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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31624 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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This probably should have gone into the general Bostrom thread. Note that there is some dissent (one wonders what's going on on more private channels) and I'm very much not sure your prediction will pan out; votes as well as major voices seem to skew in the other direction – perhaps heterodox EAs are already too savvy to upvote in the direction of wrongthink, but it may as well be a genuine indication of the group sentiment. And some clear defenses of Bostrom are downvoted to hell – including your ones.

In any case, thank you for the link – it confirms what I've already believed. People who cannot deal rationally with a trivial topic like HBD 101 don't have any business devising policy for longtermism and against existential risks; they are at best a liability, and at worst, useful idiots in someone's scheme. Like in that RAND guy's scheme.

It's also mildly surprising, in that EAs have apparently taken the idea of elevating BIPOC voices to heart – like the good Hajnalbots they are. Results are dismal as they always are this deep into the «Sociopaths» stage of The Cycle.

Shakeel Hashim («Head of Communications at the Centre for Effective Altruism. Previously: News Editor at The Economist; journalist and growth manager at Protocol; journalist at Finimize» – basically a slick establishment/Cathedral/PMC type, so prominent in current-year EA) is quick to «unequivocally condemn» Bostrom in eerie HR-speak. Habiba slams Bostrom with verbiage like «When people in positions of privilege use or mention slurs lightly they are able to do so because they are blinkered to the lived experience of others», «I am deeply uncomfortable with a discussion of race and intelligence failing to acknowledge the historical context of the ideas’ origin and the harm they can and have caused», «When you are willfully disengaged from the empathy that underlies common decency» etc., with links to some misleading popular commentary. Ginera refreshingly comes to Bostrom's defense with a sensible meta-level analysis, without endorsing his object level opinions; a Nigerian Igbo, I gather. This is not cherrypicking – those are all active threads on the topic that I've seen at a glance!

Oh, actually there are more. Megan Nelson, a vegan/social worker/community builder, in a highly upvoted post reports being tired. In general, politically active women wield their purported exhaustion as the ultimate argument, it's the post-highschool equivalent of an eyeroll, combined with suggesting she'll accuse you of scaring her next. Absolutely unacceptable manipulative behavior IMO, as deserving of censure as thuggish threats by men – but what do I know. Specifically she complains of the following:

I am tired of having a few people put on pedestals because they are very smart - or very good at self-promotion. I am tired of listening to arguments about who can have the think-iest thoughts. I am tired of drama, scandals, and PR. I am tired of being in a position where I have to apologize for sexism, racism, and other toxic ideologies within this movement. I am tired of convening calls with other community builders where we try to figure out how to best react to the latest Thing That Happened. I am tired of billionaires. And I am really, really tired of seeing people publicly defend bad behavior as good epistemics.

This is really a treasure trove of a mindset. In Megan's world, good epistemics is doubtlessly in line with good behavior; and good behavior is that which does not incur social ostracism that she and other «community builders» will have to quell by apologizing on behalf of «the movement». She's in EA because she wants «the world to be a better, kinder, softer place». Or maybe she just wants to be praised for doing things that authorities will recognize as such. Not the «movement's» authorities – there, Bostrom is, or was, near the top of the respect hierarchy – but those in the broader society; or rather, normal Megans and Karens parroting their doctrines like common sense. She's tired of smart people, see. I bet she's also tired of «the myth of the lone genius» and thinks intellectuals are worth less than accomodating, nurturing teams. A somewhat common belief.

As long as these people are «community builders», EA will only be as good and efficient as the discoursemongers who pull Megan's strings allow it to be.

''' And some clear defenses of Bostrom are downvoted to hell – including your ones. '''

Yeah, for a brief moment I was shocked to see that I had actually reached +7 and +10 on what were hardly diplomatic comments but I guess the Bostrom people were temporarily out in full force. I'm now DEEPLY in the negatives as I had previously expected.

Nonetheless, I 'd be shocked to find a single community with any contingent of Lefties outside of Less Wrong with a stronger pro-Bostrom faction. I haven't given up hope entirely yet. I'll consider this a win if Bostrom doesn't grovel (at least not again) and appears in any major community events within the next year.

And yes, women's tears are once again conquering the marketplace of ideas.

https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/womens-tears-win-in-the-marketplace

FWIW, I (long-time EA) downvoted your comments because non-diplomatic comments on the forum just make things worse, regardless of which side they come from.

That's entirely fair of you. I was mildly hesitant to post them, but if there were going to be passionate undiplomatic condemnations I figured the pro-Bostrom camp could use the psychological reinforcement of knowing that there were people there who passionately hated woke entryists.

I am tired of billionaires.

Snakes alive, is she screwing whoever runs the place? Because that's the last thing I would want anyone in power saying if I ran an organisation dedicated to getting billionaires to give me free money.

The billionaires she wants to donate understand she doesn't mean them, she means those other billionaires, e.g. Thiel or Musk.

Yeah, but it's like if I was hiring a cop in Compton and he said he didn't like black people. Some people might say it's Compton so it doesn't matter, everyone is going to think he doesn't like them anyway - and they are probably right - but it is such a fundamental misunderstanding of the job that I would be concerned.

What place? It's a public forum.

... a public forum for EA. Megan is a "Community Health Coordinator @ EA NYC", which plausibly was funded by said billionaires, and certainly wants those billionaires to keep donating. On the other hand, a few people saying they dislike billionaries isn't gonna stop moskovitz and tuna from donating

The troll on my left shoulder wants to remark that perhaps she'd feel less exhausted all the time if she reconsidered her veganism.

But substantively... what do you expect from EA? It is not a movement of technical achievement, even though its ranks are full of tech people, because EA isn't about building, it's about extracting others' wealth and spending it.

Scott Alexander's travails in persuading people that the media is generally dishonest without lying speaks to the interpersonal innocence of his tech-centric community. These are people who work in collaborative environments, whose defenses are weak to the finer modes of interpersonal manipulation because their passions and competencies lie elsewhere and they are unaccustomed to having resources that other people want to take from them. So a community that exists centrally to extract wealth from that community is going to feature activists who are best at manipulating that community. And one of the strategies suited to that project is performative female vulnerability. Megans.

I'm tired of wah wah wah

It's sure is tough to deal with all these eggheads.

How's that artificial womb project coming along?

Hmmm... not enough effort, too many warnings in too little time... one week ban.

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