But I would definitely consider him top-decile rude and, idk, bruising in conversation within those communities; to me, and I think to others, he stands out as notably likely to offend or be damagingly socially oblivious.
I’m not going to carry on checking this thread; I mostly just wanted to drop my one top-level response. But in response to this, my main trigger is something like “okay, how could I assess a question like this in contact with how I think about social dark matter and DifferentWorlds™?”
Mark Rosewater, head designer of Magic: the Gathering, is constantly fielding questions on his blog from players who are like “literally no one is in favor of [extremely popular thing], I’ve been to eight different game shops and five tournaments and talked about it with, no exaggeration, over a hundred people.”
And I can see the mistake those people are making, because I’m outside of the information bubble they’re caught in. It’s trickier to catch the mistake when you’re inside the bubble.
Or, to put it another way: most of the people that like Nate’s conversational style and benefit greatly from it and find it a breath of fresh air aren’t here in the let’s-complain-about-it conversation.
I feel bad posting this. It’s a bit personal, or something. But he’s writing a book, and talking to important people about it, so it matters.
It does matter. And by all accounts, it’s going very well. That’s evidence upon which someone could choose to update (on, e.g., questions like “am I representative of the kind of people Nate’s talking to, who matter with regards to this whole thing going well over the next six months?”).
At the very least, I can confidently say that I know of no active critic-of-Nate’s-style who’s within an order of magnitude of having Nate’s positive impact on getting this problem taken seriously. Like, none of the people who are big mad about this are catching the ears of senators with their supposedly better styles.
I largely agree with your top-level comment here, though I want to provide pushback on this part:
At the very least, I can confidently say that I know of no active critic-of-Nate’s-style who’s within an order of magnitude of having Nate’s positive impact on getting this problem taken seriously. Like, none of the people who are big mad about this are catching the ears of senators with their supposedly better styles.
I have personally learned the hard way to really not let my inside-view models of what will be offputting to people be replaced with this kind of outside view. The obvious example I remember here is SBF, who yes, was extremely successful at political advocacy before it all collapsed, and I did indeed have many people tell me that I should just update that that is how you do politics, and was through that beaten into tolerating some behavior I much rather had never tolerated.
Like, social dynamics are messy, counter-reactions are often delayed, manufactured confidence can work for a surprisingly long time and then suddenly all fall apart in a dramatic counter-reaction.
This isn’t to say that I don’t believe that what MIRI and Nate are doing is working. Indeed, my inside view, which is informed by all of my experiences and beliefs, thinks that the approach Nate and Eliezer are taking is great, and probably the right one. But even on this very issue that is being discussed in Nate’s post, before the Trump administration, I’ve had tons of people approach me and say that I should now finally accept that the inside-game model of politics works given how much enormous success we are seeing with the safety provisions in the AI act, and all the movement at RAND.
And in that case, all I had to say was “well, I am sorry, but my inside view says things will not pay off, and we will see a counter-reaction that will overall draw things into the red”, which I don’t think has necessarily been proven right, but I think looks a lot more plausible to most than it did then. And I don’t want you to set a precedent here that this kind of outside view argument is treated more reliably or trustworthy than it actually is, even if I locally agree with the conclusion.
This is a little off topic, but do you have any examples of counter-reactions overall drawing things into the red?
With other causes like fighting climate change and environmentalism, it’s hard to see any activism being a net negative. Extremely sensationalist (and unscientific) promotions of the cause (e.g. The Day After Tomorrow movie) do not appear to harm it. It only seems to move the Overton window in favour of environmentalism.
It seems, most of the counter-reaction doesn’t depend on your method of messaging, it results from the success of your messaging. The mere shift in opinions in favour of your position, inevitably creates a counter-reaction among those who aren’t yet convinced.
Anti-environmentalists do not seem to use these overly hyped messages (like The Day After Tomorrow) as their strawman. Instead, they directly attack the most reputable climatologists who argue for global warming. No matter how gentle and non-sensationalist these climatologists are, they still get dunked on just as badly. I don’t think it would backfire, if they argued harder and more urgently on their beliefs.
People who support environmentalism, are very capable of ignoring the overzealous messaging on their own side, and have a good laugh at movies like The Day After Tomorrow.
Reverse-psychology effects only seem to occur for moral disagreements, not strategic/scientific disagreements, where people are positively attracted to the Overton window of their opponents.
And even the crappiest campaigns (e.g. militant veganism) have little proven success in “swaying the world to do the opposite via reverse-psychology.” This is despite directly attacking their audience and calling them evil, and making lots of negative actions like blocking traffic and damaging property.I'm not sure
Assuming no counter-reaction, big name book endorsements are solid evidence of success.
Disclaimer: not an expert just a guy on the internet
It appears to me that the present republican administration is largely a counter-reaction to various social justice and left-leaning activism. IMO a very costly one.
I actually didn’t see that glaring example! Very good point.
That said, my feeling is Trump et al. weren’t reacting against any specific woke activism, but very woke policies (and opinions) which resulted from the activism.
Although they reversed very many Democrat policies, I don’t think they reversed them so badly that a stronger Democrat policy will result in a stronger policy in the opposite direction under the Trump administration.[citation needed] I guess The Overton window effect may still be stronger than the reverse-psychology effect.
In a counterfactual world where one of these woke policies/opinions was weaker among Democrats (e.g. the right to abortion), that specific opinion would probably do even worse under Trump (abortion might be banned). Trump’s policies are still positively correlated with public opinion. He mostly held back from banning abortion and cutting medical benefits because he knew these liberal policies were popular. But he aggressively attacked immigration (and foreign aid) because these liberal policies were less popular. Despite appearances, he’s not actually maximizing E(liberal tears).
The one counter-reaction, is that in aggregate, all the woke policies and opinions may have made Trump popular enough to get elected? But I doubt that pausing AI etc. will be so politically significant it’ll determine who wins the election.
PS: I changed my mind on net negatives. Net negative activism may be possible when it makes the cause (e.g. AI Notkilleveryoneism) becomes partisan and snaps into one side of the political aisle? But even Elon Musk supporting it hasn’t caused that to happen?
That said, my feeling is Trump et al. weren’t reacting against any specific woke activism, but very woke policies (and opinions) which resulted from the activism.
I don’t think this is true, and that indeed the counter-reaction is strongly to the woke activism. My sense is a lot of current US politics stuff is very identity focused, the policies on both sides matter surprisingly little (instead a lot of what is going on is something more like personal persecution of the outgroup and trying to find ways to hurt them, and to prop up your own status, which actually ends up with surprisingly similar policies on both ends).
I agree, but I don’t think individual woke activists writing books and sending it to policymakers, can directly increase the perception of “there is too much wokeness,” even if no policymakers listen to them.
They only increase the perception of “there is too much wokeness,” by way of successfully changing opinions and policies.
The perception that “there is too much wokeness” depends on
Actual woke opinions and policies by the government and people
Anti-woke activism which convince conservatives that “the government and leftwingers” are far more woke than they actually are
Not pro-woke activism (in the absence of actual woke opinions and policies)
So the only way activists can be a net negative, is if making policymakers more woke (e.g. more pro-abortion), can causally make future policymakers even less woke than they would be otherwise.
This is possible if it makes people feel “there is too much wokeness” and elect Trump. But for a single subtopic of wokeness e.g. pro-abortion, it’s unlikely to singlehandedly determine whether Trump is elected, and therefore making policymakers more pro-abortion in particular, probably has a positive influence on whether future policymakers are pro-abortion (by moving the Overton window on this specific topic).
This is probably even more true for strategic/scientific disagreements rather than moral disagreements: if clinical trial regulations were stricter during a Democrat administration, they probably will remain stricter during the next Republican administration. It’s very hard to believe that the rational prediction could be “making the regulations stronger will cause the expected future regulations to be weaker.”
You don’t hear about the zillions of policies which Trump did not reverse (or turn upside down). You don’t hear about the zillions of scientific positions held by Democrat decisionmakers which Trump did not question (or invert).
I agree, but I don’t think individual woke activists writing books and sending it to policymakers, can directly increase the perception of “there is too much wokeness,” even if no policymakers listen to them.
Why? This seems completely contrary to how I understand things.
Ibram X. Kendi mostly did not get any of his proposals enacted by any legislature, yet his association with progressivism caused significant backlash among centrist voters who became convinced the left believes any measure of success that doesn’t have perfectly equal results between races is inherently racist.
Tema Okun mostly did not get any of her proposals enacted by any legislature, but her work was pushed by universities and non-profits, became part of the standard curriculum for DEI teachings at many companies throughout the US, and entrenched in the general population the idea that the left thinks “a sense of urgency” is white supremacy and should be eliminated.
“Defund the police” and ACAB chanters in 2020 mostly did not get their proposals enacted by legislatures, but they also created significant backlash among voters who became convinced the left is talking crazy on matters of crime detection and prevention.
Frankly, opposition to wokeness has almost entirely flowed from opposition to cultural instances of wokeness as opposed to specific pieces of legislature.
I guess they succeeded in changing many people’s opinions. The right wing reaction is against left wing people’s opinions. The DEI curriculum is somewhere in between opinions and policies.
I think the main effect of people having farther left opinions, is still making policies further left rather than further right due to counter-reaction. And this is despite the topic being much more moralistic and polarizing than AI x-risk.
That said, my feeling is Trump et al. weren’t reacting against any specific woke activism
I strongly disagree with this. I think the simplest and most illustrative example I can point to is that of pro-Palestinian activists. They almost universally failed to obtain their desired policies (divestments, the expulsion of ‘Zionists’ from left-of-center spheres), but nonetheless their specific activism, such as on college campuses, engendered a tremendous amount of backlash, both in the general election and afterwards (such as through a closer US-Israel relationship, etc). It has also resulted in ongoing heavy-handed[1] actions by the Trump administration to target universities who allowed this, deport foreigners who engaged in it, and crack down on such speech in the public sphere.
In general, I think Trump 2.0 is a reaction to the wokeness of 2017-2022, which is itself a reaction to Trump 1.0, and most of this stuff is symbolic as opposed to substantive in nature.[2] I do think Trump 1.0 is a reaction to genuine policy and cultural changes that have pushed the West in a more progressive direction over the decades,[3] but I believe what happened afterward is qualitatively different in how it came about.
Although they reversed very many Democrat policies, I don’t think they reversed them so badly that a stronger Democrat policy will result in a stronger policy in the opposite direction under the Trump administration.
I also disagree with this, though less strongly than above, mostly because I’m deeply uncertain about what will happen in the near-term future. The reason I don’t agree is that Trump 2.0 has managed and likely will continue to manage to enact fundamental structural changes in the system that will heavily limit what kinds of policies can actually be enacted by Democrats in the future. In particular, I’m referring to the gutting of the bureaucratic-administrative state and the nomination and confirmation of Trump-supporting candidates to the judiciary.
For instance, despite all the talk about prison abolitionism and ACAB in the summer of 2020, close to no jurisdictions actually enacted complete defundings of police departments. But progressive activism in this general direction nevertheless created long-lasting backlash that people still point to even today.
I don’t believe that in a world without pro-Palestinian protests, Trump would be noticeably less pro-Israel.
I think in such a world, even the Democrats would be more comfortable supporting Israel without reservations and caveats.
I think the protests and pressure against the Vietnam war, forced even Republican administrations to give in and end the war. This is despite crackdowns on protests similar to those against pro-Palestinian protests.
I think some of the Supreme Court justices appointed under Trump aren’t that extreme and refused to given in to his pressure.
But even if it’s true that the Trump administration is making these structural changes, it still doesn’t feel intuitive to me that e.g., a stronger anti-abortion policy under Democrats, would cause Trump to get elected, which would cause structural changes, which would cause a weaker anti-abortion policy in the future. The influence is diluted through each of these causes, such that the resulting effect is probably pretty small compared to the straightforward effect “a stronger anti-abortion policy today makes the default anti-abortion policy for the future stronger.”
The world is complex, but unless there is some unusual reason to expect an effort to backfire and have literally the opposite effect in the long run, it’s rational to expect efforts which empirically appear to work, to work. It feels mysterious to expect many things to be “net negatives” based on an inside view.
I agree
I agree certain kinds of actions can fail to obtain desired results, and still have backlash.
If you have “activism” which is violent or physically threatening enough (maybe extremists in pro-Palestinian protests), it does create backlash to the point of being a significant net negative.
Even more consequential, are the violent actions by Hamas in reaction to Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians. This actually does cause even more mistreatment, so much so that most of the mistreatment may be caused by it.
But this is violence we are talking about, not activism. The nonviolent protesters are still a net positive towards their cause.
Edit: I do think this proposal of vilifying AI labs could potentially be a net negative.
I don’t believe that in a world without pro-Palestinian protests, Trump would be noticeably less pro-Israel.
The first Trump administration did not take actions such as:
deporting foreigners who expressed active support for Palestine on social media
cutting off funding from top universities whose student body was deemed too supportive of Palestinian terrorism
assert Harvard engaged in “violent violation” of civil rights law by creating a campus environment Jewish students found unsafe because university leadership did not crack down on campus protests to a sufficient extent
Regardless of whether you think these actions taken by Trump 2.0 are desirable or undesirable, I know Trump 1.0 did not engage in them.
The question is not whether Trump, in his heart of hearts, was more or less pro-Israel in his first term. The point we’re focused on here is whether pro-Palestinian protests created significant backlash from the Trump administration, which it demonstrably did: Trump 2.0 took pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian activism actions that it had never done prior to the protests themselves.
I think some of the Supreme Court justices appointed under Trump aren’t that extreme and refused to given in to his pressure.
I didn’t say Supreme Court justices. The most Trump-following judges that have been appointed and confirmed are mostly at the other levels of the judicial branch, namely federal district and appellate court judges (such as Judge Cannon in the Southern District of Florida and Judge Ho at the 5th Circuit). Since the Supreme Court resolves an ever-shrinking percentage of cases it receives certiorari on, more and more of the legal developments that affect the status quo are being resolved by such judges.[1]
And while I don’t want to turn this into a discussion about SCOTUS itself, when it came to the most important Trump-related matters before it in the past year-and-a-half (namely Trump v. Anderson on Trump’s personal eligibility for the presidency, and Trump v. Casa, Inc. on the viability of national injunctions preventing the Trump administration from enacting its executive orders on stuff like birthright citizenship), the court sided with Trump every time.
There were many points of concern raised earlier this year about what would happen if Trump were to receive a negative response from SCOTUS on a major issue (would he abide by it, or create a constitutional crisis by defying them?). Thus far, this potential problem has been dodged because SCOTUS has not given him any serious thumbs-down on anything major.
But even if it’s true that the Trump administration is making these structural changes, it still doesn’t feel intuitive to me that e.g., a stronger anti-abortion policy under Democrats, would cause Trump to get elected, which would cause structural changes, which would cause a weaker anti-abortion policy in the future. The influence is diluted through each of these causes, such that the resulting effect is probably pretty small compared to the straightforward effect “a stronger anti-abortion policy today makes the default anti-abortion policy for the future stronger.”
This is a strange example to pick, because a careful analysis of it reveals the complete opposite of what you’re claiming.[2]Roe v. Wade created the anti-abortion movement as a genuine national force with strong religious and political backing,[3] whereas it hadn’t existed (outside of tiny, local groups) before. This created a steady supply of single-issue Republican voters for decades, ever-tightening controls and restrictions in Red states, and eventually an overruling of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson resulting in even stricter regimes than what had been prevalent at common law (see: quickening and the academic debate over it).
it’s rational to expect efforts which empirically appear to work
What… empirics are you talking about? I’ve seen no empirical analysis from you on any of these topics.
I don’t have the energy right now to explain the intricacies of the American judicial branch, but I fear the fact you jumped directly to the Supreme Court when a careful observer of it knows the vast majority of relevant developments in law happen in district courts and appellate circuits reflects that I perhaps should
In fact, the decades-long fight over abortion is the quintessential example of how activism and policy changes lead to significant backlash moving forward; I genuinely don’t think I could have possibly picked a better example to illustrate my case
Trump 2.0 being more pro-Israel could be due to him being more extreme in all directions (perhaps due to new staff members, vice president, I don’t know), rather than due to pro-Palestinian protests.
The counter-reaction are against the protesters, not the cause itself. The Vietnam War protests also created a counter-reaction against the protesters, despite successfully ending the war.
I suspect for a lot of these pressure campaigns which work, the target has a tendency to pretend he isn’t backing down due to the campaign (but other reasons), or act like he’s not budging at all until finally giving in. The target doesn’t want people to think that pressure campaigns work on him, the target wants people to think that any pressure him will only get a counter-reaction out of him, in order to discourage others from pressuring him.
You’re probably right about the courts though, I didn’t know that.
I agree that there is more anti-abortion efforts due to Roe v. Wade, but I disagree that these efforts actually overshot to a point where restrictions on abortion are even harsher than they would be if Roe v. Wade never happened. I still think it moved the Overton window such that even conservatives feel abortion is kind of normal, maybe bad, but not literally like killing a baby.
The people angry against affirmative action have a strong feeling that different races should get the same treatment e.g. when applying to university. I don’t think any of them overshot into wanting to bring back segregation or slavery.
Oops, “efforts which empirically appear to work” was referring to how the book, If Anyone Builds, It Everyone Dies attracted many big name endorsements who aren’t known for endorsing AI x-risk concerns until now.
Nate messaged me a thing in chat and I found it helpful and asked if I could copy it over:
fwiw a thing that people seem to me to be consistently missing is the distinction between what i was trying to talk about, namely the advice “have you tried saying what you actually think is the important problem, plainly, even once? ideally without broadcasting signals of how it’s a socially shameful belief to hold?”, and the alternative advice that i was not advocating, namely “have you considered speaking to people in a way that might be described as ‘brazen’ or ‘rude’ depending on who’s doing the describing?”.
for instance, in personal conversation, i’m pretty happy to directly contradict others’ views—and that has nothing to do with this ‘courage’ thing i’m trying to describe. nate!courage is completely compatible with saying “you don’t have to agree with me, mr. senator, but my best understanding of the evidence is [thing i believe]. if ever you’re interested in discussing the reasons in detail, i’d be happy to. and until then, we can work together in areas where our interests overlap.” there are plenty of ways to name your real worry while being especially respectful and polite! nate!courage and politeness are nearly orthogonal axes, on my view.
[people having trouble separating them] does maybe enhance my sense that the whole community is desperately lacking in nate!courage, if so many people have such trouble distinguishing between “try naming your real worry” and “try being brazen/rude”. (tho ofc part of the phenomenon is me being bad at anticipating reader confusions; the illusion of transparency continues to be a doozy.)
Can you be more concrete about what “catching the ears of senators” means? That phrase seems like it could refer to a lot of very different things of highly disparate levels of impressiveness.
On the other hand, we should expect that the first people to speak out against someone will be the most easily activated (in a neurological sense)- because of past trauma, or additional issues with the focal person, or having a shitty year. Speaking out is partially a function of pain level, and pain(Legitimate grievance + illegitimate grievance) > pain(legitimate grievance). It doesn’t mean there isn’t a legitimate grievance large enough to merit concern.
FWIW, as someone who’s been working pretty closely with Nate for the past ten years (and as someone whose preferred conversational dynamic is pretty warm-and-squishy), I actively enjoy working with the guy and feel positive about our interactions.
[acknowledging that you might not reply] Sorry, I don’t think I understand your point about the MtG questions: are you saying you suspect I’m missing the amount (or importance-adjusted amount) of positive responses to Nate? If so, maybe you misunderstood me. I certainly wouldn’t claim it’s rare to have a very positive response to talking to him (I’ve certainly had very positive conversations with him too!); my point was that very negative reactions to talking to him are not rare (in my experience, including among impactful and skilled people doing important work on AIS, according to me), which felt contrary to my read of the vibes of your comment. But again, I agree very positive reactions are also not rare!
Or, to put it another way: most of the people that like Nate’s conversational style and benefit greatly from it and find it a breath of fresh air aren’t here in the let’s-complain-about-it conversation.
I mean, we’re having this conversation on LessWrong. It’s, to put it mildly, doing more than a bit of selection for people who like Nate’s conversational style. Also, complaining about people is stressful and often socially costly, and it would be pretty weird for random policymakers to make it clear to random LW users how their conversation with Nate Soares had gone. How those effect compare to the more-specific selection effect of this being a complaint thread spurred by people who might have axes to grind is quite unclear to me.
At the very least, I can confidently say that I know of no active critic-of-Nate’s-style who’s within an order of magnitude of having Nate’s positive impact on getting this problem taken seriously. Like, none of the people who are big mad about this are catching the ears of senators with their supposedly better styles.
I believe that’s true of you. I know of several historically-active-critic-of-Eliezer’s-style who I think have been much more effective at getting this problem taken seriously in DC than Eliezer post-Sequences, but not of Nate’s or Eliezer’s with respect to this book in particular, but I also just don’t know much about how they’re responding other than the blurbs (which I agree are impressive! But also subject to selection effect!). I’m worried there’s substantial backfire effect playing out, which is nontrivial to catch, which is one of the reasons I’m interested in this thread.
I’m not going to carry on checking this thread; I mostly just wanted to drop my one top-level response. But in response to this, my main trigger is something like “okay, how could I assess a question like this in contact with how I think about social dark matter and DifferentWorlds™?”
Mark Rosewater, head designer of Magic: the Gathering, is constantly fielding questions on his blog from players who are like “literally no one is in favor of [extremely popular thing], I’ve been to eight different game shops and five tournaments and talked about it with, no exaggeration, over a hundred people.”
And I can see the mistake those people are making, because I’m outside of the information bubble they’re caught in. It’s trickier to catch the mistake when you’re inside the bubble.
Or, to put it another way: most of the people that like Nate’s conversational style and benefit greatly from it and find it a breath of fresh air aren’t here in the let’s-complain-about-it conversation.
It does matter. And by all accounts, it’s going very well. That’s evidence upon which someone could choose to update (on, e.g., questions like “am I representative of the kind of people Nate’s talking to, who matter with regards to this whole thing going well over the next six months?”).
At the very least, I can confidently say that I know of no active critic-of-Nate’s-style who’s within an order of magnitude of having Nate’s positive impact on getting this problem taken seriously. Like, none of the people who are big mad about this are catching the ears of senators with their supposedly better styles.
I largely agree with your top-level comment here, though I want to provide pushback on this part:
I have personally learned the hard way to really not let my inside-view models of what will be offputting to people be replaced with this kind of outside view. The obvious example I remember here is SBF, who yes, was extremely successful at political advocacy before it all collapsed, and I did indeed have many people tell me that I should just update that that is how you do politics, and was through that beaten into tolerating some behavior I much rather had never tolerated.
Like, social dynamics are messy, counter-reactions are often delayed, manufactured confidence can work for a surprisingly long time and then suddenly all fall apart in a dramatic counter-reaction.
This isn’t to say that I don’t believe that what MIRI and Nate are doing is working. Indeed, my inside view, which is informed by all of my experiences and beliefs, thinks that the approach Nate and Eliezer are taking is great, and probably the right one. But even on this very issue that is being discussed in Nate’s post, before the Trump administration, I’ve had tons of people approach me and say that I should now finally accept that the inside-game model of politics works given how much enormous success we are seeing with the safety provisions in the AI act, and all the movement at RAND.
And in that case, all I had to say was “well, I am sorry, but my inside view says things will not pay off, and we will see a counter-reaction that will overall draw things into the red”, which I don’t think has necessarily been proven right, but I think looks a lot more plausible to most than it did then. And I don’t want you to set a precedent here that this kind of outside view argument is treated more reliably or trustworthy than it actually is, even if I locally agree with the conclusion.
This is a little off topic, but do you have any examples of counter-reactions overall drawing things into the red?
With other causes like fighting climate change and environmentalism, it’s hard to see any activism being a net negative. Extremely sensationalist (and unscientific) promotions of the cause (e.g. The Day After Tomorrow movie) do not appear to harm it. It only seems to move the Overton window in favour of environmentalism.
It seems, most of the counter-reaction doesn’t depend on your method of messaging, it results from the success of your messaging. The mere shift in opinions in favour of your position, inevitably creates a counter-reaction among those who aren’t yet convinced.
Anti-environmentalists do not seem to use these overly hyped messages (like The Day After Tomorrow) as their strawman. Instead, they directly attack the most reputable climatologists who argue for global warming. No matter how gentle and non-sensationalist these climatologists are, they still get dunked on just as badly. I don’t think it would backfire, if they argued harder and more urgently on their beliefs.
People who support environmentalism, are very capable of ignoring the overzealous messaging on their own side, and have a good laugh at movies like The Day After Tomorrow.
Reverse-psychology effects only seem to occur for moral disagreements, not strategic/scientific disagreements, where people are positively attracted to the Overton window of their opponents.
And even the crappiest campaigns (e.g. militant veganism) have little proven success in “swaying the world to do the opposite via reverse-psychology.” This is despite directly attacking their audience and calling them evil, and making lots of negative actions like blocking traffic and damaging property.I'm not sure
Assuming no counter-reaction, big name book endorsements are solid evidence of success.
Disclaimer: not an expert just a guy on the internet
It appears to me that the present republican administration is largely a counter-reaction to various social justice and left-leaning activism. IMO a very costly one.
I actually didn’t see that glaring example! Very good point.
That said, my feeling is Trump et al. weren’t reacting against any specific woke activism, but very woke policies (and opinions) which resulted from the activism.
Although they reversed very many Democrat policies, I don’t think they reversed them so badly that a stronger Democrat policy will result in a stronger policy in the opposite direction under the Trump administration.[citation needed] I guess The Overton window effect may still be stronger than the reverse-psychology effect.
In a counterfactual world where one of these woke policies/opinions was weaker among Democrats (e.g. the right to abortion), that specific opinion would probably do even worse under Trump (abortion might be banned). Trump’s policies are still positively correlated with public opinion. He mostly held back from banning abortion and cutting medical benefits because he knew these liberal policies were popular. But he aggressively attacked immigration (and foreign aid) because these liberal policies were less popular. Despite appearances, he’s not actually maximizing E(liberal tears).
The one counter-reaction, is that in aggregate, all the woke policies and opinions may have made Trump popular enough to get elected? But I doubt that pausing AI etc. will be so politically significant it’ll determine who wins the election.
PS: I changed my mind on net negatives. Net negative activism may be possible when it makes the cause (e.g. AI Notkilleveryoneism) becomes partisan and snaps into one side of the political aisle? But even Elon Musk supporting it hasn’t caused that to happen?
I don’t think this is true, and that indeed the counter-reaction is strongly to the woke activism. My sense is a lot of current US politics stuff is very identity focused, the policies on both sides matter surprisingly little (instead a lot of what is going on is something more like personal persecution of the outgroup and trying to find ways to hurt them, and to prop up your own status, which actually ends up with surprisingly similar policies on both ends).
I agree, but I don’t think individual woke activists writing books and sending it to policymakers, can directly increase the perception of “there is too much wokeness,” even if no policymakers listen to them.
They only increase the perception of “there is too much wokeness,” by way of successfully changing opinions and policies.
The perception that “there is too much wokeness” depends on
Actual woke opinions and policies by the government and people
Anti-woke activism which convince conservatives that “the government and leftwingers” are far more woke than they actually are
Not pro-woke activism (in the absence of actual woke opinions and policies)
So the only way activists can be a net negative, is if making policymakers more woke (e.g. more pro-abortion), can causally make future policymakers even less woke than they would be otherwise.
This is possible if it makes people feel “there is too much wokeness” and elect Trump. But for a single subtopic of wokeness e.g. pro-abortion, it’s unlikely to singlehandedly determine whether Trump is elected, and therefore making policymakers more pro-abortion in particular, probably has a positive influence on whether future policymakers are pro-abortion (by moving the Overton window on this specific topic).
This is probably even more true for strategic/scientific disagreements rather than moral disagreements: if clinical trial regulations were stricter during a Democrat administration, they probably will remain stricter during the next Republican administration. It’s very hard to believe that the rational prediction could be “making the regulations stronger will cause the expected future regulations to be weaker.”
You don’t hear about the zillions of policies which Trump did not reverse (or turn upside down). You don’t hear about the zillions of scientific positions held by Democrat decisionmakers which Trump did not question (or invert).
Why? This seems completely contrary to how I understand things.
Ibram X. Kendi mostly did not get any of his proposals enacted by any legislature, yet his association with progressivism caused significant backlash among centrist voters who became convinced the left believes any measure of success that doesn’t have perfectly equal results between races is inherently racist.
Tema Okun mostly did not get any of her proposals enacted by any legislature, but her work was pushed by universities and non-profits, became part of the standard curriculum for DEI teachings at many companies throughout the US, and entrenched in the general population the idea that the left thinks “a sense of urgency” is white supremacy and should be eliminated.
“Defund the police” and ACAB chanters in 2020 mostly did not get their proposals enacted by legislatures, but they also created significant backlash among voters who became convinced the left is talking crazy on matters of crime detection and prevention.
Frankly, opposition to wokeness has almost entirely flowed from opposition to cultural instances of wokeness as opposed to specific pieces of legislature.
I guess they succeeded in changing many people’s opinions. The right wing reaction is against left wing people’s opinions. The DEI curriculum is somewhere in between opinions and policies.
I think the main effect of people having farther left opinions, is still making policies further left rather than further right due to counter-reaction. And this is despite the topic being much more moralistic and polarizing than AI x-risk.
I strongly disagree with this. I think the simplest and most illustrative example I can point to is that of pro-Palestinian activists. They almost universally failed to obtain their desired policies (divestments, the expulsion of ‘Zionists’ from left-of-center spheres), but nonetheless their specific activism, such as on college campuses, engendered a tremendous amount of backlash, both in the general election and afterwards (such as through a closer US-Israel relationship, etc). It has also resulted in ongoing heavy-handed[1] actions by the Trump administration to target universities who allowed this, deport foreigners who engaged in it, and crack down on such speech in the public sphere.
In general, I think Trump 2.0 is a reaction to the wokeness of 2017-2022, which is itself a reaction to Trump 1.0, and most of this stuff is symbolic as opposed to substantive in nature.[2] I do think Trump 1.0 is a reaction to genuine policy and cultural changes that have pushed the West in a more progressive direction over the decades,[3] but I believe what happened afterward is qualitatively different in how it came about.
I also disagree with this, though less strongly than above, mostly because I’m deeply uncertain about what will happen in the near-term future. The reason I don’t agree is that Trump 2.0 has managed and likely will continue to manage to enact fundamental structural changes in the system that will heavily limit what kinds of policies can actually be enacted by Democrats in the future. In particular, I’m referring to the gutting of the bureaucratic-administrative state and the nomination and confirmation of Trump-supporting candidates to the judiciary.
To put it mildly and euphemistically.
For instance, despite all the talk about prison abolitionism and ACAB in the summer of 2020, close to no jurisdictions actually enacted complete defundings of police departments. But progressive activism in this general direction nevertheless created long-lasting backlash that people still point to even today.
In addition to a heaping dose of symbolic stuff.
I don’t believe that in a world without pro-Palestinian protests, Trump would be noticeably less pro-Israel.
I think in such a world, even the Democrats would be more comfortable supporting Israel without reservations and caveats.
I think the protests and pressure against the Vietnam war, forced even Republican administrations to give in and end the war. This is despite crackdowns on protests similar to those against pro-Palestinian protests.
I think some of the Supreme Court justices appointed under Trump aren’t that extreme and refused to given in to his pressure.
But even if it’s true that the Trump administration is making these structural changes, it still doesn’t feel intuitive to me that e.g., a stronger anti-abortion policy under Democrats, would cause Trump to get elected, which would cause structural changes, which would cause a weaker anti-abortion policy in the future. The influence is diluted through each of these causes, such that the resulting effect is probably pretty small compared to the straightforward effect “a stronger anti-abortion policy today makes the default anti-abortion policy for the future stronger.”
The world is complex, but unless there is some unusual reason to expect an effort to backfire and have literally the opposite effect in the long run, it’s rational to expect efforts which empirically appear to work, to work. It feels mysterious to expect many things to be “net negatives” based on an inside view.
I agree
I agree certain kinds of actions can fail to obtain desired results, and still have backlash.
If you have “activism” which is violent or physically threatening enough (maybe extremists in pro-Palestinian protests), it does create backlash to the point of being a significant net negative.
Even more consequential, are the violent actions by Hamas in reaction to Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians. This actually does cause even more mistreatment, so much so that most of the mistreatment may be caused by it.
But this is violence we are talking about, not activism. The nonviolent protesters are still a net positive towards their cause.
Edit: I do think this proposal of vilifying AI labs could potentially be a net negative.
The first Trump administration did not take actions such as:
deporting foreigners who expressed active support for Palestine on social media
cutting off funding from top universities whose student body was deemed too supportive of Palestinian terrorism
assert Harvard engaged in “violent violation” of civil rights law by creating a campus environment Jewish students found unsafe because university leadership did not crack down on campus protests to a sufficient extent
Regardless of whether you think these actions taken by Trump 2.0 are desirable or undesirable, I know Trump 1.0 did not engage in them.
The question is not whether Trump, in his heart of hearts, was more or less pro-Israel in his first term. The point we’re focused on here is whether pro-Palestinian protests created significant backlash from the Trump administration, which it demonstrably did: Trump 2.0 took pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian activism actions that it had never done prior to the protests themselves.
I didn’t say Supreme Court justices. The most Trump-following judges that have been appointed and confirmed are mostly at the other levels of the judicial branch, namely federal district and appellate court judges (such as Judge Cannon in the Southern District of Florida and Judge Ho at the 5th Circuit). Since the Supreme Court resolves an ever-shrinking percentage of cases it receives certiorari on, more and more of the legal developments that affect the status quo are being resolved by such judges.[1]
And while I don’t want to turn this into a discussion about SCOTUS itself, when it came to the most important Trump-related matters before it in the past year-and-a-half (namely Trump v. Anderson on Trump’s personal eligibility for the presidency, and Trump v. Casa, Inc. on the viability of national injunctions preventing the Trump administration from enacting its executive orders on stuff like birthright citizenship), the court sided with Trump every time.
There were many points of concern raised earlier this year about what would happen if Trump were to receive a negative response from SCOTUS on a major issue (would he abide by it, or create a constitutional crisis by defying them?). Thus far, this potential problem has been dodged because SCOTUS has not given him any serious thumbs-down on anything major.
This is a strange example to pick, because a careful analysis of it reveals the complete opposite of what you’re claiming.[2] Roe v. Wade created the anti-abortion movement as a genuine national force with strong religious and political backing,[3] whereas it hadn’t existed (outside of tiny, local groups) before. This created a steady supply of single-issue Republican voters for decades, ever-tightening controls and restrictions in Red states, and eventually an overruling of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson resulting in even stricter regimes than what had been prevalent at common law (see: quickening and the academic debate over it).
What… empirics are you talking about? I’ve seen no empirical analysis from you on any of these topics.
I don’t have the energy right now to explain the intricacies of the American judicial branch, but I fear the fact you jumped directly to the Supreme Court when a careful observer of it knows the vast majority of relevant developments in law happen in district courts and appellate circuits reflects that I perhaps should
In fact, the decades-long fight over abortion is the quintessential example of how activism and policy changes lead to significant backlash moving forward; I genuinely don’t think I could have possibly picked a better example to illustrate my case
Along with strengthening the power of the originalist strain of thought within judicial and legal academia circles
Trump 2.0 being more pro-Israel could be due to him being more extreme in all directions (perhaps due to new staff members, vice president, I don’t know), rather than due to pro-Palestinian protests.
The counter-reaction are against the protesters, not the cause itself. The Vietnam War protests also created a counter-reaction against the protesters, despite successfully ending the war.
I suspect for a lot of these pressure campaigns which work, the target has a tendency to pretend he isn’t backing down due to the campaign (but other reasons), or act like he’s not budging at all until finally giving in. The target doesn’t want people to think that pressure campaigns work on him, the target wants people to think that any pressure him will only get a counter-reaction out of him, in order to discourage others from pressuring him.
You’re probably right about the courts though, I didn’t know that.
I agree that there is more anti-abortion efforts due to Roe v. Wade, but I disagree that these efforts actually overshot to a point where restrictions on abortion are even harsher than they would be if Roe v. Wade never happened. I still think it moved the Overton window such that even conservatives feel abortion is kind of normal, maybe bad, but not literally like killing a baby.
The people angry against affirmative action have a strong feeling that different races should get the same treatment e.g. when applying to university. I don’t think any of them overshot into wanting to bring back segregation or slavery.
Oops, “efforts which empirically appear to work” was referring to how the book, If Anyone Builds, It Everyone Dies attracted many big name endorsements who aren’t known for endorsing AI x-risk concerns until now.
Nate messaged me a thing in chat and I found it helpful and asked if I could copy it over:
I wish Nate had optimized his post more for being clear about which of these things he was talking about!
yeah, I left off this part but Nate also said
Can you be more concrete about what “catching the ears of senators” means? That phrase seems like it could refer to a lot of very different things of highly disparate levels of impressiveness.
On the other hand, we should expect that the first people to speak out against someone will be the most easily activated (in a neurological sense)- because of past trauma, or additional issues with the focal person, or having a shitty year. Speaking out is partially a function of pain level, and pain(Legitimate grievance + illegitimate grievance) > pain(legitimate grievance). It doesn’t mean there isn’t a legitimate grievance large enough to merit concern.
FWIW, as someone who’s been working pretty closely with Nate for the past ten years (and as someone whose preferred conversational dynamic is pretty warm-and-squishy), I actively enjoy working with the guy and feel positive about our interactions.
[acknowledging that you might not reply] Sorry, I don’t think I understand your point about the MtG questions: are you saying you suspect I’m missing the amount (or importance-adjusted amount) of positive responses to Nate? If so, maybe you misunderstood me. I certainly wouldn’t claim it’s rare to have a very positive response to talking to him (I’ve certainly had very positive conversations with him too!); my point was that very negative reactions to talking to him are not rare (in my experience, including among impactful and skilled people doing important work on AIS, according to me), which felt contrary to my read of the vibes of your comment. But again, I agree very positive reactions are also not rare!
I mean, we’re having this conversation on LessWrong. It’s, to put it mildly, doing more than a bit of selection for people who like Nate’s conversational style. Also, complaining about people is stressful and often socially costly, and it would be pretty weird for random policymakers to make it clear to random LW users how their conversation with Nate Soares had gone. How those effect compare to the more-specific selection effect of this being a complaint thread spurred by people who might have axes to grind is quite unclear to me.
I believe that’s true of you. I know of several historically-active-critic-of-Eliezer’s-style who I think have been much more effective at getting this problem taken seriously in DC than Eliezer post-Sequences, but not of Nate’s or Eliezer’s with respect to this book in particular, but I also just don’t know much about how they’re responding other than the blurbs (which I agree are impressive! But also subject to selection effect!). I’m worried there’s substantial backfire effect playing out, which is nontrivial to catch, which is one of the reasons I’m interested in this thread.