Sorry to revisit this, and I understand if you don’t. I must apologies if my previous comments felt a bit defensive from my side, as I do feel your statements towards me were untrue, but I think I have more clarity on the perspective you’ve come from and some of the possible baggage brought to this conversation, and I’m truly sorry if I’ve be ignorant of relevant context.
I think this comment is more going to address the overall conversation between us two on here, and where I perceive it to have gone, although I may be wrong, and I am open to corrections.
Firstly, I think you have assumed this statement is essentially a product of CSER, perhaps because it has come from me, who was a visit at CSER, and has been similarly critical of your work in a way that I know some at CSER have. [I should say, for the record on this, I do think your work is of high quality, and I hope you’ve never got the impression that I don’t. Perhaps some of my criticisms last year towards the review process your report went through felt poor quality (and I can’t remember what they were and may not stand by them today), but if so, I am sorry.] Nonetheless, I think its really important to keep in mind that this statement is absolutely not a ‘CSER’ statement; I’d like to remind you of the signatories, and whilst every signatory doesn’t agree with everything, I hope you can see why I got so defensive when you claimed that the signatories weren’t being transparent and actually attempting to just make EA another left-wing movement. I tried really hard to get a plurality of voices in this document, which is why such an accusation offended me, but ultimately I shouldn’t have got defensive over this, and I must apologise.
Secondly, on that point, I think we may have been talking about different things when you said ‘heterodox CSER approaches to EA.’ Certainly, I think Ehrlich and much of what he has called for is deeply morally reprehensible, and the capacity for ideas like his to gain ground is a genuine danger of pluralistic xrisk, because it is harder to police which ideas are acceptable or not (similarly, I have recieved criticism because this letter fails to call out eugenics explicitly, another danger). Nonetheless, I think we can trust as a more pluralistic community develops it would better navigate where the bounds of acceptable or unacceptable views and behaviours are, and that this would be better than us simply suggesting this now. Maybe this is a crux we/the signatories and much of the commens section disagree on. I think we can push for more pluralism and diversity in response to our situation whilst trusting that the more pluralistic ERS community will police how far this can go. You disagree and think we need to lay this out now otherwise it will either a) end up with anything goes, including views we find moral reprehensible or b) will mean EA is hijaked by the left. I think the second argument is weaker, particularly because this statement is not about EA, but about building a broader field of Existential Risk Studies, although perhaps you see this as a bit of a trojan horse. I understand I am missing some of the historical context that makes you think it is, but I hope that the signatories list may be enough to show you that I really do mean what I say when I call for pluralism.
I also must apologise if the call for retraction of certain parts of your comment seemed uncollegiate or disrespectful to you; this was certainly not my intention. I, however, felt that your painting of my views was incorrect, and thought you may, in light of this, be happy to change; although given you are not happy to retract, I assume you are either trying to make the argument that these are in fact my underlying beliefs (or that I am being dishonest, although I have no reason to suspect you would say this!).
I think there are a few more substantive points we disagree on, but to me this seems like the crux of the more heated discussion, and I must apologise it got so heated
Thanks for these comments and for the discussion. I do genuinely appreciate discussing things with you—I appreciate the directness and willingness to engage. I also appreciate that given how direct we both are and how rude I sometimes am/seem on here, it can create tension, and that is mainly my fault here.
I think my cruxes are:
I suppose my broader point is that EA is <1% of social movements ‘trying to do social good’ in some broad sense. >98% of the remainder is focused on broadly ‘do what sounds good’ vibes, with a left wing valence, i.e. work on climate change, rich country education, homelessness, identity politics type stuff etc. Over the years, I have seen many proposals to make EA more like the remainder, or even just make it exactly the same as the remainder, in the name of diversity or pluralism.
This strikes me as an Orwellian use of those terms. I don’t think it would in any way create more pluralism or diversity to have EA shift in the direction of doing that kind of stuff. EA offers a distinctive perspective and I think it is valuable to have that in the marketplace of ideas to actually provide a challenge to what remains the overwhelmingly dominant form of thinking about ‘trying to do good’.
I also view the >98% as very epistemically closed; I don’t think they are a good advert for an epistemic promised land for EAs.
There is a powerful social force that I do not understand which means that every organisation that is not explicitly right wing eventually becomes left wing, and I have seen that dynamic at play repeatedly over the last 13 years, and I would view this as the latest example. EA is not focused on areas I would view as particularly left or right valenced at the moment.
I am also very opposed to efforts to make hiring decisions according to demographic considerations. I think the instrumental considerations enumerated for doing this are usually weak on closer examination, and I think the commonsense idea that people who do best on work-related hiring criteria will be best at their job is fundamentally correct and the reason it is fundamentally correct are obvious. The idea that implicit bias against demographic groups could be driving demographic skews in EA also strikes me as extremely implausible. It is violently at odds with my lived experience of being on hiring panels or knowing about them at other organisations, and there being a very strong explicit bias against the typical EA demographic. The idea that implicit bias could be strong enough to overcome this is not credible.
I am aware that I am setting my precious social capital alight in making these arguments (which is, I think, a lesson in itself)
Hi John,
Sorry to revisit this, and I understand if you don’t. I must apologies if my previous comments felt a bit defensive from my side, as I do feel your statements towards me were untrue, but I think I have more clarity on the perspective you’ve come from and some of the possible baggage brought to this conversation, and I’m truly sorry if I’ve be ignorant of relevant context.
I think this comment is more going to address the overall conversation between us two on here, and where I perceive it to have gone, although I may be wrong, and I am open to corrections.
Firstly, I think you have assumed this statement is essentially a product of CSER, perhaps because it has come from me, who was a visit at CSER, and has been similarly critical of your work in a way that I know some at CSER have. [I should say, for the record on this, I do think your work is of high quality, and I hope you’ve never got the impression that I don’t. Perhaps some of my criticisms last year towards the review process your report went through felt poor quality (and I can’t remember what they were and may not stand by them today), but if so, I am sorry.] Nonetheless, I think its really important to keep in mind that this statement is absolutely not a ‘CSER’ statement; I’d like to remind you of the signatories, and whilst every signatory doesn’t agree with everything, I hope you can see why I got so defensive when you claimed that the signatories weren’t being transparent and actually attempting to just make EA another left-wing movement. I tried really hard to get a plurality of voices in this document, which is why such an accusation offended me, but ultimately I shouldn’t have got defensive over this, and I must apologise.
Secondly, on that point, I think we may have been talking about different things when you said ‘heterodox CSER approaches to EA.’ Certainly, I think Ehrlich and much of what he has called for is deeply morally reprehensible, and the capacity for ideas like his to gain ground is a genuine danger of pluralistic xrisk, because it is harder to police which ideas are acceptable or not (similarly, I have recieved criticism because this letter fails to call out eugenics explicitly, another danger). Nonetheless, I think we can trust as a more pluralistic community develops it would better navigate where the bounds of acceptable or unacceptable views and behaviours are, and that this would be better than us simply suggesting this now. Maybe this is a crux we/the signatories and much of the commens section disagree on. I think we can push for more pluralism and diversity in response to our situation whilst trusting that the more pluralistic ERS community will police how far this can go. You disagree and think we need to lay this out now otherwise it will either a) end up with anything goes, including views we find moral reprehensible or b) will mean EA is hijaked by the left. I think the second argument is weaker, particularly because this statement is not about EA, but about building a broader field of Existential Risk Studies, although perhaps you see this as a bit of a trojan horse. I understand I am missing some of the historical context that makes you think it is, but I hope that the signatories list may be enough to show you that I really do mean what I say when I call for pluralism.
I also must apologise if the call for retraction of certain parts of your comment seemed uncollegiate or disrespectful to you; this was certainly not my intention. I, however, felt that your painting of my views was incorrect, and thought you may, in light of this, be happy to change; although given you are not happy to retract, I assume you are either trying to make the argument that these are in fact my underlying beliefs (or that I am being dishonest, although I have no reason to suspect you would say this!).
I think there are a few more substantive points we disagree on, but to me this seems like the crux of the more heated discussion, and I must apologise it got so heated
Thanks for these comments and for the discussion. I do genuinely appreciate discussing things with you—I appreciate the directness and willingness to engage. I also appreciate that given how direct we both are and how rude I sometimes am/seem on here, it can create tension, and that is mainly my fault here.
I think my cruxes are:
I suppose my broader point is that EA is <1% of social movements ‘trying to do social good’ in some broad sense. >98% of the remainder is focused on broadly ‘do what sounds good’ vibes, with a left wing valence, i.e. work on climate change, rich country education, homelessness, identity politics type stuff etc. Over the years, I have seen many proposals to make EA more like the remainder, or even just make it exactly the same as the remainder, in the name of diversity or pluralism.
This strikes me as an Orwellian use of those terms. I don’t think it would in any way create more pluralism or diversity to have EA shift in the direction of doing that kind of stuff. EA offers a distinctive perspective and I think it is valuable to have that in the marketplace of ideas to actually provide a challenge to what remains the overwhelmingly dominant form of thinking about ‘trying to do good’.
I also view the >98% as very epistemically closed; I don’t think they are a good advert for an epistemic promised land for EAs.
There is a powerful social force that I do not understand which means that every organisation that is not explicitly right wing eventually becomes left wing, and I have seen that dynamic at play repeatedly over the last 13 years, and I would view this as the latest example. EA is not focused on areas I would view as particularly left or right valenced at the moment.
I am also very opposed to efforts to make hiring decisions according to demographic considerations. I think the instrumental considerations enumerated for doing this are usually weak on closer examination, and I think the commonsense idea that people who do best on work-related hiring criteria will be best at their job is fundamentally correct and the reason it is fundamentally correct are obvious. The idea that implicit bias against demographic groups could be driving demographic skews in EA also strikes me as extremely implausible. It is violently at odds with my lived experience of being on hiring panels or knowing about them at other organisations, and there being a very strong explicit bias against the typical EA demographic. The idea that implicit bias could be strong enough to overcome this is not credible.
I am aware that I am setting my precious social capital alight in making these arguments (which is, I think, a lesson in itself)