Some of these things are fundamentally hard to insure against, because of information asymmetries / moral hazard.

e.g. insurance against donor issues would disproportionately be taken by people who had some suspicions about their donors, which would drive up prices, which would get more people without suspicions to decline taking insurance, until the market was pretty tiny with very high prices and a high claim rate. (It would also increase the incentives to commit fraud to give, which seems bad.)

By the way, I'm curious which of these points give you personally the greatest hesitance in endorsing a focus on x-risk, or something.

I certainly think these are all good to express (and I could reply to them, though I won't right now). But also, they're all still pretty crisp/explicit. Which is good! But I wouldn't want people to think that sceptical thoughts have to get to this level of crispness before they can deserve attention.

I feel sad that you're getting downvoted. Whether or not your position is correct (I personally disagree more than I agree), it seems to me that this is content which will be helpful for moving people towards mutual understanding of where the disagreements are.

Multiple entries are very welcome!

[With some kind of anti-munchkin caveat. Submitting your analyses of several different disjoint questions seems great; submitting two versions of largely the same basic content in different styles not so great. I'm not sure exactly how we'd handle it if someone did the latter, but we'd aim for something sensible that didn't incentivise people to have been silly about it.]

My guess is that the crux between people disagreeing is typically closer to: "is this mostly a question of managing the details of how someone else ran an event, or is this mostly a question of appropriate social signalling?"

Just a prompt to say that if you've been kicking around an idea of possible relevance to the essay competition on the automation of wisdom and philosophy, now might be the moment to consider writing it up -- entries are due in three weeks.

Totally agree that people can do whatever they want!

But: suppose there were a big online discussion about the clothing choices of a public intellectual (and while slightly quirky and not super flattering, these obviously weren't being chosen for the sake of being provocative). Then I think I'd feel like I cared about their privacy, and that it would be kinder for people to refrain from this discussion. Not that they wouldn't have a right to have it -- but that it might ultimately be more aligned with their values not to (even if they're totally right about the clothes).

I feel kind of similarly here. Manifest made some choices. They seem to me like they may have been mistakes, but it's important to me that they have the right to make their own choices (whether or not those are mistakes). Some of the discourse feels like it's an ungraceful attempt to muscle in on their autonomy -- like the vibe is "you shouldn't have had the right to invite him", even if people don't actually say that -- and thereby more likely to create an environment where people don't actually feel free. (Not all of the criticism has felt to me like that. I actually support a certain amount of tactfully-done criticism in this case. And I've upvoted a number of contributions on both "sides" of this debate, where I felt like they were adding something useful.)

(It's more plausible that Manifest's choices are causing indirect harm than that the intellectual's clothing choices are, so this analogy isn't perfect, and I'm not trying to say it's as clear-cut as that case, and it's possible this value could be outweighed by other values, which is why I'm in favour of some of the criticism. But I do think it's not a "non-argument", and I'm giving an analogy where I think it's clearer cut in order to demonstrate that it's at least a legitimate consideration.)

I agree that Manifest was platforming him.

(I wouldn't have done that, and at some level I feel sad that they did it -- but I think that is a bit norm violating to express publicly, and I'm trying to do it softly and only because it may help to avoid misunderstanding.)

However, I think Manifest has the right to choose who to platform just as people have the right to choose who to talk to. I do think this platforming decision is something Manifest's natural constituents can rightfully complain about, but I think it's kind of inappropriate for the EA forum at large to weigh in on. (Though I support people's right to be inappropriate this way! I just would try not to do it myself and might gently advise other people to try not to.)

As an observer to these discussions, a couple of comments:

• I think you're right in your characterization of most of the anti-platforming comments
  • However, I'd guess you're wrong to describe most of the anti-anti-platforming comments/votes as "pro-platforming"
  • Rather, the more common sentiment, and the one I think is mostly attracting upvotes, seems to me to be like "who are we to tell other people who to talk to?"
    • I don't know much about him, but from what I do know I think the guy sounds like a jerk and I'd be meaningfully less interested in going to events he was at; I can't really imagine inviting him to speak at anything
    • But it also seems to me that it's important to respect people's autonomy and ability to choose differently
• There's a sad irony that this whole debate is functioning to give him a weird kind of platform 
  • e.g. I'd otherwise never heard of him; now I have
    • As a matter of social game theory I think it's usually a mistake to read someone's writing when it's been drawn to your attention for being controversial. This incentivizes people to be provocative in order to draw audiences.
    • This means that I think it's likely correct for most people to never form strong opinions about him in the first place
      • And I feel uncomfortable that his critics are doing his work for him by demanding others have strong negative reactions to him, when I think it might usually be wiser for them to keep focused on other things and let him sink into obscurity