It’s certainly possible he’s lying.
But given what I’ve read of his other work, I’d be very surprised if he was referring to all black people.
However, being pissed off at criminals and criminal apologists is completely in his wheelhouse, and makes way more sense.
I’m surprised. You just found out that one of the worst things you thought he said was wrong.
Are you not going to update and maybe think that maybe he’s not the villain you originally thought?
I know you’re usually quite good at updating based on new evidence. It’s hard to convey over text, but I genuinely recommend taking a step back from this and reflecting on your views.
I’ve seen in one other thread as well you realizing that what you’d heard about Hanania was wrong, so that’s twice in one day. Consider that maybe the other things were also not as bad as you originally thought.
Neither were accidents? It was just people misinterpreting what he was saying or interpreting things uncharitably.
People interpret people uncharitably all the time on the internet, especially if you ever mention race.
It wasn’t intended as snide. I think it’s probably just hard to convey tone and emotions over text, especially in a heated conversation.
Sorry if it came across that way. I should definitely try to err more on the side of speaking extra nicely when commenting on the forum, to make up for all of the psychological forces pushing against it being interpreted that way.
I reached out to Hanania and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
I reached out to Hanania and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
I reached out to Hanania and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
I reached out to Hanania and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
I recommend taking comments like these and making them two separate comments.
I really wanted to upvote one section and downvote another, and now I’m just not voting at all.
Generally speaking, it’s good to break your long comments into shorter ones where each makes a particular point.
Nobody’s excluding people based on their genetics or immutable characteristics
I was assigned to female at birth and I happily go to conferences where there are people who have discussed the IQ differences between women and men.
People are deciding to not go to a place because somebody said something they disagreed about about their group.
That is people deciding not to attend an event based on beliefs, not genetics.
He didn’t say that blacks are danger to whites
He said that woke rhetoric makes it sound like white people kill more black people, and actually, more black people kill white people. (I don’t know if this is true, but it is a matter of looking into the data and is different from how you portrayed what he said)
He corrected the blacks being animals in a Blocked and Reported podcast episode. He was not calling black people animals. He was calling woke activists animals.
But they are not talking about you or perceiving you as less intelligent.
They are talking about averages.
Just because you feel like people are talking about you does not mean that they are.
The more relevant comparison would be that if you went to said conference, somebody pooped, and then you decided to stop doing business with an unrelated arm of the organization that has nothing to do with conferences and pooping.
Or it would be like not going to a conference, where one of the speakers at a previous conference had done a pooping thing, and then you decided that you would publicly say you were not doing business with that company again. And that you will not do business with anybody who hosts a pooping performance. That pooping performances are vile and you want nothing to do with them, no matter how indirect.
You did not attend the conference. There was no pooping done at the conference. There had just been pooping at a previous conference. And the business you are doing with them has nothing to do with pooping, and you have never interacted with anybody who did any pooping performance.
I wouldn’t frame it as prioritizing truth vs kindness.
I don’t see it as a kindness to shun people based on who they hang out with, to try to control what EAs can listen to or who they can talk to, or to encourage people to avoid controversial ideas/people.
I think this hurts truth but it also hurts people.
Why do you think that’s referring to all black people?
It makes way more sense to interpret it as him talking about woke activists, which is the general group he’s fighting against.
Apparently he confirms that he’s talking about woke activists in a Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t get my card to work.
This feels like interpreting an ambiguous sentence in the maximally uncharitable way.
The first one he wasn’t calling black people animals. He was calling woke activists animals.
Which, you know, not great. But very very different from calling black people animals.
The second one is him saying that if we were to genuinely reduce crime, it would involve increasing policing of black people, which he thinks would be politically infeasible given the current climate.
This seems like the sort of thing where reasonable people could disagree. Like, does policing and surveillance actually reduce crime? Are black people disproportionately likely to commit crimes or is that over-reporting due to racism?
If somebody said the exact same thing but said it about men in general (who do commit more violent crime) I don’t think most people would call that sexist and vile.
If you had simply stopped using Manifold privately and it had nothing to do with who they associate, that’s one thing.
But if you 1) publicly stop 2) because of who they associate with and 3) imply that you’ll do that to others who associate with the “wrong” people (see quote below), then that’s boycotting and trying to encourage other people to boycott and telling everybody who’s watching that you’ll boycott them too if they associate with the wrong people.
Ergo, trying to control who people can hang out with.
I’m fine to learn that Manifold is not for me. It’s sad, but I’ll move on. It would be really sad to learn that EA or the EA Forum is not for me.
I was assigned female at birth and have been in tons of conversations where people talk about IQ differences between men and women and why that might explain why there are less women in STEM.
I never thought “wtf, they must secretly be sexist”.
I thought “Huh, interesting. I wonder if the evidence backs that up.”
Because I know I’m incredibly smart. The evidence is abundantly clear. And I know that people talking about group differences doesn’t say much about individual differences.
Women are also on average shorter than men, but I’m taller than most men. I don’t get offended or think that people are secretly saying I’m actually short.
Averages are different than individuals.
You can talk about differences between groups without it being sexist / racist / _____ist and thinking people are talking about you.
For example, the whole “he called black people animals” thing.
He was calling woke activists animals, not black people.
Which, yeah, I’m generally against calling people animals, but is very different from the narrative of him saying all black people are animals.
There is some possibility that this is strategic.
But I think the hypothesis that he unthikingly posted an ambiguous tweet while he was feeling emotional is more likely.
Your prior should be on people occasionally posting unthinking emotional tweets.
Your prior should be that he has a strong dislike of crime apologists, which is one of his big hobby horses.
Especially if you’ve read more of his work, like I have.
He doesn’t hate black people.
He definitely strongly dislikes crime apologists.