It seems like you believe that one’s decision of whether or not to disinvite a speaker should depend only on one’s beliefs about the speaker’s character, intellectual merits, etc. and in particular not on how other people would react.
Suppose that you receive a credible threat that if you let already-invited person X speak at your event, then multiple bombs would be set off, killing hundreds of people. Can we agree that in that situation it is correct to cancel the event?
If so, then it seems like at least in extreme cases, you agree that the decision of whether or not to hold an event can depend on how other people react. I don’t see why you seem to assume that in the EA Munich case, the consequences are not bad enough that EA Munich’s decision is reasonable.
Some plausible (though not probable) consequences of hosting the talk:
Protests disrupting the event (this has previously happened to a local EA group)
Organizers themselves get cancelled
Most members of the club leave due to risk of the above or disagreements with the club’s priorities
At least the first two seem quite bad, there’s room for debate on the third.
In addition, while I agree that the extremes of cancel culture are in fact very harmful for EA, it’s hard to argue that disinviting a speaker is anywhere near the level of any of the examples you give. Notably, they are not calling for a mob to e.g. remove Robin Hanson from his post, they are simply cancelling one particular talk that he was going to give at their venue. This definitely does have a negative impact on norms, but it doesn’t seem obvious to me that the impact is very large.
Separately, I think it is also reasonable for a random person to come to believe that Robin Hanson is not arguing in good faith.
(Note: I’m still undecided on whether or not the decision itself was good or not.)
Naturally, you have to understand Rohin, that in all of the situations where you tell me what the threat is, I’m very motivated to do it anyway? It’s an emotion of stubbornness and anger, and when I flesh it out in game-theoretic terms it’s a strong signal of how much I’m willing to not submit to threats in general.
Returning to the emotional side, I want to say something like “f*ck you for threatening to kill people, I will never give you control over me and my community, and we will find you and we will make sure it was not worth it for you, at the cost of our own resources”.
Yeah, I’m aware that is the emotional response (I feel it too), and I agree the game theoretic reason for not giving in to threats is important. However, it’s certainly not a theorem of game theory that you always do better if you don’t give in to threats, and sometimes giving in will be the right decision.
we will find you and we will make sure it was not worth it for you, at the cost of our own resources
This is often not an option. (It seems pretty hard to retaliate against an online mob, though I suppose you could randomly select particular members to retaliate against.)
Another good example is bullying. A child has ~no resources to speak of, and bullies will threaten to hurt them unless they do X. Would you really advise this child not to give in to the bully?
(Assume for the sake of the hypothetical the child has already tried to get adults involved and it has done ~nothing, as I am told is in fact often the case. No, the child can’t coordinate with other children to fight the bully, because children are not that good at coordinating.)
Another case where ‘precommitment to refute all threats’ is an unwise strategy (and a case more relevant to the discussion, as I don’t think all opponents to hosting a speaker like Hanson either see themselves or should be seen as bullies attempting coercion) is where your opponent is trying to warn you rather than trying to blackmail you. (cf. 1, 2)
Suppose Alice sincerely believes some of Bob’s writing is unapologetically misogynistic. She believes it is important one does not give misogynists a platform and implicit approbation. Thus she finds hosting Bob abhorrent, and is dismayed that a group at her university is planning to do just this. She approaches this group, making clear her objections and stating her intention to, if this goes ahead, to (e.g.) protest this event, stridently criticise the group in the student paper for hosting him, petition the university to withdraw affiliation, and so on.
This could be an attempt to bully (where usual game theory provides a good reason to refuse to concede anything on principle). But it also could not be: Alice may be explaining what responses she would make to protect her interests which the groups planned action would harm, and hoping to find a better negotiated agreement for her and the EA group besides “They do X and I do Y”.
It can be hard to tell the difference, but some elements in this example speak against Alice being a bully wanting to blackmail the group to get her way: First is the plausibility of her interests recommending these actions to her even if they had no deterrent effect whatsoever (i.e. she’d do the same if the event had already happened). Second the actions she intends falls roughly falls in ‘fair game’ of how one can retaliate against those doing something they’re allowed to do which you deem to be wrong.
Alice is still not a bully even if her motivating beliefs re. Bob are both completely mistaken and unreasonable. She’s also still not a bully even if Alice’s implied second-order norms are wrong (e.g. maybe the public square would be better off if people didn’t stridently object to hosting speakers based on their supposed views on topics they are not speaking upon, etc.) Conflict is typically easy to navigate when you can dictate to your opponent what their interests should be and what they can license themselves to do. Alas such cases are rare.
It is extremely important not to respond to Alice as if she was a bully if in fact she is not, for two reasons. First, if she is acting in good faith, pre-committing to refuse any compromise for ‘do not give in to bullying’ reasons means one always ends up at ones respective BATNAs even if there was mutually beneficial compromises to be struck. Maybe there is no good compromise with Alice this time, but there may be the next time one finds oneself at cross-purposes.
Second, wrongly presuming bad faith for Alice seems apt to induce her to make a symmetrical mistake presuming bad faith for you. To Alice, malice explains well why you were unwilling to even contemplate compromise, why you considered yourself obliged out of principle to persist with actions that harm her interests, and why you call her desire to combat misogyny bullying and blackmail. If Alice also thinks about these things through the lens of game theory (although perhaps not in the most sophisticated way), she may reason she is rationally obliged to retaliate against you (even spitefully) to deter you from doing harm again.
The stage is set for continued escalation. Presumptive bad faith is pernicious, and can easily lead to martyring oneself needlessly on the wrong hill. I also note that ‘leaning into righteous anger’ or ‘take oneself as justified in thinking the worst of those opposed to you’ are not widely recognised as promising approaches in conflict resolution, bargaining, or negotiation.
I agree with parts of this and disagree with other parts.
First off:
First, if she is acting in good faith, pre-committing to refuse any compromise for ‘do not give in to bullying’ reasons means one always ends up at ones respective BATNAs even if there was mutually beneficial compromises to be struck.
Definitely agree that pre-committing seems like a bad idea (as you could probably guess from my previous comment).
Second, wrongly presuming bad faith for Alice seems apt to induce her to make a symmetrical mistake presuming bad faith for you. To Alice, malice explains well why you were unwilling to even contemplate compromise, why you considered yourself obliged out of principle to persist with actions that harm her interests, and why you call her desire to combat misogyny bullying and blackmail.
I agree with this in the abstract, but for the specifics of this particular case, do you in fact think that online mobs / cancel culture / groups who show up to protest your event without warning should be engaged with on a good faith assumption? I struggle to imagine any of these groups accepting anything other than full concession to their demands, such that you’re stuck with the BATNA regardless.
(I definitely agree that if someone emails you saying “I think this speaker is bad and you shouldn’t invite him”, and after some discussion they say “I’m sorry but I can’t agree with you and if you go through with this event I will protest / criticize you / have the university withdraw affiliation”, you should not treat this as a bad faith attack. Afaik this was not the case with EA Munich, though I don’t know the details.)
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Re: the first five paragraphs: I feel like this is disagreeing on how to use the word “bully” or “threat”, rather than anything super important. I’ll just make one note:
Alice is still not a bully even if her motivating beliefs re. Bob are both completely mistaken and unreasonable. She’s also still not a bully even if Alice’s implied second-order norms are wrong (e.g. maybe the public square would be better off if people didn’t stridently object to hosting speakers based on their supposed views on topics they are not speaking upon, etc.)
I’d agree with this if you could reasonably expect to convince Alice that she’s wrong on these counts, such that she then stops doing things like
(e.g.) protest this event, stridently criticise the group in the student paper for hosting him, petition the university to withdraw affiliation
But otherwise, given that she’s taking actions that destroy value for Bob without generating value for Alice (except via their impact on Bob’s actions), I think it is fine to think of this as a threat. (I am less attached to the bully metaphor—I meant that as an example of a threat.)
I agree with this in the abstract, but for the specifics of this particular case, do you in fact think that online mobs / cancel culture / groups who show up to protest your event without warning should be engaged with on a good faith assumption? I struggle to imagine any of these groups accepting anything other than full concession to their demands, such that you’re stuck with the BATNA regardless.
I think so.
In the abstract, ‘negotiating via ultimatum’ (e.g. “you must cancel the talk, or I will do this”) does not mean one is acting in bad faith. Alice may foresee there is no bargaining frontier, but is informing you what your BATNA looks like and gives you the opportunity to consider whether ‘giving in’ is nonetheless better for you (this may not be very ‘nice’, but it isn’t ‘blackmail’). A lot turns on whether her ‘or else’ is plausibly recommended by the lights of her interests (e.g. she would do these things if we had already held the event/she believed our pre-commitment to do so) or she is threatening spiteful actions where their primary value is her hope they alter our behaviour (e.g. she would at least privately wish she didn’t have to ‘follow through’ if we defied her).
The reason these are important to distinguish is ‘folk game theory’ gives a pro tanto reason to not give in the latter case, even if doing so is better than suffering the consequences (as you deter future attempts to coerce you). But not in the former one, as Alice’s motivation to retaliate does not rely on the chance you may acquiesce to her threats, and so she will not ‘go away’ after you’ve credibly demonstrated to her you will never do this.
On the particular case I think some of it was plausibly bad faith (i.e. if a major driver was ‘fleet in being’ threat that people would antisocially disrupt the event) but a lot of it probably wasn’t: “People badmouthing/thinking less of us for doing this” or (as Habryka put it) the ‘very explicit threat’ of an organisation removing their affiliation from EA Munich are all credibly/probably good faith warnings even if the only way to avoid them would have been complete concession. (There are lots of potential reasons I would threaten to stop associating with someone or something where the only way for me to relent is their complete surrender)
(I would be cautious about labelling things as mobs or cancel culture.)
[G]iven that she’s taking actions that destroy value for Bob without generating value for Alice (except via their impact on Bob’s actions), I think it is fine to think of this as a threat. (I am less attached to the bully metaphor—I meant that as an example of a threat.)
Let me take a more in-group example readers will find sympathetic.
When the NYT suggested it will run an article using Scott’s legal name, may of his supporters responded by complaining to the editor, organising petitions, cancelling their subscriptions (and encouraging others to do likewise), trying to coordinate sources/public figures to refuse access to NYT journalists, and so on. These are straightforwardly actions which ‘destroy value’ for the NYT, are substantially motivated to try and influence its behaviour, and was an ultimatum to boot (i.e. the only way the NYT can placate this ‘online mob’ is to fully concede on not using Scott’s legal name).
Yet presumably this strategy was not predicated on ‘only we are allowed to (or smart enough to) use game theory, so we can expect the NYT to irrationally give in to our threats when they should be ostentatiously doing exactly what we don’t want them to do to demonstrate they won’t be bullied’. For although these actions are ‘threats’, they are warnings/ good faith/ non-spiteful, as these responses are not just out of hope to coerce: these people would be minded to retaliate similarly if they only found out NYT’s intention after the article had been published.
Naturally the hope is that one can resolve conflict by a meeting of the minds: we might hope we can convince Alice to see things our way; and the NYT probably hopes the same. But if the disagreement prompting conflict remains, we should be cautious about how we use the word threat, especially in equivocating between commonsense use of the term (e.g. “I threaten to castigate Charlie publicly if she holds a conference on holocaust denial”) and the subspecies where folk game theory—and our own self-righteousness—strongly urges us to refute (e.g. “Life would be easier for us at the NYT if we acquiesced to those threatening to harm our reputation and livelihoods if we report things they don’t want us to. But we will never surrender the integrity of our journalism to bullies and blackmailers.”)
Yeah, I think I agree with everything you’re saying. I think we were probably thinking of different aspects of the situation—I’m imagining the sorts of crusades that were given as examples in the OP (for which a good faith assumption seems straightforwardly wrong, and a bad faith assumption seems straightforwardly correct), whereas you’re imagining other situations like a university withdrawing affiliation (where it seems far more murky and hard to label as good or bad faith).
Also, I realize this wasn’t clear before, but I emphatically don’t think that making threats is necessarily immoral or even bad; it depends on the context (as you’ve been elucidating).
I think I agree with you except for your example. I’m not sure, but it seems plausible to me that in many cases the bullied kid doing X is a bad idea. It seems like it will encourage the bullies to ask for Y and Z later.
In this case, AFAIK, no one in particular was making a threat yet. So, instead, not canceling the event is exposing yourself to a potential threat and the loss (whether you submit or not, or even retaliate) that would result. Avoiding the threat in the first place to avoid its costs is a reason to cancel the event.
Canceling is like hiring bodyguards for the president and transporting them in an armoured vehicle, instead of leaving them exposed to attacks and then retaliating afterwards if they are attacked.
(When I write “explicit threat(s)” below, I’m mostly thinking demands from outsiders to cancel the event and risks of EA Munich or its organizers being cancelled or explicit threats from outsiders to cancel EA Munich without necessarily following through.)
Abstractly, sure, the game theory is similar, since cancelling is also a cost, but I think the actual payoffs/costs can be very different, as you may be exposing yourself to more risk, and being explicitly threatened at all can incur additional (net) costs beyond the cost of cancellation. Also, if we were talking about not planning the event in the first place (that’s another way to avoid the action, although that’s not what happened here), it’ll go unnoticed, so you wouldn’t be known as someone who submits to threats to make yourself a target for more. A group won’t likely be known for not inviting certain controversial speakers in the first place. I think in this case, we can say the game theory is pretty different due to asymmetric information.
Cancelling early can also reduce the perception of submission to others who would make threats compared to cancelling after explicit threats, since explicit threats bring attention with them.
As I wrote, there are costs that come from being threatened that are additional to just (the costs of) cancelling the event that you can avoid if you’re never explicitly threatened in the first place. It’s easier to avoid negative perceptions (like being known as “the group that invited Peter Singer”, as Julia mentioned) if you didn’t plan the event in the first place or cancelled early before any threat was made (and even if no explicit threat was made at all). Once a threat is actually made, negative perceptions are more likely to result even if you submit, since threats bring negative perceptions with them. Cancelling after being threatened might seem like giving an apology after being caught, so might not appear genuine or the cancellation will just be less memorable than the threats and what lead to them (the association with particular figures).
I’m assuming you’re referring to my analogy with protecting the president, rather than my claim “Avoiding the threat in the first place to avoid its costs is a reason to cancel the event”, which seems obvious given the risk that they will follow through on the threat (although you may have stronger reasons in the opposite direction.)
Protecting the president has costs and is avoiding the action of letting the president go unprotected, which you would prefer if there were no threats or risks of threats. How does “Avoiding the action because you know you’ll be threatened until you change course is the same as submitting to the threat” apply to cancelling but not this? I guess you can look at bodyguards as both preventative and retaliatory (they’ll kill attackers), but armoured vehicles seem purely preventative.
EDIT: One possible difference from purely strategic threats is that the people threatening to cancel you (get you fired, ruin your reputation, etc., which you don’t have much control over) might actually value both making and following through on their threats to cancel as good things, rather than see following through as a necessary but unfortunate cost to make their future threats more persuasive. What do they want more, to cancel problematic people (to serve justice and/or signal virtue), or for there to be fewer problematic people? If the former, they may just be looking for appropriate targets to cancel and excuses to cancel them, so you’d mark yourself as a target by appearing problematic to them.
I’m not sure this is that different from protecting the president, though, since some also just value causing harm to the president and the country.
It seems like you believe that one’s decision of whether or not to disinvite a speaker should depend only on one’s beliefs about the speaker’s character, intellectual merits, etc. and in particular not on how other people would react.
Suppose that you receive a credible threat that if you let already-invited person X speak at your event, then multiple bombs would be set off, killing hundreds of people. Can we agree that in that situation it is correct to cancel the event?
If so, then it seems like at least in extreme cases, you agree that the decision of whether or not to hold an event can depend on how other people react. I don’t see why you seem to assume that in the EA Munich case, the consequences are not bad enough that EA Munich’s decision is reasonable.
Some plausible (though not probable) consequences of hosting the talk:
Protests disrupting the event (this has previously happened to a local EA group)
Organizers themselves get cancelled
Most members of the club leave due to risk of the above or disagreements with the club’s priorities
At least the first two seem quite bad, there’s room for debate on the third.
In addition, while I agree that the extremes of cancel culture are in fact very harmful for EA, it’s hard to argue that disinviting a speaker is anywhere near the level of any of the examples you give. Notably, they are not calling for a mob to e.g. remove Robin Hanson from his post, they are simply cancelling one particular talk that he was going to give at their venue. This definitely does have a negative impact on norms, but it doesn’t seem obvious to me that the impact is very large.
Separately, I think it is also reasonable for a random person to come to believe that Robin Hanson is not arguing in good faith.
(Note: I’m still undecided on whether or not the decision itself was good or not.)
I’m reminded of this.
Also of The Apology, though that’s obviously an extreme case.
Naturally, you have to understand Rohin, that in all of the situations where you tell me what the threat is, I’m very motivated to do it anyway? It’s an emotion of stubbornness and anger, and when I flesh it out in game-theoretic terms it’s a strong signal of how much I’m willing to not submit to threats in general.
Returning to the emotional side, I want to say something like “f*ck you for threatening to kill people, I will never give you control over me and my community, and we will find you and we will make sure it was not worth it for you, at the cost of our own resources”.
Yeah, I’m aware that is the emotional response (I feel it too), and I agree the game theoretic reason for not giving in to threats is important. However, it’s certainly not a theorem of game theory that you always do better if you don’t give in to threats, and sometimes giving in will be the right decision.
This is often not an option. (It seems pretty hard to retaliate against an online mob, though I suppose you could randomly select particular members to retaliate against.)
Another good example is bullying. A child has ~no resources to speak of, and bullies will threaten to hurt them unless they do X. Would you really advise this child not to give in to the bully?
(Assume for the sake of the hypothetical the child has already tried to get adults involved and it has done ~nothing, as I am told is in fact often the case. No, the child can’t coordinate with other children to fight the bully, because children are not that good at coordinating.)
Another case where ‘precommitment to refute all threats’ is an unwise strategy (and a case more relevant to the discussion, as I don’t think all opponents to hosting a speaker like Hanson either see themselves or should be seen as bullies attempting coercion) is where your opponent is trying to warn you rather than trying to blackmail you. (cf. 1, 2)
Suppose Alice sincerely believes some of Bob’s writing is unapologetically misogynistic. She believes it is important one does not give misogynists a platform and implicit approbation. Thus she finds hosting Bob abhorrent, and is dismayed that a group at her university is planning to do just this. She approaches this group, making clear her objections and stating her intention to, if this goes ahead, to (e.g.) protest this event, stridently criticise the group in the student paper for hosting him, petition the university to withdraw affiliation, and so on.
This could be an attempt to bully (where usual game theory provides a good reason to refuse to concede anything on principle). But it also could not be: Alice may be explaining what responses she would make to protect her interests which the groups planned action would harm, and hoping to find a better negotiated agreement for her and the EA group besides “They do X and I do Y”.
It can be hard to tell the difference, but some elements in this example speak against Alice being a bully wanting to blackmail the group to get her way: First is the plausibility of her interests recommending these actions to her even if they had no deterrent effect whatsoever (i.e. she’d do the same if the event had already happened). Second the actions she intends falls roughly falls in ‘fair game’ of how one can retaliate against those doing something they’re allowed to do which you deem to be wrong.
Alice is still not a bully even if her motivating beliefs re. Bob are both completely mistaken and unreasonable. She’s also still not a bully even if Alice’s implied second-order norms are wrong (e.g. maybe the public square would be better off if people didn’t stridently object to hosting speakers based on their supposed views on topics they are not speaking upon, etc.) Conflict is typically easy to navigate when you can dictate to your opponent what their interests should be and what they can license themselves to do. Alas such cases are rare.
It is extremely important not to respond to Alice as if she was a bully if in fact she is not, for two reasons. First, if she is acting in good faith, pre-committing to refuse any compromise for ‘do not give in to bullying’ reasons means one always ends up at ones respective BATNAs even if there was mutually beneficial compromises to be struck. Maybe there is no good compromise with Alice this time, but there may be the next time one finds oneself at cross-purposes.
Second, wrongly presuming bad faith for Alice seems apt to induce her to make a symmetrical mistake presuming bad faith for you. To Alice, malice explains well why you were unwilling to even contemplate compromise, why you considered yourself obliged out of principle to persist with actions that harm her interests, and why you call her desire to combat misogyny bullying and blackmail. If Alice also thinks about these things through the lens of game theory (although perhaps not in the most sophisticated way), she may reason she is rationally obliged to retaliate against you (even spitefully) to deter you from doing harm again.
The stage is set for continued escalation. Presumptive bad faith is pernicious, and can easily lead to martyring oneself needlessly on the wrong hill. I also note that ‘leaning into righteous anger’ or ‘take oneself as justified in thinking the worst of those opposed to you’ are not widely recognised as promising approaches in conflict resolution, bargaining, or negotiation.
I agree with parts of this and disagree with other parts.
First off:
Definitely agree that pre-committing seems like a bad idea (as you could probably guess from my previous comment).
I agree with this in the abstract, but for the specifics of this particular case, do you in fact think that online mobs / cancel culture / groups who show up to protest your event without warning should be engaged with on a good faith assumption? I struggle to imagine any of these groups accepting anything other than full concession to their demands, such that you’re stuck with the BATNA regardless.
(I definitely agree that if someone emails you saying “I think this speaker is bad and you shouldn’t invite him”, and after some discussion they say “I’m sorry but I can’t agree with you and if you go through with this event I will protest / criticize you / have the university withdraw affiliation”, you should not treat this as a bad faith attack. Afaik this was not the case with EA Munich, though I don’t know the details.)
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Re: the first five paragraphs: I feel like this is disagreeing on how to use the word “bully” or “threat”, rather than anything super important. I’ll just make one note:
I’d agree with this if you could reasonably expect to convince Alice that she’s wrong on these counts, such that she then stops doing things like
But otherwise, given that she’s taking actions that destroy value for Bob without generating value for Alice (except via their impact on Bob’s actions), I think it is fine to think of this as a threat. (I am less attached to the bully metaphor—I meant that as an example of a threat.)
I think so.
In the abstract, ‘negotiating via ultimatum’ (e.g. “you must cancel the talk, or I will do this”) does not mean one is acting in bad faith. Alice may foresee there is no bargaining frontier, but is informing you what your BATNA looks like and gives you the opportunity to consider whether ‘giving in’ is nonetheless better for you (this may not be very ‘nice’, but it isn’t ‘blackmail’). A lot turns on whether her ‘or else’ is plausibly recommended by the lights of her interests (e.g. she would do these things if we had already held the event/she believed our pre-commitment to do so) or she is threatening spiteful actions where their primary value is her hope they alter our behaviour (e.g. she would at least privately wish she didn’t have to ‘follow through’ if we defied her).
The reason these are important to distinguish is ‘folk game theory’ gives a pro tanto reason to not give in the latter case, even if doing so is better than suffering the consequences (as you deter future attempts to coerce you). But not in the former one, as Alice’s motivation to retaliate does not rely on the chance you may acquiesce to her threats, and so she will not ‘go away’ after you’ve credibly demonstrated to her you will never do this.
On the particular case I think some of it was plausibly bad faith (i.e. if a major driver was ‘fleet in being’ threat that people would antisocially disrupt the event) but a lot of it probably wasn’t: “People badmouthing/thinking less of us for doing this” or (as Habryka put it) the ‘very explicit threat’ of an organisation removing their affiliation from EA Munich are all credibly/probably good faith warnings even if the only way to avoid them would have been complete concession. (There are lots of potential reasons I would threaten to stop associating with someone or something where the only way for me to relent is their complete surrender)
(I would be cautious about labelling things as mobs or cancel culture.)
Let me take a more in-group example readers will find sympathetic.
When the NYT suggested it will run an article using Scott’s legal name, may of his supporters responded by complaining to the editor, organising petitions, cancelling their subscriptions (and encouraging others to do likewise), trying to coordinate sources/public figures to refuse access to NYT journalists, and so on. These are straightforwardly actions which ‘destroy value’ for the NYT, are substantially motivated to try and influence its behaviour, and was an ultimatum to boot (i.e. the only way the NYT can placate this ‘online mob’ is to fully concede on not using Scott’s legal name).
Yet presumably this strategy was not predicated on ‘only we are allowed to (or smart enough to) use game theory, so we can expect the NYT to irrationally give in to our threats when they should be ostentatiously doing exactly what we don’t want them to do to demonstrate they won’t be bullied’. For although these actions are ‘threats’, they are warnings/ good faith/ non-spiteful, as these responses are not just out of hope to coerce: these people would be minded to retaliate similarly if they only found out NYT’s intention after the article had been published.
Naturally the hope is that one can resolve conflict by a meeting of the minds: we might hope we can convince Alice to see things our way; and the NYT probably hopes the same. But if the disagreement prompting conflict remains, we should be cautious about how we use the word threat, especially in equivocating between commonsense use of the term (e.g. “I threaten to castigate Charlie publicly if she holds a conference on holocaust denial”) and the subspecies where folk game theory—and our own self-righteousness—strongly urges us to refute (e.g. “Life would be easier for us at the NYT if we acquiesced to those threatening to harm our reputation and livelihoods if we report things they don’t want us to. But we will never surrender the integrity of our journalism to bullies and blackmailers.”)
Yeah, I think I agree with everything you’re saying. I think we were probably thinking of different aspects of the situation—I’m imagining the sorts of crusades that were given as examples in the OP (for which a good faith assumption seems straightforwardly wrong, and a bad faith assumption seems straightforwardly correct), whereas you’re imagining other situations like a university withdrawing affiliation (where it seems far more murky and hard to label as good or bad faith).
Also, I realize this wasn’t clear before, but I emphatically don’t think that making threats is necessarily immoral or even bad; it depends on the context (as you’ve been elucidating).
I think I agree with you except for your example. I’m not sure, but it seems plausible to me that in many cases the bullied kid doing X is a bad idea. It seems like it will encourage the bullies to ask for Y and Z later.
In this case, AFAIK, no one in particular was making a threat yet. So, instead, not canceling the event is exposing yourself to a potential threat and the loss (whether you submit or not, or even retaliate) that would result. Avoiding the threat in the first place to avoid its costs is a reason to cancel the event.
Canceling is like hiring bodyguards for the president and transporting them in an armoured vehicle, instead of leaving them exposed to attacks and then retaliating afterwards if they are attacked.
No it’s not! Avoiding the action because you know you’ll be threatened until you change course is the same as submitting to the threat.
(When I write “explicit threat(s)” below, I’m mostly thinking demands from outsiders to cancel the event and risks of EA Munich or its organizers being cancelled or explicit threats from outsiders to cancel EA Munich without necessarily following through.)
Abstractly, sure, the game theory is similar, since cancelling is also a cost, but I think the actual payoffs/costs can be very different, as you may be exposing yourself to more risk, and being explicitly threatened at all can incur additional (net) costs beyond the cost of cancellation. Also, if we were talking about not planning the event in the first place (that’s another way to avoid the action, although that’s not what happened here), it’ll go unnoticed, so you wouldn’t be known as someone who submits to threats to make yourself a target for more. A group won’t likely be known for not inviting certain controversial speakers in the first place. I think in this case, we can say the game theory is pretty different due to asymmetric information.
Cancelling early can also reduce the perception of submission to others who would make threats compared to cancelling after explicit threats, since explicit threats bring attention with them.
As I wrote, there are costs that come from being threatened that are additional to just (the costs of) cancelling the event that you can avoid if you’re never explicitly threatened in the first place. It’s easier to avoid negative perceptions (like being known as “the group that invited Peter Singer”, as Julia mentioned) if you didn’t plan the event in the first place or cancelled early before any threat was made (and even if no explicit threat was made at all). Once a threat is actually made, negative perceptions are more likely to result even if you submit, since threats bring negative perceptions with them. Cancelling after being threatened might seem like giving an apology after being caught, so might not appear genuine or the cancellation will just be less memorable than the threats and what lead to them (the association with particular figures).
I’m assuming you’re referring to my analogy with protecting the president, rather than my claim “Avoiding the threat in the first place to avoid its costs is a reason to cancel the event”, which seems obvious given the risk that they will follow through on the threat (although you may have stronger reasons in the opposite direction.)
Protecting the president has costs and is avoiding the action of letting the president go unprotected, which you would prefer if there were no threats or risks of threats. How does “Avoiding the action because you know you’ll be threatened until you change course is the same as submitting to the threat” apply to cancelling but not this? I guess you can look at bodyguards as both preventative and retaliatory (they’ll kill attackers), but armoured vehicles seem purely preventative.
EDIT: One possible difference from purely strategic threats is that the people threatening to cancel you (get you fired, ruin your reputation, etc., which you don’t have much control over) might actually value both making and following through on their threats to cancel as good things, rather than see following through as a necessary but unfortunate cost to make their future threats more persuasive. What do they want more, to cancel problematic people (to serve justice and/or signal virtue), or for there to be fewer problematic people? If the former, they may just be looking for appropriate targets to cancel and excuses to cancel them, so you’d mark yourself as a target by appearing problematic to them.
I’m not sure this is that different from protecting the president, though, since some also just value causing harm to the president and the country.