I would have even less energy if I felt the upshot of these discussions was a set of policy proposals that seemed abhorrent to me/ felt like a dicsussion of my value as a person.
I think this is the key thing.
First, people are highly motivated to disguise ideas that have already been rejected, although they often disguise them very thinly. Here’s an example from when “creationism” got rebranded as “intelligent design” in the United States. The example focuses on the anti-evolution textbook Of Pandas and People:
Working late one night, I discovered a crucial difference between the two 1987 drafts [of the textbook]: one was written before the Supreme Court’s 1987 Edwards v Aguillard decision outlawing creationism in public schools, and the other was obviously written afterwards. The first version contained blatant creationist terminology. In the second, creationist terminology had been deleted and replaced by “intelligent design” and other ID terms. A new footnote in the latter version referenced the Edwards decision, indicating a conscious attempt to circumvent the Edwards ruling in the revised manuscript that would become Pandas. The “search and replace” operation must have been done in a hurry: in the post-Edwards manuscript, “creationists” was not completely deleted by whoever tried to replace it with “design proponents”. The hybrid term “cdesign proponentsists” now stands as a “missing link” between the blatantly creationist earlier drafts and the post-Edwards versions of Pandas.
Roger Pearson, who ran Mankind Quarterly from 1978 to 2015, made some rather feeble attempts to disguise his ideas, such as this one:
Pearson’s own assistant during the conference was Earl Thomas, a former storm trooper in the American Nazi Party, and when forced to expel two men distributing anti-Semitic literature from the National States Rights Party, he was quoted as telling them, “Not that I’m not sympathetic with what you’re doing … but don’t embarrass me and cut my throat.” He then asked them to give his regards to the secretary of the party.
The main point of this post was to remove the thin disguise that Ives Parr put over his ideas. It seems either I did not succeed or the user base of the EA Forum is disturbingly tolerant of white supremacy, or perhaps some combination of both.
Second, the discussion and debate of, e.g., coded white supremacist ideas exact a cost on some participants that they do not on others. (A hypothetical “Let’s decide whether to kill Concerned EA Forum User” thread would demonstrate this principle in the extreme.) It’s more than exhausting, it’s acutely distressing to defend your rights as a minority when those rights are under attack. It can also be exhausting and distressing for others who feel the injustice strongly to participate in such debates. Avoiding or disengaging becomes simple self-preservation.
People self-select out of these debates. I think the people who are able to coolly and calmly, ad nauseam, debate, e.g., whether Hitler had a point about the Jews are typically the worst positioned to form good opinions on these subjects. They have the least empathy, the least moral concern, the weakest sense of justice, and are most detached from the reality and actual stakes of what they’re talking about.
Many people enjoy provoking and offending other people. I think this is very common. Some people even enjoy causing other people distress. This seems to be true of a lot of people who oppose minority rights. The cost is not symmetrical.
Allowing debate of, e.g., white supremacy on the EA Forum, besides being simply off-topic in most cases, creates a no-win situation for the people whose rights and value are being debated and for other people who care a lot about them. If you engage in the debate, it will exhaust you and distress you, which your interlocutors may very well enjoy. If you avoid the debate or debate a bit and then disengage, this can create the impression that your views can’t be reasonably defended. It can also create the impression that your interlocutors’ views are the dominant ones in the community, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (See: “Nazi death spiral”.)
Third, I would like to see a survey of various demographics’ impressions of the EA community’s attitudes about people like them, but I don’t know how you would be able to survey the people who joined then left or refrained from joining because of those impressions. The questions I’m imagining would be something like, “How likely do you think EAs are to support abhorrent policies or practices with regard to people of your race/gender/identity?” or “Do you think EAs see people of your race/gender/identity as having equal value as everyone else?”.
I suspect that, if we could know the answers to those kinds of questions, it would confirm the existence of a serious problem. EA was founded as a movement to escape banal evils (e.g. the banal evil of ignoring the drowning child), but with regard to some banal evils it is quite morally unexceptional. I think the moral circles of many EAs do not encompass other human beings as fully as they could. It’s easy to nominally support universal human equality but fail to live up to that in practice. What I see EAs saying and doing with regard to race and racism is just so sad.
Universal human equality is a point of core moral integrity for me (as it is for many others). I can’t imagine wholeheartedly supporting EA if universal human equality is not a strong part of the movement.
I don’t respond or read fully posts that are this much longer than my posts.
Allowing debate of, e.g., white supremacy on the EA Forum, besides being simply off-topic in most cases, creates a no-win situation for the people whose rights and value are being debated and for other people who care a lot about them. If you engage in the debate, it will exhaust you and distress you, which your interlocutors may very well enjoy. If you avoid the debate or debate a bit and then disengage, this can create the impression that your views can’t be reasonably defended. It can also create the impression that your interlocutors’ views are the dominant ones in the community, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (See: “Nazi death spiral”.)
Let’s note that white supremacy is not regularly discussed on the EA forum and you, yes literally you, are the cause of most of this previous discussion. 3 or 4 times now I have seen people say they didn’t see this discussion until they read this post.
I am not particularly worried about people thinking that sterilisation is a good solution, for instance. Perhaps if there was a post every week arguing for it, then I would want to talk about that.
I get that there are people who don’t want this to be a space where these ideas are regularly discussed. There are large costs to them, similar to the costs around engaging with with Bostrom’s email. These costs are real. I sense people want confidence that others will join them in pushing back when stuff like this happens.
I don’t know how to give people that confidence, except to say, I see the costs of othering groups in society. How what starts as “wouldn’t it be convenient if” can end up as “let’s put them in camps”. I don’t really know how to convey this to you, but a part of me is very concerned by this.
But again, right know, the equilibrium feels okay and not a high priority to change. Let’s come back to it in 6 months.
White supremacists and Nazis disguise their views to make them seem more benign and acceptable, but you can often find connections to overt Nazism and/or white supremacy without looking super hard. Ives Parr disguised his views and I showed the connections to overt Nazism and white supremacy in the OP.
Expecting people to debate white supremacists and Nazis is unfair and harmful, as well as damaging to the community. Just ban them.
The EA community has more racist behaviour than I can feel proud of. This makes me sad. I suspect a survey of people of colour with experience of EA would confirm EA has a racism problem.
Something else I haven’t mentioned about preventing the Nazi death spiral and why “just debate the Nazis” is not an adequate way to prevent the Nazi death spiral:
If they don’t get banned for posting Nazi stuff, the Nazis can become part of the community by posting other, more normal EA-type stuff. People can read and upvote and comment on the normal stuff without knowing about the posters’ Nazi affiliations or beliefs. Then, you have users with a lot of karma who are Nazis, and people will look around at the EA community and say, “Hmm, there sure are a lot of Nazis here!” and then leave.
I don’t think effective altruism is a covert racist eugenics cult like some critics seem to claim, but there are people out there who would love to turn effective altruism into a racist eugenics cult and I don’t think we should hand them our movement on a silver platter.
I am not particularly worried about people thinking that sterilisation is a good solution, for instance. Perhaps if there was a post every week arguing for it, then I would want to talk about that.
I think that what the voting dynamics may suggest would be a bigger problem than the frequency of posts like Mr. Parr’s per se. His lead post got to +24 at one point (and stayed there for a while), while the post on which we are commenting sits at −12 (despite my +9 strong upvote). If I were in a group for which people were advocating for sterilization, and had good reason to think a significant fraction of the community supported that view, it would be cold comfort that the posts advocating for my sterilization only came by every few months!
I think this is the key thing.
First, people are highly motivated to disguise ideas that have already been rejected, although they often disguise them very thinly. Here’s an example from when “creationism” got rebranded as “intelligent design” in the United States. The example focuses on the anti-evolution textbook Of Pandas and People:
Roger Pearson, who ran Mankind Quarterly from 1978 to 2015, made some rather feeble attempts to disguise his ideas, such as this one:
The main point of this post was to remove the thin disguise that Ives Parr put over his ideas. It seems either I did not succeed or the user base of the EA Forum is disturbingly tolerant of white supremacy, or perhaps some combination of both.
Second, the discussion and debate of, e.g., coded white supremacist ideas exact a cost on some participants that they do not on others. (A hypothetical “Let’s decide whether to kill Concerned EA Forum User” thread would demonstrate this principle in the extreme.) It’s more than exhausting, it’s acutely distressing to defend your rights as a minority when those rights are under attack. It can also be exhausting and distressing for others who feel the injustice strongly to participate in such debates. Avoiding or disengaging becomes simple self-preservation.
People self-select out of these debates. I think the people who are able to coolly and calmly, ad nauseam, debate, e.g., whether Hitler had a point about the Jews are typically the worst positioned to form good opinions on these subjects. They have the least empathy, the least moral concern, the weakest sense of justice, and are most detached from the reality and actual stakes of what they’re talking about.
Many people enjoy provoking and offending other people. I think this is very common. Some people even enjoy causing other people distress. This seems to be true of a lot of people who oppose minority rights. The cost is not symmetrical.
Allowing debate of, e.g., white supremacy on the EA Forum, besides being simply off-topic in most cases, creates a no-win situation for the people whose rights and value are being debated and for other people who care a lot about them. If you engage in the debate, it will exhaust you and distress you, which your interlocutors may very well enjoy. If you avoid the debate or debate a bit and then disengage, this can create the impression that your views can’t be reasonably defended. It can also create the impression that your interlocutors’ views are the dominant ones in the community, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (See: “Nazi death spiral”.)
Third, I would like to see a survey of various demographics’ impressions of the EA community’s attitudes about people like them, but I don’t know how you would be able to survey the people who joined then left or refrained from joining because of those impressions. The questions I’m imagining would be something like, “How likely do you think EAs are to support abhorrent policies or practices with regard to people of your race/gender/identity?” or “Do you think EAs see people of your race/gender/identity as having equal value as everyone else?”.
I suspect that, if we could know the answers to those kinds of questions, it would confirm the existence of a serious problem. EA was founded as a movement to escape banal evils (e.g. the banal evil of ignoring the drowning child), but with regard to some banal evils it is quite morally unexceptional. I think the moral circles of many EAs do not encompass other human beings as fully as they could. It’s easy to nominally support universal human equality but fail to live up to that in practice. What I see EAs saying and doing with regard to race and racism is just so sad.
Universal human equality is a point of core moral integrity for me (as it is for many others). I can’t imagine wholeheartedly supporting EA if universal human equality is not a strong part of the movement.
I don’t respond or read fully posts that are this much longer than my posts.
Let’s note that white supremacy is not regularly discussed on the EA forum and you, yes literally you, are the cause of most of this previous discussion. 3 or 4 times now I have seen people say they didn’t see this discussion until they read this post.
I am not particularly worried about people thinking that sterilisation is a good solution, for instance. Perhaps if there was a post every week arguing for it, then I would want to talk about that.
I get that there are people who don’t want this to be a space where these ideas are regularly discussed. There are large costs to them, similar to the costs around engaging with with Bostrom’s email. These costs are real. I sense people want confidence that others will join them in pushing back when stuff like this happens.
I don’t know how to give people that confidence, except to say, I see the costs of othering groups in society. How what starts as “wouldn’t it be convenient if” can end up as “let’s put them in camps”. I don’t really know how to convey this to you, but a part of me is very concerned by this.
But again, right know, the equilibrium feels okay and not a high priority to change. Let’s come back to it in 6 months.
A short summary of my above comment:
White supremacists and Nazis disguise their views to make them seem more benign and acceptable, but you can often find connections to overt Nazism and/or white supremacy without looking super hard. Ives Parr disguised his views and I showed the connections to overt Nazism and white supremacy in the OP.
Expecting people to debate white supremacists and Nazis is unfair and harmful, as well as damaging to the community. Just ban them.
The EA community has more racist behaviour than I can feel proud of. This makes me sad. I suspect a survey of people of colour with experience of EA would confirm EA has a racism problem.
Something else I haven’t mentioned about preventing the Nazi death spiral and why “just debate the Nazis” is not an adequate way to prevent the Nazi death spiral:
If they don’t get banned for posting Nazi stuff, the Nazis can become part of the community by posting other, more normal EA-type stuff. People can read and upvote and comment on the normal stuff without knowing about the posters’ Nazi affiliations or beliefs. Then, you have users with a lot of karma who are Nazis, and people will look around at the EA community and say, “Hmm, there sure are a lot of Nazis here!” and then leave.
I don’t think effective altruism is a covert racist eugenics cult like some critics seem to claim, but there are people out there who would love to turn effective altruism into a racist eugenics cult and I don’t think we should hand them our movement on a silver platter.
Ban the Nazis.
I think that what the voting dynamics may suggest would be a bigger problem than the frequency of posts like Mr. Parr’s per se. His lead post got to +24 at one point (and stayed there for a while), while the post on which we are commenting sits at −12 (despite my +9 strong upvote). If I were in a group for which people were advocating for sterilization, and had good reason to think a significant fraction of the community supported that view, it would be cold comfort that the posts advocating for my sterilization only came by every few months!