It’s of course reasonable to skip an event because people you don’t like will be there.
However, it’s clear that many people have the opposite preference, and wouldn’t want LessOnline attendees or invited guests to have to meet a “standard of care and compassion,” especially one wherever you’re putting it.
LessOnline seems to be about collecting people interested in and good at rationality and high-quality writing, not about collecting people interested in care and compassion. For the latter I’d suggest one go to something like EA Global or church…
It’s clear that many people at least don’t mind Cremieux being invited [ETA: as a featured author-guest] to LessOnline, but it’s also clear (from this comment thread) that many people do mind Cremieux being invited to LessOnline, and some of them mind it quite strongly.
This is a (potential) reason to reconsider the invitation and/or explicitize some norms/standards that prospective LessOnline invitees are expected to meet.
Small ~nitpick/clarification: in my understanding, at issue is Crémieux being a featured guest at LessOnline, rather than being allowed to attend LessOnline; “invited to” is ambiguous between the two.
It is ambiguous, but it’s hinting more strongly towards being a featured author guest because “normal/usual/vanilla guests” are not Being Invited by the organizers to attend the conference in the sense in which this word is typically used in this context.
I don’t think “if discussing issues that have caused tremendous amounts of real world pain, you gotta avoid being contemptuous of the groups that were hurt” is a standard of care and compassion that is incompatible with rationality and high-quality writing. And not having any standard at all is flatly unworkable, and indeed not, actually, how the community actually functions.
Approximately every contentious issue has caused tremendous amounts of real-world pain. Therefore the choice of which issues to police contempt about becomes a de facto political standard.
I am not saying care and compassion is incompatible with rationality and high-quality writing.
Yes, perhaps it’s reasonable to require some standard, but personally I think there’s a place for events where that standard is as or more permissive than it is at LessOnline. This is my subjective opinion and preference, but I would not be surprised if many LessWrong readers shared it.
It’s of course reasonable to skip an event because people you don’t like will be there.
However, it’s clear that many people have the opposite preference, and wouldn’t want LessOnline attendees or invited guests to have to meet a “standard of care and compassion,” especially one wherever you’re putting it.
LessOnline seems to be about collecting people interested in and good at rationality and high-quality writing, not about collecting people interested in care and compassion. For the latter I’d suggest one go to something like EA Global or church…
It’s clear that many people at least don’t mind Cremieux being invited [ETA: as a featured author-guest] to LessOnline, but it’s also clear (from this comment thread) that many people do mind Cremieux being invited to LessOnline, and some of them mind it quite strongly.
This is a (potential) reason to reconsider the invitation and/or explicitize some norms/standards that prospective LessOnline invitees are expected to meet.
Small ~nitpick/clarification: in my understanding, at issue is Crémieux being a featured guest at LessOnline, rather than being allowed to attend LessOnline; “invited to” is ambiguous between the two.
It is ambiguous, but it’s hinting more strongly towards being a featured author guest because “normal/usual/vanilla guests” are not Being Invited by the organizers to attend the conference in the sense in which this word is typically used in this context.
But fair, I’ll ETA-clarify.
I don’t think “if discussing issues that have caused tremendous amounts of real world pain, you gotta avoid being contemptuous of the groups that were hurt” is a standard of care and compassion that is incompatible with rationality and high-quality writing. And not having any standard at all is flatly unworkable, and indeed not, actually, how the community actually functions.
Approximately every contentious issue has caused tremendous amounts of real-world pain. Therefore the choice of which issues to police contempt about becomes a de facto political standard.
I am not saying care and compassion is incompatible with rationality and high-quality writing.
Yes, perhaps it’s reasonable to require some standard, but personally I think there’s a place for events where that standard is as or more permissive than it is at LessOnline. This is my subjective opinion and preference, but I would not be surprised if many LessWrong readers shared it.