Maniano

Karma: 520

Maniano 21 Jun 2024 7:36 UTC
10 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Habryka [Deactivated]’s comment on: Why so many “racists” at Manifest?
(and I am also not sure whether the author actually heard that term)
I can’t confidently recall it was “fag” or “faggot” at this point anymore, but the term was definitely used.
I’m choosing to interpret this as you wondering if I used that collection of words as a representation of the kind of soft opens some of the attendees engaged in instead of real examples (as opposed to suggesting that I was lying), but “fag”, “retarded”, “based”, and “cuck” were all used quite a bit.

Maniano 21 Jun 2024 7:17 UTC
31 points
2 ∶ 3
on: Against the Guardian’s hit piece on Manifest
I am surprised by some of the things written here, and this line especially stood out to me:
The people at Manifest weren’t even disproportionately right-wing
Based on the discussions had at the Yarvin afterparty (which was organised by Curtis Yarvin, not Manifest), I’d say there was a significant overrepresentation of very very right-wing people at Manifest (as in the right-wing tail of the political distribution was overrepresented. Not making a statement on more moderate right-wingers or left-wingers.). This sentence felt especially surprising since you were there at the afterparty.^[1] To be fair, there were also people there who weren’t right-wing at all, and when I reached out to you to ask about this you said that you didn’t find many to say right-wing things, and that only a small percentage of Manifest attendees were invited to the afterparty.
There is a chance that people around me said non-representatively many bigoted things, but I think it is more likely that your experience is explained by people avoiding more incendiary topics around an in-group famous, non-right wing blogger such as yourself. I am not very confident on this, though.
1. ^
  I asked Omnizoid for his permission to mention this.

Maniano 20 Jun 2024 6:09 UTC
7 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Why so many “racists” at Manifest?
I feel like you should give it more time than just three hours before posting results. At least 24 hours sounds reasonable. The results for me already looked quite different from what you posted.
For example:

Maniano 20 Jun 2024 6:00 UTC
11 points
7 ∶ 2
in reply to: Habryka [Deactivated]’s comment on: Why so many “racists” at Manifest?
For what it is worth, a core argument I made was that many attendees at these events said clearly racist and bigoted things, far beyond milquetoast “there might be group IQ differences”. I am also disturbed by people jumping to the truth-seeking defence.

Maniano 19 Jun 2024 16:45 UTC
5 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Why so many “racists” at Manifest?
Personally, I would trust an AI researcher even if they weren’t racist.

Maniano 19 Jun 2024 16:41 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Why so many “racists” at Manifest?
Happy to hear that I didn’t overreach too much, I debated posting that comment for a while.
To me this feels very relevant to a discussion of whether rationalists are allowing racism/sexism to ferment.
I do consider it an important piece of evidence, but for example ACX comments sections, open threads, and culture war sections of the ACX Reddit are still often quite nasty, and frequently feature some notorious bigots (most notoriously HBD people) who have been long banned from LessWrong. For example, Steven Sailer and Emil O. W. Kirkegaard are not all too uncommon commenters in ACX comment sections.
I think LessWrong itself is not very likely to allow bigoted content compared to many other platforms where rationalist congregate. This is not enough in my view, and it would be wise to hold a harder line.

Maniano 19 Jun 2024 14:03 UTC
9 points
5 ∶ 2
in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Why so many “racists” at Manifest?
This feels a bit misleading (or an attempt at damage control?), as I am sure you have come across race topics in the past a lot due your high level of engagement in these communities over the years.
The conversation is mostly happening on Substack, Twitter, various chats, and in-person. I have a vague memory that it was a conscious decision by LessWrong moderators many years ago to not allow inflammatory race talk on LessWrong, and most of the most inflammatory people have been long banned.
There is a chance that this is a bit an overreaching analysis, as I do not personally know you very well: you do feel genuine in your defence of communities that are important to you, but I do suspect that you might have a major blind spot for various forms of non-overt bigotry, and you you might assume good intentions of everyone to a fault. Again, I apologise if this is out of line. I might be completely wrong on this as well.

Maniano 19 Jun 2024 7:19 UTC
3 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: TracingWoodgrains’s comment on: My experience at the controversial Manifest 2024
There was a controversy about whether or not Hanania should be included last year (he was), mostly within connected communities.

Maniano 19 Jun 2024 7:17 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: TracingWoodgrains’s comment on: My experience at the controversial Manifest 2024
I don’t feel super strongly about the title, and would be happy to change it. What would you suggest as an alternative title?

Maniano 19 Jun 2024 7:11 UTC
7 points
2 ∶ 2
in reply to: RobertM’s comment on: My experience at the controversial Manifest 2024
Observe that it is here, on the EA forum, that a substantial fraction of commenters are calling for conference organizers to avoid inviting people for reasons that explicitly trade off against truth-seeking considerations.
I have mostly observed people who don’t see the controversial speakers as a problem claim that excluding them would go against truth-seeking principles. People who’d prefer to not have them platformed at an event somewhat connected to EA don’t seem to think this is a trade off.
Separately, if someone avoided attending Manifest because they anticipated unpleasantness stemming from the presence of these attendees, they either had wildly miscalibrated expectations about what Manifest would be like, or (frankly) they might benefit from asking themselves what is different about attending Manifest vs. attending any other similarly large social event (nearly all of which have invited people with similarly unpalatable views)
Anecdotally, a major reason I created this post was because the amount of very edgy people was significantly higher than the baseline for non-EA large events. I can’t think of another event that I have attended where people would’ve felt comfortable saying the stuff that was being said. I didn’t particularly seek these types of interactions either.
The fact is that we have multiple people who would have been a positive contribution to the event, multiple people who have had similar experiences, and at least one person who said they would not have come or volunteered if they would have known that race science is a topic that would continue to come up (and I myself was on the fence on whether or not I’d come again, but I probably would, especially if some actions are taken to make things more comfortable for everyone). To be fair, at least one person has said that they did not see anything like this happening during the events, so it is unclear how many people were actually left upset by these things (Austin’s feedback form suggests not many).

Maniano 18 Jun 2024 20:39 UTC
19 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Austin’s comment on: Why so many “racists” at Manifest?
Thanks for taking the time to make a thorough reply.
Would you have contacted such a person during the course of your attendance at Manifest?
I probably would have. Some of the edgy takes were far beyond the pale, and I haven’t really experienced such things in an in-person context. Having an anonymous form would increase a sense of trust if it is otherwise lacking.
I do suspect that you would be able to get a lot more data on this by asking about experiencing bigotry directly. I do get that it is probably too late for that now, and doing an extra survey for the attendees on this would be costly and would likely make this whole situation more stressful for everyone, but it is an option that can be taken.
It is very human to fail to mention something like this on a feedback form, especially if a typical experience with bigotry for this event is something like hanging out with an edgelord for an hour on day 2 and continuing with the rest of the conference perhaps slightly avoiding them (I’m only guessing this is what a typical experience would look like, since we don’t really have too much data to go on with when it comes to people who experienced bigotry at the events).

Maniano 18 Jun 2024 18:54 UTC
11 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: terraform’s comment on: My experience at the controversial Manifest 2024
What would you suggest as an alternative title? I don’t feel very strongly about that particular choice of word and would be happy to change the title.
I considered changing the title to “My experience with racism at Manifest 2024”, but that feels like it might invite low quality discussion and would probably be bad.

Maniano 18 Jun 2024 18:44 UTC
13 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Why so many “racists” at Manifest?
Some further data: even though I took part in some of these sessions, I didn’t RSVP to them since RSVP status was public through the schedule website.

Maniano 18 Jun 2024 18:41 UTC
36 points
12 ∶ 0
in reply to: Austin’s comment on: Why so many “racists” at Manifest?
I think people who would be hurt would be quite hesitant to contact community health personnel at the event, since the event organisers were the ones who invited the controversial guests, and a hurt person could be afraid that whoever they’d contact might hold bigoted views themselves (I feel bad for having to say this out loud. Rest assured I am not accusing you or anyone else in the organiser team of anything here, Austin).
Anyone who might hear such discourse will understandably be discouraged from seeking recourse.
I’m afraid that there really were quite a few toxic people present, and I have to say that I am a bit surprised to see you say otherwise.
I haven’t seen the feedback form answers, and as far as I can recall didn’t highlight these issues when I filled it, but I am also surprised that there were few to no complaints. Is this assessment based on a quick skim, or is it a result of more thorough processing?
For your next event, I encourage you to adopt an anonymous community health contact person contact form, where people can air out their grievances with much less anxiety.

Maniano 18 Jun 2024 10:05 UTC
11 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Davis_Kingsley’s comment on: My experience at the controversial Manifest 2024
Thanks Davis Kingsley! I edited my post to include a mention that The Guardian article is flawed, and that Vassar has been more or less excommunicated (I had already replaced the Vassar mention with a link to Saul expanding on Vassar’s attendance).
I guess I am happy to hear that my vibes on rationalists vs. EAs doesn’t ring true to you—I hope you are right on this regard.
I changed the Republicans part into strikethrough, since multiple people have objected to it now, but left the Thielosphere mention as Thiel is tied to Yarvin, who is tied to race stuff. Thiel does a lot of stuff, and what Samo Burja (who, if I understand correctly, is at least partially funded by Thiel) does, for example, doesn’t appear to be very objectionable to me, but overall Thiel does seem like a character whose values are incompatible with EA.
Manifest doesn’t really register as an EA event to me, and the amount of people who I might categorise as EA was maybe 25% of the attendance pool, so I am not sure representative these surveys are of the attendance pool of the event. I have not attended many rationalist events in the Bay, so talk for that either. I suspect there is a major skew towards liberal/progressive beliefs, but with a non-insignificant reactionary minority.
Also, and pardon me if I am mistaken, I am relatively sure (80%+) that I did see you at the venue during Summer Camp or less.online? The things I am talking about were present during those two as well.

Maniano 18 Jun 2024 9:11 UTC
14 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Habryka [Deactivated]’s comment on: [Linkpost] Sam Bankman-Fried funded a group with racist ties. FTX wants its $5m back
People are notoriously bad at assessing these things, so do take this with a major grain of salt: I would believe >10% of the people present were HBD curious or would endorse and partake in discussions around HBD. If we want better data a survey could be sent to the participants.

Maniano 18 Jun 2024 8:58 UTC
35 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: My experience at the controversial Manifest 2024
I feel like listing specific examples is pretty difficult without compromising anonymity, but at least I heard a range of takes between those more mellow examples you gave and a few times even beyond what your more incendiary examples were. There are incentives to leave more shocking views implicit.
To be fair it is pretty difficult to tell to what degree some of the more extreme views were views that the people actually held, and to what degree they were just attempts to be shocking, edgy, and contrarian (or funny). They might work as status signals as well—”I can say this outrageous thing out loud and nothing is going to happen”. If push came to shove I doubt many of people saying these things would say they actually subscribe to these what they imply (I could be wrong about this, though).

Maniano 18 Jun 2024 8:04 UTC
41 points
11 ∶ 0
in reply to: Shakeel Hashim’s comment on: My experience at the controversial Manifest 2024
I feel like you are basing this reaction on something more than Manifest events and less.online. Is this correct? I feel like Habryka or the Lightcone team haven’t really done anything that registers as clearly wrong to me in this case. What you are suggesting sounds extreme based on what information I have.

Maniano 18 Jun 2024 7:55 UTC
20 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: AnnaSalamon’s comment on: My experience at the controversial Manifest 2024
Fwiw, a big reason for posting under a throwaway is the fear of a social attack. I don’t want to make enemies out of people, especially if some of them I have only briefly interacted with. Some people are bound to have had a different experience from mine, and will be tempted to discard what I write about out of hand. Some can’t relate to my experience due to mere chance with regards to who they’ve interacted with during these events, and some might not be able to relate due to being very generous (or perhaps even naive) in their interpretation of others.
I do not think I am encouraging changing things just for PR reasons. I think it is not only instrumentally bad move towards becoming a more edgy or racist community, but that is also bad in absolute terms. I am not sure if what you are trying to say is “if people think [insert an HBD belief here] is true, they should feel comfortable saying so in this community”, and I hope I am not misrepresenting you by responding this way—let me know if you’d like me to delete this last paragraph and I’d be happy to do so.

Maniano 18 Jun 2024 6:44 UTC
8 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: kave’s comment on: My experience at the controversial Manifest 2024
True, but he was allowed to attend Manifest, even though he didn’t end up coming in the end. Saul on Vassar attendance: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MHenxzydsNgRzSMHY/my-experience-at-the-controversial-manifest-2024?commentId=vWLJo6GQ5sFbbbxch