Firstly, I will say that I’m personally not afraid to study and debate these topics, and have done so. My belief is that the data points to no evidence of significant genetic differences between races when it comes to matters such as intelligence, and i think one downside of being hush hush about the subject is that people miss out on this conclusion, which is the one even a basic wikipedia skim would get you to. (you’re free to disagree, that’s not the point of this comment).
That being said, I think you have greatly understated the case for not debating the subject on this forum. Remember, this is a forum for doing the most good, not a debate club, and if shunting debate of certain subjects onto a different website does the most good, that’s what we should do. This requires a cost/benefit analysis, and you are severely understating the costs here.
Point 1 is that we have to acknowledge the obvious fact that when you make a group of people feel bad, some of them are going to leave your group. I do not think this is a moral failing on their part. We have a limited number of hours in the day, would you hang out in a place where people regularly discuss whether you are genetically inferior? And it doesn’t just drive out minorities, it drives out other people who are uncomfortable with the discussion as well.
Driving out minorities is bad on it’s own, but it also has implications for cause areas. A homogenous group is going to going to lack diverse viewpoints, and miss things that would be obvious to people with different contexts/experiences. It also limits the outreach to different countries, are we going to make inroads to India if we’re constantly discussing the genetic makeup of indians? And that’s not even talking about the bad PR of being a super-white, super-male group, which costs us both credibility and funding.
Following on the PR point, I think people find it gauche to talk about the PR effect of discussions, as our opinions shouldn’t be affected by public opinion. But if we are honestly discussing the costs of allowing these discussions, then PR undeniably is a cost, and a really bad one. People are already using this as an excuse to slam EA in general as racist on twitter, if this becomes a major news story, the narrative will spread. EA is already associated with fradulence thanks to SBF, do we really want to be associated with race science as well?
My last point is that while not everyone who believes in genetic group differences is far-right/neo-nazi, the vice versa is not true: pretty much every neo-nazi believes in this stuff, and they use every opportunity they can to use it as an excuse to spread their ideology. A continuing discussion could very well encourage a flood of nazis onto the site, which is not exactly good for the wellbeing of the forum.
Again, my point isn’t that these discussions should be banned from the internet entirely. My point is merely that it shouldn’t be discussed here.
I completly that group genetic differences should not be discussed here. It is a good thing that I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a discussion of it on the EA forum prior to this situation.
So we all agree: Talking about this on the forum is a bad idea. Then the remaining question is what attitude we should take towards Bostrom now that this email of his from the nineties has become the topic de jour.
Possibly the position you are trying to take is that the institutions of the community should distance themselves from him because continuing to treat him as a central intellectual voice might offecnd and drive out minorities, and might offend and drive away people who a very sensitive to the possibility that someone is accepted in a community who is racist.
I want to note that there are also huge negative consequences to the official community distancing itself from such an important figure over this. Notably it will show that it is adopting an attitude that people who honestly try to figure out the truth on controversial topics without being concerned about what is socially acceptable should not be here. It will be saying that we care more about PR than truth.
The sorts of people who care about arguments, and will follow them wherever they go are and have been very central to the EA community, and they are unusual people who provide extremely important benefits, and the unique value of EA as an addition to the global portolio of ideas has probably come from how it was a place where those sorts of thinkers thought about how to do good.
I’d also note: We constantly talk about the PR effect of our decisions. The forum at least has become obsessed with it over the past years.
Bostroms email is a seperate matter. My problem with bostroms email is not about the opinions he holds on technical questions, but about the lack of empathy and astonishingly poor judgement of what he decided to include in there. For example, even if you agree with his two paragraph tangent on eugenics, there was absolutely no need to include it in an apology letter. There were many, many ways that he could have apologised without upsetting people or compromising his beliefs.
Imagine if I called someone’s mother overweight in a vulgar manner. When they get upset, I compose a long apology email where I apologize for the language, but then note that their mother does have a BMI substantially above average, as does their sister, father, and wife. All those statements might be true, but that would not excuse the email!
I think talking about PR is entirely appropriate, given that EA is in the charity business and was just embroiled in a massive fraud scandal, and that bad PR directly translates into less money for EA causes. I think it’s important that the public faces of EA be good at PR, and find it very concerning that Bostrom is so astonishingly bad at it.
It is constantly claimed, but never actually proven that bad PR (in the sense of being linked to things like SBF, racism, or an Emile Torres article) leads to fewer donations for EA causes.
I am not convinced this is actually true. Does bad PR actually lead twenty something people who want to do ai safety research to be less likely to get a grant for career development? Does it actually hurt MIRI’s budget? Or the ai safety camp? Etc.
Does it actually make people decide to not support an organization that wants to hand out lots of anti factory farm pamphlets? Are AMF and Give directly and the worm initiatives actually receiving less money because of these bad PR moments?
And if they are, how do we collectively know that?
While I agree, this grew out of the Bostrom email thing which I found hard to avoid because EA or EA-adj people were saying things I disagreed with! Luckily we have a single thread where this sort of discussion can be isolated.
Firstly, I will say that I’m personally not afraid to study and debate these topics, and have done so. My belief is that the data points to no evidence of significant genetic differences between races when it comes to matters such as intelligence, and i think one downside of being hush hush about the subject is that people miss out on this conclusion, which is the one even a basic wikipedia skim would get you to. (you’re free to disagree, that’s not the point of this comment).
That being said, I think you have greatly understated the case for not debating the subject on this forum. Remember, this is a forum for doing the most good, not a debate club, and if shunting debate of certain subjects onto a different website does the most good, that’s what we should do. This requires a cost/benefit analysis, and you are severely understating the costs here.
Point 1 is that we have to acknowledge the obvious fact that when you make a group of people feel bad, some of them are going to leave your group. I do not think this is a moral failing on their part. We have a limited number of hours in the day, would you hang out in a place where people regularly discuss whether you are genetically inferior? And it doesn’t just drive out minorities, it drives out other people who are uncomfortable with the discussion as well.
Driving out minorities is bad on it’s own, but it also has implications for cause areas. A homogenous group is going to going to lack diverse viewpoints, and miss things that would be obvious to people with different contexts/experiences. It also limits the outreach to different countries, are we going to make inroads to India if we’re constantly discussing the genetic makeup of indians? And that’s not even talking about the bad PR of being a super-white, super-male group, which costs us both credibility and funding.
Following on the PR point, I think people find it gauche to talk about the PR effect of discussions, as our opinions shouldn’t be affected by public opinion. But if we are honestly discussing the costs of allowing these discussions, then PR undeniably is a cost, and a really bad one. People are already using this as an excuse to slam EA in general as racist on twitter, if this becomes a major news story, the narrative will spread. EA is already associated with fradulence thanks to SBF, do we really want to be associated with race science as well?
My last point is that while not everyone who believes in genetic group differences is far-right/neo-nazi, the vice versa is not true: pretty much every neo-nazi believes in this stuff, and they use every opportunity they can to use it as an excuse to spread their ideology. A continuing discussion could very well encourage a flood of nazis onto the site, which is not exactly good for the wellbeing of the forum.
Again, my point isn’t that these discussions should be banned from the internet entirely. My point is merely that it shouldn’t be discussed here.
I completly that group genetic differences should not be discussed here. It is a good thing that I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a discussion of it on the EA forum prior to this situation.
So we all agree: Talking about this on the forum is a bad idea. Then the remaining question is what attitude we should take towards Bostrom now that this email of his from the nineties has become the topic de jour.
Possibly the position you are trying to take is that the institutions of the community should distance themselves from him because continuing to treat him as a central intellectual voice might offecnd and drive out minorities, and might offend and drive away people who a very sensitive to the possibility that someone is accepted in a community who is racist.
I want to note that there are also huge negative consequences to the official community distancing itself from such an important figure over this. Notably it will show that it is adopting an attitude that people who honestly try to figure out the truth on controversial topics without being concerned about what is socially acceptable should not be here. It will be saying that we care more about PR than truth.
The sorts of people who care about arguments, and will follow them wherever they go are and have been very central to the EA community, and they are unusual people who provide extremely important benefits, and the unique value of EA as an addition to the global portolio of ideas has probably come from how it was a place where those sorts of thinkers thought about how to do good.
I’d also note: We constantly talk about the PR effect of our decisions. The forum at least has become obsessed with it over the past years.
Bostroms email is a seperate matter. My problem with bostroms email is not about the opinions he holds on technical questions, but about the lack of empathy and astonishingly poor judgement of what he decided to include in there. For example, even if you agree with his two paragraph tangent on eugenics, there was absolutely no need to include it in an apology letter. There were many, many ways that he could have apologised without upsetting people or compromising his beliefs.
Imagine if I called someone’s mother overweight in a vulgar manner. When they get upset, I compose a long apology email where I apologize for the language, but then note that their mother does have a BMI substantially above average, as does their sister, father, and wife. All those statements might be true, but that would not excuse the email!
I think talking about PR is entirely appropriate, given that EA is in the charity business and was just embroiled in a massive fraud scandal, and that bad PR directly translates into less money for EA causes. I think it’s important that the public faces of EA be good at PR, and find it very concerning that Bostrom is so astonishingly bad at it.
It is constantly claimed, but never actually proven that bad PR (in the sense of being linked to things like SBF, racism, or an Emile Torres article) leads to fewer donations for EA causes.
I am not convinced this is actually true. Does bad PR actually lead twenty something people who want to do ai safety research to be less likely to get a grant for career development? Does it actually hurt MIRI’s budget? Or the ai safety camp? Etc.
Does it actually make people decide to not support an organization that wants to hand out lots of anti factory farm pamphlets? Are AMF and Give directly and the worm initiatives actually receiving less money because of these bad PR moments?
And if they are, how do we collectively know that?
While I agree, this grew out of the Bostrom email thing which I found hard to avoid because EA or EA-adj people were saying things I disagreed with! Luckily we have a single thread where this sort of discussion can be isolated.
I absolutely agree with this view, and I see this as one of the better takes.