Scott, for instance, is left of center, so is Nate Silver, so is Kelsey Piper.
So… people who are neoliberal to centrist, with Scott (as others on this forum have pointed out on this forum) partial to race pseudoscience. Wow, what confronting fresh ideas.
Have some anarchists, socialists, communists. Have some actually brave thinkers. Be challenged. What are y’all afraid of?
Does this mean I think Hanania should be permanently shunned? No—he’s an interesting guy
That’s a pretty low-bar for interesting.
The people at Manifest weren’t even disproportionately right-wing
And how many left-wingers were there? To the left’s credit, they are a bit more socially-intelligent as to not mix & mingle with the crowd of tired cranks with the same tired ideas, but I assure you there are plenty of desperate cranks on the left who are “down bad”.
If you really want fresh thinkers with controversial ideas, have some actually controversial left wing speakers who’s ideas—unlike “controversial” right-wingers—actually are controversial and have the chance to change the world.
You kid yourself if you think the guestlist of libertarian & right-wing speakers at Manifest weren’t themselves also conformist.
EA began as an intellectual movement, and over the years it has watered this down to let in any and all contrarian rejects from other movements. And it shows. EA’s crypto-exchange psoter boy couldn’t grasp probability concepts like the Kelly Criterion, and our conferences are full of cranks, the alt-right, & pseudoscience. Being contrarian should not be mixed up with being EA.
Glad to hear it.
But I think it’s probably a psychological fact that if a group of critics keeps calling your ideas some combination of “moral corruption”, “the dumbest idea”, “excuses for the rich” and “white supremacist/fascist”[2], then you’ll probably just stop responding to their work.
I understand. I never take this stuff personally myself. I even think it’s more important to engage with criticism (provided you are headstrong for it—at that time and place) if it’s espescially disagreeable/ hostile.
I haven’t read Crary but it’s on my list. The headline for McGoey’s piece is quite harsh, but there’s no real nice way to say some of these things (e.g. “excuses for the rich” isn’t that much nicer from what Kemp says about EA being captured by billionaire interests). These critics sincerely hold these positions—whilst it’s head for us to hear—it wouldn’t be right for them to water down their criticisms either.
And ultimately, doesn’t EA deserve harsh criticism, with the spate of scandals that have emerged & emerging? If it’s ultimately good for EA in the end—bring it on! More critcism is good.
I see where you’re coming form, but I do see libertarianism as the thread that unerpins all these scandals together.
Thiel has described himself as a conservative libertarian in the past, but yes his politics are more conservative overall now. But I make the point that surveillance/authoritarianism is not incompatible with libertarian view, and Bostrom was a an Extropian
SBF’s “problem” also includes his activities for cryptocurrency adoption, which if embraced, could have caused widespread problems in the financial system. And I want to stress, cryptocurrency scandals in EA have been broader than just SBF (e.g. Ben Delo, Avraham Eisenberg). I want to stress that the cryptocurrency scandal in EA is not just SBF, but more systematic.
Hi Linch, sorry for the confusion. I that comment was not spceifically about certain people, and I never named SBF, Bostrom etc.
I was more referring to the general communities of people who are interested in those respective areas as being libertarians. Example, there are many EAs working in cryptocurrency and they tend to be libertarian. Many EAs have expressed interest in Race-IQ differences on the forum, not just Bostrom. Cryptocurrency, Race-IQ differences, and polyamory tend to be libertarian dominated areas of fascination.
I do believe SBF donated large sums to Republicans. And Bostrom’s views seem to accord well with right-libertarians like Peter Thiel. I bring this up because Thiel has not been shy of using surveillance, having founded Palantir. Bostrom was also a member of Extropians with known libertarian links.
But I don’t really want to be speculating on these specific individuals political views, but make the broader point that those areas of itnerest are assosciated with libertarians.
Thank you JWS. Really appreciate your comments.
For example, I find it very difficult to see Crary’s criticism of EA as being in good faith, and I don’t think this is just because she’s not framing her arguments in EA language/terms, but even when EA is critical of the Left, I don’t think we call Leftism “a straightforward case of moral corruption”.
I have seen some EA’s accuse certain critiques as bad faith where I found them the opposite, and have seen attacks on Leftists (e.g. leftmism would make EA less analytical in the above comment). So I think a lot of this is due to differences in worldview/perspective.
But I certainly agree that there are some critiques of EA that are genuinely poorly done.
In terms of critiques I like:
Kemp makes great points about EAs being captured by wealthy interests
McGoey makes good points about EA culture, e.g. EAs generally being ignorant of the role the IMF/WTO have played in exacerbating global poverty
But also in terms of left wing EA support, Garrison Lovely, Rutger Bregman, & Habiba of 80K.
Sorry Richard, I meant no disrepsect. And I appreciate you acknowledging that there are leftsist EAs.
Without wanting to do guilt-by-association, I simply wanted to express that there would have been a clear benefit to having a more left-wing EA, since leftists are more critical of cryptocurrencies etc. There were many EAs who did the right thing warning about cryptocurrency/SBF, but they were smaller in number, and overlooked by the community. So apologies I went too far maligning all libertarians/non-leftists.
Well Rich, some of us here are leftists.
There seems a background assumption that EAs dismiss anti-capitalist or post-colonial critiques because we’re just closed-minded
So of course, no, not all of us EAs dismiss these critiques, because a few us champion these critiques ourselves.
rather than because those critiques are bad.
Ouch, this hurt. But I shall recover 😢. But suffice to say, libertarian EAs shouldn’t assume these critiques are bad either.
I will point out that to-date, all the major EA scandals have been caused by libertarians (cryptocurrency, race science, sexual abuse in polyarmorous community), and I do think the more reckless libertarians in EA have done more to hurt this movement than anyone else.
If EA became more left-wing, in my leftist opinion, it would be more “EA”, if you get what I mean.
Well half of you do and half of you don’t. The OP for example is defending the Manifest guestlist.
And for people like him who want defend these conferences for having interesting controversial people, why not actually have some confronting controversial people? Instead it’s always libertarians and neoliberals spouting the same tired old race psuedoscience.