cosigned, generally.
most strongly, i agree with:
i also somewhat agree with:
[the rest of this comment is a bit emotional, a bit of a rant/ramble. i don't necessarily reflectively endorse the below, but i think it pretty accurately captures my state of mind while writing.]
but man, people can be mean. twitter is a pretty low bar, and although the discourse on twitter isn't exactly enjoyable, my impression of the EA forum has also gone down over the last few days. most of the comments that critique my/rachel's/austin's decisions (and many of the ones supporting our decisions!) have made me quite sad/anxious/ashamed in ways i don't endorse — and (most) have done ~nothing to reduce the likelihood that i invite speakers who the commenters consider racist to the next manifest.
i'm a little confused about the goals of a lot of the folks who're commenting. like, their (your?) marginal 20 minutes would be WAY more effective by... idk, hopping on a call with me or something?[1] [june23-2024 — edit: jeff's comment has explained why: yes, 1:1 discussion with me is better for the goal of improving/changing manifest's decisions, but many of the comments are "trying to hash out what EA community ... norms should be in this sort of situation, and that seems ... reasonably well suited for public discussion."]
there have been a few comments that are really great, both some that are in support of our decisions & some that are against them — austin highlighted a few that i had in mind, like Isa's and huw's. and, a few folks have reached out independently to offer their emotional support, which is really kind of them. these are the things that make me agree with (8): i don't think that, in many communities, folks who might disagree with me on the object level would offer their emotional support for me on the meta-level.
i'm grateful to the folks who're disagreeing (& agreeing) with me constructively; to everyone else... idk, man, at least hold off on commenting until you've given me a call or let me buy you a coffee or something. [june23-2024 — see edit above]
and i would explicitly encourage you, dear reader, to do so! please! i would like to talk to you much more than i would like to read your comment on the EA forum, and way more than i'd like to read your twitter post! i would very much like to adjust my decision-making process to be better, and insofar as you think that's good, please do so through a medium that's much higher bandwidth!
although manifest is nominally about prediction markets, it's also about all the ideas that folks who like prediction markets are also into — betting, philosophy, mechanism design, writing, etc. i'd recommend readers look through our special guest list and come to their own opinion about manifest; we had about sixty such special guests, and i think some aggregation of all of them probably amounts to a much more accurate read of the intellectual vibe at manifest than any selected subset of guests.
and i want to note that some edge is fine (and good!) — but it’s fine & good as a byproduct of a good event-building process, not as a goal at which i’d like to intentionally aim.
i don’t want manifest to be a conference for edgelords, and i don’t want manifest to be known as such. if it is, i’ve failed.
…but i don’t think i’ve failed! my guess is that most people can attend manifest and never interact with someone who they consider racist. the average response on the feedback form was a 9/10, and of the negative responses, the vast majority were about long lines for the bathrooms, not about racists. this was also true of qualitative reactions i heard during the event; @Nathan Young 's comment gets into this really well.[1]
my guess is that, on the margin, i’d have liked to have a bunch more folks at manifest who’re sorta unrelated to discussions about race. some specific people i invited and who weren’t able to make it include andy matsuschak, judea pearl, jason matheny, and many others. i don’t think we hit this balance perfectly, but i also don’t think we were off-base. i’ll touch on this more in a moment, but i wanted to make on thing really clear:
manifest is not an application-based or invite-only event. you buy a ticket, and you show up.
two exceptions to that general rule:
we have a high bar for banning people from the event, and we also have a pretty high bar for giving people free tickets. the vast majority (~4/5?) of the attendees at manifest fell into the category of “bought a ticket, showed up.”
again: the vast majority of attendees simply bought a ticket and showed up.
i think that nonhuman animal suffering is an atrocious blight on humanity's moral track record. but if the person who most strongly endorsed nonhuman animal suffering bought a ticket to manifest and showed up, i would've let them into the event — and for context on that statement, i've taken the pledge and donated ~all of my pledged funds thus far to various animal welfare organizations.
and this framework extends more broadly, to folks who hold views that you might consider abhorrent: e.g. we did not give curtis yarvin a free ticket to attend manifest, but if he had bought a ticket and showed up, i would've let him in. (however, yarvin didn’t buy a ticket, and didn’t attend.)
if we invite a bunch of edgy speakers, and then a bunch of edgelords buy tickets, we can’t reasonably claim that we’re not responsible for creating an edgy vibe.
i think that, on balance, we were like ~5% too edgy or something — but the way that i’d aim to correct this is by having the makeup of speakers more accurately represent my internal set of beliefs and interests (which happens to be like ~5% less edgy), and not by intentionally cutting our average edginess. anodynity is a really bad goal to aim for. you can see in one of our notes docs on april 22 that we explicitly wanted to invite more “warm/kind/gracious” people, and this was directly to have the speaker makeup more accurately reflect our interests.
like, c’mon — we had fifty seven speakers! look through them, and evaluate for yourself if the 8 that this article describes is an accurate representation of our speakers overall.
Lightcone [...] hosted these events at Lighthaven
this is technically true, but a bit misleading. Lightcone owns & operates the venue (Lighthaven), so by a stretched interpretation of "host," this is true of every event that occurs at Lighthaven. but more realistically:
and, more specifically:
i can clarify further if you’d find it helpful, but this is the gist of the split.
[…] anti-equality figure Curtis Yarvin […], and the highly controversial rationalist Michael Vassar […]
Having speakers who have strong opinions on the Holocaust […]? Not so great!
uh, so, my guess is that you mean something like “it’s bad to invite speakers who think the holocaust is {fake, good, etc}.” i agree with this take, but the way that you’ve currently phrased this is pretty ambiguous in a way that seems quite unhelpful. to take an obviously hyperbolic example, i myself have pretty strong opinions on the holocaust: my grandparents survived torture & starvation in various death camps, and my opinions are, roughly, “the holocaust was (strongly) bad.”
i’d like to understand your wording better, and i’d encourage you to edit your original wording to reflect what you actually mean as well as the thing that you’re actually critiquing. e.g., did such a speaker come to manifest? what was the view that they actually endorsed? what norm do you think that violates? etc.
independently, i’d also like to know if any special guests explicitly endorsed the holocaust as being good or fake — i’d probably be a lot less interested in giving them a free ticket next time.
i think that there is a lot here that i could write a lot about. in my experience, it's vastly more productive to have these sorts of dialogues over a video call or face-to-face. so:
if you’re actually interested in improving community dynamics, talking to me (or the other organizers) IRL or over video call is probably the most effective way to do so; and i’d actively encourage it.
i do think there’s a bit of a selection effect, where those most hurt by a racist vibe would probably have not come (or would have left early, etc). again, if this prevented great folks who would otherwise have attended the event from coming, i think i’ve failed them, and i’d seek to do better for the next event.
good question, jonas; thanks for asking it!
or, like, conditional on my decision having been a mistake, the team bears responsibility for setting up systems such that i was enabled to make this decision. but i'd disagree with that (i think that our systems for deciding who to uninvite were pretty sound, generally), and i think i deserve all of the blame to the extent that there is blame deserved.
i'd be curious to see the results of e.g. focus groups on this — i'm just now realizing how awful of a name "lab grown meat" is, re: the connotations.