This is also particularly disturbing as I try to convince myself and others, including and especially humans who look like me, that we might want to ignore EA’s glaring diversity problem and parts of EA’s unwillingness to change to build a better world for future generations rather than focus on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties.
Was that Chris finds it difficult to justify devoting effort/time/money to EA causes (and convincing others to do so) instead of focusing “on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties” (presumably in the context of black Americans?) because of EA’s lack of diversity and willingness to discuss this topic.
While I believe that this is a nonsensical argument against a social movement with nearly all of its attention to global health being dedicated to saving (mostly black) lives as efficiently as possible, I want to try to understand the argument as best as possible, and think you may have misinterpreted.
If one truly believes in maximizing human welfare in a rigorous and evidence-based fashion, the suggestion that these two modes of intervention (ie EA Global Health vs. USA Domestic political activism) are comparable in the saving of black lives does not add up. One can always give to the actual effective causes without aligning or identifying with EA.
Thanks for the pushback. I crossed out my interpretation. I’ll await an answer. Perhaps I should’ve waited for clarification before responding.
I’ll explain why I interpretted it the way I did:
This is also particularly disturbing as I try to convince myself and others, including and especially humans who look like me, that we might want to ignore EA’s glaring diversity problem and parts of EA’s unwillingness to change to build a better world for future generations rather than focus on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties.
I parsed it as EA is unwilling to change and would rather focus on direct threats. And since there was a “rather” I thought it was constrasting building a better world with with focusing on threats. So, I interpretted the threat to be Bostrom’s views/these discussions.
...I try to convince myself and others, … , that we might want to ignore EA’s glaring diversity problem and parts of EA’s unwillingness to change … rather than focus on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties.
Note: If I had more than 10 minutes to make an extended comment or post that was less likely to be tone-police bait and properly formatted, I would have. That was my first EA forum comment and it came after a few emotionally exhausting days reviewing this discourse. I frankly just needed to get my thoughts off my chest.
But! Now for my second EA forum comment ever:
Was that Chris finds it difficult to justify devoting effort/time/money to EA causes (and convincing others to do so) instead of focusing “on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties” (presumably in the context of black Americans?) because of EA’s lack of diversity and willingness to discuss this topic.
Thank you for the clarification, Anon Rationalist. That is, in large part, what I meant. But the willingness to discuss this topic is not my main issue, and neither is how tactfully people can make statements that I believe are still at odds with the basic empirics of how clinal traits like skin color work.
My point is that by subjecting oneself to conversations (particularly like this) with people who a) strongly align with HBD (and the HBD Institute) and b) may be more concerned with being perceived as non-racist/EA value-aligned than updating priors on possible externalities, one faces an increased risk of epistemic exploitation (not losing my life directly).
My point is not to be combative or inflammatory, but the direction longtermism appears to be taking suggests that this occupational hazard will be less likely in other social movements. And as others have noted , longtermism has “brought a shift of funding away from causes such as global health and poverty which greatly benefitted the residents of nonwestern nations, including many women and people of color, towards funding research in North America and Western Europe, to the benefit of a small number of highly-educated and highly-paid researchers, often white men.” I agree with him that this is likely unintentional but it’s notable regardless if you/we want to do the most good.
While I believe that this is a nonsensical argument against a social movement with nearly all of its attention to global health being dedicated to saving (mostly black) lives as efficiently as possible, I want to try to understand the argument as best as possible, and think you may have misinterpreted.
This reaction pattern-matches with some of my individual impressions of some push-back I’ve received from a variety of people to EA’s messaging, or when I say we should help them help the African diaspora. I’ve often defended EA, Game B, and other movements associated with x-risk as not immediately dismissible sci-fi-laced navel-gazing, jargon-spewing crypto-bros and doomers who care more about good epistemics than base reality. Natheless, I still applaud the work EA has accomplished, in promoting the importance of long-term thinking (because important it is), and its members’ commitment to combating biases.
However, I also have an increasingly hard time picturing how I might sustainably, in good conscience, decouple links the Human Biodiversity Institute has to the alt-right and how promoting and normalizing HBD has psychosocial externalities that include making those who peddle pseudoscience more acceptable. It’s quite hard when seeing the tangible harms these consequences can cause in e.g. the NFL or authoritarian jerks in office who don’t mince their bigotry or unintentionally do so covertly as Bostrom suggests.
I understand that it is not many folks here’s intention. I stronglywant to believe that EA is different and will be better but I had to take a break from reading the forums after seeing the posts.
Now back to Ivan’s comment:
If you think that genetic differences in IQ immediately imply inferiority, then unless you deny that individuals have different levels of cognitive ability because of genetic differences, you must be committed to thinking you are “intellectually superior” than a bunch of people. But you probably don’t talk like that because it makes you seem like a jerk. (which I don’t think you are).
I don’t think (genetic) differences in IQ imply inferiority. My point is that my anticipated experience suggests that people have and do immediately make that jump to justify illiberal policies in the name of reason, science and evidence—even when it completely wrong.
I’m not trying to make people look worse than they are, I’m just baffled by holding up a mirror to what EA looks like to the very people they say they/we are advocating for, and wondering who EA wants to be.
My understanding of this section:
Was that Chris finds it difficult to justify devoting effort/time/money to EA causes (and convincing others to do so) instead of focusing “on direct threats to our lives, voting rights or civil liberties” (presumably in the context of black Americans?) because of EA’s lack of diversity and willingness to discuss this topic.
While I believe that this is a nonsensical argument against a social movement with nearly all of its attention to global health being dedicated to saving (mostly black) lives as efficiently as possible, I want to try to understand the argument as best as possible, and think you may have misinterpreted.
If one truly believes in maximizing human welfare in a rigorous and evidence-based fashion, the suggestion that these two modes of intervention (ie EA Global Health vs. USA Domestic political activism) are comparable in the saving of black lives does not add up. One can always give to the actual effective causes without aligning or identifying with EA.
Thanks for the pushback. I crossed out my interpretation. I’ll await an answer. Perhaps I should’ve waited for clarification before responding.
I’ll explain why I interpretted it the way I did:
I parsed it as EA is unwilling to change and would rather focus on direct threats. And since there was a “rather” I thought it was constrasting building a better world with with focusing on threats. So, I interpretted the threat to be Bostrom’s views/these discussions.
Note: If I had more than 10 minutes to make an extended comment or post that was less likely to be tone-police bait and properly formatted, I would have. That was my first EA forum comment and it came after a few emotionally exhausting days reviewing this discourse. I frankly just needed to get my thoughts off my chest.
But! Now for my second EA forum comment ever:
Thank you for the clarification, Anon Rationalist. That is, in large part, what I meant. But the willingness to discuss this topic is not my main issue, and neither is how tactfully people can make statements that I believe are still at odds with the basic empirics of how clinal traits like skin color work.
My point is that by subjecting oneself to conversations (particularly like this) with people who a) strongly align with HBD (and the HBD Institute) and b) may be more concerned with being perceived as non-racist/EA value-aligned than updating priors on possible externalities, one faces an increased risk of epistemic exploitation (not losing my life directly).
My point is not to be combative or inflammatory, but the direction longtermism appears to be taking suggests that this occupational hazard will be less likely in other social movements. And as others have noted , longtermism has “brought a shift of funding away from causes such as global health and poverty which greatly benefitted the residents of nonwestern nations, including many women and people of color, towards funding research in North America and Western Europe, to the benefit of a small number of highly-educated and highly-paid researchers, often white men.” I agree with him that this is likely unintentional but it’s notable regardless if you/we want to do the most good.
This reaction pattern-matches with some of my individual impressions of some push-back I’ve received from a variety of people to EA’s messaging, or when I say we should help them help the African diaspora. I’ve often defended EA, Game B, and other movements associated with x-risk as not immediately dismissible sci-fi-laced navel-gazing, jargon-spewing crypto-bros and doomers who care more about good epistemics than base reality. Natheless, I still applaud the work EA has accomplished, in promoting the importance of long-term thinking (because important it is), and its members’ commitment to combating biases.
However, I also have an increasingly hard time picturing how I might sustainably, in good conscience, decouple links the Human Biodiversity Institute has to the alt-right and how promoting and normalizing HBD has psychosocial externalities that include making those who peddle pseudoscience more acceptable. It’s quite hard when seeing the tangible harms these consequences can cause in e.g. the NFL or authoritarian jerks in office who don’t mince their bigotry or unintentionally do so covertly as Bostrom suggests.
I understand that it is not many folks here’s intention. I strongly want to believe that EA is different and will be better but I had to take a break from reading the forums after seeing the posts.
Now back to Ivan’s comment:
I don’t think (genetic) differences in IQ imply inferiority. My point is that my anticipated experience suggests that people have and do immediately make that jump to justify illiberal policies in the name of reason, science and evidence—even when it completely wrong.
I’m not trying to make people look worse than they are, I’m just baffled by holding up a mirror to what EA looks like to the very people they say they/we are advocating for, and wondering who EA wants to be.