While I appreciate your saying you don’t intend to ban topics, I think there is considerable risk that this sort of policy becomes a form of de facto censorship. In the same way that we should be wary of Isolated Demands for Rigour, so too we should also be wary of Isolated Demands for Sensitivity.
Take for example the first item on your list—lets call it A).
Whether it is or has been right or necessary that women have less influence over intellectual debate and less economic and political power
I agree that this is not a great topic for an EA discussion. I haven’t seen any arguments about the cost-effectiveness of a cause area that rely on whether A) is true or false. It seems unlikely that specifically feminist or anti-feminist causes would be the best things to work on, even if you thought A) was very true or false. If such a topic was very distracting, I can even see it making sense to essentially ban discussion of it, as LessWrong used to do in practice with regard Politics.
My concern is that a rule/recommendation against discussing such a topic might in practice be applied very unequally. For example, I think that someone who says
As you know, women have long suffered from discrimination, resulting a lack of political power, and their contributions being overlooked. This is unjust, and the effects are still felt today.
would not bechastised for doing so, or feel that they had violated the rule/suggestion.
However, my guess is that someone who said
As you know, the degree of discrimination against women has been greatly exaggerated, and in many areas, like conscription or homicide risk, they actually enjoy major advantages over men.
might be criticized for doing so, and might even agree (if only privately) that they had in some sense violated this rule/guideline with regard topic A).
If this is the case, then this policy is de facto a silencing not of topics, but of opinions, which I think is much harder to justify.
As a list of verboten opinions, this list also has the undesirable attribute of being very partisan. Looking down the list, it seems that in almost every case the discouraged/forbidden opinion is, in contemporary US political parlance, the (more) Right Wing opinion, and the assumed ‘default’ ‘acceptable’ one is the (more) Left Wing opinion. In addition, my impression (though I am less sure here) is that it is also biased against opinions disproportionately held by older people.
And yet these are two groups that are dramatically under-represented in the EA movement! (source) Certainly it seems that, on a numerical basis, conservatives are more under-represented than some of the protected groups mentioned in this article. This sort of list seems likely to make older and more conservative people feel less welcome, not more. Various viewpoints they might object to have been enshrined, and other topics, whose discussion conservatives find disasteful but is nonetheless not uncommon in the EA community, are not contraindicated.
For a generally well-received article on how to partially address this, you might enjoy Ozy’s piece here.
While I appreciate your saying you don’t intend to ban topics, I think there is considerable risk that this sort of policy becomes a form of de facto censorship. In the same way that we should be wary of Isolated Demands for Rigour, so too we should also be wary of Isolated Demands for Sensitivity.
Take for example the first item on your list—lets call it A).
I agree that this is not a great topic for an EA discussion. I haven’t seen any arguments about the cost-effectiveness of a cause area that rely on whether A) is true or false. It seems unlikely that specifically feminist or anti-feminist causes would be the best things to work on, even if you thought A) was very true or false. If such a topic was very distracting, I can even see it making sense to essentially ban discussion of it, as LessWrong used to do in practice with regard Politics.
My concern is that a rule/recommendation against discussing such a topic might in practice be applied very unequally. For example, I think that someone who says
would not be chastised for doing so, or feel that they had violated the rule/suggestion.
However, my guess is that someone who said
might be criticized for doing so, and might even agree (if only privately) that they had in some sense violated this rule/guideline with regard topic A).
If this is the case, then this policy is de facto a silencing not of topics, but of opinions, which I think is much harder to justify.
As a list of verboten opinions, this list also has the undesirable attribute of being very partisan. Looking down the list, it seems that in almost every case the discouraged/forbidden opinion is, in contemporary US political parlance, the (more) Right Wing opinion, and the assumed ‘default’ ‘acceptable’ one is the (more) Left Wing opinion. In addition, my impression (though I am less sure here) is that it is also biased against opinions disproportionately held by older people.
And yet these are two groups that are dramatically under-represented in the EA movement! (source) Certainly it seems that, on a numerical basis, conservatives are more under-represented than some of the protected groups mentioned in this article. This sort of list seems likely to make older and more conservative people feel less welcome, not more. Various viewpoints they might object to have been enshrined, and other topics, whose discussion conservatives find disasteful but is nonetheless not uncommon in the EA community, are not contraindicated.
For a generally well-received article on how to partially address this, you might enjoy Ozy’s piece here.
Ozy also wrote a response to this article which agrees with some of your points:
https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2019/05/15/a-response-to-making-discussions-in-ea-groups-inclusive/