When I was drafting my comment, the original version of the text you first quoted was, “Anyone using this piece to scapegoat needs to ignore the giant upfront paragraph about ‘HEY DON’T USE THIS TO SCAPEGOAT’ (which people are totally capable of ignoring)”, guess I should have left that in there. I don’t think it’s uncommon to ignore such disclaimers, I do think it actively opposes behaviors and discourse norms I wish to see in the world.
I agree that putting a “I’m not trying to blame anyone” disclaimer can be a pragmatic rhetorical move for someone attempting to scapegoat. There’s an alternate timeline version of Jessica that wrote this post as a well crafted, well defended rhetorical attack, where the literal statements in the post all clearly say “don’t fucking scapegoat anyone, you fools” but all the associative and impressionistic “dark implications” (Vaniver’s language) say “scapegoat CFAR/MIRI!” I want to draw your attention to the fact that for a potential dark implication to do anything, you need people who can pick up that signal. For it to be an effective rhetorical move, you need a critical mass of people who are well practiced in ignoring literal speech, who understand on some level that the details don’t matter, and are listening in for “who should we blame?”
To be clear, I think there is such a critical mass! I think this is very unfortunate! (though not awkward, as Scott put it) There was a solid 2+ days where Scott and Vaniver’s insistence on this being a game of “Scapegoat Vassar vs scapegoat CFAR/MIRI” totally sucked me in, and instead of reading the contents of anyone’s comments I was just like “shit, who’s side do I join? How bad would it be if people know I hung out with Vassar once? I mean I really loved my time at CFAR, but I’m also friends with Ben and Jess. Fuck, but I also think Eli is a cool guy! Shit!” That mode of thinking I engaged in is a mode that can’t really get me what I want, which is larger and larger groups of people that understand scapegoating dynamics and related phenomena.
This also seems to strong to me. I expect that many movement EAs will read the post Zoe’s and think “well, that’s enough information for me to never have anything to do with Geoff or Leverage.” This isn’t because they’re not interested in justice, it’s because they don’t have time time or the interest to investigate every allegation, so they’re using some rough heuristics and policies such as “if something looks sufficiently like a dangerous cult, don’t even bother giving it the benefit of the doubt.”
Okay, I think my statement was vague enough to be mistaken for a statement I think is too strong. Though I expect you might consider my clarification too strong as well :)
I was thinking about the “in any way that matters” part. I can see how that implies a sort of disregard for justice that spans across time. Or more specifically, I can see how you would think it implies that certain conversations you’ve had with EA friends were impossible, or that they were lying/confabulating the whole convo, and you don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s the case either. I’m thinking about it as more piece-wise behavior. One will sincerely care about justice, but in that moment where they read Jess’s post, ignore the giant disclaimer about scapegoating, and try to scapegoat MIRI/CFAR/Leverage, in that particular moment the cognitive processes generating their actions aren’t aligned with justice, and are working against it. Almost like an “anti-justice traumatic flashback” but most of the time it’s much more low-key and less intense than what you will read about in the literature on flashback. Malcolm Ocean does a great job of describing this sort of “falling into a dream” in his post Dream Mashups (his post is not about scapegoating, its about ending up running a cognitive algo that hurts you without noticing).
To be clear, I not saying such behavior is contemptible, blameworthy, bad, or to-be-scapegoated. I am saying it’s very damaging, and I want more people to understand how it works. I want to understand how it works more. I would love to not get sucked into as many anti-justice dreams where I actively work against creating the sort of world I want to live in.
So when I said “not aligned with justice in any important relevant way”, that was more a statement about “how often and when will people fall into these dreams?” Sorta like the concept of “fair weather friend”, my current hunch is that people fall into scapegoating behavior exactly when it would be most helpful for them to not. While reading a post about “here’s some problems I see in this institution that is at the core of our community” is exactly when it is most important for one’s general atemporal commitment to justice to be present in one’s actual thoughts and actions.
When I was drafting my comment, the original version of the text you first quoted was, “Anyone using this piece to scapegoat needs to ignore the giant upfront paragraph about ‘HEY DON’T USE THIS TO SCAPEGOAT’ (which people are totally capable of ignoring)”, guess I should have left that in there. I don’t think it’s uncommon to ignore such disclaimers, I do think it actively opposes behaviors and discourse norms I wish to see in the world.
I agree that putting a “I’m not trying to blame anyone” disclaimer can be a pragmatic rhetorical move for someone attempting to scapegoat. There’s an alternate timeline version of Jessica that wrote this post as a well crafted, well defended rhetorical attack, where the literal statements in the post all clearly say “don’t fucking scapegoat anyone, you fools” but all the associative and impressionistic “dark implications” (Vaniver’s language) say “scapegoat CFAR/MIRI!” I want to draw your attention to the fact that for a potential dark implication to do anything, you need people who can pick up that signal. For it to be an effective rhetorical move, you need a critical mass of people who are well practiced in ignoring literal speech, who understand on some level that the details don’t matter, and are listening in for “who should we blame?”
To be clear, I think there is such a critical mass! I think this is very unfortunate! (though not awkward, as Scott put it) There was a solid 2+ days where Scott and Vaniver’s insistence on this being a game of “Scapegoat Vassar vs scapegoat CFAR/MIRI” totally sucked me in, and instead of reading the contents of anyone’s comments I was just like “shit, who’s side do I join? How bad would it be if people know I hung out with Vassar once? I mean I really loved my time at CFAR, but I’m also friends with Ben and Jess. Fuck, but I also think Eli is a cool guy! Shit!” That mode of thinking I engaged in is a mode that can’t really get me what I want, which is larger and larger groups of people that understand scapegoating dynamics and related phenomena.
Okay, I think my statement was vague enough to be mistaken for a statement I think is too strong. Though I expect you might consider my clarification too strong as well :)
I was thinking about the “in any way that matters” part. I can see how that implies a sort of disregard for justice that spans across time. Or more specifically, I can see how you would think it implies that certain conversations you’ve had with EA friends were impossible, or that they were lying/confabulating the whole convo, and you don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s the case either. I’m thinking about it as more piece-wise behavior. One will sincerely care about justice, but in that moment where they read Jess’s post, ignore the giant disclaimer about scapegoating, and try to scapegoat MIRI/CFAR/Leverage, in that particular moment the cognitive processes generating their actions aren’t aligned with justice, and are working against it. Almost like an “anti-justice traumatic flashback” but most of the time it’s much more low-key and less intense than what you will read about in the literature on flashback. Malcolm Ocean does a great job of describing this sort of “falling into a dream” in his post Dream Mashups (his post is not about scapegoating, its about ending up running a cognitive algo that hurts you without noticing).
To be clear, I not saying such behavior is contemptible, blameworthy, bad, or to-be-scapegoated. I am saying it’s very damaging, and I want more people to understand how it works. I want to understand how it works more. I would love to not get sucked into as many anti-justice dreams where I actively work against creating the sort of world I want to live in.
So when I said “not aligned with justice in any important relevant way”, that was more a statement about “how often and when will people fall into these dreams?” Sorta like the concept of “fair weather friend”, my current hunch is that people fall into scapegoating behavior exactly when it would be most helpful for them to not. While reading a post about “here’s some problems I see in this institution that is at the core of our community” is exactly when it is most important for one’s general atemporal commitment to justice to be present in one’s actual thoughts and actions.