“Eugenics or ‘human biodiversity’ isn’t a new idea and is incredibly toxic to most people.”
>right, calling an idea “toxic” is literally the same thing as calling it “taboo.” Hanania argues rationalism is the belief that “fewer topics...should be considered taboo...and not subject to cost-benefit anaysis.”
It sounds like your argument isn’t explicitly saying that you consider this topic off limits personally, but rather too many others view it as taboo so as a practical matter you will lose more people than you’ll gain (or lose the right people, gain the wrong people).
This sounds like a cop-out to me. Do you feel these ideas, in and of themselves, are too “toxic” to justify a cost benefit-analysis or is your argument simply that the ideas are currently too unpopular to consider for practical reasons?
It’s certainly true that “Failed attempts at sleeping with someone can often lead to awkwardness or uncomfortability.” However, this is also true of successful attempts. “No attempts” isn’t a reasonable solution.
If there is a taboo the EA community would benefit from breaking it’s the notion that something being awkward/uncomfortable is evidence, in and of itself, that something that has transpired is bad, or someone did something wrong. Well intentioned people acting in good faith can often lead to awkward situations even when nobody did anything explicitly wrong.
There’s obviously a continuum of behaviors from very benign to potentially very serious, it’s very difficult to escape nuance in these cases. Life isn’t always so simple.