Just to narrow in on a single point—I have found the ‘EA fundamentally depends on uncomfortable conversations’ point to be a bit unnuanced in the past. It seems like we could be more productive by delineating which kinds of discomfort we want to defend—for example, most people here don’t want to have uncomfortable conversations about age of consent laws (thankfully), but do want to have them about factory farming.
When I think about the founding myths of EA, most of them seem to revolve around the discomfort of applying utilitarianism in practice, or on how far we should expand our moral circles. I think EA would’ve broadly survived intact by lightly moderating other kinds of discomfort (or it may have even expanded).
I’m not keen to take a stance on whether this post should or shouldn’t be allowed on the forum, but I am curious to hear if and where you would draw this line :)
Narrowing in even further on the example you gave, as an illustration: I just had an uncomfortable conversation about age of consent laws literally yesterday with an old friend of mine. Specifically, my friend was advocating that the most important driver of crime is poverty, and I was arguing that it’s cultural acceptance of crime. I pointed to age of consent laws varying widely across different countries as evidence that there are some cultures which accept behavior that most westerners think of as deeply immoral (and indeed criminal).
Picturing some responses you might give to this:
That’s not the sort of uncomfortable claim you’re worried about
But many possible continuations of this conversation would in fact have gotten into more controversial territory. E.g. maybe a cultural relativist would defend those other countries having lower age of consent laws. I find cultural relativism kinda crazy (for this and related reasons) but it’s a pretty mainstream position.
I could have made the point in more sensitive ways
Maybe? But the whole point of the conversation was about ways in which some cultures are better than others. This is inherently going to be a sensitive claim, and it’s hard to think of examples that are compelling without being controversial.
This is not the sort of thing people should be discussing on the forum
But EA as a movement is interested in things like:
Criminal justice reform (which OpenPhil has spent many tens of millions of dollars on)
Promoting women’s rights (especially in the context of global health and extreme poverty reduction)
What factors make what types of foreign aid more or less effective
More generally, the relationship between the developed and the developing world
So this sort of debate does seem pretty relevant.
I think EA would’ve broadly survived intact by lightly moderating other kinds of discomfort (or it may have even expanded).
The important point is that we didn’t know in advance which kinds of discomfort were of crucial importance. The relevant baseline here is not early EAs moderating ourselves, it’s something like “the rest of academic philosophy/society at large moderating EA”, which seems much more likely to have stifled early EA’s ability to identify important issues and interventions.
(I also think we’ve ended up at some of the wrong points on some of these issues, but that’s a longer debate.)
Do you have an example of the kind of early EA conversation which you think was really important which helped came up with core EA tenets might be frowned upon or censored on the forum now? I’m still super dubious about whether leaving out a small number of specific topics really leaves much value on the table.
And I really think conversations can be had in more sensitive ways. In the the case of the original banned post, just as good a philosophical conversation could be had without explicitly talking about killing people. The conversation already was being had on another thread “the meat eater problem”
And as a sidebar yeah I wouldn’t have any issue with that above conversation myself because we just have to practically discuss that with donors and internally when providing health care and getting confronted with tricky situations. Also (again sidebar) it’s interesting that age of marriage/consent conversations can be where classic left wing cultural relativism and gender safeguarding collide and don’t know which way to swing. We’ve had to ask that question practically in our health centers, to decide who to give family planning to and when to think of referring to police etc. Super tricky.
My point is not that the current EA forum would censor topics that were actually important early EA conversations, because EAs have now been selected for being willing to discuss those topics. My point is that the current forum might censor topics that would be important course-corrections, just as if the rest of society had been moderating early EA conversations, those conversations might have lost important contributions like impartiality between species (controversial: you’re saying human lives don’t matter very much!), the ineffectiveness of development aid (controversial: you’re attacking powerful organizations!), transhumanism (controversial, according to the people who say it’s basically eugenics), etc.
Re “conversations can be had in more sensitive ways”, I mostly disagree, because of the considerations laid out here: the people who are good at discussing topics sensitively are mostly not the ones who are good at coming up with important novel ideas.
For example, it seems plausible that genetic engineering for human intelligence enhancement is an important and highly neglected intervention. But you had to be pretty disagreeable to bring it into the public conversation a few years ago (I think it’s now a bit more mainstream).
Just to narrow in on a single point—I have found the ‘EA fundamentally depends on uncomfortable conversations’ point to be a bit unnuanced in the past. It seems like we could be more productive by delineating which kinds of discomfort we want to defend—for example, most people here don’t want to have uncomfortable conversations about age of consent laws (thankfully), but do want to have them about factory farming.
When I think about the founding myths of EA, most of them seem to revolve around the discomfort of applying utilitarianism in practice, or on how far we should expand our moral circles. I think EA would’ve broadly survived intact by lightly moderating other kinds of discomfort (or it may have even expanded).
I’m not keen to take a stance on whether this post should or shouldn’t be allowed on the forum, but I am curious to hear if and where you would draw this line :)
Narrowing in even further on the example you gave, as an illustration: I just had an uncomfortable conversation about age of consent laws literally yesterday with an old friend of mine. Specifically, my friend was advocating that the most important driver of crime is poverty, and I was arguing that it’s cultural acceptance of crime. I pointed to age of consent laws varying widely across different countries as evidence that there are some cultures which accept behavior that most westerners think of as deeply immoral (and indeed criminal).
Picturing some responses you might give to this:
That’s not the sort of uncomfortable claim you’re worried about
But many possible continuations of this conversation would in fact have gotten into more controversial territory. E.g. maybe a cultural relativist would defend those other countries having lower age of consent laws. I find cultural relativism kinda crazy (for this and related reasons) but it’s a pretty mainstream position.
I could have made the point in more sensitive ways
Maybe? But the whole point of the conversation was about ways in which some cultures are better than others. This is inherently going to be a sensitive claim, and it’s hard to think of examples that are compelling without being controversial.
This is not the sort of thing people should be discussing on the forum
But EA as a movement is interested in things like:
Criminal justice reform (which OpenPhil has spent many tens of millions of dollars on)
Promoting women’s rights (especially in the context of global health and extreme poverty reduction)
What factors make what types of foreign aid more or less effective
More generally, the relationship between the developed and the developing world
So this sort of debate does seem pretty relevant.
The important point is that we didn’t know in advance which kinds of discomfort were of crucial importance. The relevant baseline here is not early EAs moderating ourselves, it’s something like “the rest of academic philosophy/society at large moderating EA”, which seems much more likely to have stifled early EA’s ability to identify important issues and interventions.
(I also think we’ve ended up at some of the wrong points on some of these issues, but that’s a longer debate.)
Do you have an example of the kind of early EA conversation which you think was really important which helped came up with core EA tenets might be frowned upon or censored on the forum now? I’m still super dubious about whether leaving out a small number of specific topics really leaves much value on the table.
And I really think conversations can be had in more sensitive ways. In the the case of the original banned post, just as good a philosophical conversation could be had without explicitly talking about killing people. The conversation already was being had on another thread “the meat eater problem”
And as a sidebar yeah I wouldn’t have any issue with that above conversation myself because we just have to practically discuss that with donors and internally when providing health care and getting confronted with tricky situations. Also (again sidebar) it’s interesting that age of marriage/consent conversations can be where classic left wing cultural relativism and gender safeguarding collide and don’t know which way to swing. We’ve had to ask that question practically in our health centers, to decide who to give family planning to and when to think of referring to police etc. Super tricky.
My point is not that the current EA forum would censor topics that were actually important early EA conversations, because EAs have now been selected for being willing to discuss those topics. My point is that the current forum might censor topics that would be important course-corrections, just as if the rest of society had been moderating early EA conversations, those conversations might have lost important contributions like impartiality between species (controversial: you’re saying human lives don’t matter very much!), the ineffectiveness of development aid (controversial: you’re attacking powerful organizations!), transhumanism (controversial, according to the people who say it’s basically eugenics), etc.
Re “conversations can be had in more sensitive ways”, I mostly disagree, because of the considerations laid out here: the people who are good at discussing topics sensitively are mostly not the ones who are good at coming up with important novel ideas.
For example, it seems plausible that genetic engineering for human intelligence enhancement is an important and highly neglected intervention. But you had to be pretty disagreeable to bring it into the public conversation a few years ago (I think it’s now a bit more mainstream).