I don't see why we'd expect less factory farms under socialism, except via us being poorer in general. And I feel like "make everything worse for humans to make things better for animals" feels a bit "cartoon utilitarian super-villain", even if I'm not sure what is wrong with it. It's also not why socialists support socialism, even if many are also pro-animal. On the other hand, if socialism worked as intended, why would factory farming decrease? 

I think two things are being conflated here into a 3rd position no one holds

-Some people don't like the big R community very much.

-Some people don't think improving the world's small-r rationality/epistemics should be a leading EA cause area.

Are getting conflated into:

-People don't think it's important to try hard at being small-r rational. 

I agree that some people might be running together the first two claims, and that is bad, since they are independent, and it could easily be high impact to work on improving collective epistemics in the outside world even if the big R rationalist community was bad in various ways. But holding the first two claims (which I think I do moderately) doesn't imply the third. I think the rationalists are often not that rational in practice, and are too open to racism and sexim. And I also (weakly) think that we don't currently know enough about "improving epistemics" for it to be a tractable cause area. But obviously I still want us to make decisions rationally, in the small-r sense internally. Who wouldn't! Being against small-r rationality is like being against kindness or virtue; no one thinks of themselves as taking that stand. 

For what it's worth, I was one of the most anti-Hanania/Manifest people in the original big thread, and I don't think I'm all that "cancel-y" overall. I'm opposed to people being fired from universities for edgy right-wing opinions on empirical matters, and I'm definitely opposed to them being cut off from all jobs. I do think people should not hire open neo-Nazis (or for that matter left-wingers who believe in genuinely deranged antisemitic conspiracy theories) for normal jobs, but I don't think any of the Manifest speakers fell in that category. But I see a difference between the role of universities-find out the truth no matter what by permitting very broad debate-and the role of a group like EA that has a particular viewpoint and no obligation to invite in people who disagree with it. 

I don't think anyone heavily involved in global health stuff has ever said they endorse scientific racism. But I don't think this is true about eugenics. Of the two people most associated with the founding of GWWC, you've criticized Will yourself here on the grounds that you thought some of the stuff he says in WWOTF about cloning scientific geniuses is too eugenicist. And Toby Ord was Bostrom's co-author on a paper defending attempts to increase the average IQ,  through genetic engineering, that I'm guessing you would oppose: https://nickbostrom.com/ethics/statusquo.pdf

(As I've said elsewhere, I have more complicated feelings about genetic enhancement. I think it is potentially beneficial, but also tends to be correlated with bad politics, and it could be the negative social effects of allowing it outweigh the benefits.) 

One reason to believe that inviting Hanania is unpopular, though far from definitive, is the data we have on political views of EAs. About 70% of EAs identify as either "left" or "centre-left" in the EA survey. Very few identify as "right" or "centre-right". I'd assume, cautiously, the most people who identify as "left" or "centre-left" think inviting Hanania was a bad decision, though I can't be certain of that, as some Hanania supporters do seem to conceptualise themselves as centre-left. But presumably, also, some people who identify as "centre" (and perhaps even "other" or "libertarian") are also not fans of the decision to invite Hanania. 

There is an object-level disagreement about what counts as unacceptable racism here, not just a meta-disagreement about norms. One person-I assume a rationalist but I don't know that-in the main thread didn't understand why I was offended by something they posted in which Hanania basically implied that the Civil Rights Act caused crime. 

I agree with the point your actually making here-namely that people invite racists but not socialists because they like racism better than socialism or other alternative viewpoints that they could invite people with, but I do have a nitpick: 

While I'd much rather have (most, non-Stalinist) socialists than scientific racists, I'd say economists are the most relevant experts for economics, and they seem to be down on socialism, except maybe some non-mainstream market variants. Although I guess other social scientists also have relevant expertise and more of them are socialists I think? Insofar as philosophers are expressing reasonably high confidence in socialism by picking it in the philpapers survey even when "don't know" is also an option, yet among economists socialism is (I think?) quite fringe, I feel like this is the kind of anti science/empiricism arrogance that philosophers are often accused of, usually quite unfairly. But then I am not a socialist. 



 

I am not maintaining it is impossible for anyone to criticise any law that includes an anti-discrimination portion. If, say, Jason Brennan criticised anti-discrimination law on the grounds that it generated inefficient bureaucracy that did more harm than good, I wouldn't be offended.What I am claiming is that people are rightfully suspicious when someone with Hanania's overall track record makes the particular criticism of it he did.

Yes I think. Conscious strategic deception is shady regardless of the goal being served, whereas a certain amount of self-deception is kind of inevitable.

I also do think most rationalists would object to demands that some other group didn't invite left-wing speakers. (Maybe I'm too generous.) Like I think if there was some very left-wing speaker at an EA-adjacent animal activism conference, (edit:) and people wanted them disinvited as too controversial I think rationalists would mostly oppose that. I think they'd oppose a professor being deplatformrd from an academic conference for Black Power-style attacks on white people.

More generally, I think they have a genuinely content-neutral dislike of people being told they can't say true (as they see it) things because they are offensive. Maybe I am typical-minding here, but my experience growing up with autism in a neurotypical world is that a distates for white lies, and people fooling themselves about what is true to avoid non-conformity, or upsetting group bonding, or just to avoid feeling bad about themselves, is a central experience for people with a broadly autistic type personality. (Never mind whether they are autistic enough to be diagnosable.) I think this far predates people forming their specific political views, rather than being a post-hoc excuse for them. (Actually I also suspect a lot of the incredibly high value rationalists put on "rationality" as they understand is them compensating psychologically for feelings of social inferiority people with this sort of personality type often grow up with. But maybe that's just me!).

Where I do think they are being (unconsciously) a bit disingenuous is when they imply that the presence of far-right views in their community is just a product of their commitment to openess or imply that they are just as open to radical left or super woke ideas. (Maybe that's not quite the way to put it: I feel like they'd say something directionally like that but milder and more plausible.)

Bear in mind the Johnson bills Hanania is criticising in the opening sentence of that article include the bills that finally allowed Black Americans to be able to vote in the US and outlawed racial discrimination. Can you really not see why a former secret white nationalist at the very least edging close to "bans on explicit discrimination against Black people and letting Black people vote causes crime and is therefore bad" might disgust a lot of people?

Bear in mind that none of this legislation was about crime. Some of it was facially race neutral anti-poverty stuff. But the Civil Rights Act of 1964 just outlaws explicit discrimination against people on the basis of their race or gender, and creates some bureaucracy to enforce this. (Look it up if you don't believe me.)