"Group differences in IQ is right around the corner, and if you’re going to maintain any kind of commitment to rationalism you’re going to have to either stop yourself before getting on that train or take it to its logical destination."

Yikes.

Eugenics or "human biodiversity" isn't a new idea and is incredibly toxic to most people. It has no place in the EA movement. If you let it anywhere near the movement, the only people that will remain are contrarian right-wingers that care more about being edgy and provocative than helping people or other animals. And also those who enjoy hanging around contrarian right-wingers (maybe they find them endearing or something? idk).

Speaking as a group leader for a local EA group, if someone tried to start a conversation on HBD and its assumed "logical destination" at a group meetup, I would immediately and permanently ban them from the group. It is incredibly hard to bring in different perspectives that lead to good decisions and better normative ethics. One conversation like that is enough to permanently lose many people I want in my group. If banning a few disagreeable right-wing "rationalists" who like to talk about HBD means lots of other people stay, I'll gladly take that trade-off.

For those who think a ban is too harsh: go read the article linked to in this post, read several other top posts from the author, and read the comments from the blogs followers.

There are plenty of contributions right-wing ideas and disagreeable rationalists can make to the EA movement. Many of the movements best ideas come from those who identify that way. Just not the kind demonstrated in this post.

[EDIT] I'm puzzled by the disagreement votes, so adding some more context: In the linked blog post, Richard Hanania writes "A free market in ideas is like a free market in any other good or service. It ends up with Asian and white men on top who are there because they’re simply better than everyone else. Movements uncomfortable with this naturally get swallowed by wokeness."

I think it's pretty clear that what Richard Hanania and the post author mean when they say "anti-woke" is that they think EA should entertain operationalized racism and sexism. Anti-racism and anti-sexism are commitments wildly shared by EA community builders. If being anti-racist and anti-sexist is "woke", the majority of EA has been "woke" for a long time and does better because of it.

EA should be willing to explore all potentially fruitful avenues of mission fulfillment without regard to taboo.

In general, where it doesn't directly relate to cause areas of principle concern to effective altruists, I think EAs should strive to respect others' sacred cows as much as possible. Effective Altruism is a philosophy promoting practical action. It would be harder to find allies who will help us achieve our goals if we are careless about the things other people care a lot about.

Anon Rationalist - thanks for posting some excerpts from this Richard Hanania piece.  I would encourage EAs to read the entire original piece for full context.

I'll just add two comments for now:

First, Hanania is writing as a trollish edgelord. He uses crude, sweeping generalizations, deliberately provocative language, and emotionally inflammatory criticisms of wokeness. Brace yourselves for that. He's not using the usual rhetorical style and rationalist epistemics of EA Forum posts. He's writing to get your attention, and you probably won't like at least half of what he says.

Second, despite all that, I agree with Hanania that wokeness is an existential threat to EA, to utilitarianism, and to rationalism, and we should take the threat more seriously.  

I've noticed a tendency in EA to show exactly the kind of gutless, cringing, defensive deference to woke critiques of EA that Hanania talks about. Whenever a critic of EA (whether inside or outside the movement) uses woke argument styles, deploys woke terms, and invokes woke values (e.g. 'diversity, equity, inclusion'), most EAs seem too frightened to challenge them, for fear of suffering the usual fate of the anti-woke: dogpiling, brigading, ostracism, and cancellation. 

If we don't develop robust defenses against wokeness, we will suffer the same fate as every other organization that values emotional victimization rhetoric over scope-sensitive rationality.

The relevant part of the Cowen talk:

I think for virtually all social movements, I have a saying, and that is “demographics is destiny”. And you may like this or you may not like it. But it is also true for people in effective altruism. It's been true for people who are libertarianism. So if you look at early libertarianism, say in the 1970s, it had a very particular logical structure. But the actual descriptive fact of the matter was that a lot of libertarians were nerdy white males and some other set of libertarians were non-nerdy, somewhat rural, kind of gun owning anti-authoritarian, very US American white males who had a particular set of grudges. And what you end up getting from libertarianism is some evolution of those socioeconomic groups, which again, you might like or you might not like. But if you're evaluating libertarianism, you have to think a bit, well, what are the natural constituencies? What will those demographics get you? Do you like all of that? And are you ready for the stupider version of the theory? 

So there's like the Robert Nozick super smart, very sophisticated libertarianism. But of course, that's not what you get. You get the stupider version. So you have to ask with effective altruism, well, what is the stupider version of effective altruism and what are its demographics and what does that mean is its destiny? I have limited experience in the EA movement, but at least in the United States, and I would readily admit other countries may differ. In the United States, it's quite young, very high IQ, very coastal, very educated, but broadly people with the social conscience. None of that should be surprising, right? But I think the demographics of the EA movement are essentially the US Democratic Party. And that's what the EA movement over time will evolve into. If you think the existential risk is this kind of funny, weird thing, it doesn't quite fit. Well, it will be kind of a branch of Democratic Party thinking that makes philanthropy a bit more global, a bit more effective. I wouldn't say it's a stupider version, but it's a less philosophical version that's a lot easier to sell to non-philosophers. Just so you end up telling people you should think more broadly about how you should give money at the margin, I agree with that. I'm fine with it. But it's simply another way of thinking about what effective altruism really is, just as it is with libertarianism, just to understand that demographics is destiny. 

I gave a talk to an EA group lately, and I'm always like a troll when I give these talks. That's on purpose, but I'm saying things I believe, to be clear. I'm not making up stuff I don't believe. So I said to them all, you EAers, you should be more religious, and a lot of you should be social conservatives, because social conservatism is actually better for human welfare. I didn't mean that in the sense of government coercively enforcing social conservatism on people, but just people voluntarily being more socially conservative. I said a lot of you should do a lot more to copy the Mormons. Maybe now I would say the Quakers, other groups too. What was striking to me was how shocked everyone was by this point. I'm not saying they should have agreed or not agreed, but they hadn't ever heard it before. Will McAskill said this in his podcast with me. He said, oh, where are all social liberals? That doesn't really follow at all. It's something you can debate. But the fact that so many people took it for granted to me gets back at this point. When it comes to EA, demographics is destiny, and the future of socially conservative EA is really not that strong, but it should be. And after my talk, a woman went up to me and she came over and she whispered in my ear and she said, you know, Tyler, I actually am a social conservative and an effective altruist, but please don't tell anyone. I thought that was awesome. And of course, I didn't tell anyone who she was. But the mere fact that she felt the need to whisper this to me gets back to demographics is destiny. 

So in part, when you think about EA, don't just think about the philosophic propositions. Think about what it is, what it is becoming. And again, in the United States, at least, it is a very specific set of sociological connections that will shape its future. I like many of those trends at the margin, but I would say not all of them. And just looking at EA that way would be another way in which I differ from a lot of the effective altruists themselves, noting that when I mentioned social conservatism, they just all were shocked. I don't think they agreed with me, but for me, the important point was that they were shocked that I would bring up such a thing. They just took it for granted that effective altruist people ought to be social liberals. 

Almost every "bad" thing said here about "Woke EA" sounds good to me, while the "good" things EA would otherwise be able to achieve sound absolutely horrible.

Strongly downvoted.

This post quotes Scott Alexander on a tangent about as much as it does Richard Hannania to bolster minor points made in Hannania's post by appealing to a bias in favour of Scott Alexander among effective altruists.

By linking to and so selectively quoting Hanania prominently, you're trying to create an impression that the post should be trustworthy to effective altruists in spite of the errors and falsehoods about effective altruism in particular and just in general. Assuming you've made this post in reinforcing a truth-seeking agenda in a truth-seeking agenda, you've failed by propagating an abysmal perspective.

There are anti-woke viewpoints that have been well-received on the EA Forum but this isn't one of them. Some of them haven't been anonymous, so the fact that you had no reason to worry more about your reputation than 'truth-seeking' isn't an excuse.

You would, could and should have done better if you had shared an original viewpoint really more familiar with effective altruism than Hannania is. May you take heed of this lesson for the next time you try to resolve disputes.

How do you define "wokeness"? The term is often used very broadly as a placeholder for vaguely culturally left things the writer dislikes, broad enough that anyone in the audience can feel like its referring to specifically the things they dislike. And there's often a degree of strategic ambiguity/motte and bailey in how its used.