I am strongly ambivalent about the publishing of the pledge as written; I was invited to sign by someone who I trust and respect, the original post is made by someone who Iâve clearly seen exhibit thoughtfulness and acumen in thorny situations, and yet when I initially read the statement my thoughts were largely along the same lines as Duncanâs. I came here to find that heâd articulated them more thoroughly than I could. As is so often the case, his opinion is clearer than mine, pointing in the same direction, but also seems to go further than mine.
In this instance I think the claim of probable harm by crowding out the space is overstated, and I am moved by Lorenzoâs frame of âthe counterfactual is likely to have been nothing rather than something better.â So rather than this being a well-intentioned pavestone on the road to hell or on the road to clear improvements, itâs more I see it more as a symbolic marker at the fork of those two paths. Because Iâm not sure which direction the community will take (or if this pledge actually is farther along the better/âworse paths and not just in the fork), I havenât signed.
What I am more confident about is that this response of âAnti-racism and Anti-sexism in EA shouldnât be top cause areas for 99% of peopleâ is clearly detrimental. Because while I agree with the quoted title, Iâm also confident that the writers and signers of the pledge would agree with the title. Nothing that Iâve seen from the people involved, including the posting of this pledge, indicates that anyone believes that anti-racism and anti-sexism is considered a top cause area or that action in those directions should be prioritized over other work. The position that you are taking, and the obvious implication made by the âshallow pond and the sexist comment thought experimentâ relies on the false conflation of âtaking any actionâ with âadvancing this cause to oneâs top priority.â
Rocky wrote, solicited feedback, and published the pledge as part of her role as a community builder, while doing other EA movement building work that I think can (arguably) be valued as a top cause area. The various signatories likewise took a few minutes to read and sign, and none of them indicated that they were choosing this as a focus. Granted, the lack of specificity is part of my problem with the pledge as written, but I donât think it justifies pushback of the nature:
âDo Atlanta, Deloitte or MIT have no more important cause areas than this and should really focus on this?â
I model those who wrote and signed this pledge as considering taking some, limited, action on maintaining robust anti-racism and anti-sexism norms in the community as essential needs to keep the community healthy and functioning. Like any other work in EA infrastructure, this is just part of the necessary business; does someone spending part of the day making sure the WiFi is working in an EA office mean they think âproviding internet access to EAs is a top cause area?â
Your post on the other hand, if it follows its own logic as I understand it, indicates that you think it should be a top cause area for yourself to argue against anti-racism and anti-sexism work. If you believe that writing and posting on the EA forum equates to considering a topic oneâs focus, then I genuinely ask: what moral calculus justifies your own response? I personally donât hold the view that writing a forum post is equivalent to prioritizing its topic over any other. I think, like keeping the WiFi running, the conversation initiated by Rocky and the criticism it generated in Duncan and myself are part of what keeps the EA movement healthy and capable of working effectively and impactfully on the causes we actually consider important.
Thank you for your reply and questions. As stated at the beginning my postâit was bit of a rant, but still I probably used too much of hyperboles and you point out them well.
So please let me clarify /â answer your last paragraph:
If you believe that writing and posting on the EA forum equates to considering a topic oneâs focus, then I genuinely ask: what moral calculus justifies your own response? I personally donât hold the view that writing a forum post is equivalent to prioritizing its topic over any other.
If it was just a forum post I wouldnât have reacted like that. I consider âworking on a statement for the past few weeksâ (as quoted from the beginning of the OP), making a public pledge and gathering a group of signatories to sign it as something notably bigger, than just a forum post. Something that shouldnât be used like that. Especially for applause lights (vide Duncanâs answer).
Your post on the other hand, if it follows its own logic as I understand it, indicates that you think it should be a top cause area for yourself to argue against anti-racism and anti-sexism work.
Not a top cause area (again, forum post < pledge with signatories), but something I think is somewhat important. Because IMO -isms are not going to erode this communityâI would bet almost everyone here is against them, a lot of us actively. But losing EA valuesâgood epistemic, avoiding virtue signalling and poseuring, avoiding group-think, etc. might.
I do wish that I had been more constructive in my own reply, rather than merely arguing against your arguments. I will try to remedy that here by specifically addressing why I declined an invitation to sign, despite my understanding that there are genuine problems of racism and sexism in our community and my desire to work against them.
As I led with, I am strongly ambivalent. So while it would not take much to tip me over into the belief that signing is probably net good, it would take a great deal more to assuage me that all harms of such a pledge were acknowledged and mitigated. I updated positively on Rockyâs response to Duncan, explaining the rationale of removing specific actions due to an attempt to create a generalized statement upon which groups (with varying levels of resources) could build. If there were language in the pledge that clearly addressed this, it would probably be sufficient for me to sign and cautiously endorse the pledge.
The best possible version of this proposal that I can imagine is not a pledge, but a roll call. For example, I would be completely on board if EA-NYC had finished their public DEI policy and made an announcement to the effect of: âWe condemn racism and sexism, here is what we are trying to do about it. Please give us feedback and feel free to use any element of ours to establish your own policy. Once you have done so, please sign and link to your own policy, and in that way we can make a strong demonstration to those who are uncertain about the EA communityâs commitment against bigotry.â
Similarly, I do think the statement as written can easily be perceived as applause lights. I think it can be (and is) completely true that many EAsâ experience is that racism and sexism are already universally condemned and that community builders regularly encounter those with uncertainty. So I am very empathetic to the perceived need to put out a statement even before specific proposals are ironed out. (Having been through the process myself, I can well imagine the âweeksâ that the simple pledge above took were not actually workweeks of any individual(s), but merely the difficulty of establishing any kind of consensus around messaging). If the pledge made clear that it did not aim to reify some new commitment to anti-racism/âanti-sexism and was intended primarily to be a reference of common knowledge towards which we could direct uncertain newcomers (or antagonistic journalists), that too might have been sufficient to convince me to sign.
The largest factor for me is that which Duncan addressed: the potential consequences of dividing of the relevant parties into those who did sign, and those who didnât. I see the value in a list of names, I really do. And as Iâve said, now that the list exists, it wouldnât take very much more to get me to sign it. But I would still prefer a world where there wasnât one.
I model those who donât see the possible harm as making the same (imho) mistake as those who dismiss privacy concerns with âif you donât have anything to hide, you donât have anything to fear.â Because who could object to declaring oneself against bigotry? I donât really think itâs probable that anyone in EA will weaponize the division any more than I think itâs dangerous that some people post their home addresses on lists of EA couchsurfing options. I nevertheless want to support robust privacy norms, and norms against creating lists of âRight Mindedâ individuals.
I think the value created by the list, of demonstration of commitment, could be accomplished better by lists of actions taken (and, in EA fashion, a bunch of discussion about the best ways to measure the impact of those actions). I donât have a suggestion on how to mitigate the potential harms of dividing people into signers and not signers (besides my most vehement exhortation to not create a list of non-signers. If the list of those invited to sign existed and clearly delineated between those who signed and those who didnât, I would absolutely object to the entire attempt). Iâm not sure if it would have been good to add language that acknowledges the possible harm, though I would appreciate it.
I do want to note that in addition to the comments above, a primary consideration for why I did not/âhave not yet signed the pledge is that I do not speak on behalf of any community building organization. I do community building work, and may do so in a more official capacity in the near future. I am in the early stages of establishing a role that will hopefully come to fruition; if I were currently holding that position I would have signed the pledge (to represent the stance of the organization) and voiced my objections. As it stands, I think it is valuable to speak as an individual (the only, so far as I know) invited to sign the pledge who has declined. Because although some significant part of my objection is that the existence of such a pledge could in theory be used as a weapon against those who do not sign it, in practice I do not believe the individuals who created the pledge would in fact do so.
I am strongly ambivalent about the publishing of the pledge as written; I was invited to sign by someone who I trust and respect, the original post is made by someone who Iâve clearly seen exhibit thoughtfulness and acumen in thorny situations, and yet when I initially read the statement my thoughts were largely along the same lines as Duncanâs. I came here to find that heâd articulated them more thoroughly than I could. As is so often the case, his opinion is clearer than mine, pointing in the same direction, but also seems to go further than mine.
In this instance I think the claim of probable harm by crowding out the space is overstated, and I am moved by Lorenzoâs frame of âthe counterfactual is likely to have been nothing rather than something better.â So rather than this being a well-intentioned pavestone on the road to hell or on the road to clear improvements,
itâs moreI see it more as a symbolic marker at the fork of those two paths. Because Iâm not sure which direction the community will take (or if this pledge actually is farther along the better/âworse paths and not just in the fork), I havenât signed.What I am more confident about is that this response of âAnti-racism and Anti-sexism in EA shouldnât be top cause areas for 99% of peopleâ is clearly detrimental. Because while I agree with the quoted title, Iâm also confident that the writers and signers of the pledge would agree with the title. Nothing that Iâve seen from the people involved, including the posting of this pledge, indicates that anyone believes that anti-racism and anti-sexism is considered a top cause area or that action in those directions should be prioritized over other work. The position that you are taking, and the obvious implication made by the âshallow pond and the sexist comment thought experimentâ relies on the false conflation of âtaking any actionâ with âadvancing this cause to oneâs top priority.â
Rocky wrote, solicited feedback, and published the pledge as part of her role as a community builder, while doing other EA movement building work that I think can (arguably) be valued as a top cause area. The various signatories likewise took a few minutes to read and sign, and none of them indicated that they were choosing this as a focus. Granted, the lack of specificity is part of my problem with the pledge as written, but I donât think it justifies pushback of the nature:
I model those who wrote and signed this pledge as considering taking some, limited, action on maintaining robust anti-racism and anti-sexism norms in the community as essential needs to keep the community healthy and functioning. Like any other work in EA infrastructure, this is just part of the necessary business; does someone spending part of the day making sure the WiFi is working in an EA office mean they think âproviding internet access to EAs is a top cause area?â
Your post on the other hand, if it follows its own logic as I understand it, indicates that you think it should be a top cause area for yourself to argue against anti-racism and anti-sexism work. If you believe that writing and posting on the EA forum equates to considering a topic oneâs focus, then I genuinely ask: what moral calculus justifies your own response? I personally donât hold the view that writing a forum post is equivalent to prioritizing its topic over any other. I think, like keeping the WiFi running, the conversation initiated by Rocky and the criticism it generated in Duncan and myself are part of what keeps the EA movement healthy and capable of working effectively and impactfully on the causes we actually consider important.
Thank you for your reply and questions. As stated at the beginning my postâit was bit of a rant, but still I probably used too much of hyperboles and you point out them well.
So please let me clarify /â answer your last paragraph:
If it was just a forum post I wouldnât have reacted like that. I consider âworking on a statement for the past few weeksâ (as quoted from the beginning of the OP), making a public pledge and gathering a group of signatories to sign it as something notably bigger, than just a forum post. Something that shouldnât be used like that. Especially for applause lights (vide Duncanâs answer).
Not a top cause area (again, forum post < pledge with signatories), but something I think is somewhat important. Because IMO -isms are not going to erode this communityâI would bet almost everyone here is against them, a lot of us actively. But losing EA valuesâgood epistemic, avoiding virtue signalling and poseuring, avoiding group-think, etc. might.
To paraphrase Does Sam make me want to renounce the actions of the EA community? No. Does your reaction? Absolutely.:
Does sexism in EA make me want to renounce the actions of the EA community? No.[1] Does this pledge? A bit.
Because it is unanimously condemned.
I do wish that I had been more constructive in my own reply, rather than merely arguing against your arguments. I will try to remedy that here by specifically addressing why I declined an invitation to sign, despite my understanding that there are genuine problems of racism and sexism in our community and my desire to work against them.
As I led with, I am strongly ambivalent. So while it would not take much to tip me over into the belief that signing is probably net good, it would take a great deal more to assuage me that all harms of such a pledge were acknowledged and mitigated. I updated positively on Rockyâs response to Duncan, explaining the rationale of removing specific actions due to an attempt to create a generalized statement upon which groups (with varying levels of resources) could build. If there were language in the pledge that clearly addressed this, it would probably be sufficient for me to sign and cautiously endorse the pledge.
The best possible version of this proposal that I can imagine is not a pledge, but a roll call. For example, I would be completely on board if EA-NYC had finished their public DEI policy and made an announcement to the effect of: âWe condemn racism and sexism, here is what we are trying to do about it. Please give us feedback and feel free to use any element of ours to establish your own policy. Once you have done so, please sign and link to your own policy, and in that way we can make a strong demonstration to those who are uncertain about the EA communityâs commitment against bigotry.â
Similarly, I do think the statement as written can easily be perceived as applause lights. I think it can be (and is) completely true that many EAsâ experience is that racism and sexism are already universally condemned and that community builders regularly encounter those with uncertainty. So I am very empathetic to the perceived need to put out a statement even before specific proposals are ironed out. (Having been through the process myself, I can well imagine the âweeksâ that the simple pledge above took were not actually workweeks of any individual(s), but merely the difficulty of establishing any kind of consensus around messaging). If the pledge made clear that it did not aim to reify some new commitment to anti-racism/âanti-sexism and was intended primarily to be a reference of common knowledge towards which we could direct uncertain newcomers (or antagonistic journalists), that too might have been sufficient to convince me to sign.
The largest factor for me is that which Duncan addressed: the potential consequences of dividing of the relevant parties into those who did sign, and those who didnât. I see the value in a list of names, I really do. And as Iâve said, now that the list exists, it wouldnât take very much more to get me to sign it. But I would still prefer a world where there wasnât one.
I model those who donât see the possible harm as making the same (imho) mistake as those who dismiss privacy concerns with âif you donât have anything to hide, you donât have anything to fear.â Because who could object to declaring oneself against bigotry? I donât really think itâs probable that anyone in EA will weaponize the division any more than I think itâs dangerous that some people post their home addresses on lists of EA couchsurfing options. I nevertheless want to support robust privacy norms, and norms against creating lists of âRight Mindedâ individuals.
I think the value created by the list, of demonstration of commitment, could be accomplished better by lists of actions taken (and, in EA fashion, a bunch of discussion about the best ways to measure the impact of those actions). I donât have a suggestion on how to mitigate the potential harms of dividing people into signers and not signers (besides my most vehement exhortation to not create a list of non-signers. If the list of those invited to sign existed and clearly delineated between those who signed and those who didnât, I would absolutely object to the entire attempt). Iâm not sure if it would have been good to add language that acknowledges the possible harm, though I would appreciate it.
I do want to note that in addition to the comments above, a primary consideration for why I did not/âhave not yet signed the pledge is that I do not speak on behalf of any community building organization. I do community building work, and may do so in a more official capacity in the near future. I am in the early stages of establishing a role that will hopefully come to fruition; if I were currently holding that position I would have signed the pledge (to represent the stance of the organization) and voiced my objections. As it stands, I think it is valuable to speak as an individual (the only, so far as I know) invited to sign the pledge who has declined. Because although some significant part of my objection is that the existence of such a pledge could in theory be used as a weapon against those who do not sign it, in practice I do not believe the individuals who created the pledge would in fact do so.