I think Cremieux is an honest[1], truthseeking, and intelligent guest speaker, and I would be extraordinarily disappointed in the organizers if they disinvited him. I also have a very high opinion of LessOnline’s organizers, so I’m not particularly worried about them cowtowing to attempts to chill speech.
are… are you sure you read the post you’re responding to?
I ask because what you wrote is really bizarre in response to someone saying “I don’t like this person and so will not go to X, but I hope that X goes well and everyone has fun”.
I don’t like what he’s about, I think the rationalist community can do better, and I do not want to be a special guest at the same event he’s a special guest at. I hope that LessOnline goes well and that those who do go have a great time, and that my assessment is completely off-base. I mean, I don’t think it is, but I hope so.
This sounds to me like “hint hint I think you guys should disinvite him, and if it goes badly I will say that I told you so”.
“I told you so” is correct if you told someone something, they ignore it, and you were right.
I had a good time at LessOnline last year and expect to have a good time this year, but if Cremieux somehow ruins it for me, Eukaryote is absolutely entitled to tell me “I told you so”.
I guess you could choose to read it that way, but I’m not sure why you would—seems like an assumption of bad faith that doesn’t feel justified to me, especially on LW.
Just ask directly if you think the author meant to say that, IMO. Less chance for weird internet grudges that way. :)
I guess you could choose to read it that way, but I’m not sure why you would—seems like an assumption of bad faith that doesn’t feel justified to me, especially on LW.
Saying “I don’t like that you invited this person, and I think you shouldn’t have, and I think you should reverse that decision, and it’s on you if you ignore my advice and it goes poorly” doesn’t seem like it’s in bad faith to me. Caving to such bids seems like it would invite more such bids in the future, but I don’t think making such bids is particularly norm-breaking.
In context, I took that to be a threat to try to get the event organizers and attendees “cancelled” as racists unless they capitulated and disinvited him.
I don’t think this is necessarily what eukaryote explicitly intended...
… But I also don’t think it particularly matters whether they meant it this way or not. “I dislike this person so I will boycott this event”, implemented at scale, is what cancelling is. If a whole bunch of people coordinate to boycott the event unless Alice is blacklisted, that creates a threat-like pressure on event organizers to blacklist Alice if they want to maximize the number of attendees.
If a community wants to avoid such dynamics, then “I will boycott the event if Alice is there, not because I expect Alice to make the event unpleasant, but because I disagree with some of Alice’s beliefs and think she should be deplatformed” is something that shouldn’t be considered acceptable behavior, at the group-norm level. The intent behind the behavior doesn’t matter; the behavior itself is the problem.
And indeed, in the Simulacrum Levels framework, it’s not a Simulacrum Level 1 move. It’s Simulacrum Level 3-4, fashioning a cudgel out of your social resources and trying to beat the social realities into shape using it.
The acceptable response is IMO starting a discussion regarding Alice’s character and openly questioning whether she’s the kind of person who deserves to be invited to rationalist events. But not unilaterally setting up a game-theoretic structure that decreases the event’s value iff your demands are not met.
I think Cremieux is an honest[1], truthseeking, and intelligent guest speaker, and I would be extraordinarily disappointed in the organizers if they disinvited him. I also have a very high opinion of LessOnline’s organizers, so I’m not particularly worried about them cowtowing to attempts to chill speech.
(In the sense of e.g. his work output being factually correct, not speaking to his character personally)
are… are you sure you read the post you’re responding to?
I ask because what you wrote is really bizarre in response to someone saying “I don’t like this person and so will not go to X, but I hope that X goes well and everyone has fun”.
We definitely read the same words!
Did we read the same OP?
This sounds to me like “hint hint I think you guys should disinvite him, and if it goes badly I will say that I told you so”.
“I told you so” is correct if you told someone something, they ignore it, and you were right.
I had a good time at LessOnline last year and expect to have a good time this year, but if Cremieux somehow ruins it for me, Eukaryote is absolutely entitled to tell me “I told you so”.
I guess you could choose to read it that way, but I’m not sure why you would—seems like an assumption of bad faith that doesn’t feel justified to me, especially on LW.
Just ask directly if you think the author meant to say that, IMO. Less chance for weird internet grudges that way. :)
Saying “I don’t like that you invited this person, and I think you shouldn’t have, and I think you should reverse that decision, and it’s on you if you ignore my advice and it goes poorly” doesn’t seem like it’s in bad faith to me. Caving to such bids seems like it would invite more such bids in the future, but I don’t think making such bids is particularly norm-breaking.
sure
This seems a bit speculative to me. If OP didn’t believe that would the post have looked any different?
Suppose I tell you that you have a nice house, and it would be a shame if anything happened to it.
What do I mean?
In context, I took that to be a threat to try to get the event organizers and attendees “cancelled” as racists unless they capitulated and disinvited him.
I don’t think this is necessarily what eukaryote explicitly intended...
… But I also don’t think it particularly matters whether they meant it this way or not. “I dislike this person so I will boycott this event”, implemented at scale, is what cancelling is. If a whole bunch of people coordinate to boycott the event unless Alice is blacklisted, that creates a threat-like pressure on event organizers to blacklist Alice if they want to maximize the number of attendees.
If a community wants to avoid such dynamics, then “I will boycott the event if Alice is there, not because I expect Alice to make the event unpleasant, but because I disagree with some of Alice’s beliefs and think she should be deplatformed” is something that shouldn’t be considered acceptable behavior, at the group-norm level. The intent behind the behavior doesn’t matter; the behavior itself is the problem.
And indeed, in the Simulacrum Levels framework, it’s not a Simulacrum Level 1 move. It’s Simulacrum Level 3-4, fashioning a cudgel out of your social resources and trying to beat the social realities into shape using it.
The acceptable response is IMO starting a discussion regarding Alice’s character and openly questioning whether she’s the kind of person who deserves to be invited to rationalist events. But not unilaterally setting up a game-theoretic structure that decreases the event’s value iff your demands are not met.