I would be sad to see Emile Torres offered a speaking slot at an EA conference as this would reward bad faith criticism. I wouldn’t join a social pressure campaign to cancel him—sometimes people will make decisions I consider unwise and I’ll make decisions that they consider unwise—but I would caution someone considering doing this that they were making an unwise decision by inviting someone who often acts in bad faith and I would strongly recommend that they consider alternate names before resorting to Emile (I don’t think it would be hard to find equally interesting critics without the bad faith, his mind just immediately springs to mind due to availability bias).
I suppose I don’t see listening to him as a reward to him, but something I do or don’t do because it is good for me. The relevance of him saying things in bad faith is that it means you have to be more careful about trusting anything he says, and thus listening him is unusually likely to leave you with more inaccurate beliefs than you started with.
I suppose to explore the difference further, do you think it would be a bad idea to read something he wrote or to subscribe to his Twitter (which I do). Or is it specifically that you don’t want to invite him to talk.
And in the case of invitation, is it because you are worried that people will get bad beliefs from listening to him, or primarily because you dislike that it would seem like a positive thing for him?
I would be sad to see Emile Torres offered a speaking slot at an EA conference as this would reward bad faith criticism. I wouldn’t join a social pressure campaign to cancel him—sometimes people will make decisions I consider unwise and I’ll make decisions that they consider unwise—but I would caution someone considering doing this that they were making an unwise decision by inviting someone who often acts in bad faith and I would strongly recommend that they consider alternate names before resorting to Emile (I don’t think it would be hard to find equally interesting critics without the bad faith, his mind just immediately springs to mind due to availability bias).
I suppose I don’t see listening to him as a reward to him, but something I do or don’t do because it is good for me. The relevance of him saying things in bad faith is that it means you have to be more careful about trusting anything he says, and thus listening him is unusually likely to leave you with more inaccurate beliefs than you started with.
I suppose to explore the difference further, do you think it would be a bad idea to read something he wrote or to subscribe to his Twitter (which I do). Or is it specifically that you don’t want to invite him to talk.
And in the case of invitation, is it because you are worried that people will get bad beliefs from listening to him, or primarily because you dislike that it would seem like a positive thing for him?
I think we should use talk invitations to nudge people towards acting in good faith.