So despite the nitpicking they did of the Guardian Article, it seems blatantly clear now that Manifest 2024 was infested by racists. The post article doesn’t even count Scott Alexander as “racist” (although they do at least note his HBD sympathies) and identify a count of full 8 racists. They mention a talk discussing the Holocaust as a Eugenics event (and added an edit apologizing for their simplistic framing). The post author is painfully careful and apologetic to distinguish what they personally experienced, what was “inaccurate” about the Guardian article, how they are using terminology, etc. Despite the author’s caution, the comments are full of the classic SSC strategy of trying to reframe the issue (complaining the post uses the word controversial in the title, complaining about the usage of the term racist, complaining about the threat to their freeze peach and open discourse of ideas by banning racists, etc.).
There’s more shit gems in the comments, but I think my summary captures most of the major points. One more comment that stuck out:
Yes, this is actually true, and it is a bad thing and an indictment of EA.
Edit 1: There is another post clarifying that it wasn’t mostly racists (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/34pz6ni3muwPnenLS/why-so-many-racists-at-manifest ) but 1) this is sneerclub, not careful count of the exact percentage of racists and racist talks to avoid hurting feelings club 2) if you sit down at a table with 3 Neo-Nazis, there are 4 Neo-Nazis sitting down. 3) “Full” is a subjective description, so yes its valid. two major racists would be more than my quota 4) see sidebar on debate
like, one racist motherfucker is already one too many… how is that not obvious to the enlightened
reactionariesrationalists is beyond me.If it was one racist dude at a conference I could accept it was a horrible oversight on the conference organizers part if they immediately apologized and assured it wouldn’t happen again. But 8 racist dudes (or 12 if you count the more mask-on racists) is too many to be accidental or an oversight.
Well, probably some of them are deliberately racist HBD advocates, but are mask on enough to play dumb and hand wring and complain about free speech. Some of them have HBD sympathies but aren’t quite outright advocates, so they don’t condemn the inclusion of racists because of their own sympathies. Some of them are against HBD, but know being too direct and forceful and not framing everything in 8 layers of charity and good-faith assumptions isn’t acceptable on the Lesswrong or EA forums so they don’t just come out and say what they mean. And some of them actually buy all the rhetoric about charitably and free speech and act as useful idiots or a buffer to the others.
I was actually surprised that so many EAs in the comments came straight out and said the racism was unacceptable to them.
It turns out there is a level of mask-off that makes EAs react with condemnation! It’s somewhere past the point where the racist is comparing pronouns to genocide, but it exists!
Also the only acceptable number percentage of racists in an organisation is 0%.