Why so many “racists” at Manifest?

I very much appreciate you sharing your thoughts here. While I see a fair bit of personal value in engaging with eg Hanania, I agree that there's nothing dishonorable or shameful about not wanting to be in a place with the dynamic you describe. I agree that people who are skeptical towards speakers who have made edgy, offensive, or extreme statements should not be assumed to lack intellectual rigor or curiosity. I'm also glad to hear, and take it as a good sign, that many of the "edgy" people were nice to you and people were receptive when you raised the issues you saw at Manifest. Your comment touches on a lot of valuable points.

As for the path forward, I'm personally impressed by the call for "pluralist civility" in Folded Papers:

There is no universal safe space, nor should we try to make one. To do so would be to engage in a new version of the fallacy that made the old "rules of debate" so infuriating. "If you can't make your point in this safe space, then it must be hateful and wrong" is just as false as "If your viewpoint can't survive these debate rules, then it must be irrational."

The only way out is to allow multiple sets of rules. That way, truths that are unsayable in one context can still be said in another. Other people can then respond, and the ideas can have the opportunity to be refined or critiqued from the local viewpoint. If we have multiple fora, we can have a system where pretty much anything can be said somewhere. [...]

• Respect that discussion norms are local. Don't try to make them universal.
• Be part of the overlap. Belong to more than one community.
• Encourage other people to recognise that discussion norms can and should differ from place to place.
• Encourage other people to recognise that broad discussion norms are incredibly valuable and should be nurtured wherever they are compatible with community aims.

My own impression is that Manifest strikes a good balance for its goals. In the context of prediction markets, it's uncommonly valuable to have people with a wide range of assumptions, some of whom are willing to go against consensus, even if that leads some into hot water. I don't think controversial speakers should be sought out for their own sake, but if someone who has worthwhile, relevant things to say has also courted controversy, I think in the context of Manifest it would be a mistake not to invite them as a result. This seems to be the approach Manifest has taken. I don't think those norms are appropriate everywhere, but I do think they're appropriate somewhere, and Manifest has built something successful, rewarding, and compelling as a result, something that fits a niche other spaces do not. 

I think it's possible to assert that the approach Manifest takes is not the only appropriate approach to take, that inviting and excluding people always carry trade-offs and that some good people may not want to be in every environment, and that as it stands the conference accomplishes something wholly worth doing. That's where I land.

Glad to see this perspective represented, everything I've read about this makes me think it'd have been a poor experience and the consistent arguments I see in favor of flavors of scientific racism in this community. It's one thing to have opinions, it's another to just ignore the amount of scholarship done on the topics folks like him spout off about, generally uninformed.

It's most objectionable from a policy perspective, as I do not think folks like this need to be anywhere near policy making, nor should they be given platforms to influence malleable people on these topics without some kind of informed counterweight.

The consistent commentary here seems to imply there is no black person who would fit this bill, but given the rampant diversity of black folks across the spectrum in other political and academic spaces, it's less that there aren't people, and more that this siloed community seems hostile that sort of participation. 
 

I was assigned female at birth and have been in tons of conversations where people talk about IQ differences between men and women and why that might explain why there are less women in STEM. 

I never thought "wtf, they must secretly be sexist". 

I thought "Huh, interesting. I wonder if the evidence backs that up."

Because I know I'm incredibly smart. The evidence is abundantly clear. And I know that people talking about group differences doesn't say much about individual differences. 

Women are also on average shorter than men, but I'm taller than most men. I don't get offended or think that people are secretly saying I'm actually short. 

Averages are different than individuals. 

You can talk about differences between groups without it being sexist / racist / _____ist and thinking people are talking about you. 

Because others here are unlikely to do so, I feel like I ought to explicitly defend Hanania's presence on the merits. I don't find it "fun" that he's "edgy." I go out of my way, personally, to avoid being edgy. While I tread into heated territory at times, I have always made it my goal to do so respectfully, thoughtfully, and with consideration for others' values. No, it's not edginess or fun that makes me think he belongs there. He unquestionably belongs at a prediction market conference because he has been a passionate defender of prediction markets in the public sphere and because he writes to his predominantly right-leaning audience in ways that consistently emphasize and criticize the ways they depart from reality.

Let me be clear: I emphatically do not defend all parts of his approach and worldview. He often engages in a deliberately provocative way and says insensitive or offensive things about race, trans issues, and other hot-button topics on the right. But I feel the same about many people who you would have no problem seeing attend Manifest, and he brings specific unusual and worthwhile things to the table.

My first real interaction with Hanania, as I recall, came when he boosted and praised my affirmative defense of surrogacy, a topic very personal to me and one online public figures are much more likely to attack or stay silent on than defend when I speak about it. Later, I went on his podcast to discuss my path out of Mormonism and my sexuality, my essay on how the Republican Party is doomed, the importance of a spirited defense of liberalism in the public sphere, and other ideas that would challenge his right-leaning audience and encourage norms I believe the EA sphere would approve of. This is also true of some areas where I can't claim to be as emphatically EA-aligned as he is, as with his treatise against factory farming and animal suffering.

Someone below pointed out that you misrepresented his pronouns/genocide essay, which I saw as an unusually self-reflective look at why he and others have, as he puts it, "deranged" priorities in getting the most animated not about objectively the most important ideas but about emotionally salient topics close to home. The point of the essay is not "they/them pronouns are worse than genocide," but "it is in one sense deranged, but human and important to understand, that people get so much more emotionally invested in issues like they/them pronouns than about genocide."

I understand perfectly well why people dislike him and I have no problem with robust criticism and even condemnation of much of what he says. But while his actions look from your angle like mainstreaming far-right ideas, they look to the far-right like mainstreaming animal suffering concerns, prediction markets, abortion and surrogacy, open borders, and rather a lot more. You may discount those as trivial, but the people in his audience certainly do not.

You seem smart, capable, and knowledgeable about prediction markets. I think Manifest would benefit from having you in attendance. But my own intellectual life is richer for the opportunity to read, engage with, and argue with people like Hanania. I'm glad he was there, I'm glad I had the chance to say hi to him and chat a bit, and if a precondition for your engagement is that it's either you or him, I would rather you not attend than that you use your reputational sway to prevent me from having those interactions.

I appreciate the main point you're making: that you’re someone we would value having at Manifest, and including people like Hanania causes you to not come.

However, I think there’s a miscommunication going on: as far as I can tell, not Austin, nor any of us organizers, nor any of the people defending Manifest’s choice of speakers nor those defending the speakers themselves, thinks that Manifest is “fun” because it’s “edgy”. I’ve noticed you tie these things together in a few comments in a way that feels to me like a straw man, like you think that we think it's "fun" to be "edgy", when we in fact do not.

The “fun” thing, which Austin is rightly proud of, refers to the festival part: Manifest hosts mostly serious talks during the day, but there is also e.g. a dance class, wrestling, karaoke, s’mores, etc. That all feels very wholesome and essential to what makes Manifest an exceptional event.

The “edgy” thing — attendees being purposefully inflammatory, using slurs, making others feel unwelcome, etc. — is totally unrelated. Not wholesome. Not a thing to be proud of. Not a thing we aspire to.

I think we could choose to kill the festival part of Manifest, and run a professional forecasting conference at some generic conference hotel, and still choose to invite Hanania. Alternatively, we could invite only the kindest, most welcoming, least offensive people we know, to come hang out and sing songs and chat about forecasting by the fire at Lighthaven. The former might be edgy and not fun, while the latter might be fun and not edgy. These are unrelated.

I want you to be able to come and just talk about forecasting too! I think people who wanted to do this (eg Ozzie Gooen by his self-report) were able to do this. Manifest is a big tent; if people want to just talk about forecasting, or AI, or board games, or polygenic screening, I want them to have that space.

It sounds like "serious forecasting conference" is a product that you and some others would be excited about. I hope that somebody runs one! But this wasn't ever the explicit goal of Manifest, which I'd describe as being closer to "fun forecasting-adjacent festival" -- I use "festival" instead of "conference" to denote that Manifest's aims are much more similar to a music festival or an anime convention, rather than an academic conference.

Hi Peter,

I don't want to come and help "balance out" someone who thinks that using they/them pronouns is worse than committing genocide.

Does anyone really think this, or are you just using hyperbole?

has stated that black people are animals who need to be surveilled in mass to reduce crime

What's your source for that? Is the original quote the same as the one I wrote about in this comment?

Thanks Linch. I appreciate the chance to step back here. So I want to apologize to @Austin and @Rachel Weinberg and @Saul Munn if I stressed them out with my comments. (Tagging means they'll see it, right?)

I want to be very clear that while I disagree with some of the choices made, I have absolutely no ill will towards them or any other Manifest organizer, I very much want Manifold and Manifest to succeed, and I very much respect their rights to have their conference the way they want. If I see any of them I will be very warm and friendly and there's really no need from me to talk about this further if they don't want to. I hope we can be friends and engage productively in other areas - even if I don't attend Manifest or trade on Manifold, I'd be happy to interact with them in other ways that don't involve Hanania.

While I dislike Hanania's ideas greatly, and I still think inviting Hanania was a mistake, and I still will not attend events or participate in places where Hanania is given a platform... I don't want to practice guilt by association for those who do not hold Hanania's detestable ideas. Just because someone interacted with him does not make them also bad people. I apologize for not being clear about this from the beginning and I regret that I may have lead people to think otherwise.

There's a lot of good stuff here, but I think there's another side to "[c]onsider the virtue of silence." There is the belief/norm, quite common in the broader world, that qui tacet consentire videtur (often translated to "silence means consent" but apparently more literally to ~ "he who is silent is taken to agree"). Whether or not one thinks that should be a norm, it is a matter of social reality at this point in time. 

I wish we had a magic button we could press that would contain any effects from the Manifest organizers' decisions to Manifest itself, preventing any reputational or other adverse effects from falling on anyone else. To me, it is the need to mitigate those third-party adverse effects that makes silence problematic here. After all, all of us have much better things to do with our lives than gripe about other people's choices that don't impose adverse effects onto other people (or other moral patients).

Good points! It seems good to take a break or at least move to the meta level.

I think one emotion that is probably quite common in discussions about what norms should be (at least in my own experience) is clinging. Quoting from Joe Carlsmith's post on it:

Clinging, as I think about it, is a certain mental flavor or cluster of related flavors. It feels contracted, tight, clenched, and narrow. It has a kind of hardness, a “not OK-ness,” and a (sometimes subtle) kind of desperation. It sees scarcity. It grabs. It sees threat. It pushes away. It carries seeds of resentments and complaints. [...]

Often, in my experience, clinging seems to hijack attention and agency. It makes it harder to think, weigh considerations, and respond. You are more likely to flail, or stumble around, or to “find yourself” doing something rather than choosing to do it. And you’re more likely, as well, to become pre-occupied by certain decisions — especially if both options involve things you’re clinging in relation to — or events. Indeed, clinging sometimes seems like it treats certain outcomes as “infinitely bad,” or at least bad enough that avoiding them is something like a hard constraint. This can cause consequent problems with reasoning about what costs to pay to avoid what risks.

Clinging is also, centrally, unpleasant. But it’s a particular type of unpleasant, which feels more like it grabs and restricts and distorts who you are than e.g. a headache.

In the midst of feeling like a lot is at stake and one's values are being threatened, we may often try to push the social pendulum in our desired direction as hard as possible. However, that will have an aggravating and polarizing effect on the debate because the other side will see your attitude and think, "this person is not making any concessions whatsoever, and it seems like even though the social pendulum is already favorable to them, they'll keep pushing against us!"

So, to de-escalate these dynamics, it seems valuable to acknowledge the values that are at stake for both sides, even just to flag that you're not in favor of pushing the pendulum as far as possible. 

For instance, maybe this would already feel more relaxed if the side that is concerned about losing what's valuable regarding "truth-seeking" can acknowledge that there is a bar also for them, that, if they thought they were dealing with people full of hate or people who advocate for views that predictably cause harm to others (while being aware of this but advocating for those views because of a lack of concern for the affected others), the "truth-seeking" proponents will indeed step in and not tolerate it. Likewise, the other side could maybe acknowledge that it's bad when people get shunned just based on superficial associations/vibes (to give an example of something that I think is superficial: saying "sounds like they're into eugenics" as though this should end the discussion, without pointing out any way in which what the person is discussing is hateful, lacks compassion, or is otherwise likely to cause harm). This is bad not just for well-intentioned individuals who might get unfairly ostracized, but also bad for discourse in general because people won't speak their minds any longer.

I disagree with much of this, but I edited my very-downvoted comment to make clear that it wasn't about the Manifest team, whom I know basically nothing about.

It's just a symbolic gesture of "we think this person is cool, and we think that you should choose whether to go to our event partly based on whether you also think this person is cool".

My guess is that "special guest" status meant more than that. Special guests likely received a free ticket, worth $500.

It's also possible that special guests might have gotten travel or lodging subsidies in one form or another (e.g. free lodging at Lightcone). This is a guess, I don't know how common it is in general for billed guests at conferences to fund their own lodging and travel fully, but it seems possible. 

If that's the case, it strengthens your point. It's very reasonable to not pay for someone who is rude and unnecessarily seeks out controversy to attend your conference. 

Indeed, I spoke loosely and the sentence would have been more accurate if I had replaced "57 speakers" with "57 special guests", for which I apologize. I don't consider this to be a major distinction, however, and have used these terms fairly interchangeably throughout event planning. It's a quirk of how we run Manifest, where there are many blurry boundaries.

Most, but not all of our "special guests" presented a session^[1]. Not all of the sessions were presented by special guests: Manifest allowed any attendee to book a room to run a talk/session/workshop/event of their choice (though, we the organizers did arrange many of the largest sessions ourselves.) Most special guests did not receive housing or travel assistance; I think we provided this to 10-15 of them. Not all of our special guests even received complimentary tickets: some, such as Eliezer, Katja, Nate and Sarah, paid for their tickets before we reached out to them; we're very grateful for this! And we also issued complimentary tickets to many folks, without listing them as special guests.

What is true about all our special guests is that we chose them for being notable people, who we imagined our attendees would like to meet. They were listed on our website and received a differently-colored badge. They were also all offered a spot at a special (off campus) dinner on Saturday night, in addition to those who bought supporter tickets.

1. ^{^}

   Off the top of my head, these special guests did not give talks: Eliezer Yudkowsky, Katja Grace, Joe Carlsmith, Clara Collier, Max Tabarrok, Sarah Constantin, Rob Miles, Richard Hanania, Nate Soares

I've also updated over the last few years that having a truth-seeking community is more important than I previously thought - basically because the power dynamics around AI will become very complicated and messy, in a way that requires more skill to navigate successfully than the EA community has. Therefore our comparative advantage will need to be truth-seeking.

I'm actually not sure about this logic. Can you expand on why EA having insufficient skill to "navigate power dynamics around AI" implies "our comparative advantage will need to be truth-seeking"?

One problem I see is that "comparative advantage" is not straightforwardly applicable here, because the relevant trade or cooperation (needed for the concept to make sense) may not exist. For example, imagine that EA's truth-seeking orientation causes it to discover and announce one or more politically inconvenient truths (e.g. there are highly upvoted posts about these topics on EAF), which in turn causes other less truth-seeking communities to shun EA and refuse to pay attention to its ideas and arguments. In this scenario, if EA also doesn't have much power to directly influence the development of AI (as you seem to suggest), then how does EA's truth-seeking benefit the world?

(There are worlds in which it takes even less for EA to be shunned, e.g., if EA merely doesn't shun others hard enough. For example there are currently people pushing for EA to "decouple" from LW/rationality, even though there is very little politically incorrect discussions happening on LW.)

My own logic suggests that too much truth-seeking isn't good either. Would love to see how to avoid this conclusion, but currently can't. (I think the optimal amount is probably a bit higher than the current amount, so this is not meant to be an argument against more truth-seeking at the current margin.)

What prominent left wing thinkers exhibited anti semitism recently?

To put Garrison's comment a bit more bluntly, I challenge you to name 1 left-winger who might feasibly be invited to speak at Manifold and has said anything about Jews as a group comparable to Hanania saying "these people are animals" about Black people*. That's not a dogwhistle, or a remark that reflects stereotypes, or applies double-standards, or cheering for one side in a violent conflict because you think their the aggressors it's just explicit open racism.

*(The claim made below that Hanania really meant woke people not Black people, strains credulity. He was talking about not just the lawyer who prosecuted a man for violence towards a black man who was harrassing people on the subway, but also the . The full quote was "these people are animals, whether harassing people in the subway or walking around in suits". There is no reason to think the harasser was woke or shared any other characteristic with the lawyer except being Black. And your prior on "man who was a neo-Nazi for years, and never apologised till he got caught actually meant the racist reading when he said something that sounded racist" should be high.)

Could you elaborate on why you’re so quick to associate racism with truthseekingness? You’re at least the third person to do so in this discussion and I think this demands an explanation. What’s the relationship between the two? Have you investigated racist assertions and concluded they are truthful?

You could say that lack of censorship, even of false ideas, is important for truth seeking in a community. But I don’t think you’d agree with a policy to allow everyone to say what they think is true without social consequences. Suppose a community of people are fixated on the intelligence of your children specifically, and they think that your children are genetically dumb. They post about this often on Twitter/X, and endorse eugenic policies to prevent future people from being like your children in particular. How would you feel about one of those people being a top billed guest to a conference? Would you approve of it because it demonstrates a strong commitment to truthseekingness?