
Somewhere in this ball of topics is something that would be really important to discuss well. Or somehow learning to discuss it would give us needed competence around coordination.
We miss out on better decisionmaking because of this.
Like i’d be okay if we picked 3 things you couldn’t discuss. But then when we added a new one, we took one away. It’s that it feels like the list is growing that i dislike.
(merely because i can name a big cluster of costly topics doesn’t mean that i could cheaply write an article or that the forum would discuss them well if it came up)
A more general formulation of this is of ‘1 way vs 2-way doors’ sometimes reference by Jeff Bezos. Here from some article (not by Bezos):
To me a big part of the disagreement is which parts of this are 1-way or 2-way decisions.
I guess that to some, having racist speakers anywhere near EA feels like a 1-way decision. Once it starts, it won’t unhappen and then there will just be racists around sometimes.
To me, the repeated action of banning topics, often without full agreements on the facts involved (we don’t even agree on Hanania, let alone other speakers and attendees) is a 1-way decision. Once we start doing it, it becomes a tool that we can use that is hard to un-use. I want to be more cautious before we start being like “this person is unacceptable on grounds we don’t all agree on”.
Here then the question is how parties can both have these be 2 way doors. Perhaps we could agree to revisit the issue of racism in EA in a year and see where we think we are, with the power to renegotiate. If I were confident of that, I would be less worried about some more pushy moves now.
I strongly support local bans on particular topics, so long as they are done in a way that doesn’t involve endorsing one side and then refusing to let people who disagree talk.
I am at least pretty relaxed on such bans as long as they are bounded. CEA can ban what they like from EAGs and i feel less bad than if EAs are attempting to ban things generally.
And I would be more relaxed on those things being banned if it were credible that they would be unbanned or that the amount of banned topics overall would be static.