For several of the examples you give, including my own comments, your description of what was said seems to misrepresent the source text.
Active suppression of inconvenient questions: Martín Soto
The charitable explanation here is that my post focuses on naive veganism, and Soto thinks that’s a made-up problem.
This is not a charitable or even plausible description of what Martín wrote, and Martín has described this as a ‘hyperbolic’ misrepresentation of their position. There is nowhere in the source comment thread that Martín claims or implies anything resembling the position that naïve veganism is ‘made-up’. The closest they come is to express that naïve transitions to veganism are not common in their personal experience (‘I was very surprised to hear those anecdotal stories of naive transitions, because in my anecdotal experience across many different vegan and animalist spaces, serious talk about nutrition, and a constant reminder to put health first, has been an ever-present norm.‘) Otherwise, they seem to take the idea of naïve transitions seriously while considering the effects of ‘signaling [sic] out veganism’ for discussion: ‘To the extent the naive transition accounts are representative of what’s going on...’, ‘seems to me to be one of the central causes of these naive transitions...‘, ‘...the single symptom of naive vegan transitions...’.
Active suppression of inconvenient questions: ‘midlist EA’
But what they actually did was name-check the idea that X is fine before focusing on the harm to animals caused by repeating the claim- which is exactly what you’d expect if the health claims were true but inconvenient. I don’t know what this author actually believes, but I do know focusing on the consequences when the facts are in question is not truthseeking.
The author is clear about what they actually believe. They say that the claims that plant foods are poisonous or responsible for Western diseases are ‘based on dubious evidence’ and are ‘dubious health claims’. They then make an argument proceeding from this: that these dubious claims increase the consumption of animal-based foods, which they believe to be unethical, with the evidence for animal suffering being much stronger than the evidence for the ‘dubious health claims’.
You may disagree with their assessment of the health claims about plant foods, and indeed they didn’t examine any evidence for or against these claims in the quoted post. This doesn’t change the fact that the source quotation doesn’t fit the pattern you describe. The author clearly does not believe that the health claims about plant foods are ‘true but inconvenient’, but that they are ‘dubious’. Their focus on the consequences of these health claims is not an attempt to ‘actively suppress inconvenient questions’, but to express what they believe to be true.
Active suppression of inconvenient questions: Rockwell
This comment more strongly emphasizes the claim that my beliefs are wrong, not just inconvenient.
Rockwell expresses, in passing, a broad concern with your posts (‘...why I find Elizabeth’s posts so troubling...‘), although as they don’t go into any further detail it’s not clear if they think your ‘beliefs are wrong’ or that they find your posts troubling for some other reason. It’s reasonable to criticise this as vague negativity without any argument or details to support it. However, it cannot serve as an example of ‘active suppression of an inconvenient question’ because it does not seem to engage with any question at all, and there’s certainly nowhere in the few words Rockwell wrote on ‘Elizabeth’s posts’ where they express or emphasise ‘the claim that [your] beliefs are wrong, not just inconvenient’. (This source could work as an example of ‘strong implications not defended’).
Active suppression of inconvenient questions: wilkox[1]
...the top comment says that vegan advocacy is fine because it’s no worse than fast food or breakfast cereal ads...If I heard an ally described our shared movement as no worse than McDonalds, I would injure myself in my haste to repudiate them.
My comment does not claim ‘that vegan advocacy is fine because it’s no worse than fast food or breakfast cereal ads’, and does not describe veganism or vegan advocacy as ‘no worse than McDonalds’. It sets up a hypothetical scenario (‘Let’s suppose...‘) in which vegan advocates do the extreme opposite of what you recommend in the conclusions of the ‘My cruxes’ section of the Change My Mind post, then claims that even this hypothetical, extreme version of vegan advocacy would be no worse than the current discourse around diet and health in general. This was to illustrate my claim that health harms from misinformation are ‘not a problem specific to veganism’, nor one where ‘veganism in particular is likely to be causing significant health harms’.
Had I actually compared McDonalds to real-world vegan advocacy rather than this hypothetical worst-case vegan advocacy, I would have said McDonalds is much worse. You know this, because you asked me and I told you. (This also doesn’t seem to be an example of ‘active suppression of inconvenient questions’.)
Frame control, etc.: wilkox
Over a very long exchange I attempt to nail down his position:
Does he think micronutrient deficiencies don’t exist? No, he agrees they do.
Does he think that they can’t cause health issues? No, he agrees they do.
This did not happen. You did not ask or otherwise attempt to nail down whether I believe micronutrient deficiencies exist, and I gave my position on that in the opening comment (‘Veganism is a known risk factor for some nutrient deficiencies...’). Likewise, you did not ask or attempt to nail down whether I believe micronutrient deficiencies can cause health issues, and I gave my position on that in the opening comment (‘Nutrient deficiencies are common and can cause anything ranging from no symptoms to vague symptoms to life-threatening diseases’).
Does he think this just doesn’t happen very often, or is always caught? No, if anything he thinks the Faunalytics underestimates the veg*n attrition due to medical issues.
You did ask me what I thought about the Faunalytics data (‘Do you disagree with their data...or not consider that important...?’).
So what exactly does he disagree with me on?
This is answered by the opening sentences of my first comment: ‘I feel like I disagree with this post, despite broadly agreeing with your cruxes’, because I interpreted your post as making ‘an implicit claim’ that there are ‘significant health harms’ of veganism beyond the well-known nutritional deficiencies. I went on to ask whether you actually were making this claim: ‘Beyond these well-known issues, is there any reason to expect veganism in particular to cause any health harms worth spending time worrying about?’ Over two exchanges on the ‘importance’ of nutrient deficiencies in veganism, I asked again and then again whether you believe that there are health harms of veganism that are more serious and/or less well-known than nutrient deficiencies, and you clarified that you do not, and provided some useful context that helped me to understand why you wrote the post the way you did.
My account of the conversation is that I misread an implicit claim into your post, and you clarified what you were actually claiming and provided context that helped me to understand why the post had been written in the way it was. We did identify a disagreement over the ‘importance’ of nutrient deficiencies in veganism, but this also seemed explicit and legible. It’s hard to construe this as an example where the nature of the disagreement was unclear, or otherwise of ‘nailing jello to the wall’.
Wilkox acknowledges that B12 and iron deficiencies can cause fatigue, and veganism can cause these deficiencies, but it’s fine because if people get tired they can go to a doctor
I did not claim that fatigue due to B12 or iron deficiencies, or any other health issue secondary to veganism, is ‘fine because if people get tired they can go to a doctor’. I claimed that to the extent that people don’t see a doctor because of these symptoms, the health harms of veganism are unlikely to be their most important medical problem, because the symptoms are ‘minor enough that they can’t be bothered’, they ‘generally don’t seek medical help when they are seriously unwell, in which case the risk from something like B12 deficiency is negligible compared to e.g. the risk of an untreated heart attack’, or they ‘don’t have good access to medical care...[in which case] veganism is unlikely to be their most important health concern’. I did not say that every vegan who has symptoms due to nutritional deficiencies can or will go to a doctor (I explicitly said the opposite), nor that this situation is ‘fine’.
But it’s irrelevant when the conversation is “can we count on veganism-induced fatigue being caught?”
‘Can we count on veganism-induced fatigue being caught?’ is not a question raised in my original comment, nor in Lukas Finnveden’s reply. I claimed that it would not always be caught, and gave some reasons why it might not be caught (symptoms too minor to bother seeing a doctor, generally avoid seeking medical care for major issues, poor access to medical care). Lukas Finnveden’s comment added reasons that people with significant symptoms may not seek medical care: they might not notice issues that are nonetheless significant to them, or they might have executive function problems that create a barrier to accessing medical care. There’s nowhere in our brief discussion where ‘can we count on veganism-induced fatigue being caught?’ is under debate.
Bad sources, badly handled: wilkox
Wilkox’s comment on the LW version of the post, where he eventually agrees that veganism requires testing and supplementation for many people (although most of that exchange hadn’t happened at the time of linking).
I did not ‘eventually agree’ to these points, and we did not discuss them at all in the exchange. In my first comment, I said ‘Many vegans, including myself, will routinely get blood tests to monitor for these deficiencies. If detected, they can be treated with diet changes, fortified foods, oral supplementation, or intramuscular/intravenous supplementation.’
I am not an EA, have only passing familiarity with the EA movement, and have never knowingly met an EA in real life. I don’t think anything I have written can stand as an example of ‘EA vegan advocacy’, and actual EAs might reasonably object to being tarred with the same brush. ↩︎
I kinda want to flag something like “yes, that’s the point”? If Martín’s position is hard to pin down, then… like, it’s better to say “I don’t know what he’s trying to say” than “he’s trying to say [concrete thing he’s not trying to say]”, but both of them seem like they fit for the purposes of this post. (And if Elizabeth had said “I don’t know what he’s trying to say” then I anticipate three different commenters giving four different explanations of what Martín had obviously been saying.)
And, part of the point here is “it is very hard to talk about this kind of thing”. And I think that if the response to this post is a bunch of “gotcha! You said this comment was bad in one particular way, but it’s actually bad in an interestingly different way”, that kinda feels like it proves Elizabeth right?
But also I do want there to be space for that kind of thing, so uh. Idk. I think if I was making a comment like that I’d try to explicitly flag it as “not a crux, feel free to ignore”.
And, part of the point here is “it is very hard to talk about this kind of thing”. And I think that if the response to this post is a bunch of “gotcha! You said this comment was bad in one particular way, but it’s actually bad in an interestingly different way”, that kinda feels like it proves Elizabeth right?
This seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I wrote a post that said:
It’s common for people on LessWrong to accuse others of misquoting them. For example, just the other day, Elizabeth said:
wilkox is always misquoting me! He claimed that I said the moon is made of rubber, when of course I actually believe it is made of cheese.
and philh said:
I wish wilkox would stop attributing made-up positions to me. He quoted me as saying that the sky is blue. I’m a very well-documented theskyisgreenist.
The responses to that post would quite likely provide evidence in favour of my central claim. But this doesn’t mean that the evidence I provided was sound, or that it shouldn’t be open to criticism.
I don’t think this is a great analogy, but basically yeah. This sort of thing is why I included the last paragraph in my previous comment (“I do want there to be space for that kind of thing”).
For several of the examples you give, including my own comments, your description of what was said seems to misrepresent the source text.
Active suppression of inconvenient questions: Martín Soto
This is not a charitable or even plausible description of what Martín wrote, and Martín has described this as a ‘hyperbolic’ misrepresentation of their position. There is nowhere in the source comment thread that Martín claims or implies anything resembling the position that naïve veganism is ‘made-up’. The closest they come is to express that naïve transitions to veganism are not common in their personal experience (‘I was very surprised to hear those anecdotal stories of naive transitions, because in my anecdotal experience across many different vegan and animalist spaces, serious talk about nutrition, and a constant reminder to put health first, has been an ever-present norm.‘) Otherwise, they seem to take the idea of naïve transitions seriously while considering the effects of ‘signaling [sic] out veganism’ for discussion: ‘To the extent the naive transition accounts are representative of what’s going on...’, ‘seems to me to be one of the central causes of these naive transitions...‘, ‘...the single symptom of naive vegan transitions...’.
(Martín also objected to other ways in which they believe you misrepresented their position, and Slapstick agreed. I found it harder to evaluate whether they were misrepresented in these other ways, because like Stephen Bennett I found it hard to understand Martín’s position in detail.)
Active suppression of inconvenient questions: ‘midlist EA’
The author is clear about what they actually believe. They say that the claims that plant foods are poisonous or responsible for Western diseases are ‘based on dubious evidence’ and are ‘dubious health claims’. They then make an argument proceeding from this: that these dubious claims increase the consumption of animal-based foods, which they believe to be unethical, with the evidence for animal suffering being much stronger than the evidence for the ‘dubious health claims’.
You may disagree with their assessment of the health claims about plant foods, and indeed they didn’t examine any evidence for or against these claims in the quoted post. This doesn’t change the fact that the source quotation doesn’t fit the pattern you describe. The author clearly does not believe that the health claims about plant foods are ‘true but inconvenient’, but that they are ‘dubious’. Their focus on the consequences of these health claims is not an attempt to ‘actively suppress inconvenient questions’, but to express what they believe to be true.
Active suppression of inconvenient questions: Rockwell
Rockwell expresses, in passing, a broad concern with your posts (‘...why I find Elizabeth’s posts so troubling...‘), although as they don’t go into any further detail it’s not clear if they think your ‘beliefs are wrong’ or that they find your posts troubling for some other reason. It’s reasonable to criticise this as vague negativity without any argument or details to support it. However, it cannot serve as an example of ‘active suppression of an inconvenient question’ because it does not seem to engage with any question at all, and there’s certainly nowhere in the few words Rockwell wrote on ‘Elizabeth’s posts’ where they express or emphasise ‘the claim that [your] beliefs are wrong, not just inconvenient’. (This source could work as an example of ‘strong implications not defended’).
Active suppression of inconvenient questions: wilkox[1]
My comment does not claim ‘that vegan advocacy is fine because it’s no worse than fast food or breakfast cereal ads’, and does not describe veganism or vegan advocacy as ‘no worse than McDonalds’. It sets up a hypothetical scenario (‘Let’s suppose...‘) in which vegan advocates do the extreme opposite of what you recommend in the conclusions of the ‘My cruxes’ section of the Change My Mind post, then claims that even this hypothetical, extreme version of vegan advocacy would be no worse than the current discourse around diet and health in general. This was to illustrate my claim that health harms from misinformation are ‘not a problem specific to veganism’, nor one where ‘veganism in particular is likely to be causing significant health harms’.
Had I actually compared McDonalds to real-world vegan advocacy rather than this hypothetical worst-case vegan advocacy, I would have said McDonalds is much worse. You know this, because you asked me and I told you. (This also doesn’t seem to be an example of ‘active suppression of inconvenient questions’.)
Frame control, etc.: wilkox
This did not happen. You did not ask or otherwise attempt to nail down whether I believe micronutrient deficiencies exist, and I gave my position on that in the opening comment (‘Veganism is a known risk factor for some nutrient deficiencies...’). Likewise, you did not ask or attempt to nail down whether I believe micronutrient deficiencies can cause health issues, and I gave my position on that in the opening comment (‘Nutrient deficiencies are common and can cause anything ranging from no symptoms to vague symptoms to life-threatening diseases’).
You did ask me what I thought about the Faunalytics data (‘Do you disagree with their data...or not consider that important...?’).
This is answered by the opening sentences of my first comment: ‘I feel like I disagree with this post, despite broadly agreeing with your cruxes’, because I interpreted your post as making ‘an implicit claim’ that there are ‘significant health harms’ of veganism beyond the well-known nutritional deficiencies. I went on to ask whether you actually were making this claim: ‘Beyond these well-known issues, is there any reason to expect veganism in particular to cause any health harms worth spending time worrying about?’ Over two exchanges on the ‘importance’ of nutrient deficiencies in veganism, I asked again and then again whether you believe that there are health harms of veganism that are more serious and/or less well-known than nutrient deficiencies, and you clarified that you do not, and provided some useful context that helped me to understand why you wrote the post the way you did.
My account of the conversation is that I misread an implicit claim into your post, and you clarified what you were actually claiming and provided context that helped me to understand why the post had been written in the way it was. We did identify a disagreement over the ‘importance’ of nutrient deficiencies in veganism, but this also seemed explicit and legible. It’s hard to construe this as an example where the nature of the disagreement was unclear, or otherwise of ‘nailing jello to the wall’.
I did not claim that fatigue due to B12 or iron deficiencies, or any other health issue secondary to veganism, is ‘fine because if people get tired they can go to a doctor’. I claimed that to the extent that people don’t see a doctor because of these symptoms, the health harms of veganism are unlikely to be their most important medical problem, because the symptoms are ‘minor enough that they can’t be bothered’, they ‘generally don’t seek medical help when they are seriously unwell, in which case the risk from something like B12 deficiency is negligible compared to e.g. the risk of an untreated heart attack’, or they ‘don’t have good access to medical care...[in which case] veganism is unlikely to be their most important health concern’. I did not say that every vegan who has symptoms due to nutritional deficiencies can or will go to a doctor (I explicitly said the opposite), nor that this situation is ‘fine’.
‘Can we count on veganism-induced fatigue being caught?’ is not a question raised in my original comment, nor in Lukas Finnveden’s reply. I claimed that it would not always be caught, and gave some reasons why it might not be caught (symptoms too minor to bother seeing a doctor, generally avoid seeking medical care for major issues, poor access to medical care). Lukas Finnveden’s comment added reasons that people with significant symptoms may not seek medical care: they might not notice issues that are nonetheless significant to them, or they might have executive function problems that create a barrier to accessing medical care. There’s nowhere in our brief discussion where ‘can we count on veganism-induced fatigue being caught?’ is under debate.
Bad sources, badly handled: wilkox
I did not ‘eventually agree’ to these points, and we did not discuss them at all in the exchange. In my first comment, I said ‘Many vegans, including myself, will routinely get blood tests to monitor for these deficiencies. If detected, they can be treated with diet changes, fortified foods, oral supplementation, or intramuscular/intravenous supplementation.’
I am not an EA, have only passing familiarity with the EA movement, and have never knowingly met an EA in real life. I don’t think anything I have written can stand as an example of ‘EA vegan advocacy’, and actual EAs might reasonably object to being tarred with the same brush. ↩︎
So I haven’t reread to figure out an opinion on most of this, but wrt this specific point
I kinda want to flag something like “yes, that’s the point”? If Martín’s position is hard to pin down, then… like, it’s better to say “I don’t know what he’s trying to say” than “he’s trying to say [concrete thing he’s not trying to say]”, but both of them seem like they fit for the purposes of this post. (And if Elizabeth had said “I don’t know what he’s trying to say” then I anticipate three different commenters giving four different explanations of what Martín had obviously been saying.)
And, part of the point here is “it is very hard to talk about this kind of thing”. And I think that if the response to this post is a bunch of “gotcha! You said this comment was bad in one particular way, but it’s actually bad in an interestingly different way”, that kinda feels like it proves Elizabeth right?
But also I do want there to be space for that kind of thing, so uh. Idk. I think if I was making a comment like that I’d try to explicitly flag it as “not a crux, feel free to ignore”.
This seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I wrote a post that said:
The responses to that post would quite likely provide evidence in favour of my central claim. But this doesn’t mean that the evidence I provided was sound, or that it shouldn’t be open to criticism.
I don’t think this is a great analogy, but basically yeah. This sort of thing is why I included the last paragraph in my previous comment (“I do want there to be space for that kind of thing”).