I’m a Research Fellow at Open Philanthropy, though all views I express here are my own.
Before OP I was an independent researcher in global health and biosecurity, and a Charity Entrepreneurship incubatee. I have an MD and undergrad degrees in philosophy, international relations, and neuroscience, all from the University of Sydney.
The point wasn’t to motivate intuitions on the broader issue, but demonstrate that exclusionary beliefs could be a coherent concept. I agree your version is better for motivating broader intuitions
Thanks. Given Alice has committed no crime, and everything else about her is ‘normal’, I think organizers would need to point to her belief to justify uninviting or banning her. That would suggest that an individual’s beliefs can (in at least one case) justify restricting their participation, on the basis of how that belief concerns other (prospective) attendees.
Yes I’m not saying anyone was—this is a thought experiment to see if exclusionary beliefs can be a coherent concept. We can stipulate that Alice has this sincere belief, but no history of such attacks (she’s never met a Bob), and hasn’t made any specific threats against Bob. It’s just a belief - a subjective attitude about the world. If Bob does not attend due to knowing about Alice’s belief, is that reasonable in your view?
As a light thought experiment, what if Alice’s belief X was “People called Bob are secret evil aliens who I should always try to physically attack and maim if I get the opportunity” ?
Bob would understandably be put off by this belief, and have a pretty valid reason to not attend an event if he knew someone who believed it were present. Does it seem reasonable that Bob would ask that Alice (or people who hold the attack-secret-alien-Bobs belief) not be invited as speakers? Is that a heckler’s veto, and contrary to free expression and intellectual enquiry? Is Bob’s decision not to attend just a matter of his own feelings?
If answers to the above questions are ‘no’, it suggests it’s possible for a belief to be an ‘exclusionary belief’, on your terms.
That’s reasonable. My point is that it’s much less clear and open to contestation that Hanania’s article says the opposite of what the headline is, but given the example is ~retracted anyway my point is not important
He says wokeness is in the “top 5-10, depending how you count”. That doesn’t seem to be ‘nowhere near’?
Ah okay, I understand better now, thanks. There could be better examples given OP and EA have legitimate controversy, such that I wouldn’t find that phrasing objectionable, but I take your point
Yeah that was a bit strong, sorry late here. I’m conflating reacting to Hanania et al. vs reacting to Manifest, which I shouldn’t do. Thanks for pointing to the note—what do you think of the ‘controversy’ being ‘in EA’ vs ‘in public’?
Could you point me to where he does so? I only see mentions of genocide in the title (which he does not contradict), and in the context of liberals’ relative hatred. And where he says “Emotionally, I don’t identify with the tribe of ‘people who don’t commit genocide.’”
My claim is that the article did not drive the objections and disagreements at hand, and is instead a contingent trigger of discussion. The voluminous and intense debate in this and other threads are indicative that stridently opposing views on this have been in place for some time. So ‘controversial’ within EA seems not driven by the article. Public controversy may indeed be driven by the article—I doubt the public had any knowledge or interest in Manifest (and I don’t know if this article has had any traction outside of these circles). The exception may this New York Times article, which did not focus on any controversy and had a very mild note about Hanania: “Richard Hanania, the conservative commentator, signed copies of his book on wokeness.”
So I think I implied something I didn’t intend here. I thought you were saying that the article’s slant drove the current criticism—that I strongly deny. But if you were saying that the article’s slant drove public controversy (if there is some), then I agree that my personal beliefs don’t matter much. I agree with the comments in the rest of the thread that focusing on ‘public controversy’ isn’t capturing the substance of the critique—i.e. that Manifest’s decisions are and have been bad not in terms of PR, but bad for its own epistemics, the forecasting community, EA, and basic human decency.
I would hold a tighter grip on your horses. The article does not contravene the headline. Hanania talks at length about how much he hates wokeness.[1] He doesn’t mention his views on genocide. He notes that some issues are more important than being anti-woke (as an example, he mentions anti-aging research). So in sum, this article suggests:
he hates wokeness vehemently
he thinks some issues are more important than wokeness.
It seems entirely consistent with the article that Hanania hates wokeness more than genocide, and a straightforward reading of the headline and context would support this. We don’t know whether Hanania puts genocide as one of the ‘5-10’ more important issues.
So we have mildly positive, at best neutral evidence on how Hanania rates genocide compared to wokeness. ‘Thinks is worse’ could mean different things. One reading is that ‘worse = rates as a more important problem’ (on which we should be unsure). Another reading is ‘worse = hates more’ (on which we have positive evidence). Either reading is reasonable.
E.g. “I’ve hated wokeness so much, and so consistently over such a long period of my life, that I’ve devoted a large amount of time and energy to reading up on its history and legal underpinnings and thinking about how to destroy it.”
My distaste for Manifest and a subset of its speakers preceded and is not based on the article in any way. I would guess others are similar.
As elsewhere, more edgy does not equal more truth-seeking. By favouring a more homogenous and more exclusionary conference, Manifest closes off important sources of ideas. And based on the intellectual calibre of the edgier speakers, they are not thereby gaining a compensatory stream of ideas. It is not a dichotomy between truth seeking and kindness—both are achievable.
My wording was imprecise—I meant 30-40ish in terms of karma. I agree the number of people is more likely to be 5-12. And my point is less about overall bias than just a particular voting dynamic—at first upvotes and downvotes occurring as is pretty typical, then a large and sudden influx of downvotes on everything from a particular camp.
There are other examples, and I do not share your doubt.
Consider the relative sizes of the groups, and their respective intellectual honesty and calibre. Manifest can be intellectually open, rigorous, and not deliberately platform racists—it really is possible. And to be clear, I’m not saying ban people who agree with XYZ speaker with racist ties—I’m saying don’t seek to deliberately invite those speakers. Manifest has already heard from them, do they really need annual updates?
On the recent post on Manifest, there’s been another instance of a large voting group (30-40ish [edit to clarify: 30-40ish karma, not 30-40ish individuals])arriving and downvoting any progressive-valenced comments (there were upvotes and downvotes prior to this, but in a more stochastic pattern). This is similar to what occured with the eugenics-related posts last year. Wanted to flag it to give a picture to later readers on the dynamics at play.
Yes ‘cultivate’ is too strong—but the rate of speakers of this kind is way above what one would expect just from the happenstance crossover of interests. Like my guess here is that some subset of the organisers has significant interest in those communities and proactively seeks to add speakers from them. There are speakers/panellists whose connection to any of the Manifest topics are tenuous, and there are other fields with tenuous connections which are not drawn on much by Manifest—e.g. formal risk analysis, actuarial studies, safety engineering, geopolitics, statistics. All that to say there appears to be at least some predilection for edgelordism, above and beyond any coinciding of interests.
One might distinguish de jure openness (“We let everyone in!”) with de facto (“We attract X subgroups, and repel Y!”). The homogeneity and narrowness of the recent conference might suggest the former approach has not been successful at intellectual openness.