This kind of thing does justified harm to our community’s reputation. If you have fun arguing that only white people can save us while deliberately obfuscating whether you actually believe that, it is in fact a concerning sign about your intentions/seriousness/integrity/trustworthiness.
i think i agree that this does justified harm, but maybe for some subgroups or communities the justified harm is worth the benefits of such an event? our local rationality community has developed to a point where i think people are comfortable talking about “controversial” statements with their real faces on because the vibes are one where any attempt at cancellation instead of dialogue will be met with eyerolls and social exclusion but like, you know, it took a pretty long time and sustained effort for us to get here. (and maybe im wrong and there are people in the group with opinions they are still afraid to voice!)
im modelling this as something kind of like authentic relating—you’re hacking the group’s intimacy module and ratcheting up the feeling of closeness with a shortcut. it’s not going to be as good as the genuine thing, but maybe it’s a lot better than what one would have general access to. it’s not everyone’s thing, people with enough access to the genuine goods are likely to be like “wtf this is weird”, sometimes it can go catastrophically wrong if the facilitator drops the ball… but despite all of that, for some people it’s a good thing to do occasionally bc otherwise they will never get enough of that social nutrient naturally
You may be right that the benefits are worth the costs for some people, but I think if you have access to a group interested in doing social events with plausible deniability, that group is probably already a place where you should be able to be honest about your beliefs without fear of “cancellation.” Then it is preferable to practice (and expect) the moral courage / accountability / honesty of saying what you actually believe and defending it within that group. If you don’t have a group of people interested in doing social events with plausible deniability, you probably can’t do them and this point is mute. So I’m not sure I understand the use case—you have a friend group that is a little cancel-ish but still interested in expressing controversial beliefs? That sounds like something that is not a rationalist group (or maybe I am spoiled by the culture of Jenn’s meetups).
I think if you have access to a group interested in doing social events with plausible deniability, that group is probably already a place where you should be able to be honest about your beliefs without fear of “cancellation.”
You may not know exactly who belongs to that group before going to the event and seeing who shows up.
There’s a connection to the idea of irony poisoning here, and I do not think it is good for the person in question to pretend to hold extremist views. This is a parallel issue with the fact that it’s terrible optics and creates a difficult tension with this website’s newfound interest in doing communications/policy/outreach work.
I’d argue one of the issues with a lot of early social media moderation policies was treating ironic beliefs that were usually banned as not ban-worthy, because as it turned out, ironic belief in some extremism turned out to either have been fake, or turned into the real versions over time.
This kind of thing does justified harm to our community’s reputation. If you have fun arguing that only white people can save us while deliberately obfuscating whether you actually believe that, it is in fact a concerning sign about your intentions/seriousness/integrity/trustworthiness.
i think i agree that this does justified harm, but maybe for some subgroups or communities the justified harm is worth the benefits of such an event? our local rationality community has developed to a point where i think people are comfortable talking about “controversial” statements with their real faces on because the vibes are one where any attempt at cancellation instead of dialogue will be met with eyerolls and social exclusion but like, you know, it took a pretty long time and sustained effort for us to get here. (and maybe im wrong and there are people in the group with opinions they are still afraid to voice!)
im modelling this as something kind of like authentic relating—you’re hacking the group’s intimacy module and ratcheting up the feeling of closeness with a shortcut. it’s not going to be as good as the genuine thing, but maybe it’s a lot better than what one would have general access to. it’s not everyone’s thing, people with enough access to the genuine goods are likely to be like “wtf this is weird”, sometimes it can go catastrophically wrong if the facilitator drops the ball… but despite all of that, for some people it’s a good thing to do occasionally bc otherwise they will never get enough of that social nutrient naturally
You may be right that the benefits are worth the costs for some people, but I think if you have access to a group interested in doing social events with plausible deniability, that group is probably already a place where you should be able to be honest about your beliefs without fear of “cancellation.” Then it is preferable to practice (and expect) the moral courage / accountability / honesty of saying what you actually believe and defending it within that group. If you don’t have a group of people interested in doing social events with plausible deniability, you probably can’t do them and this point is mute. So I’m not sure I understand the use case—you have a friend group that is a little cancel-ish but still interested in expressing controversial beliefs? That sounds like something that is not a rationalist group (or maybe I am spoiled by the culture of Jenn’s meetups).
You may not know exactly who belongs to that group before going to the event and seeing who shows up.
There’s a connection to the idea of irony poisoning here, and I do not think it is good for the person in question to pretend to hold extremist views. This is a parallel issue with the fact that it’s terrible optics and creates a difficult tension with this website’s newfound interest in doing communications/policy/outreach work.
I’d argue one of the issues with a lot of early social media moderation policies was treating ironic beliefs that were usually banned as not ban-worthy, because as it turned out, ironic belief in some extremism turned out to either have been fake, or turned into the real versions over time.