My experience at the recently controversial conference/festival on prediction markets
Background
I recently attended the triple whammy of rationalist-adjacent events of LessOnline, Summer Camp, and Manifest 2024. For the most part I had a really great time, and had more interesting conversations than I can count. The overlap between the attendees of each event was significant, and the topics discussed were pretty similar.
The average attendee for these events is very smart, well-read, and most likely working in tech, consulting, or finance. People were extremely friendly, and in general the space initially felt like a high-trust environment approaching that of an average EAGlobal conference (which also has overlap with the rational-ish communities, especially when it comes to AI risks), even if the number of EA people there was fairly low–the events were very rationalist-coded.
Nominally, Manifest was about prediction markets. However, the organizers had selected for multiple quite controversial speakers and presenters, who in turn attracted a significant number of attendees who were primarily interested in these controversial topics, most prominent of which was eugenics.
This human biodiversity (HBD) or “scientific racism” curious crowd engaged in a tiring game of carefully trying the waters with new people they interacted with, trying to gauge both how receptive their conversation partner is to racially incendiary topics and to which degree they are “one of us”. The ever-changing landscape of euphemisms for I-am-kinda-racist-but-in-a-high-IQ-way have seemed to converge to a stated interest in “demographics”–or in less sophisticated cases the use of edgy words like “based”, “fag”, or “retarded” is more than enough to do the trick. If someone asks you what you think of Bukele, you can already guess where he wants to steer the conversation to.
The Guardian article
I
While I was drafting this post, The Guardian released a flawed article on Lightcone, who own the event venue Lighthaven, that a certain lawsuit claims was partially bought with FTX money (which Oliver Habryka from Lightcone denies). The article detailed some of the scientific racism special guests these past three events had.
In the past, The Guardian has released a couple of articles on EA that were a bit hit-piece-y, or tried to connect nasty things that are not really connected to EA at all to EA, framing them as representative of the entire movement. Sometimes the things presented were relevant to other loosely EA-connected communities, or some of the people profiled had tried to interact with the EA community at some point (like in the case of the Collinses, who explicitly do not identify as EA despite what The Guardian says. Collinses attempt to present their case for pro-natalism on the EA Forum was met mostly with downvotes), but a lot of the time the things presented were non-central at best, and I haven't seen strong evidence that would suggest that the Lightcone team is guilty of any wrongdoing.
Despite this, I think the core claim of "the event platformed a lot of problematic people" holds true. Some of the things in it I might object to (describing Robin Hanson as misogynistic in particular registers a bit unfair to me, even if he has written some things in bad taste), but for the most part I agree with how it describes Manifest. What is up with all the racists?
II
The article names some people who are quite connected to eugenics, HBD, or are otherwise highly controversial. They missed quite a few people[1], including a researcher who has widely collaborated with the extreme figure Emil O. W. Kirkegaard, the personal assistant of the anti-democracy, anti-equality figure Curtis Yarvin (Yarvin himself wasn't attending, although he did organize an afterparty at his house for Manifest attendees), and the highly controversial excommunicated rationalist Michael Vassar, who has been described as “a cult leader” involved in some people having a psychotic breaks due to heavy psychedelics use[2] (according an organiser Vassar did not end up coming to the event, but there were people involved with him that were present who said he might be dropping by and that he had bought a ticket). Manifest co-organiser Saul expanding on the Vassar situation here.
Among the people listed as special guests for LessOnline and Manifest I would be comfortable putting a total of eight people under the eugenics/HBD label. There might be more, but I am not an expert. In addition to those eight there were multiple prominent people taking part in the three events as attendees who clearly fall under this umbrella. I am not tallying Scott Alexander or Steve Hsu here, although both of them seemed and do seem at least sympathetic to some subset of HBD beliefs (I do get that this might be a controversial opinion to express here, and if you feel offended by this feel free to ignore this aside).
The race science people were fairly welcoming. As long as you didn’t react to their hot takes with a strong emotional outburst, didn't use too many leftie shibboleths, and had a modicum of social skills, you could, like, hang out. If you were fun to hang around with, you probably were also invited to the Curtis Yarvin afterparty as well. The party featured almost every single person from the three events that fell under the category "vaguely racist" (the more cringy or overtly racist ones weren’t invited), along with many people who were there probably just out of sheer curiosity (these included some pretty famous people within the community, but I am not naming names). Newbies thought that the party was kind of lame, and the amount of controversial things being said was only about half a notch worse than what was already being said after midnight during Manifest when people didn’t have as many social guards up. Anti-trans sentiment, however, appeared to be way higher during the Yarvin party, even if race stuff was not much worse. And wow, some people really do idolize this Yarvin dude.
Takeaways
I do not live in the Bay Area. I do not know how representative of the Bay Area rationalism these events were. But I do think that these events featured a very problematic undercurrent in the rationalism community.
It is probably wise to have a stronger separation between EA and rationalism. Many people attend both rationalist meetups and EA meetups. Out of all the communities that have an overlap with the EA community, the rationalist community has the largest intersection. I think the EA community should strive to hold itself to a higher standard, and to the degree where we can affect what goes on with the rationalist community, we should at least demand them not to platform highly controversial figures with ideas way outside the Overton window.
Yes, it is true that these events weren't EA events per se, but they featured prominent EAs, forecasting is sometimes considered to be a niche EA cause area, and rationalists and AI safety people are extremely intertwined. EA will be associated with what happens at events like these. If we don't want these things to be associated with EA, add some distance. Some of the more good things that might come out of strong interest in genetics can be presented in a way that does not invite controversy. A hyperbolic example not strictly about anyone specific in particular: want to create healthier and smarter babies? Great! Having speakers who choose to express opinions on the Holocaust as an eugenic event during that presentation? Not so great! And now a non-insignificant portion of the audience is people who were attracted to the controversy. Even the good parts of a controversial idea are ruined if you have the wrong person talking about it.
[Edit: People have begun to object to this part of the text, since it was quite clear who I was loosely referring to here. I regret using this as an example, and I think the presence of the person holding this specific talk was way more justified and less likely to attract a bad crowd than many other controversial speakers. I do not think this speaker is an anti-semite. I'm leaving this reference in the text for posterity in a slightly edited form that I hope makes my point a little bit clearer.]
Closing words with some extra ramblings and loose thoughts about vibes
I am releasing this post under a pseudonym, because I really don’t know how much talking about this topic with my real name and face might hurt my future interactions with the rationalist community. It might turn out to have zero effect, but I dunno maybe the Manifest people and Lightcone would kind of dislike me or something.
LessWrong was where I first came across EA, and both communities have been important to me at different points in my life. In general I do identify more with the EA movement, and the vibes of both communities feel like they have diverged quite a bit. If I’d have to vaguely point to a specific difference in the vibes of an EAs and those of rats, I would say EAs feel more innocent whereas rats might, with possibly a little bit too much generalization, feel like they’d rank higher in some dark triad traits and feature more of chuunibyou tendencies sprinkled with a dash of narrative addiction.
I don’t really feel like many people in the rationalist community communicate very openly or honestly, even though non-deception is often thought to be one of their core tenets. I’m not sure how much this vibe can be explained by being exposed to the older iterations of LessWrong, where high-decouplers would discuss pick-up-artistry way beyond the bar for manipulation, where people might commit to naive utilitarianism at the expense of common sense, and where a small sub-community would obsess over scientific racism and group IQ differences (a sub-community which arguably gave rise to the modern alt-right, even though this honor might not be something they hold in high regard).
Anyways, those were some of my grievances about some of the special guests and a non-insignificant portion of the attendee base. In general I did have a good time at these events, even if some of the attendees did bum me out. I would probably go again, especially if whoever is responsible for choosing the speakers tones it down with the controversial special guests. But who knows, maybe next time half the people there will consist of Republicans and the Thielosphere[3]. Let me know what you think, but I won't promise to reply in the comments.
- ^
I assume mostly because you really do need quite a lot of evidence to make a claim about someone in media and not get sued for slander.
- ^
One source from Scott Alexander here. Linked because this sounds like a shocking claim and I am not sure how widely people gossip about this stuff. For the rest of the people mentioned I refrained from linking to them.
- ^
Thiel is tied to Yarvin, who is tied to race stuff.
One aspect of the framing here that annoyed me, both in the OP and in some of the comments: the problem is not controversial beliefs, it is exclusionary beliefs. Here are some controversial beliefs that I think would pose absolutely no problem at this event or any other:
The problem with racism and transphobia is not that people disagree about them! The problem is that these beliefs, in their content on the object level, hurt people and exclude people from the discussion.
Let's avoid using "controversial" as a euphemism for "toxic and exclusionary". Let's celebrate the debate and discussion of all controversies that threaten no-one and exclude no-one. Suggesting any of that is at stake is totally unnecessary.
I think this concept of an "exclusionary belief" is incoherent. If Alice is a speaker at an event, and holds belief X, and Bob is very put off by belief X and is therefor less interested in attending, that is never just about X. That is always an interaction between Bob and X, it is a function of both. And for any X, there will exist a Bob. There are many anti-nuclear and green energy activists who would not attend a conference with a speaker who has advocated nuclear energy as a necessary part of the transition away from fossil fuels. There are surely researchers who do gain of function research, or who view it as essential to protecting against future pandemics, who would not attend a conference with a speaker advocating against gain of function research. I can certainly think of people in the world, on both sides of the political spectrum, who, had they been invited to Manifest, that would have given me pause. The question is how should we respond when we find ourselves in Bob's shoes? And I think we should definitely not demand that Alice be deplatformed. Asking for someone else to be deplatformed, because of our own feelings about them or their beliefs, is controlling behavior... (read more)
To be honest, I didn't intend to focus primarily on what an exclusionary belief is, as much as highlight that many controversial beliefs are not exclusionary. If we want to get more precise about it, I'm saying something like: all the objectionable beliefs here are beliefs about people who are also (perhaps prospectively) participating in the discussion, and this is a key thing that distinguishes them from like 95% of controversial (in the sense of heated disagreement) beliefs, and that's a whole lot of baby that we risk throwing out with the bathwater if we keep saying "controversial" like the controversy itself is the problem.
I think this is mostly just arguing over hypotheticals, so it's pretty impossible to adjudicate, but I want to highlight a difference be... (read more)
In this case, I think the "physically attack and maim" part makes it much more than just a belief. So far as I am aware, nobody thinks anyone under discussion in relation to Manifest was ever likely to physically attack anybody.
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?
Bob can attend or not attend for whatever reasons he wishes. I'm not trying to judge that at all. The question seems to be whether Bob can reasonably ask the organizers to deplatform or uninvite or ban Alice. In your scenario, I think the answer is "yes", though I would frame that as being about Alice's likely future criminal behavior, not directly about the belief that precipitates that behavior.
I was a bit confused by this comment. I thought "controversial" commonly meant something more than just "causing disagreement", and indeed I think that seems to be true. Looking it up, the OED defines "controversial" as "giving rise or likely to give rise to controversy or public disagreement", and "controversy" as "prolonged public disagreement or heated discussion". That is, a belief being "controversial" implies not just that people disagree over it, but also that there's an element of heated, emotional conflict surrounding it.
So it seems to me like the problem might actually be controversial beliefs, and not exclusionary beliefs? For example, antinatalism, communism, anarcho-capitalism, vaccine skepticism, and flat earthism are all controversial, and could plausibly cause the sort of controversy being discussed here, while not being exclusionary per se. (There are perhaps also some exclusionary beliefs that are not that controversial and therefore accepted, e.g., some forms of credentialism, but I'm less sure about that.)
Of course I agree that there's no good reason to exclude topics/people just because there's disagreement around them -- I just don't think "controversial" is a good word to fence those off, since it has additional baggage. Maybe "contentious" or "tendentious" are better?
So, I downvoted this post, and wanted to explain why.
First though, I'd like to acknowledge that Manifest sure seems by far the most keen to invite "edgy" speakers out of any Lighthaven guests. Some of them seem like genuinely curious academics with an interest bound to get them into trouble (like Steve Hsu), whereas others seem like they're being edgy for edges sake, in a way that often makes me cringe (like Richard Hanania last year). Seems totally fair to discuss what's up with that speaker choice.
However, the way you engage in that discussion gives me pause.
I'm happy to cut you some slack, because having a large community discussion about these topics in a neutral and detached way is super hard. Sometimes you just gotta get your thoughts out there, and can't be held to everything under a microscope. And in general, that's ok. Nonetheless, I feel kind of obliged to point out a bunch of things that make me uncomfortable about your post.
The title itself describes Manifest as controversial as though it was an objectively verifiable descriptive term (such as "green"). This gives me an immune reaction, feeling som... (read more)
I think controversial is a totally fair and accurate description of the event given that it was the subject of a very critical story from a major newspaper, which then generated lots of heated commentary online.
And just as a data point, there is a much larger divide between EAs and rationalists in NYC (where I've been for 6+ years), and I think this has made the EA community here more welcoming to types of people that the Bay has struggled with. I've also heard of so many people who have really negative impressions of EA based on their experiences in the Bay which seem specifically related to elements of the rationalist community/culture.
Idk what caused this to be the case, and I'm not suggesting that rationalists should be purposefully excluded from EA spaces/events, but I think there are major risks to EA to be closely identified with the rationality community.
No, this argument is importantly false.
I strongly reject the norm whereby a belligerent writer at a small news outlet can pick out a small slice of a large... (read more)
Of course Manifest is controversial; the very active and heated debate on this post is evidence of that!
I think if the only thing claiming controversy was the article, it might make sense to call that fabricated/false claim by an outsider journalist, but given this post and the fact many people either disapprove or want to avoid Manifest, (and also that Austin writes about consciously deciding to invite people they thought were edgy,) means I think it's just actually just a reasonable description.
And there's disanalogy there. Racism is about someone's beliefs and behaviors, and I can't change those of someone's else's with a label. But controversy means people disagree, disapprove, etc. and someone can make someone else's belief controversial just by disagreeing with it (or if one disagreement isn't enough to be controversy, a person contributes to it with their disagreement).
I think the really key thing here is the bait-and-switch at play.
Insofar as "controversial" means "heated discussion of subject x", let's call that "x-controversial".
Now the article generates heated discussion because of "being a hit piece", and so is "hit-piece-controversial". However, there's then also heated discussion of racism on the forum, call that "racism-controversial".
If we then unpack the argument made by Garrison above, it reads as "It is fair and accurate to label Manifest racism-controversial, because of a piece of reporting that was hit-piece controversial" -- clearly an invalid argument.
Moreover, I don't know that the forum discourse was necessarily that heated; and seems like there could be a good faith conversation here about an important topic (for example the original author has been super helpful in engaging with replies, I think). So it also seems lots of "heat" got imported from a different controversy.
Crucially, I think part of the adversarial epistemic playbook of this article, the journalist behind it, as well as your own Tweets and comments supporting it, is playing on ambiguities like this (bundling a bunch of different x-controversial and y-controversial things into one label "controversial"), and then using those as the basis to make sweeping accusations that "organisations [...] cut all ties with Manifold/Lightcone".
That is what I'm objecting so strongly against.
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.
"My experience at Manifest 2024"
"My experience with controversial speakers at Manifest 2024"
"My perception of HBD discourse at and around Manifest 2024"
My mistake on the guardian US distinction but to call it a "small newspaper" is wildly off base, and for anyone interacting with the piece on social media, the distinction is not legible.
Candidly, I think you're taking this topic too personally to reason clearly. I think any reasonable person evaluating the online discussion surrounding manifest would see it as "controversial." Even if you completely excluded the guardian article, this post, Austin's, and the deluge of comments would be enough to show that.
It's also no longer feeling like a productive conversation and distracts from the object level questions.
Thanks for your comment! I think most of these issues stem from the fact that I am not a very good writer or a communicator, and because I tried to be funny at the same time. I hope you can cut me some slack, like you said. Rest assured I haven't written this post as a bad-faith hit piece, but as a collection of grievances that expand upon some of the core claims The Guardian article made. I am quite a conlfict averse person, so doing this in the first place is pretty nerve wrecking and I'm sure I made a bunch of mistakes or framed things in a sub-optimal way.
I'll try to reply to some of your points here:
My original draft had a different title, but the release of the Guardian article and subsequent Twitter discussion among EAs and rationalists made me change the title. It felt like an appropriate adjective, and I am somewhat surprised that you don't feel like these things could be called controversy or warrant the use of that word. I don't feel very strongly on this, though, and am happy to change the title if you feel like it is inappropriate.
... (read more)I am open to trade, but I would like something in return, and my guess is it would have to be pretty valuable since option value and freedom of expression is quite valuable to me. I don't see a basis on which the EA community would have any right to "demand" such a thing from rationalists like myself.
Thanks for the reply, it feels like you're engaging in good faith and I really appreciate that!
Brief notes --
- The word "controversy": Thanks. I think the issue with some of these media things is that they feed off of themselves. Something becomes a controversy merely because everyone believes it's controversial; even though it really might not have to be. (For a longer explanation of this phenomenon, search for "gaffe" here)
- People you met: I believe you that you met people who were into HBD. I saw at least one comment in Manifest discord last year that weirded me out. I'm pro people discussing that and how to relate to that. (I'm just worried how the term "racist" easily steers this off the rails, as seen in some of the other comments on this post)
- Republicans: I'll be blunt, but I think you're way off base here. Being a republican is equally as compatible with EA as being a Democrat. Lots of people on both sides have incompatible views. I honestly think you just haven't met enough Republicans! (Maybe some could introduce themselves in reply to this comment? :) )
- Distancing: I think some version of the "platforming" concept makes sense. I currently don't think Lighthaven should
... (read more)Yeah. I am aware of the story. (I was in fact the person who made this site, together with my colleague Ben.) Updated my comment for clarity.
(For people who don't know all the details: Scott didn't just voluntarily doxx himself. He only did it in a kind of judo-move response to the New York Times informing him they were going to proceed with doxxing him, against his repeatedly strongly expressed wishes.)
I was at Manifest as a volunteer, and I also saw much of the same behaviour as you. If I had known scientific racism or eugenics were acceptable topics of conversation there, I wouldn’t have gone. I’m increasingly glad I decided not to organise a talk.
EA needs to recognise that even associating with scientific racists and eugenicists turns away many of the kinds of bright, kind, ambitious people the movement needs. I am exhausted at having to tell people I am an EA ‘but not one of those ones’. If the movement truly values diversity of views, we should value the people we’re turning away just as much.
Hey huw -- I'm very grateful that you took the time to volunteer at Manifest. I hope that you overall enjoyed your time at the festival; either way, thanks for the feedback.
I don't love that some guests we invited may turn away bright, ambitious, and especially kind folks like yourself; I write a bit more about this here. I think the opposite is true as well, though, where left-leaning views turn away some of the most awesome up-and-coming folks. My subjective guess is that EA as a whole is far more likely to suffer from the latter failure mode.
In any case, I expect EAGs to represent more of an official EA party line with respect to who they include or exclude, and encourage you to look there if you don't find Manifest to your tastes. One of the explicit tenets of Manifest that distinguishes it from an EAG is that we are default-open rather than default-closed; there's no application process where we screen attendees to conform to a particular mold.
Here's how I interpret your response:
I think this response is a false equivalence and feels dismissive of the concerns being expressed.
My issue is not that I'm leftist and don't like right-wing opinions and just want to toe the "party line". I am actually quite moderate, attend right-wing conferences, and share a lot of misgivings with left-wing culture + cancel culture + progressives.
My issue is that I don't like having platformed speakers who think that trans people are mentally ill, that black professionals are easily dismissed affirmative action hires (or worse: animals). I don't like cancel culture but I do think there needs to be some sort of "line" established of acceptable conduct and I think this goes way beyond right vs. left and into something very dark and different.
I think this comment does a really bad job of interpreting Austin in good faith. You are putting words in his mouth, rewriting the tone and substance of his comment so that it is much more contentious than what he actually expressed. Austin did not claim:
I think it is pretty poor form to read someone's comment in such a hostile way and then attribute views to them they didn't express.
Mm, for example, I think using the word "fag" in conversation is somewhat past the line; I don't see why that kind of epithet would need to be used at Manifest, and hope that I would have spoken out against that kind of behavior if I had witnessed it. (I'm naturally not a very confrontational person, fwiw).
I don't remember any instances or interactions throughout Manifest that I witnessed which got close to the line; it's possible it didn't happen in front of me, because of my status as an organizer, but I think this was reflective of the vast majority of attendee experiences. In the feedback form, two commenters described interactions that feel past the line to me (which I detail here).
I have heard from many conversatives (and some grey tribe people) over the years that they feel very unwelcome at EA events (which is not very surprising, given quotes in the OP which expresses horror at a conference that might be 50% republicans, though I understand that might be more of a US/non-US cultural misunderstanding).
I don't pay that much attention to which speakers go to EAG, so I am less sure about speakers, but there have been a bunch of radical-leftist animal rights people at various conferences that have been cited to me many times as something that made very promising young people substantially less likely to attend (I don't want to dox the relevant attendees here, but would be happy to DM you some names if you want).
"there have been a bunch of radical-leftist animal rights people at various conferences that have been cited to me many times as something that made very promising young people substantially less likely to attend (I don't want to dox the relevant attendees here, but would be happy to DM you some names if you want)."
I'm curious about the type of behaviour rather than the names of the people.
As an example of something that I think causes people to have this reaction, DxE coordinated and tried to stage a protest at the EA Global I organized in 2015, because we served some meat at the event. DxE also staged a protest at another CFAR event that I helped organize in 2016. Their protests at the time consisted of disruptively blocking access to the food and screaming very loudly (sometimes with a megaphone) at the people trying to get food about how they are evil (everyone gets to hear this, though it's directed at the people who eat meat) until they get escorted out by security.
Some of their other public protests involve showering the floor and furniture in pig blood: https://www.totallyveganbuzz.com/headline-posts/vegan-activists-arrested-after-storming-mcdonalds-wearing-pig-masks-and-smearing-blood-across-the-floor/
(Also, to be clear on my position, I think Wayne Hsiung, head of DxE is a pretty terrible person with a history of disruption and advocating for pretty extreme bad things in my books, and I still think it would be good for him to be invited to Manifest, especially if he would debate his positions with someone, and he commits to not staging some kind of disruptive protest)
I do think Manifest and the Manifund team try to communicate a philosophy of extreme transparency and extreme openness for any conversational topic that people want to bring (of course barring anything that actually involves directly harassing someone). I, of all people, had a bunch of arguments with Austin over the last 1-2 years about whether some people should be more clearly deplatformed or excluded from conversations (and I think I am already at least a 95th percentile person on this dimension)
I think this is overall admirable, but I am sad that you ended up attending without that being properly sign-posted to you.
I guess I am trying to elucidate that the paradox of intolerance applies to this kind of extreme openness/transparency. The more open Manifest is to offensive, incorrect, and harmful ideas, the less of any other kinds of ideas it will attract. I don’t think there is an effective way to signpost that openness without losing the rest of their audience; nobody but scientific racists would go to a conference that signposted ‘it’s acceptable to be scientifically racist here’.
Anyway. It’s obviously their prerogative to host such a conference if they want. But it is equally up to EA to decide where to draw the line out of their own best interests. If that line isn’t an outright intolerance of scientific racism and eugenics, I don’t think EA will be able to draw in enough new members to survive.
Huw: To what extent is this EA verses rationality? Above you keep saying, "EA needs to" but these are ultimately rationalist conferences. For example, I'm not sure what more we can do to loudly signal Vassar isn't EA. He's banned from literally everything and has been for coming up to 10 years. I am pretty sure that extends to multiple people listed here. I am just not sure how public those decisions are so I will stop listing but (shoots karma into space) I wouldn't go near half of these people with a 60 foot long stick.
Steelmanning Huw's comments, I interpret "it is equally up to EA to decide where to draw the line out of their own best interests" as speaking out against certain things and being very careful to not give the impression of accepting or tolerating them. Indicia exist that could cause a reasonable person to think that Manifest was somehow related to EA -- it was promoted on this Forum, Manifold has received significant funding from an "EA" coded source (i.e., FTXFF), a number of prominent EAs were reportedly in attendance, etc. So one could reach a conclusion that EA needs to distance itself more sharply and firmly from this while recognizing that the conferences are not under EA control.
I'm surprised you say you have "no idea what people mean." The Manifest / Summer Camp / LessOnline trio made Manifest seem closer to "project the LessWrong team is deeply involved with" than "some organization is renting out our space."
Among the things that gave me this impression were Raemon's post "some thoughts on LessOnline" and the less.online website, both of which integrate content about Manifest without clear differentiation.
Now that I'm looking at these with a more careful eye, I can see that they all say Manifest is independently operated with its own organizers, etc. I can understand how from the inside, it would be obvious that Manifest was run by completely different people and had (I'm now presuming) little direct LessWrong involvement. I just think it should be apparent that this is less clear from the outside, and it wouldn't be hard for someone to be confused on this point.
Granted, I didn't go to any of these, I've just seen some stuff about them online, so discount this take appropriately. But my impression is that if a friend had asked me "hey, I heard about Manifest, is that a Rationalist thing?" I think "yes" would have been a less misleading answer than "no."
Yeah, I think this is fair. I think using the language "no idea what people mean" in exchange for "I think these people are wrong and I think are capable of figuring out that they are wrong" (which is closer to what I meant) is a bad rhetorical move and I shouldn't have used it.
The paradox is that openness to these kinds of speakers makes the conference much less attractive and acceptable to the large swathe of people interested in forecasting but not interested in engaging with racists. The conference does not need to literally bar this swathe from attending to effectively dissuade them from doing so. Consider how a similar selection of blatant homophobes would affect LGBT+ folks' decision to attend.
(edit: some cool voting patterns happening huh)
If you cancel speakers from attending a future Manifest, won't that also make the conference less attractive and acceptable to a large swathe of people interested in forecasting?
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?
It's not just a matter of a speaker's net effect on attendance/interest. Alex Jones would probably draw lots of new people to a Manifest conference, but are they types of people you want to be there? Who you choose to platform, especially at a small, young conference, will have a large effect on the makeup and culture of the related communities.
Additionally, given how toxic these views are in the wider culture, any association between them and prediction markets are likely to be bad for the long-term health of the prediction community.
I am strongly in favor of having more forecasting conferences! I think having a more orthodox and professional forecasting conference could be great and I would love to host it. I agree there is somewhat of a limited resource in terms of conference-bandwidth here, but I think on the margin there is just space for multiple events with different priorities here.
I claim Manifest would do better by it's own lights (i.e. openness to many ideas) if they were more accomodating to people who find racism distasteful than to those who find it acceptable. But also, as one of very few conferences on a niche topic, Manifest holds some responsibility to the current and future forecasting community. On a moral and intellectual basis, barring explicit racists seems much more reasonable than cultivating a home for racists. There is no necessary connection between forecasting and racism - it is a relationship contingent upon particular histories and internet groups. Manifest can decide to continue that relationship or disrupt it.
I feel sympathy for the "cultivating a home for racists" comparison, but like, my sense is just that Manifest just invited anyone who wanted to come with any reasonably large following of any kind. I don't think they were trying in any way to "cultivate a home for racists".
I feel hesitant to put more complicated reputational burdens on conference organizers. It is already an enormously thankless job, and while I agree there is conference fatigue and so that means there are some commons to be allocated here, I think on the margin it's more productive to encourage people to run their own conferences instead of putting more constraints on existing organizers.
I think one way you can read this situation is: racists are looking for an "intellectual home" in some sense, and since they don't find one in most of the mainstream, they look for places that they can parasitically occupy and use for their own ends. The warning here is: the forecasting community need not only to avoid cultivating a home for racists, but also to proactively defend against racists cultivating a home for themselves. And if the forecasting community can't build walls against this kind of parasitism, then the rationalist community needs to protect themselves from the forecasting community. And if they can't do that, then EA needs to protect itself from the rationalist community.
The core of much of this thinking is that racists (and fascists, the alt-right generally) don't play fair in the marketplace of ideas, and they will manipulate and exploit your welcome if you extend them one. I'm not sure how well I can defend this idea (might write a top-level comment about it if I can feel confident enough about it), but I think that's often what people are getting at with these kinds of concerns.
Yeah, to be clear, I think this is a real dynamic (as Scott Alexander has I think cogently written about here [1]). I think in as much as this is the concern, I am pretty into thinking about the dynamics here, and strongly agree that defenses for this kind of stuff are important.
I also think similar things are true about people on the far left and a bunch of other social clusters with a history of trying to establish themselves in places with attack surface like this.
I think a reasonable thing would definitely be to see whether any specific subculture is growing at a very disproportionate rate in terms of attendance for events like Manifest, as well as to think about good ways of defending against this kind of takeover. My model of Manifest is probably not doing enough modeling about this kind of hostile subculture growth, though my guess is they'll learn quickly as it becomes a more apparent problem.
- ^
... (read more)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.
As far as I can tell, this isn't true. My model of Austin, Saul and Rachel did indeed invite tons of people from different fields, and it happened to be that these people developed an interest in prediction markets and wanted to come.
I guess I don't super have a feeling of edgelordism, though I do see a pretty extreme commitment to openness. To be clear, I am not like "these people aren't at all edgy for the sake of edgy", but there are people for which I get that vibe much more. It feels much more like a deep commitment to something that happens to give rise to an intense openness to stuff here.
Have you considered that the reason you don’t see a paradox here is because you are not one of the minorities targeted by the abhorrent views you and your organisation seek to platform?
I have considered it, though most of my staff (which I of course recognize is a biased sample, but it's what I have) and a large fractions of my friends who I talked to about this are in a bunch of the obviously targeted demographics (most relevantly many of them are jewish), and I don't think they feel differently. Indeed, there was literally a Shabbat service at the event.
I am pretty confident that is not the reason for my belief, and if I was jewish or black, which seem like the obvious demographics, I would not believe something different here, though it's of course hard to know with such a substantial counterfactual.
As a side note: I would like to flag that a common meme in the HBD crowd seemed to be that Ashkenazim are the best and the most intelligent race, and that Jewish people were overrepresented among them.
Please only answer if you are comfortable.
When you say "scientific racists and eugenicists" how often would you say you heard things like "some races are worse than others and don't deserve respect" or "poor people shouldn't have kids" as opposed to "there are slight differences between racial groups" or "people should be able to select their children for intelligence".
Because both sets of statements are technically racist and eugenicist but I think there is a pretty large gap between them. What exactly did you hear?
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).
It's pretty damning of an event in my view if people are saying things beyond "some races are worse than others and don't deserve respect." (Or indeed, if they are literally saying just that.)
Many not themselves bigoted people in the rationalist community seem to really hate the idea that HBD people are covering up bad intentions with a veneer of just being interested in scientific questions about the genetics of intelligence because they pattern-match it to accusations of "dog-whistling" on twitter and correctly note that such accusations are epistemically dodgy, because they are so hard to disprove even in cases where they are false. (And also, the rationalists themselves I think, often are interested in scientific racist ideas simply because they want to know whether scary taboo things are true.) But these rationalists should in my view remember that:
A) It IS possible for people to "hide their power level" so to speak (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hide-your-power-level) and people on the far-right (amongst others) do do that. (Unsurprisingly, as they have strong incentives to do so.) Part of the reason this sometimes works is because most people understand tha... (read more)
Thank you for clarifying. I would regard Nathan's first pair of examples as racist and eugenic, but importantly not his second pair. My experience at Summer Camp and Manifest was that I did not hear anything like the first pair or anything more extreme. (I did not attend Less Online or the Curtis Yarvin party so I cannot speak to what happened there). I think I understand why you did not include many concrete examples, but the accusation of racism without concrete examples mostly comes off as name-calling to me. The "HBD" label also comes off to me as name-calling, as I only ever hear it used by people attacking it, and they don't ever seem to say much more than "racist" in their own definitions of it. I haven't really seen people say "yes, I believe in HBD and here is what I mean by that", but maybe I'm just not reading the right people. If you could point me at such a person that might be useful. But now it seems you are claiming to have heard significantly more extreme things than I did. And I'm curious why that is.
I'm kind of confused by this. I went to LessOnline and Manifest feel like I hardly heard any racist opinions. It's possible that such people don't talk to me or that opinions that the poster thinks are racist, I don't, but I dunno, I just didn't hear much of that kind of edginess. It was probably slightly less edgy than I expected.
I have some sympathy with the poster. I didn't like that Hanania was given top billing last year and pushed in the discord for that to change (and wrote this). I have literally taken flack for not being harsh enough there, but I stand by what I said - that status is something to be careful when doling out and that Hanania didn't deserve it. Not that he never would, but that he wasn't at the time.
To me it feels like those people who generate new ideas are pretty scattershot about it. Hanson has some great ideas and some pretty bad ones. But I think if he never felt comfortable saying a bad idea he might not say some really good ones too.
The question then is whether it is ethical to have events that involve people with bad ideas and whether there are ways to minimise harms. I think yes to both. To me, the prediction market space is an unusually ... (read more)
Agree, and my experience was also free of racism, although I only went to one session (my debate with Brian Chau) and otherwise had free-mingling conversations. It's possible the racist people just didn't gravitate to me.
I would never have debated Brian Chau for a podcast or video because I don't think it's worth /don't want to platform his org and its views more broadly, but Manifest was a great space where people who are sympathetic to his views are actually open to hearing PauseAI's case in response. I think conferences like that, with a strong emphasis on free speech and free exchange, are valuable.
I think it would be phenomenally shortsighted for EA to prioritize its relationship with rationalists over its relationship with EA-sympathetic folks who are put off by scientific racists, given that the latter include many of the policymakers, academics, and professional people most capable of actualizing EA ideas. Most of these people aren't going to risk working/being associated with EA if EA is broadly seen as racist. Figuring out how to create a healthy (and publicly recognized) distance between EAs and rationalists seems much easier said than done, though.
I think you’re underestimating how important the Rationalist influence has been for putting EA on the right track. The clearest example is that it likely would have taken us much longer to start paying attention to AI without the rationalist influence. A large number of movements have been rendered ineffective when they’ve allowed their epistemics to be corrupted by politics.
A more minor point, but perhaps worth noting — rationalists also made the forum software we're all using to have this discussion.
Hi, last organizer here, wanted to give my take.
Overall, I’m sympathetic to the point this post is making.
This is tricky because I think I could defend the choice to have any of the individual controversial speakers. Some of them, e.g. Simone and Malcolm Collins, simply do not hold racist views. Sure, they can be edgy and inflammatory — they act this way on the internet strategically as far as I can tell, and it’s not my style. But they’re not scientific racists. Embryo selection has nothing to do with race or reproductive coercion and oppression. Plus they are particularly generous, friendly, and engaging in person, which means they are particularly value-adding as attendees. Others of them, e.g. Brian Chau, I don’t like the style or opinions of about basically anything (though I admit I've hardly engaged with his stuff). I've seen him write about race and gender in a way I perceive to be unnecessarily inflammatory, and like, mean? And I think he’s wrong and doing a lot of harm with the AI stuff. But he came to do a debate with Holly Elmore about acceleration vs. pause. It was a very popular session, and I heard from an AI safety friend I respect a lot that he learned a lot about ... (read more)
meta
- above all, thank you for writing this up. i recognize how difficult writing something like this might be, and i endorse the reflex to click “publish” anyway.
- "I am releasing this post under a pseudonym, because I really don’t know how much talking about this topic with my real name and face might hurt my future interactions with the rationalist community. It might turn out to have zero effect, but I dunno maybe the Manifest people and Lightcone would kind of dislike me or something."
- i’m not sure exactly what you mean by “dislike;” i do think we disagree, but i definitely don’t think you’re an evil person or something. i would love to have you back at future manifests!
- i was pretty disappointed at the quality of the journalism in the guardian hitpiece; see @Habryka 's thread pointing out a number factual errors. there were definitely some nuggets of fair criticism, which made me even more disappointed in the guardian piece. but that also makes me even more glad that you wrote up what is (IMO) a much more coherent criticism.
- …however, i think that “error-riddled guardian hitpiece” is a pretty low bar to clear. i do still think that there are some worrying/bad parts of this piece, wh
... (read more)Thank you for this message Saul Munn. It feels honest and I do notice myself feeling relieved seeing that one of the main organisers isn't angry at me or something. I'll make every edit and clarification that you suggested. I would like to point out that I had said that I am unsure if Vassar himself attended the events or not, but I have been told that he did buy a ticket. I believe you that he did not attend, but I will leave a mention about the ticket (unless of course I have been misinformed, but I do get it if you can't divulge in who specifically has or has not bought a ticket). [Edit: Saul on Vassar attendance]
I do regret using the holocaust example. The example was loosely based on one speaker who appeared to be defending eugenics by saying that the holocaust was actually considered a dysgenic event by top nazi officials. Many other examples I could have used would have narrowed my identity down quite a bit, as many of the sessions had just a handful people in the audience. What I was going for was "even the good parts of a controversial idea are ruined if you have the wrong person talking about it". I edited this in the text to make it more clear. Please take a look to see ... (read more)
That sounds like an obviously invalid argument! Now, a) I didn't attend that talk, b) many people are bad at making arguments, and c) I've long suspected that poor reasoning especially is positively correlated with racism (and this is true even after typical range restriction). So it's certainly possible that the argument they made was literally that bad.
But I think it's more likely that you misunderstood their argument.
I believe Vassar did buy a ticket to Summer Camp, but it was refunded as he wasn't allowed into that event.
If it were my event, i would like it to be free speechy without giving status mainly for edginess. So attendees can do what they like, but i’d prefer guests were people with good forecasting track records or something interesting to say - people who we want to grow up to be, in some sense. I think this would remove a lot of the incentive for edgy people to come, which i’m fine with.
I'm a non-binary person with a disability - and Manifund inviting iconoclastic thinkers made me feel like this is a safer community.
Because more than my gender or privilige, I identify as somebody who thinks outside the box.
I love the EA and rationalist communities for their willingness to seek truth and altruism, regardless of how socially acceptable it is. I feel like I can talk to people and really get to the heart of an issue without having to self-censor due to politics.
I am happy that Manifund is doing what they think is right and true. I am happy that they do not ostracize and deplatform people if they believe in controversial things outside of the Overton window.
I hope they keep doing what they're doing.
I'm not particularly happy to see people within this community immediately present and accept the framing that Manifest was controversial because people reacted harshly to an article explicitly aimed at smearing a community I belong to with reckless disregard for truth and bizarrely sinister framing of mundane decisions, written by people who proceeded simply by reading a guest list without even bothering to attend the event they were writing about. In that regard, Manifest is only controversial in the same sense Scott Alexander was controversial when the New York Times wrote about him.
To name something is often to make it so; to lead with the framing that Manifest was controversial is to encourage other people to see it that way, yielding to the frame of people who treat EA itself as controversial. That has an impact on everyone who attends, organizes, and puts effort into it. I recognize that your own experience was mixed and have no problem with you sharing that and exploring it, but I think it's worth being cautious about frame-setting in the title in that way, particularly given its potential impact on early-career organizers or guests.
I was excited and honored to be invited t... (read more)
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.
I believe you, but “Ben Stewart dislikes it” is not typically the standard for declaring a conference controversial. Was there public controversy around the conference not connected to the article?
Sure—but a debate over one guest last year says little about the reception of the conference as a whole. The New York Times paid much more attention to the presence of an orgy and Aella than to Hanania, glossing him over in a single line.
Most conferences—not least EAG—wind up with debates like that on the margins.
I'm quite leftwing by manifest standards. I'm probably extremely pro-woke even by EA standards. I had a great time at less-online/summer-camp/manifest. I honestly tried to avoid politics. Unlike many people I don't actually like arguing. I'd prefer to collaborate and learn from other people. (Though I feel somewhat 'responsible for' and 'invested in' EA and so I find it hard not to argue about that particular topic). I mostly tried to talk to people about finance, health and prediction markets. Was honestly super fun and easy. People didn't force me to discuss poltiics.
Though I must say it was probably a mistake to bring my girlfriend to manifest. I think she got freaked out. Probably wasn't good for our relationship.
I want to be in a movement or community where people hold their heads up, say what they think is true, speak and listen freely, and bother to act on principles worth defending / to attend to aspects of reputation they actually care about, but not to worry about PR as such.
It's somehow hard for me to read the OP and the comments below it without feeling like I should cower in fear and try to avoid social attack. I hope we don't anyhow. (TBF, lots of the comments actively make this better, and I appreciate that!)
(Alternately put: a culture of truthseeking seems really important if we want to do actual good, and not just think we're doing good or gain careers by being associated with the idea of do-gooding or something. I find it actively difficult to remember I wish to live by truth-seeking principles/culture while reading these threads somehow. I want a counterweight to make it easier.)
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.
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.
This is deeply antithetical to EA culture and norms.
Applying RCTs to global poverty was outside the overton window and considered very controversial early on.
Same with AI safety.
We should have a community where people are free to associate with who they want, explore out there ideas, and pursue truth and altruism instead of politics.
Yarvin, in particular, stands out to me as someone who only has relevant notability as a famous openly anti-democratic far-right figure with explicitly far-right "establish a dictatorship" political goals. If he was not merely there as an attendee, but invited by the organisers, I think EA orgs should cut any ties with Manifold frankly.
Also, the use of slurs as described should be an absolutely easy case for expulsion apart from anything else. It doesn't have even the slightest fig-leaf of being about taboo empirical claims. If Manifold won't take even that seriously it's hard to believe they don't hold pretty hard right, bigoted opinions as an org. (A shame if so, as I like Manifold itself.) Though I guess it is possible the organisers were not aware of this behaviour.
Thanks for your comment David! Just to clarify: Yarvin wasn't there there as an attendee or as an invitee, but both his personal assistant and many people who seemed to have close ties to him were attending the events. Many attendees also took part in the afterparty organized by Yarvin at his house. I could have been clearer about this in my text.
Just to clarify for my own benefit:
Of these points, there was only legitimate confusion over the Vassar one. Omitting these points would not only make the post epistemologically cleaner and more concise, but also save you the trouble posting corrections down in the comments.
You will forgive me if this colors the conclusions I draw from your post.
I don't know exactly how it would work, but we need to get better as a community in excluding extreme right authoritarian people from spaces associated with us. It's bad stuff on its merits, it's uncomfortable for many EAs who are not straight white men (not all necessarily obviously more than literally zero very right-wing people of colour are fine with this stuff, and some are in EA), and it makes me and I suspect other people nervous about publicly identifying with EA. (I don't think we should play down what we believe to be popular, but I do think we should reject/eject people for believing stuff that is both wrong and bigoted and reputationally toxic.)
I would slightly separate "pro-eugenics" stuff from the white nationalism, because "eugenics" alas covers a wide variety of importantly different things. Certain ideas associated with "liberal eugenics" are quite mainstream in parts of analytic philosophy, whereas writing about the United States becoming too genetically Mexican is thankfully mainstream nowhere reputable. See for example: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/eugenics/#ArguForLibeEuge One of the "liberal eugenicists" discussed there, Julian Savulescu was ... (read more)
"Eugenics" is the worst word. (Is there any other word in the English language where the connotations diverge so wildly from the literal denotation?) "Liberal eugenics" is effectively a scissor-statement to generate utterly unnecessary conflict between low and high decouplers. Imagine if the literal definition of "rape" didn't actually include anything about coercion or lack of consent, and then a bunch of sex-positive philosophers described themselves as being in favor of "consensual rape" instead of picking a less inflammatory way of describing being sex-positive. That's eugenics discourse today.
ETA: my point being that it would seem most helpful (both for clear thinking and for avoiding unnecessary conflict) for people to use more precise language when discussing technologically-aided reproductive freedom and technologically-aided reproductive coercion. The two opposites are not the same, just because both involve technology and goal-directedness in relation to reproduction!
So you want EA orgs to use their clout to try and push for EA-associated spaces to not allow people that you and some amount of EAs don't like?
I don't want this. CEA can choose who it wants to invite to EAGs (and I think manages to block out extreme right authoritarians pretty well). Other orgs can invite who they want.
I find this desire for control over other people and spaces bad. I predict it has a chilling effect on ideas. A big chunk of thinking about AI (for better or worse) came from people who are at times uncomfortable to me and I guess you. Would you have endorsed not engaging with these people 10 years ago?
Also I just really don't think there were many authoritarian right wingers at these events. Feels like the poster and I went to completely different events?
I think the key words in the text you quoted are "spaces associated with us":
This is pretty concerning to me (as someone who didn't attend Manifest but very well might have under other circumstances). I knew Hanania had been at Manifest before and would perhaps be there again, but didn't realize the event overall had this level of "race science" presence? I hope the Manifest organizers take action to change that for future events, and in general have thought some of Manifold's recent decisions seemed rather too "edgy"/sensationalist/attention-seeking (not sure of the right word here...) for my taste.
However, this post also rubs me the wrong way a bit because it seems to conflate a bunch of things that I don't think are appropriate.
To name some quick examples that I don't intend to get into in detail:
The other thing that really gets me about this post, though, is your conclusion:
I think conflating Rep... (read more)
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.
I respectfully disagree with this post. I think one of the best aspects of rat/EA/adjacent spaces like Manifest is that they're willing to have a broader Overton window than the rest of society, and that this is fragile and should be protected. To encourage Manifest to no longer host "controversial" speakers (more controversial from the perspective of mainstream media than from the perspective of EA) is to defeat the purpose of one of the key norms of rationalism: truth-seeking over prevailing social norms.
Out of hundreds of guests, there were a handful people who might hold views you disagree with that were allowed to come to a conference which was not about their controversial views?
As someone said on Twitter, "They allowed Republicans to attend? The horror!"
It is my strong belief that each of us have something to learn even from these people with controversial views.
The Guardian article cited Jonathan Anomaly's "liberal, non-coercive eugenics". Is that so bad that we can never discuss it? We have to shun such people and destroy their careers so that the silencing affect is so large that no one dares to ever bring it up again?
That's pure authoritarian censorship. I truly believe you guys should all be ashamed of yourselves. This is not how we build the best future.
The wisest among us know to reserve judgment and engage intellectually even with ideas we don't believe in. Have some humility -- you might not be right about everything!
I think EA is getting worse precisely because it is more normie and not accepting of true intellectual diversity.
Lastly, you might not know this, but there's broad agreement among the smartest people that HBD is true. I've been in the room before. The data is very obvious if you undertake research yourself -- it is just taboo. Many decide that the world is better off hiding this knowledge, but I think there is a middle ground.
Just to clarify, I would be extremely surprised if any organizer would have asked anyone to give a presentation on any holocaust stuff, that would seem extremely non-characteristic of everyone involved (I mean, maybe in a way that would allow someone else to challenge it live, but not in a way that would be an encouraged one-sided presentation).
I also don't remember anything about this on the schedule, but all three events were unconferences where anyone could add anything they wanted to the schedule, and there were over 200 sessions, so I can't rule that out (but like, anyone could buy a ticket and add anything they wanted to the schedule).
I was at that session. My memory is that the presenter was very clear that the nazis killed other groups for eugenic reasons, and the jews for dysgenic reasons, both of which are generally regarded as part of the holocaust. The distinction was a bit of history nerding, not an attempt to minimize the nazis crimes, or to deny that the nazis were eugenicists.
If that is the case then the post seems shockingly disingenuous, even within the category of 'denounce people for tolerating controversial people' posts. It really seems like the OP was trying to let readers assume that the speakers' strong opinions in question were pro-holocaust or pro-holocaust denial, especially given the post was also calling them racist. If those strong opinions were actually included their opposition to the genocide ... well, what would the OP prefer? Speakers with mixed and equivocal views on the holocaust?
Was Vassar a speaker or just an attendee?
In addition to the cult stuff you mentioned, when the time article on sexual harassment in rationalist communities came out, many responses on the article claimed Vassar had been accused of multiple instances of sexual harassment or assault and banned from multiple communities. I got the impression he was no longer around, and am disturbed that he would be allowed in such a conference.
Edit: see the edit in the Op, vassar did not actually attend, but apparently he could have if he wanted to. I would advise everyone to not let this guy attend your conferences.
neither; he did not attend manifest.
edit: see jonas' important question below, and my response. i think they both provide pretty important context.
Would he have been allowed to attend if he wanted to? (I think you really need to have a process to filter out people like him.)
good question, jonas; thanks for asking it!
- he bought a ticket to summer camp; we refunded it ~immediately and uninvited him from the event.
- after that, and before (or possibly during?) manifest, i made the decision to, conditional on his having bought a ticket, allow him to participate in the event. a few clarifications:
- i made this decision, not the others on the manifest team; i bear sole responsibility/deserve blame-in-expectation if it was wrong.[1]
- i made this decision under quite a lot of stress/pressure, after agonizing about it for a couple days, and with way less information than i would've liked; i basically didn't know who vassar was prior to summer camp, and had like an hour or two in total to do research/talk to people/learn about his behavior/etc.
- i'm quite unsure if this is a decision i reflectively endorse, and if you have information that might sway my decision about his attending future events in either direction, i'd love to hear — especially now that i actually have the time/attention to do look into it, rather than being amidst a 600-person event i'm running. feel free to reach out to me privately, if you'd prefer.
- ultimately, vassar did not buy a ticket to manifest
... (read more)I'm confused how come he was first uninvited, and then you later decided to allow him to participate? Did he buy a summer camp ticket, get uninvited, and then you decided to make up your mind for what would happen if he also were to buy a Manifest ticket?
Here is Saul on Vassar attendance: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MHenxzydsNgRzSMHY/my-experience-at-the-controversial-manifest-2024?commentId=vWLJo6GQ5sFbbbxch
Tl;dr: Vassar bought a ticket to Summer Camp, got uninvited to it, then the decision was reversed to allow him to participate in Manifest, and he ultimately didn't end up participating. Editing the main post to reflect this.
I think many people are overestimating the reputational risks here.
Firstly, cancel culture is past its peak. Secondly, for better or worse, the Overton window is largely than it was previously (I expect this process to continue further). Thirdly, many of the folk who play the 'guilt by association game' already hate us and already have enough ammunition that we aren't going to change their minds. Fourthly, the folk who play that game most strongly mostly wouldn't make good community members anyway. Fifthly, the more you bend in relation to reputational attacks or to ward them off, the more that people see you as a juicy target.
For that reason, I don't think we should prioritise worries about reputational risks nearly as much as you think (in fact, posts like this seem to cause more reputational risks than they potentially solve by implicitly accepting the frame that EA and LightCone and Manifold shouldn't be regarded as separate entities, but all mashed together).
I strongly believe that we should allow each community to pursue its own path. Effective Altruism cares primarily about impact, rationalism primarily about strong epistemics and Manifold about accurate prediction markets. ... (read more)
It's important to consider adverse selection. People who get hounded out of everywhere else are inexplicably* invited to a forecasting conference, of course they come! they have nowhere else to go!
* inexplicably, in the sense that a forecasting conference is inviting people specialized in demographics and genetics-- it's a little related, but not that related.
[Minor edits - I posted this after seeing the main post and one of the comments about similar experiences, and figured that this experience was much more common. Since then I haven't seen many other similar experiences listed, but there have been some on the other side. I'd be curious to get a better read on how many people wound up feeling uncomfortable at the event. That's something I don't want to see, and it's something the organizers don't want to see.]
Thanks for bringing this up, and I feel really bad about a lot of this.
My impression is that some decent forecasters / financial traders online are more interested in some of this than I'd like or expect. There's definitely some edgy vibes in the territory. I think the conference played heavily to the interests of some of the community that enjoys forecasting (much more than the community of professional forecasters or forecasting researchers), whatever these interests might be.
I attended for most of Manifest, but I was very focused on the forecasting parts, and (thankfully) think I missed almost all of what you're describing. There was definitely a decent crowd of professionals there focused on forecasting / EA (and among these... (read more)
Thinking about this more - at first I was confused on why all of these people (Curtis Yarvin? Michael Vassar?) were interested in forecasting. Some of the individuals listed were people I’ve never known to be interested in the area.
I think one issue might have been that this was just an unusual event in that it rejected very few people for controversial beliefs, and was (generally) well put together. I suspect that this could have attracted people with controversial beliefs, even though that was likely not really the main intention.
So, “not excluding controversial people” quickly becomes, partially, “a gathering for controversial people.”
I think Scott Alexander wrote about this sort of pattern with online communities.
This is the Scott Alexander summation of it that sticks in my memory most: "if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.”
And lots of great people who are interested and talented at forecasting don't go, because they don't want to be "balancing out".
I imagine a bit of investigation/survey work would be really good here. It's a clear empirical question, and I'd hope that if it is true, data would be very convincing to the relevant decision-makers.
Personally I'd hope and expect that it's true (I'm not very excited about some of these people either, and it would be great to have the conference have better attendees), but expect that the Manifold team isn't yet convinced.
Here's one data point; I was consistently in the top 25 on metaculus for a couple years. I would never attend a conference where a "scientific racist" gave a talk.
I'm surprised at all the negative votes I was getting above. I felt like I was trying to understand the problem, not recommend solutions.
If it is the case that “not excluding controversial people” lead to it becoming unintentionally popular with some crowd, I imagine there are various ways this could be handled. Like, have discussions with some of these people first, and try to get to some agreement people are all happy with.
"forecasting is sometimes considered to be a niche EA cause area"
Given that Open Phil have given many millions to metaculus, and there are a bunch of posts on the forum I would say it may even be more than a niche EA cause area.
I made a small poll to try and figure out what consensus and disagreeing views are. You can add your own statements.
I'll post it on both articles, please only vote once. Likewise please take the results with a pinch of salt because I can't gate to one vote per user.
Results here: https://viewpoints.xyz/polls/ea-and-manifest/results
(If you want more people to answer this poll consider upvoting it)
I note that there has been a fair bit of promotion related to Manifest on the Forum. While people can put on whatever events they wish under their own banner -- we have no veto power over that -- Maniano's post makes me skeptical that advertising Manifest on the Forum is appropriate. While I don't think allowing an event to be advertised can fairly imply endorsement, a reasonable observer could interpret such allowance as implying some degree of tolerance or acceptability. While I'm cognizant of the downsides of a centralized authority deciding what events can and cannot be promoted here, I think the need to maintain sufficient distance between EA and this sort of event outweighs those downsides.
Can I also nudge people to be more vocal when they perceive there to a problem? I find it's extremely common that when a problem is unfolding nobody says anything.
Even the post above is posted anonymously. To me, I see this as being part of a wider trend where people don't feel comfortable expressing their viewpoint openly, which I think is not super healthy.
I can't speak for the original poster, but the Forum is on the public internet. I can't blame someone in the OP's shoes for not wanting their name anywhere near a discussion of “scientific racism” where potential employers, neighbors, and others might come across it -- even if their post is critical of the concept.
I think saying "I am against scientific racism" is within the overton window, and it would be extraordinarily unlikely to be"cancelled" as a result of that. This level of risk aversion is straightforwardly deleterious for our community and wider society.
The person who sees the post after Googling the commenter's name is still potentially left with the impression of the commenter as part of a community that tolerates "scientific racism." That imposes costs that some of us, especially those with non-EA professional lives, would prefer not to bear.
A bad pattern than can happen in posts like that is that we all feel attacked. Maniano feels attacked and so uses a pseudonym. I feel attacked because I have to argue carefully on tough topics and so I feel stressed. some people feel that racism is going on unacknowledged. That sounds stressful too.
So a couple of things.
I imagine there is more agreement than it feels like. Both @habryka and I have acknowledged having conversations about disinviting people. Whatever the vibe is, we both think that some people are beyond the pale and this probably includes many people other readers do. @saul has seemed open to discussing ways to improve.
We don’t need to settle this today. This issue has bubbled under the surface for a while. I’d have preferred that we dealt with it in small dollops, but i don’t always get what i want. We don’t have to fix/work out the EA-rationalist relationship in one post.
Thank you for writing this, and I’m really sorry you experienced it. I’m really disappointed that Manifold have learnt absolutely nothing after inviting Hanania last year, and that Lightcone are fine having such horrible people at their events. These organisations are, knowingly or not, actively making their communities unwelcoming to people of colour and other underrepresented groups. I personally think CEA and other major organisations like Open Philanthropy ought to cut all ties with Manifold/Lightcone.
Events hosted at Lighthaven are not generally "our events". I am not going to ban people I disagree with from hosting events at Lighthaven, that would be both a dumb economic decision and a dumb moral decision.
As I said before, I would be surprised if we never end up hosting events for scaling lab teams at Lighthaven. If they pay us a fair price (and maybe somewhat more as a tax), I will rent to them.
You are of course entitled to that view, but I find it morally wrong!
As far as I can tell this is standard practice for practical all hotels and event venues I have ever heard about. Indeed it would be kind of weird for an event venue to ask detailed question about who I am inviting to an event (and this has never happened before), and very rare and weird for them to block someone from running an event because of an attendee (not unprecedented, but very weird).
What does "cut all ties" mean, concretely?
Cease funding, stop giving them booths at EAG, stop inviting Habryka et al to EA leadership events like Meta Coordination Forum.
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.
(Side note regarding the karma system and this comment being at like -30: I think the right response to this comment is "upvote, because it concretely and clearly answers the question, and then if you also disagree, use the 'disagree' react button". It's not a bad contribution to the discourse, which is what I think the downvote button should be used for)
(Edit: the comment is at +26 now. Karma here really is a rollercoaster, lol.)
I'm not aware of any clear ties between Manifold and OP although I could have missed them.
To give some agreement, I too was sad that Hanania was given special guest billing last year. Not being racist isn't particularly hard and Hanania seems to me to do it egregiously. Also it led to several people I actually wanted to hear from pulling out (as was their right).
What do you mean by this?
I'm reading it as saying that EAs shouldn't attend rationalist meetups?
Discouraging group members from hanging out with groups you disagree with is very culty, leads to impoverished epistemics, and should not be associated with EA.
I can see that EA could optimise for being respectable with some controversial ideas rather than fully truth seeking. But that seems like a hard equilibrium, similarly difficult to manifest in fact:
If that were our aim, what would our north star be and how could we know we weren't ending up incapable of discussing difficult things. Already it seems that a number of issues are 'not the sort we should be t... (read more)
Minor note: "based" is a part of current gen Z parlance and "fag" is a part of current queer gen Z parlance.
Was Cremieux considered to be one of the HBD/eugenics people?
[Twitter also kept pushing him into my feed even though I didn't follow him...]
If you look at the schedule of events(https://schedule.manifest.is/Manifest?view=text), Jonathan Anomaly is the only person who is very clearly HBD (the Collins allegedly, and then there's Stephen Hsu, who's HBD-adjacent). From the surface, it doesn't look like the HBD participants got any extra-special visibility? (though they just might be especially conspicuous in how unfiltered they are in bringing the topics out )... (read more)