This is excellent. But since I'm mentioned, I thought I'd weigh in. I don't particularly care about saving the term "eugenics." However, it is worth noting that for more than a century philosophers and scientists have carefully distinguished between voluntary and involuntary eugenics, between state-sponsored and mandatory eugenics, etc. Indeed, Galton (who coined the word) always rejected coercive eugenics, and Leonard Darwin (Charles's son, and past president of the English Eugenics Society) defined the word in a way that was clear and unobjectionable: "eugenics is the study of heredity as it may be applied to the betterment, mental and physical, of the human race." There is no obvious substitute for this word.
What's happened in the last 5-10 years is an attempt to use "eugenics" as a slur when other slurs started losing their bite. Now that many of us who write about this topic use "genetic enhancement," activists have demonized "genetic enhancement" as a euphemism for "eugenics." They're not wrong. It is a euphemism. And so the euphemism treadmill accelerates. For a historical overview of the term, see this essay: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-031-01987-6_9.pdf
If I knew using different words would make annoying people like the authors of the hit piece go away, I'd gladly use different words so we could all move on with our lives. However, it's worth emphasizing that when I was asked to defend eugenics in a philosophy debate a decade ago it was understood by all parties that "eugenics" is not the same thing as Nazism. But thanks to dishonest and historically illiterate journalists, we are now supposed to believe that anyone who has used the term is satanic, no matter how careful they have been in defining their terms and laying out their principles.
Let me tell you about this Bentham's bulldog guy. First of all, bulldogs are known to be aggressive and to bite people. Second while millions of real people and real animals suffer, BB is concerned about the welfare of imaginary lobster people. Third he writes on substack, and a lot of evil people write on substack. I say we should cancel this guy.
“No one has ever convincingly explained why one shouldn’t interact with bad people or invite them to their conferences”
I think this follows pretty straightforwardly from the idea that shame is an effective and necessary component of maintaining good social norms.
I’m not saying that every bad person should create associational shame. I think we should save it for the very bad people (where it’s most necessary) who are already unpopular (where it’s most effective).
I’m also not saying that norms surrounding shame should be the same in all contexts. I think it makes sense to reduce shame norms in the context of academic philosophy. But most people aren’t academic philosophers, or interested in thinking seriously about morality. For these people, I think we need various social norms like shame to enforce good behavior.
None of this makes the Guardian right. But I do think it makes the Guardian’s rightness more contingent on the rightness of the people it is trying to shame, rather than the strategy it is using.
Edit:
Given your piece was framed around “interestingness,” rather than moral rightness, I think it could be useful to add that we should expect optimizing for rightness to sometimes conflict with optimizing for interestingness.
To be fair, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that if A chooses to associate with/go see at conferences/(maybe even work for) people B doesn’t agree with at all, the chance of A believing those same things are way higher.
Why? Because it’s simply more common for someone to want to create a space of like-minded people in their lives (each reason already having been evaluated in B’s subconscious) than interact with people who make evil decisions, according to their point of view.
In this case, the fact that all these A’s even interacted with ‘interesting people’ (literally defined as those who are not what B normally sees aka non-liberals) was logically a sign to B that A would be 100x less likely to support the woke worldview. And B’s worldview leaves very little space for non-conforming/interesting people to be the good guys. There are then two bad guys.
I think this general hit piece increased my confidence in one propositions: EAs (especially EA intellectuals) should not do politics. It’s super non marginal, non neglected (even supposedly contrarian takes don’t actually help so much), and it could damage reputation of other beliefs.
If you have a belief about that people need to do more good that people would consider, they are much less likely to take you seriously if you also have a controversial view on a topic - that is not to say this is a good thing that people do, but they definitely do. Even if you put a very low credence on an idea that is widely unaccepted, I think even talking about it is terrible for your own and EA reputation- yes people make assumptions about EA based on how individuals in EA act and no this is not a good thing but let’s be pragmatic! Perhaps the good can outweigh the bad in situations where these controversial takes are related EA stuff (perhaps making the claim that factory farming is really bad, we should care about the long term future a lot, we have moral obligations because of pond-like analogies). I would just say, in general, it seems to be a good heuristic to stay away from general political controversy if you want to be marginal.
It blows my mind that Nazis engaged in mass murder (of Ashkenazi Jews, which isn't even eugenic!), while the US forcibly sterilized people, and that the message people take away from this is that the main reason those things were bad is that they were intended to improve the genetic health of future generations. This is just cargo-cult thinking.
Tbh, people like Razib Khan or even Richard Hanania kind of make me suspicious, as someone aware of the sort of alt-right frogboiling that occurs in a lot of communities (no offense to the people I mentioned, who are probably genuine and not alt-right) but nothing makes me forget that as easily as smeary hitpieces.
"standard sort of journalist hitpiece on a group: find a bunch of members saying things that sound bad, and then sneeringly report on that as if that discredits the group."
Agree, this is common, too common, and people on each "side" of the political divide do it.
Most people reporting on any topic who have an agenda other than objective journalism do cherry picking (of quotes, actions, etc) to shape your opinions as they choose. It's easy to do and effective. Then of course one can take events or words out of context to create whatever picture of a person you desire. I notice this is done by the Trump haters (and I'm not a fan of Trump, there's plenty to hate there). Most of the time when you look up the video you see the journalist is twisting what he said to make him appear stupid or bigoted.
This practice is ubiquitous (probably has been throughout history) since it's easy and effective. Cheats the reader though.
As you probably mention, another benighted process is digging up the dumbest things somebody said across a span of years, including things they've changed their mind on, or said while drunk, and pretending these represent the whole person.
> Paleoconservative and anti-immigration (like around half the country).
Minor nitpick, tho maybe a major one: this may be why the guardian authors see themselves as the brave noncomformist underdogs, since the allegedly beyond the pale things are by polling data not unpopular.
This is excellent. But since I'm mentioned, I thought I'd weigh in. I don't particularly care about saving the term "eugenics." However, it is worth noting that for more than a century philosophers and scientists have carefully distinguished between voluntary and involuntary eugenics, between state-sponsored and mandatory eugenics, etc. Indeed, Galton (who coined the word) always rejected coercive eugenics, and Leonard Darwin (Charles's son, and past president of the English Eugenics Society) defined the word in a way that was clear and unobjectionable: "eugenics is the study of heredity as it may be applied to the betterment, mental and physical, of the human race." There is no obvious substitute for this word.
What's happened in the last 5-10 years is an attempt to use "eugenics" as a slur when other slurs started losing their bite. Now that many of us who write about this topic use "genetic enhancement," activists have demonized "genetic enhancement" as a euphemism for "eugenics." They're not wrong. It is a euphemism. And so the euphemism treadmill accelerates. For a historical overview of the term, see this essay: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-031-01987-6_9.pdf
If I knew using different words would make annoying people like the authors of the hit piece go away, I'd gladly use different words so we could all move on with our lives. However, it's worth emphasizing that when I was asked to defend eugenics in a philosophy debate a decade ago it was understood by all parties that "eugenics" is not the same thing as Nazism. But thanks to dishonest and historically illiterate journalists, we are now supposed to believe that anyone who has used the term is satanic, no matter how careful they have been in defining their terms and laying out their principles.
I am glad to see you here, Jonathan. Keep up the good work!
Let me tell you about this Bentham's bulldog guy. First of all, bulldogs are known to be aggressive and to bite people. Second while millions of real people and real animals suffer, BB is concerned about the welfare of imaginary lobster people. Third he writes on substack, and a lot of evil people write on substack. I say we should cancel this guy.
“No one has ever convincingly explained why one shouldn’t interact with bad people or invite them to their conferences”
I think this follows pretty straightforwardly from the idea that shame is an effective and necessary component of maintaining good social norms.
I’m not saying that every bad person should create associational shame. I think we should save it for the very bad people (where it’s most necessary) who are already unpopular (where it’s most effective).
I’m also not saying that norms surrounding shame should be the same in all contexts. I think it makes sense to reduce shame norms in the context of academic philosophy. But most people aren’t academic philosophers, or interested in thinking seriously about morality. For these people, I think we need various social norms like shame to enforce good behavior.
None of this makes the Guardian right. But I do think it makes the Guardian’s rightness more contingent on the rightness of the people it is trying to shame, rather than the strategy it is using.
Edit:
Given your piece was framed around “interestingness,” rather than moral rightness, I think it could be useful to add that we should expect optimizing for rightness to sometimes conflict with optimizing for interestingness.
To be fair, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that if A chooses to associate with/go see at conferences/(maybe even work for) people B doesn’t agree with at all, the chance of A believing those same things are way higher.
Why? Because it’s simply more common for someone to want to create a space of like-minded people in their lives (each reason already having been evaluated in B’s subconscious) than interact with people who make evil decisions, according to their point of view.
In this case, the fact that all these A’s even interacted with ‘interesting people’ (literally defined as those who are not what B normally sees aka non-liberals) was logically a sign to B that A would be 100x less likely to support the woke worldview. And B’s worldview leaves very little space for non-conforming/interesting people to be the good guys. There are then two bad guys.
I think this general hit piece increased my confidence in one propositions: EAs (especially EA intellectuals) should not do politics. It’s super non marginal, non neglected (even supposedly contrarian takes don’t actually help so much), and it could damage reputation of other beliefs.
If you have a belief about that people need to do more good that people would consider, they are much less likely to take you seriously if you also have a controversial view on a topic - that is not to say this is a good thing that people do, but they definitely do. Even if you put a very low credence on an idea that is widely unaccepted, I think even talking about it is terrible for your own and EA reputation- yes people make assumptions about EA based on how individuals in EA act and no this is not a good thing but let’s be pragmatic! Perhaps the good can outweigh the bad in situations where these controversial takes are related EA stuff (perhaps making the claim that factory farming is really bad, we should care about the long term future a lot, we have moral obligations because of pond-like analogies). I would just say, in general, it seems to be a good heuristic to stay away from general political controversy if you want to be marginal.
It blows my mind that Nazis engaged in mass murder (of Ashkenazi Jews, which isn't even eugenic!), while the US forcibly sterilized people, and that the message people take away from this is that the main reason those things were bad is that they were intended to improve the genetic health of future generations. This is just cargo-cult thinking.
Tbh, people like Razib Khan or even Richard Hanania kind of make me suspicious, as someone aware of the sort of alt-right frogboiling that occurs in a lot of communities (no offense to the people I mentioned, who are probably genuine and not alt-right) but nothing makes me forget that as easily as smeary hitpieces.
"standard sort of journalist hitpiece on a group: find a bunch of members saying things that sound bad, and then sneeringly report on that as if that discredits the group."
Agree, this is common, too common, and people on each "side" of the political divide do it.
Most people reporting on any topic who have an agenda other than objective journalism do cherry picking (of quotes, actions, etc) to shape your opinions as they choose. It's easy to do and effective. Then of course one can take events or words out of context to create whatever picture of a person you desire. I notice this is done by the Trump haters (and I'm not a fan of Trump, there's plenty to hate there). Most of the time when you look up the video you see the journalist is twisting what he said to make him appear stupid or bigoted.
This practice is ubiquitous (probably has been throughout history) since it's easy and effective. Cheats the reader though.
As you probably mention, another benighted process is digging up the dumbest things somebody said across a span of years, including things they've changed their mind on, or said while drunk, and pretending these represent the whole person.
> Paleoconservative and anti-immigration (like around half the country).
Minor nitpick, tho maybe a major one: this may be why the guardian authors see themselves as the brave noncomformist underdogs, since the allegedly beyond the pale things are by polling data not unpopular.