Iâd like to give some context for why I disagree.
Yes, Richard Hanania is pretty racist. His views have historically been quite repugnant, and heâs admitted that âI truly sucked back thenâ. However, I think EA causes are more important than political differences. Itâs valuable when Hanania exposes the moral atrocity of factory farming and defends EA to his right-wing audience. If weâre being scope-sensitive, I think we have a lot more in common with Hanania on the most important questions than we do on political issues.
I also think Hanania has excellent takes on most issues, and thatâs because heâs the most intellectually honest blogger Iâve encountered. I think Hanania likes EA because heâs willing to admit that heâs imperfect, unlike EAâs critics who would rather feel good about themselves than actually help others.
More broadly, I think we could be doing more to attract people who donât hold typical Bay Area beliefs. Just 3% of EAs identify as right wing. I think there are several reasons why, all else equal, it would be better to have more political diversity:
In this era of political polarization, It would be a travesty for EA issues to become partisan.
All else equal, political diversity is good for community epistemics. In that regard, it should be encouraged for much the same reason that cultural and racial diversity are encouraged.
If we want EA to be a global social movement, we need to show that one can be EA even if they hold beliefs on other issues we find repugnant. I live in Panama for my job. When I arrived here, I had a culture shock from how backwards many peopleâs views are on racism and sexism. If we canât be friends with the person next door with bad views, how are we going to make allies globally?
Being âpretty racistâ with a past history of being even worse is not a mere âpolitical issue.â
I donât see how the proposition that Hanania has agreeable views on some issues, like factory farming contradicts Davidâs position that we should not treat him âas some sort of worthy figureâ and (impliedly) that we should not platform him at our events or on our blogrolls.
There is a wide gap between the proposition that EA should seek to attract more âpeople who donât hold typical Bay Area beliefsâ (I agree) and that EA should seek to attract people by playing nice with those like Hanania.
Among other things, the fact is that you canât create a social movement that can encompass 100% of humanity. You canât both be welcoming to people who hold âpretty racistâ views and to the targets of their racism. And if you start welcoming in the pretty-racist, youâre at least risking the downward spiral of having more racism-intolerant people like --> more openness to racism --> more departures from those intolerant to racism --> soon, youâve got a whole lot of racism going on.
But I think that the modern idea that itâs good policy to âshunâ people who express wrong (or heartless, or whatever) views is totally wrong, and is especially inappropriate for EA in practice, the impact of which has largely been due to unusual people with unusual views.
Why move from âwrong or heartlessâ to âunusual people with unusual viewsâ? None of the people who were important to EA historically have had hateful or heartless-and-prejudiced views (or, if someone had them secretly, at least they didnât openly express it). It would also be directly opposed to EA core principles (compassion, equal consideration of interests).
Whether someone speaks at Manifest (or is on a blogroll, or whatever) should be about whether they are going to give an interesting talk to Manifest, not because of their general moral character.
I think sufficiently shitty character should be disqualifying. I agree with you insofar that, if someone has ideas that seem worth discussing, I can imagine a stance of âweâre talking to this person in a moderated setting to hear their ideas,â but Iâd importantly caveat it by making sure to also expose their shittiness. In other words, I think platforming a person who promotes a dangerous ideology (or, to give a different example, someone who has a tendency to form mini-cults around them that predictably harm some of the people they come into contact with) isnât necessarily wrong, but it comes with a specific responsibility. What would be wrong is implicitly conveying that the person youâre platforming is vetted/ânormal/âharmless, when they actually seem dangerous. If someone actually seems dangerous, make sure that, if you do decide to platform them (presumably because you think they also have some good/âimportant things to say), others wonât come away with the impression that you donât think theyâre dangerous.
Why move from âwrong or heartlessâ to âunusual people with unusual viewsâ?
I believe these two things:
A) People donât have very objective moral intuitions, so there isnât widespread agreement on what views are seriously wrong.
B) Unusual people typically come by their unusual views by thinking in some direction that is not socially typical, and then drawing conclusions that make sense to them.
So if you are a person who does B, you probably donât and shouldnât have confidence that many other people wonât find your views to be seriously wrong. So a productive intellectual community that wants to hear things you have to say, should be prepared to tolerate views that seem seriously wrong, perhaps with some caveats (e.g. that they are the sort of view that a person might honestly come by, as opposed to something invented simply maliciously.)
None of the people who were important to EA historically have had hateful or heartless-and-prejudiced views (or, if someone had them secretly, at least they didnât openly express it).
I think this is absolutely false. A kind of obvious example (to many, since as above, people do not unanimously agree on what is hateful) is that famous Nick Bostrom email about racial differences. Another example to many is the similar correspondence from Scott Alexander. Another example would be Zack Davisâs writing on transgender identity. Another example would be Peter Singerâs writing on disability. Another example would be this post arguing in favor of altruistic eugenics. These are all views that many people who are even very culturally close to the authors (e.g. modern Western intellectuals) would consider hateful and wrong.
Of course, having views that substantially different cultures would consider hateful and wrong is so commonplace that I hardly need to give any examples. Many of my extended family members consider the idea that abortion is permissible to be hateful and wrong. I consider their views, in addition to many of their other religious views, to be hateful and wrong. And I donât believe that either of us have come by our views particularly unreasonably.
What would be wrong is implicitly conveying that the person youâre platforming is vetted/ânormal/âharmless, when they actually seem dangerous.
Perhaps this is an important crux. If a big conference is bringing a bunch of people to give talks that the speakers are individually responsible for, I personally would infer ~zero vetting or endorsement, and I would judge each talk with an open mind. (I think I am correct to do this, because little vetting is in fact done; the large conferences I have been familiar with hunt for speakers based on who they think will draw crowds, e.g. celebrities and people with knowledge and power, not because they agree with the contents of talks.) So if this is culturally ambiguous it would seem fine to clarify.
I think this is just naive. People pay money and spend their precious time to go to these conferences. If you invite a racist, the effect will be twofold:
More racists will come to your conference.
more minorities, and people sympathetic to minorities, will stay home.
When this second group stays home (as is their right), they take their bold and unusual ideas with them.
By inviting a racist, you are not selecting for âbold and unusual ideasâ. You are selecting for racism.
And yes, a similar dynamic will play out with many controversial ideas. Which is why you need to exit the meta level, and make deliberate choices about which ideas you want to keep, and which groups of people you are okay with driving away. This also comes with a responsibility to treat said topics with appropriate levels of care and consideration, something that, for example, Bostrom failed horribly at.
I feel like youâre trying to equivocate âwrong or heartlessâ (or âheartless-and-prejudiced,â as I called it elsewhere) with âsocially provocativeâ or âcauses outrage to a subset of readers.â
That feels like misdirection.
I see two different issues here:
(1) Are some ideas that cause social backlash still valuable?
(2) Are some ideas shitty and worth condemning?
My answer is yes to both.
When someone expresses a view that belongs into (2), pointing at the existence of (1) isnât a good defense.
You may be saying that we should be humble and canât tell the difference, but I think we can. Moral relativism sucks.
FWIW, if I thought we couldnât tell the difference, then it wouldnât be obvious to me that we should go for âcondemn pretty much nothingâ as opposed to âcondemn everything that causes controversy.â Both of these seem equally extremely bad.
I see that youâre not quite advocating for âcondemn nothingâ because you write this bit:
perhaps with some caveats (e.g. that they are the sort of view that a person might honestly come by, as opposed to something invented simply maliciously.)
It depends on what you mean exactly, but I think this may not be going far enough. Some people donât cult-founder-style invent new beliefs with some ulterior motive (like making money), but the beliefs they âhonestlyâ come to may still be hateful and prejudiced. Also, some people might be aware that thereâs a lot of misanthropy and wanting to feel superior in their thinking, but they might be manipulatively pretending to only be interested in âtruth-seeking,â especially when talking to impressionable members of the rationality community, where you get lots of social credit for signalling truth-seeking virtues.
To get to the heart of things, do you think Hananiaâs views are no worse than the examples you give? If so, I would expect people to say that heâs not actually racist.
However, if they are worse, then Iâd say letâs drop the cultural relativism and condemn them.
It seems to me like thereâs no disagreement by people familiar with Hanania that his views were worse in the past. Thatâs a red flag. Some people say heâs changed his views. Iâm not per se against giving people second chances, but it seems suspicious to me that someone who admits that theyâve had really shitty racist views in the past now continues to focus on issues where they â even according to other discussion participants here who defend him â still seem racist. Like, why isnât he trying to educate people on how not to fall victim to a hateful ideology, since he has personal experience with that. Itâs hard to come away with âah, now the motivation is compassion and wanting the best for everyone, when previously it was something dark.â (Iâm not saying such changes of heart are impossible, but I donât view it as likely, given what other commenters are saying.)
Anyway, to comment on your examples:
Singer faced most of the heat for his views on preimplantation diagnostics and disability before EA became a movement. Still, Iâd bet that, if EAs had been around back then, many EAs, and especially the ones I most admire and agree with, wouldâve come to his defense.
I just skimmed that eugenics article you link to and it seems fine to me, or even good. Also, most of the pushback there from EA forum participants is about the strategy of still using the word âeugenicsâ instead of using a different word, so many people donât seem to disagree much with the substance of the article.
In Bostromâs case, I donât think anyone thinks that Bostromâs comments from long ago were a good thing, but thereâs a difference between them being awkward and tone-deaf, vs them being hateful or hate-inspired. (And itâs more forgivable for people to be awkward and tone-deaf when theyâre young.)
Lastly, on Scott Alexanderâs example, whether intelligence differences are at least partly genetic is an empirical question, not a moral one. It might well be influenced by someone having hateful moral views, so it matters where a personâs interest in that sort of issue is coming from. Does it come from a place of hate or wanting to seem superior, or does it come from a desire for truth-seeking and believing that knowing whatâs the case makes it easier to help? (And: Does the person make any actual efforts to help disadvantaged groups?) As Scott Alexander points out himself:
Somebody who believes that Mexicans are more criminal than white people might just be collecting crime stats, but weâre suspicious that they might use this to justify an irrational hatred toward Mexicans and desire to discriminate against them. So itâs potentially racist, regardless of whether you attribute it to genetics or culture.
So, all these examples (I think Zach Davisâs writing is more ârationality communityâ than EA, and Iâm not really familiar with it, so I wonât comment on it) seem fine to me.
When I said,
None of the people who were important to EA historically have had hateful or heartless-and-prejudiced views (or, if someone had them secretly, at least they didnât openly express it).
This wasnât about, âCan we find some random people (who we otherwise wouldnât listen to when it comes to other topics) who will be outraged.â
Instead, I meant that we can look at peopleâs views at the object level and decide whether theyâre coming from a place of compassion for everyone and equal consideration of interests, or whether theyâre coming from a darker place.
And someone can have wrong views that arenât hateful:
Many of my extended family members consider the idea that abortion is permissible to be hateful and wrong. I consider their views, in addition to many of their other religious views, to be hateful and wrong.
Iâm not sure if youâre using âhatefulâ here as a weird synonym to âwrong,â or whether your extended relatives have similarities to the Westboro Baptist Church.
Normally, I think of people who are for abortion bans as merely misguided (since theyâre often literally misguided about empirical questions, or sometimes they seem to have an inability to move away from rigid-category thinking and not understand the necessity of having a different logic for non-typical examples/âedge cases).
When I speak of âhateful,â itâs something more. I then mean that the ideology has an affinity for appealing to peopleâs darker motivations. I think ideologies like that are properly dangerous, as weâve seen historically. (And it applies to, e.g., Communism just as well as to racism.)
I agree with you that conferences do very little âvettingâ (and find this is okay), but I think the little vetting that they do and should do includes âdonât bring in people who are mouthpieces to ideologies that appeal to peopleâs dark instincts.â (And also things like, âdonât bring in people who are known to cause harm to others,â whether thatâs through sexually predatory behavior or the tendency to form mini-cults around themselves.)
It seems to me like thereâs no disagreement by people familiar with Hanania that his views were worse in the past. Thatâs a red flag. Some people say heâs changed his views. Iâm not per se against giving people second chances, but it seems suspicious to me that someone who admits that theyâve had really shitty racist views in the past now continues to focus on issues where they â even according to other discussion participants here who defend him â still seem racist.
Agreed. I think the 2008-10 postings under the Hoste pseudonym are highly relevant insofar as they show a sustained pattern of bigotry during that time. They are just not consistent in my mind with having fallen into error despite even minimally good-faith, truth-seeking behavior combined with major errors in judgment. Sample quotations in this article. Once you get to that point, you may get a second chance at some future time, but Iâm not inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt on your second chance:
A person who published statements like the Hoste statements over a period of time, but has reformed, should be on notice that there was something in them that led them to the point of glorifying white nationalism and at least espousing white supremacist beliefs. (I donât care to read any more of the Hoste writings to be more precise than that.) An actually reformed white nationalist should know to be very cautious in what they write about Hispanic and African-American persons, because they should know that a deep prejudice once resided within them and might still be lurking beneath at some level.
The establishment of clear, sustained bigotry at time-1 would ordinarily justify an inference that any deeply problematic statements at later times are also the result of bigotry unless the evidence suggests otherwise. In contrast, it is relatively more likely that a deeply problematic statement by someone without a past history of bigotry could reflect unconscious (or at least semi-conscious?) racism, a severe but fairly isolated lack of judgment, or other serious issues that are nevertheless more forgivable than outright bigotry.
I agree with you when you said that we can know evil ideas when we see them and rightly condemn them. We donât have to adopt some sort of generic welcomingness to all ideas, including extremist hate ideologies.
I disagree with you about some of the examples of alleged racism or prejudice or hateful views attributed to people like Nick Bostrom and Scott Alexander. I definitely wouldnât wave these examples away by saying they âseem fine to me.â I think one thing youâre trying to say is that these examples are very different from someone being overtly and egregiously white supremacist in the worst way like Richard Hanania, and I agree. But I wouldnât say these examples are âfineâ.
It is okay to criticize the views and behaviour of figures perceived to be influential in EA. I think thatâs healthy.
Appreciate the reply. I donât have a well-informed opinion about Hanania in particular, and I really donât care to read enough of his writing to try to get one, so I think I said everything I can say about the topic (e.g. I canât really speak to whether Hananiaâs views are specifically worse than all the examples I think of when I think of EA views that people may find outrageous.)
Under the pseudonym, Hanania argued for eugenics, including the forcible sterilization of everyone with an IQ below 90.[4] He also denounced ârace-mixingâ and said that white nationalism âis the only hopeâ.[6] He opposed immigration to the United States, saying that âthe IQ and genetic differences between them and native Europeans are real, and assimilation is impossibleâ. He cited a speech by neo-Nazi William Luther Pierce, who had used Haiti as an example to argue that black people are incapable of governing themselves.[4]
Iâd like to give some context for why I disagree.
Yes, Richard Hanania is pretty racist. His views have historically been quite repugnant, and heâs admitted that âI truly sucked back thenâ. However, I think EA causes are more important than political differences. Itâs valuable when Hanania exposes the moral atrocity of factory farming and defends EA to his right-wing audience. If weâre being scope-sensitive, I think we have a lot more in common with Hanania on the most important questions than we do on political issues.
I also think Hanania has excellent takes on most issues, and thatâs because heâs the most intellectually honest blogger Iâve encountered. I think Hanania likes EA because heâs willing to admit that heâs imperfect, unlike EAâs critics who would rather feel good about themselves than actually help others.
More broadly, I think we could be doing more to attract people who donât hold typical Bay Area beliefs. Just 3% of EAs identify as right wing. I think there are several reasons why, all else equal, it would be better to have more political diversity:
In this era of political polarization, It would be a travesty for EA issues to become partisan.
All else equal, political diversity is good for community epistemics. In that regard, it should be encouraged for much the same reason that cultural and racial diversity are encouraged.
If we want EA to be a global social movement, we need to show that one can be EA even if they hold beliefs on other issues we find repugnant. I live in Panama for my job. When I arrived here, I had a culture shock from how backwards many peopleâs views are on racism and sexism. If we canât be friends with the person next door with bad views, how are we going to make allies globally?
Being âpretty racistâ with a past history of being even worse is not a mere âpolitical issue.â
I donât see how the proposition that Hanania has agreeable views on some issues, like factory farming contradicts Davidâs position that we should not treat him âas some sort of worthy figureâ and (impliedly) that we should not platform him at our events or on our blogrolls.
There is a wide gap between the proposition that EA should seek to attract more âpeople who donât hold typical Bay Area beliefsâ (I agree) and that EA should seek to attract people by playing nice with those like Hanania.
Among other things, the fact is that you canât create a social movement that can encompass 100% of humanity. You canât both be welcoming to people who hold âpretty racistâ views and to the targets of their racism. And if you start welcoming in the pretty-racist, youâre at least risking the downward spiral of having more racism-intolerant people like --> more openness to racism --> more departures from those intolerant to racism --> soon, youâve got a whole lot of racism going on.
+1
If even some of the people defending this person start with âyes, heâs pretty racist,â that makes me think David Mathers is totally right.
Regarding cataâs comment:
Why move from âwrong or heartlessâ to âunusual people with unusual viewsâ? None of the people who were important to EA historically have had hateful or heartless-and-prejudiced views (or, if someone had them secretly, at least they didnât openly express it). It would also be directly opposed to EA core principles (compassion, equal consideration of interests).
I think sufficiently shitty character should be disqualifying. I agree with you insofar that, if someone has ideas that seem worth discussing, I can imagine a stance of âweâre talking to this person in a moderated setting to hear their ideas,â but Iâd importantly caveat it by making sure to also expose their shittiness. In other words, I think platforming a person who promotes a dangerous ideology (or, to give a different example, someone who has a tendency to form mini-cults around them that predictably harm some of the people they come into contact with) isnât necessarily wrong, but it comes with a specific responsibility. What would be wrong is implicitly conveying that the person youâre platforming is vetted/ânormal/âharmless, when they actually seem dangerous. If someone actually seems dangerous, make sure that, if you do decide to platform them (presumably because you think they also have some good/âimportant things to say), others wonât come away with the impression that you donât think theyâre dangerous.
I believe these two things:
A) People donât have very objective moral intuitions, so there isnât widespread agreement on what views are seriously wrong.
B) Unusual people typically come by their unusual views by thinking in some direction that is not socially typical, and then drawing conclusions that make sense to them.
So if you are a person who does B, you probably donât and shouldnât have confidence that many other people wonât find your views to be seriously wrong. So a productive intellectual community that wants to hear things you have to say, should be prepared to tolerate views that seem seriously wrong, perhaps with some caveats (e.g. that they are the sort of view that a person might honestly come by, as opposed to something invented simply maliciously.)
I think this is absolutely false. A kind of obvious example (to many, since as above, people do not unanimously agree on what is hateful) is that famous Nick Bostrom email about racial differences. Another example to many is the similar correspondence from Scott Alexander. Another example would be Zack Davisâs writing on transgender identity. Another example would be Peter Singerâs writing on disability. Another example would be this post arguing in favor of altruistic eugenics. These are all views that many people who are even very culturally close to the authors (e.g. modern Western intellectuals) would consider hateful and wrong.
Of course, having views that substantially different cultures would consider hateful and wrong is so commonplace that I hardly need to give any examples. Many of my extended family members consider the idea that abortion is permissible to be hateful and wrong. I consider their views, in addition to many of their other religious views, to be hateful and wrong. And I donât believe that either of us have come by our views particularly unreasonably.
Perhaps this is an important crux. If a big conference is bringing a bunch of people to give talks that the speakers are individually responsible for, I personally would infer ~zero vetting or endorsement, and I would judge each talk with an open mind. (I think I am correct to do this, because little vetting is in fact done; the large conferences I have been familiar with hunt for speakers based on who they think will draw crowds, e.g. celebrities and people with knowledge and power, not because they agree with the contents of talks.) So if this is culturally ambiguous it would seem fine to clarify.
I think this is just naive. People pay money and spend their precious time to go to these conferences. If you invite a racist, the effect will be twofold:
More racists will come to your conference.
more minorities, and people sympathetic to minorities, will stay home.
When this second group stays home (as is their right), they take their bold and unusual ideas with them.
By inviting a racist, you are not selecting for âbold and unusual ideasâ. You are selecting for racism.
And yes, a similar dynamic will play out with many controversial ideas. Which is why you need to exit the meta level, and make deliberate choices about which ideas you want to keep, and which groups of people you are okay with driving away. This also comes with a responsibility to treat said topics with appropriate levels of care and consideration, something that, for example, Bostrom failed horribly at.
I feel like youâre trying to equivocate âwrong or heartlessâ (or âheartless-and-prejudiced,â as I called it elsewhere) with âsocially provocativeâ or âcauses outrage to a subset of readers.â
That feels like misdirection.
I see two different issues here:
(1) Are some ideas that cause social backlash still valuable?
(2) Are some ideas shitty and worth condemning?
My answer is yes to both.
When someone expresses a view that belongs into (2), pointing at the existence of (1) isnât a good defense.
You may be saying that we should be humble and canât tell the difference, but I think we can. Moral relativism sucks.
FWIW, if I thought we couldnât tell the difference, then it wouldnât be obvious to me that we should go for âcondemn pretty much nothingâ as opposed to âcondemn everything that causes controversy.â Both of these seem equally extremely bad.
I see that youâre not quite advocating for âcondemn nothingâ because you write this bit:
It depends on what you mean exactly, but I think this may not be going far enough. Some people donât cult-founder-style invent new beliefs with some ulterior motive (like making money), but the beliefs they âhonestlyâ come to may still be hateful and prejudiced. Also, some people might be aware that thereâs a lot of misanthropy and wanting to feel superior in their thinking, but they might be manipulatively pretending to only be interested in âtruth-seeking,â especially when talking to impressionable members of the rationality community, where you get lots of social credit for signalling truth-seeking virtues.
To get to the heart of things, do you think Hananiaâs views are no worse than the examples you give? If so, I would expect people to say that heâs not actually racist.
However, if they are worse, then Iâd say letâs drop the cultural relativism and condemn them.
It seems to me like thereâs no disagreement by people familiar with Hanania that his views were worse in the past. Thatâs a red flag. Some people say heâs changed his views. Iâm not per se against giving people second chances, but it seems suspicious to me that someone who admits that theyâve had really shitty racist views in the past now continues to focus on issues where they â even according to other discussion participants here who defend him â still seem racist. Like, why isnât he trying to educate people on how not to fall victim to a hateful ideology, since he has personal experience with that. Itâs hard to come away with âah, now the motivation is compassion and wanting the best for everyone, when previously it was something dark.â (Iâm not saying such changes of heart are impossible, but I donât view it as likely, given what other commenters are saying.)
Anyway, to comment on your examples:
Singer faced most of the heat for his views on preimplantation diagnostics and disability before EA became a movement. Still, Iâd bet that, if EAs had been around back then, many EAs, and especially the ones I most admire and agree with, wouldâve come to his defense.
I just skimmed that eugenics article you link to and it seems fine to me, or even good. Also, most of the pushback there from EA forum participants is about the strategy of still using the word âeugenicsâ instead of using a different word, so many people donât seem to disagree much with the substance of the article.
In Bostromâs case, I donât think anyone thinks that Bostromâs comments from long ago were a good thing, but thereâs a difference between them being awkward and tone-deaf, vs them being hateful or hate-inspired. (And itâs more forgivable for people to be awkward and tone-deaf when theyâre young.)
Lastly, on Scott Alexanderâs example, whether intelligence differences are at least partly genetic is an empirical question, not a moral one. It might well be influenced by someone having hateful moral views, so it matters where a personâs interest in that sort of issue is coming from. Does it come from a place of hate or wanting to seem superior, or does it come from a desire for truth-seeking and believing that knowing whatâs the case makes it easier to help? (And: Does the person make any actual efforts to help disadvantaged groups?) As Scott Alexander points out himself:
So, all these examples (I think Zach Davisâs writing is more ârationality communityâ than EA, and Iâm not really familiar with it, so I wonât comment on it) seem fine to me.
When I said,
This wasnât about, âCan we find some random people (who we otherwise wouldnât listen to when it comes to other topics) who will be outraged.â
Instead, I meant that we can look at peopleâs views at the object level and decide whether theyâre coming from a place of compassion for everyone and equal consideration of interests, or whether theyâre coming from a darker place.
And someone can have wrong views that arenât hateful:
Iâm not sure if youâre using âhatefulâ here as a weird synonym to âwrong,â or whether your extended relatives have similarities to the Westboro Baptist Church.
Normally, I think of people who are for abortion bans as merely misguided (since theyâre often literally misguided about empirical questions, or sometimes they seem to have an inability to move away from rigid-category thinking and not understand the necessity of having a different logic for non-typical examples/âedge cases).
When I speak of âhateful,â itâs something more. I then mean that the ideology has an affinity for appealing to peopleâs darker motivations. I think ideologies like that are properly dangerous, as weâve seen historically. (And it applies to, e.g., Communism just as well as to racism.)
I agree with you that conferences do very little âvettingâ (and find this is okay), but I think the little vetting that they do and should do includes âdonât bring in people who are mouthpieces to ideologies that appeal to peopleâs dark instincts.â (And also things like, âdonât bring in people who are known to cause harm to others,â whether thatâs through sexually predatory behavior or the tendency to form mini-cults around themselves.)
Agreed. I think the 2008-10 postings under the Hoste pseudonym are highly relevant insofar as they show a sustained pattern of bigotry during that time. They are just not consistent in my mind with having fallen into error despite even minimally good-faith, truth-seeking behavior combined with major errors in judgment. Sample quotations in this article. Once you get to that point, you may get a second chance at some future time, but Iâm not inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt on your second chance:
A person who published statements like the Hoste statements over a period of time, but has reformed, should be on notice that there was something in them that led them to the point of glorifying white nationalism and at least espousing white supremacist beliefs. (I donât care to read any more of the Hoste writings to be more precise than that.) An actually reformed white nationalist should know to be very cautious in what they write about Hispanic and African-American persons, because they should know that a deep prejudice once resided within them and might still be lurking beneath at some level.
The establishment of clear, sustained bigotry at time-1 would ordinarily justify an inference that any deeply problematic statements at later times are also the result of bigotry unless the evidence suggests otherwise. In contrast, it is relatively more likely that a deeply problematic statement by someone without a past history of bigotry could reflect unconscious (or at least semi-conscious?) racism, a severe but fairly isolated lack of judgment, or other serious issues that are nevertheless more forgivable than outright bigotry.
I agree with you when you said that we can know evil ideas when we see them and rightly condemn them. We donât have to adopt some sort of generic welcomingness to all ideas, including extremist hate ideologies.
I disagree with you about some of the examples of alleged racism or prejudice or hateful views attributed to people like Nick Bostrom and Scott Alexander. I definitely wouldnât wave these examples away by saying they âseem fine to me.â I think one thing youâre trying to say is that these examples are very different from someone being overtly and egregiously white supremacist in the worst way like Richard Hanania, and I agree. But I wouldnât say these examples are âfineâ.
It is okay to criticize the views and behaviour of figures perceived to be influential in EA. I think thatâs healthy.
Appreciate the reply. I donât have a well-informed opinion about Hanania in particular, and I really donât care to read enough of his writing to try to get one, so I think I said everything I can say about the topic (e.g. I canât really speak to whether Hananiaâs views are specifically worse than all the examples I think of when I think of EA views that people may find outrageous.)
Wikipedia:
See this comment for a more detailed survey of Hananiaâs white supremacy.