Suppose that someone has views that I think are “odious”, but which have a totally different political slant (either on the opposite side of the standard political spectrum, or just largely orthogonal) than all this stuff with Cremieux.
Should rationalist gatherings shun this person? If not, why not?
We can even make this more personal: suppose that you have views that I think are “odious”. Should rationalist gatherings shun you? If not, why not?
(I mostly don’t know your political views, and I don’t currently have any reason to think that you should be shunned. But you can easily enough imagine the scenario, I expect.)
Presumably you will answer “no” to both questions. But why? You’re giving reasons why you think that Cremieux is “odious”, on the basis of his views and his public comments about his views—just that, not anything else![1] Well, surely I could give reasons why someone (perhaps even you!) is “odious”, on the basis of that person’s views and comments thereon.
So why shouldn’t rationalists shun this hypothetical person? Why shouldn’t rationalists shun hypothetical-you?
Is it a matter of majoritarianism? We should shun anyone whom the majority of rationalists consider “odious”? (But if so—what is the denominator? Who gets to vote in this referendum?)
And if not that—then what? (Note that object-level arguments—“but you see, clearly, this guy really is odious!”—will obviously not suffice.)
This is especially hilarious given that there genuinely seem to be good reasons to, if not disinvite the guy, at least to remove him from the featured-speaker list—the plagiarism, and the exceedingly hostile response to the (quite credible) accusation thereof.
First, I don’t think rationalists should shun Cremieux. The only cases I’m aware of where there was a push to get someone actually banned from rationalist stuff and truly “cancelled” are cases of, like, abuse, theft, murder, and I think this is good. I don’t think Cremieux should be banned from rationalist events, I don’t think people should refuse to read his blog or anything. He has good Twitter threads sometimes. (though after the Dynomight thing I’m a little suspicious of how much of that is his work)
What I do think is that his character as a person (which includes the blowup in response to the plagiarism accusation, and also the posts we’re talking about here) should inform to what extent we hold him up as an exemplar of how to be. I wish we wouldn’t. I am not myself lodging any kind of big protest about this, I am going to LessOnline myself (though not as any sort of featured guest), but it does make me a little less happy about how my community works.
Anyway, if someone is, say, a diehard communist who likes to post “kill all landlords” and argue that we need to immediately have a communist revolution and put a lot of people in gulags, that would
(a) be a very different valence from Cremieux’s takes
(b) not warrant banning them from rationalist meetups (assuming they’re not constantly going on about this at the meetups—if they are, ask them to cut it out and ban them if they won’t)
(c) cause me to not want to be friends with them or respect their opinions
(d) cause me to think that if e.g. LessOnline organizers are holding them up as an example of how one should be, they are wrong and have worse judgment than I thought
Suppose that someone has views that I think are “odious”, but which have a totally different political slant (either on the opposite side of the standard political spectrum, or just largely orthogonal) than all this stuff with Cremieux.
Should rationalist gatherings shun this person? If not, why not?
We can even make this more personal: suppose that you have views that I think are “odious”. Should rationalist gatherings shun you? If not, why not?
(I mostly don’t know your political views, and I don’t currently have any reason to think that you should be shunned. But you can easily enough imagine the scenario, I expect.)
Presumably you will answer “no” to both questions. But why? You’re giving reasons why you think that Cremieux is “odious”, on the basis of his views and his public comments about his views—just that, not anything else![1] Well, surely I could give reasons why someone (perhaps even you!) is “odious”, on the basis of that person’s views and comments thereon.
So why shouldn’t rationalists shun this hypothetical person? Why shouldn’t rationalists shun hypothetical-you?
Is it a matter of majoritarianism? We should shun anyone whom the majority of rationalists consider “odious”? (But if so—what is the denominator? Who gets to vote in this referendum?)
And if not that—then what? (Note that object-level arguments—“but you see, clearly, this guy really is odious!”—will obviously not suffice.)
This is especially hilarious given that there genuinely seem to be good reasons to, if not disinvite the guy, at least to remove him from the featured-speaker list—the plagiarism, and the exceedingly hostile response to the (quite credible) accusation thereof.
First, I don’t think rationalists should shun Cremieux. The only cases I’m aware of where there was a push to get someone actually banned from rationalist stuff and truly “cancelled” are cases of, like, abuse, theft, murder, and I think this is good. I don’t think Cremieux should be banned from rationalist events, I don’t think people should refuse to read his blog or anything. He has good Twitter threads sometimes. (though after the Dynomight thing I’m a little suspicious of how much of that is his work)
What I do think is that his character as a person (which includes the blowup in response to the plagiarism accusation, and also the posts we’re talking about here) should inform to what extent we hold him up as an exemplar of how to be. I wish we wouldn’t. I am not myself lodging any kind of big protest about this, I am going to LessOnline myself (though not as any sort of featured guest), but it does make me a little less happy about how my community works.
Anyway, if someone is, say, a diehard communist who likes to post “kill all landlords” and argue that we need to immediately have a communist revolution and put a lot of people in gulags, that would
(a) be a very different valence from Cremieux’s takes
(b) not warrant banning them from rationalist meetups (assuming they’re not constantly going on about this at the meetups—if they are, ask them to cut it out and ban them if they won’t)
(c) cause me to not want to be friends with them or respect their opinions
(d) cause me to think that if e.g. LessOnline organizers are holding them up as an example of how one should be, they are wrong and have worse judgment than I thought