Giego Caleiro I’ve read the comments and now speak as me, not as Admin: It sems to me that the Zurich people were right to exclude Roland from their events. Let me lay out the reasons I have, based on extremely partial information:
1) IF Roland brings back topics that are not EA, such as 9/11 and Thai prostitutes, it is his burden to both be clear and to justify why those topics deserve to be there.
2) The politeness of EAs is in great part the reason that some SJWs managed to infiltrate it. Having regulations and rules that determine who can be kicked out is bad, because it is a weapon that the SJWs have been known to wield with great care and precision. That is, I much prefer a group where people are kicked out without justification than one in which reason is given (I say this as someone who was kicked out of at least 2 physical spaces related to EA, so it does not come lightly). Competition drives out SJWs, so I would recommend to Roland to create a new meeting that is more valuable than it’s predecessor, and attract people to it. (this community was created by me, with me as an admin, precisely for those reasons. I believed that I could legitimately help generate more valuable debate than previous EA groups, including the one that I myself created, but feared would be taken over by more SJWish types. This one is protected).
3) Another reason to be pro-kicking out: I and Tartre run a facebook chat group where I make a point of never explaining kicking anyone out. As far as I can tell, it has the best density of interesting topics of any facebook chat related to rationalists and EAs. It is necessary to be selective.
4) That said: Being excluded from social groups is horrible, it feels like dying to a lot of people, and it makes others fear it happening to them like the plague. So it allows for the kind of pernicious coordination in (DeScioli 2013) and full blown Girardian Scapegoating. There’s a balance that needs to be struck to avoid SJWs from taking little bureocracies, then mobbing people out, thus tyrannizing others into condescention with whatever is their current day flavour of acceptable speech.
5) Because being excluded from social groups is horrible, HEAs need to create a welcoming network of warmth and kindness towards those who are excluded or accused. We don’t want people to feel like they are dying, we don’t want they hyppocampi compromised and their serotonin levels lowered. Why? Because this happens to a LOT of people when they transition from being politically left leaning to being politically right leaning (or when they take the sexual strategy Red Pill). If we, HEAs, side with the accusers, the scapegoaters, the mob, we will be one more member of the Ochlocracy. This is both anti-utilitarian, as the harm to the excluded party is nearly unbearable, and anti-heterodox, as in all likelihood at least in part a person was excluded for not sharing a belief or behavioral pattern with those who are doing the excluding. So I highly recommend that, on priors, HEAs come forth in favor of the person.
During my own little scapegoating event, Divia Caroline Eden was nice enough to give me a call and inquire about psychological health, make sure I wasn’t going to kill myself and that sort of thing (people literally do that, if you have never been scapegoated, you cannot fathom what it is like, it cannot be expressed in words) and maybe 4 other people messaged me online showing equal niceness and appreciation.
Show that to Roland now, and maybe he’ll return the favor when and if it happens to you. As an HEA, you are already in the group of risk.
(Moderator note: I banned Diego partially for a long history of inflamatory commenting, but mostly for various highly deceptive and manipulative actions he took in the Bay Area community. This comment doesn’t have much to do with that, but it reminded me that he was still around.)
His ban from the Bay Area Rationalist and EA community was the result of like at least 100 hours of various mediation activities, with lots of discussion with both Diego and dozens of other people. I agree that this should be part of the process, but we are far beyond that being the right thing to do now (or two years ago).
I’m following through my critique (a). Sharing with permission from someone that was living at Event Horizon during the rent incident:
Diego said he was charging us more than standard rent and putting that money back into the house. Several people asked him how much more, and he gave them conflicting answers, like (not verbatim) “well you aren’t paying any more than normal for your room” and (again not verbatim) “I don’t know how much, maybe $1000-2000?” Eventually we all did the math together and found out we were paying about $16k for a $12k place and had been for 2 months with very little of the surplus put back into the house.
I also somewhat followed through (b) by reaching out to Diego asking zir if ze had additional comments on the ban.
> IF Roland brings back topics that are not EA, such as 9/11 and Thai prostitutes, it is his burden to both be clear and to justify why those topics deserve to be there.
This is just a strawman that has cropped up here. From the beginning I said I don’t mind dropping any topic that is not wanted. This never was the issue.
If you are rather kicked out without reason than with, and others rather with than without, then obviouslythe simple way to satisfy everyone is that you let the kicked-out choose whether they receive a reason.
Copied from the Heterodox Effective Altruism facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1449282541750667/):
Giego Caleiro I’ve read the comments and now speak as me, not as Admin:
It sems to me that the Zurich people were right to exclude Roland from their events. Let me lay out the reasons I have, based on extremely partial information:
1) IF Roland brings back topics that are not EA, such as 9/11 and Thai prostitutes, it is his burden to both be clear and to justify why those topics deserve to be there.
2) The politeness of EAs is in great part the reason that some SJWs managed to infiltrate it. Having regulations and rules that determine who can be kicked out is bad, because it is a weapon that the SJWs have been known to wield with great care and precision. That is, I much prefer a group where people are kicked out without justification than one in which reason is given (I say this as someone who was kicked out of at least 2 physical spaces related to EA, so it does not come lightly). Competition drives out SJWs, so I would recommend to Roland to create a new meeting that is more valuable than it’s predecessor, and attract people to it. (this community was created by me, with me as an admin, precisely for those reasons. I believed that I could legitimately help generate more valuable debate than previous EA groups, including the one that I myself created, but feared would be taken over by more SJWish types. This one is protected).
3) Another reason to be pro-kicking out: I and Tartre run a facebook chat group where I make a point of never explaining kicking anyone out. As far as I can tell, it has the best density of interesting topics of any facebook chat related to rationalists and EAs. It is necessary to be selective.
4) That said: Being excluded from social groups is horrible, it feels like dying to a lot of people, and it makes others fear it happening to them like the plague. So it allows for the kind of pernicious coordination in (DeScioli 2013) and full blown Girardian Scapegoating. There’s a balance that needs to be struck to avoid SJWs from taking little bureocracies, then mobbing people out, thus tyrannizing others into condescention with whatever is their current day flavour of acceptable speech.
5) Because being excluded from social groups is horrible, HEAs need to create a welcoming network of warmth and kindness towards those who are excluded or accused. We don’t want people to feel like they are dying, we don’t want they hyppocampi compromised and their serotonin levels lowered. Why? Because this happens to a LOT of people when they transition from being politically left leaning to being politically right leaning (or when they take the sexual strategy Red Pill). If we, HEAs, side with the accusers, the scapegoaters, the mob, we will be one more member of the Ochlocracy. This is both anti-utilitarian, as the harm to the excluded party is nearly unbearable, and anti-heterodox, as in all likelihood at least in part a person was excluded for not sharing a belief or behavioral pattern with those who are doing the excluding. So I highly recommend that, on priors, HEAs come forth in favor of the person.
During my own little scapegoating event, Divia Caroline Eden was nice enough to give me a call and inquire about psychological health, make sure I wasn’t going to kill myself and that sort of thing (people literally do that, if you have never been scapegoated, you cannot fathom what it is like, it cannot be expressed in words) and maybe 4 other people messaged me online showing equal niceness and appreciation.
Show that to Roland now, and maybe he’ll return the favor when and if it happens to you. As an HEA, you are already in the group of risk.
(Moderator note: I banned Diego partially for a long history of inflamatory commenting, but mostly for various highly deceptive and manipulative actions he took in the Bay Area community. This comment doesn’t have much to do with that, but it reminded me that he was still around.)
I tentatively think when making strong accusations, one should: a) be more precise b) let the chance for the other person to reply
His ban from the Bay Area Rationalist and EA community was the result of like at least 100 hours of various mediation activities, with lots of discussion with both Diego and dozens of other people. I agree that this should be part of the process, but we are far beyond that being the right thing to do now (or two years ago).
ok that’s good to know, thanks for the info!
I’m following through my critique (a). Sharing with permission from someone that was living at Event Horizon during the rent incident:
I also somewhat followed through (b) by reaching out to Diego asking zir if ze had additional comments on the ban.
Giego I agree with your post in general.
> IF Roland brings back topics that are not EA, such as 9/11 and Thai prostitutes, it is his burden to both be clear and to justify why those topics deserve to be there.
This is just a strawman that has cropped up here. From the beginning I said I don’t mind dropping any topic that is not wanted. This never was the issue.
If you are rather kicked out without reason than with, and others rather with than without, then
obviouslythe simple way to satisfy everyone is that you let the kicked-out choose whether they receive a reason.Saying that something is obvious instead of providing reasons doesn’t bring the discourse forward.
I didn’t mean I don’t need to provide reasons, I meant I just provided them.