I didn't get to vote. I understand from some other polls that I am doing that some users believe that the concept of, "Free Thinking," includes being willing to engage with people who harbor views that might be racist, sexist, something-phobic or whatever, because trying to figure out the truth means being willing to admit that one is wrong and not follow an ideological pattern as much as possible.

I think certain folks get attracted to those who purport themselves to be independent contrarian intellectuals because they believe said intellectuals are helping to represent the, "ideal of being non-idealistic." They seem to think that seeking truth has to do with really dispensing with ideology as much as possible.

The thing is, with Hanania's prediction market contest he set up, there was a very clear resolution based upon a numerical threshold that he set up (e.g. will a certain number of COVID cases occur by a certain point in China), and then it was resolved contrary to this numerical threshold, and not only was there never an explanation for why this was wrong, any talk about this market has been specifically avoided in any subsequent blog posts.

So I think universally, even those who say, "whatever the hypothetically worst ideology is, we should let them in to talk so we can learn more about each other," would reject mis-resolving a market and then not explaining why. Levi Finkelstein comes to mind (who by the way, is also a fake persona - no surprise there).

So yeah, I think the biggest universal sin on prediction markets is trolling and mis-resolving and even more so providing no explanation. This in fact renders prediction markets completely useless garbage as it's basically just random numbers you're betting on at that point with no knowledge or specialty required. At that point we might as well just have 100% markets that are just, "Will this coin come up heads or tails?"

Inviting a troll market maker to talk is suicide for the utility of prediction markets.

Came here to find out more and boy was I unsurprised

@Austin Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This is a tricky issue and I don't have clear answers myself, but I would like to push you to think more about the following: from the three considerations you listed for inviting Richard Hanania, it seems like when considering whether to invite someone you would not draw a line that depends on the nature of their speech or the impact it has on other participants or the community. Is this something you would endorse even if the person is even more extreme than Hanania in terms of promoting racism, hate speech, etc.? (E.g. If they were the equivalent of Trump or Hitler, and they are proponents of Manifold and made a contribution to forecasting, would you still invite them as a featured guest?) If your answer is "no" to this thought experiment, then that means you would draw a line somewhere (and would revise your decision rules), and I would invite you to think about whether you would do so in this case (and if not, why).

In terms of the impact on (potential) participants and the community, there seems to be real consequences already: for instance, on this page @evergreenemily has said they may choose to never attend Manifest (and if you care, it may be worth understanding better how your decision affects participants and the wider community before you reach absolute certainty that this should not factor in such decisions).

I see much value in the attitude of “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” However, there is a difference between defending someone's right to speech and giving them a platform (or raising their profile by featuring them at a professional conference). And as much as I believe that engaging with disagreements is necessary for getting closer to truths, I think there is a difference between speech or disagreements that abide by the basic values we may wish to uphold (I like what @NathanpmYoung said in his post about "accuracy and kindness") vs those that don't, e.g. hate speech. Therefore, I think there should be revisions to the decisions rules you used.

Hanania uses transphobic slurs on Twitter/X:

Really classy for a "special guest" at a conference celebrating a website with several transgender users and a transgender developer.

I know the poll is closed. I don't care. This behavior is - combined with all of his other anti-trans and anti-Black behavior - beyond the pale and should not be accepted in any community that wishes to be welcoming and inclusionary.

The decision to invite Hanania was mine, and I wrote up my reasons for doing so here: https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/Why-I-invited-Hanania-to-Manifest-b0cf387f85ff43b9b2a81e936fd1e75e

Since then, a couple speakers and others have mentioned their reluctance to participate in an event where Hanania is featured. In further conversations with Hanania, we've agreed that he won't be giving a talk, but is still welcome to attend as a special guest and will continue to be listed on our conference website.

I appreciate everyone who's weighed in in this topic for their thoughtful discourse, even as it's been a somewhat stressful situation to navigate for me personally. In particular:

• Nathan, for trying out mechanisms like this market and viewpoints.xyz to facilitate good conversation on a heated topic

• Emily and Sinclair, for weighing in with takes informed by their own lived experiences

• Rachel, for keeping me sane

• Other individuals and Manifold team members who have expressed their thoughts to me personally

@Austin I am sad this was stressful for you. I appreciate your willingness to move on this. As I said above, we get to decide our norms and I think there is room for consensus here. Unsure what the right call is, and I guess we'll have to look back and see what we think.

@Austin A sort of serious not serious suggestion here is to ask users to pay for who gets to speak using mana. That way if you're unpopular, you have to pay more and it's unenaibly low status to have to top up your own account to get to speak.

@NathanpmYoung I think controversial speakers would get more mana in such a system.

@MartinRandall I'm kind of relaxed about that tbh.

@NathanpmYoung https://manifold.markets/NathanpmYoung/will-richard-hanania-make-an-unnece

You can bet on whether Hanania has changed, here. I hope he has.

Will Richard Hanania make an unnecessarily provocative racist public statement before 2025? Voted by manifold users

41% chance. For any statement from now to 2025 if a poll of manifold users is asked "Was Richard Hanania's statement that [X] unnecessarily provocative and racist" Will the Yesses outnumber the Nos, and will Yes + No comprise more than half of votes Options yes No i don't know Question badly framed Text may alter slightly but this is basically what I'm gonna ask The Yes side gets to make the case 3 times, if all resolve no, this question resolves no, regardless of future statements.

@Austin Thanks for leading on this and pushing in a direction Manifold can be proud of.

@Austin I'm sorry this has been stressful for you. I'm sort of confused by your decision to still feature him on the website and just not have him give a talk. Wrote some thoughts here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qnMJWmT_YxYkf-OKkomdPy5IoaDDPJIFzBaQ6M-x93c/edit?usp=sharing

Reflections on Hanania

I work for the Forecasting Research Institute, but these views are totally my own and don't reflect my employer’s. Manifold had listed Richard Hanania as a speaker at Manifest; now he’s not speaking, but a special guest (at the time of writing), still featured on the conference website. Austin C...

My first impression of Hanania was the early days of the CSPI tournament. He was writing better questions than most creators on manifold at the time. And he was actively managing it well.
The tournament actually had more users than the main manifold site back then! We looked to it for inspiration: the Atlas Fellowship integrations, tournaments page, and private groups were all attempts to generalize it. If we could just crank out a new CSPI tournament every month, we'd have product market fit. Those attempts failed to get users like CSPI did, so now we focus fully on the consumer use case.
I didn't work with Hanania or push any code to the instance, and idk how much of the user count to attribute to him. Still, I respect the work he did.

My second impression of Hanania was from reading his Substack. I am subscribed to it and find it interesting. But I am aware that the very existence of trans people disgusts him - that my existence disgusts him; that if the tables were turned he would deplatform me. For some reason this doesn't really move me emotionally though.
Maybe because actually kind of refreshing, for an articulate smart transphobe to admit in writing that it comes down to base disgust. When you admit things are a value difference, negotiation is possible; but if you try to take some logically justifiable universal high ground that you don't really believe, the debate is interminable.
Or maybe it's just that my true out-group (emotionally) is some specific genre of liberal, wheras Hanania is of a culture too foreign for me to get mad at. idk.

I don't really have a takeway here. I get why some people are mad about it. Just explaining why I am not, I suppose

also, like idk if Destiny "deserves" to be a speaker, by Nathan's criteria. He is also someone that is famous for controversy, but it is less clear to me what his contribution to forecasting is. to be clear I think creating content and entertaining actually does provide a lot of value to society, and I think Destiny has contributed a lot to Manifold

I think he does belong though. because Manifest is not formal. look it's like the moldbug going to vibecamp okay?

@Sinclair I think they banned him this year.

@NathanpmYoung i think that’s a reasonable decision that’s theirs to make. but did he actually cause any issues for people the first year he was there? beyond hurt from what he’s said outside the event

@Sinclair I don't think this is about issues it's about the incentives.

@NathanpmYoung it's bad incentives to invite someone because they say mean things, but not to invite someone despite it.
If you are saying that we should negatively incent (punish) meanness, by withholding rewards otherwise deserved, then I strongly disagree. I am willing to withhold a social experience from a mean person because it would bad to other people in that experience - not in order to influence the mean person's decision but for the same reason I'd give people umbrellas to shield them from the rain. But the reason to do this is not the incentives

Rational agents don't respond to punishment. So I don't believe in punishing people. (Or at least, that's the correct moral principle for a good society I think. I sometimes fall short of this, like say a mean thing to a friend because they said something that hurt me, but I'm not proud of this.)

Let's flip the scenario.

Imagine some some Thiel-backed startup in Austin Texas made this really popular prediction market game thing that is way more fun and easy to use than any real prediction market before. It takes off in their freedom-loving trumpist audience first because, conservatives are more pro-market and pro-gambling. The users make all sorts of fun questions on when jesus christ will return or whatever.

You, a gender-abolitionist autistic trans woman working as a CS professor an elite college, sees an opportunity to use the platform to run a tournament to forecast more serious questions. So you reach out to the founders, and they agree. And you do the tournament, and it's amazing.

Incidentally you lose your job at the college because of some anon tumblr post you made 10 years ago advocated for Back to Africa or something equivalently dumb in a way that was kinda Problematic. Oh well, no big deal there's always software engineering. or OnlyFans.
The startup is hosting a forecasting conference, and they're inviting you. Yay! Oh no, some of their users really hate you and are trying to get you not to speak. Some are saying they'd leave if you'd attend. The founders - kinda centrist libertarians who are kinda icked by your more extreme positions but who respect you nonetheless - are trying to figure out what to do. But tentatively you think you're invited

Do you pull out on your own accord?
My answer in this scenario is that it depends on the exact concerns of the people calling for my removal. If I think they are threatening to pull out in order to incent the founders to remove me, or to incent me to remove myself, then I will be steadfast and attend if I can get away with it. On the other hand, if I think they are concretely harmed, even emotionally, by my attendance or behavior, and are asking me to not be there for those reasons, then I'd consider those concerns seriously. (Or at least I want to be the kind of person who does.) In that scenario I'd ask what it would take to coexist with these people, what it would cost me and them. Or what the degree of hurt is, and whether it is worth it. Like even if I don't care about these people, or hate them even, I think it would be correct negotiation-wise in that case.

@Sinclair I think this is an interesting example

I'll point out a couple of things. In this example I am not a gender-abolitionist autistic trans woman who said some tumblr stuff 10 years ago. I am deeply provocative - I love to insult the Holy Spirit, I call trump supporters less than human. I often say things similar to my tumblr stuff today.

If you invite me because of a forecasting tournament I run, exactly how have you penalised me for my behaviour?

@NathanpmYoung the baddie that continues to screed about how God is dead and insults “deplorables” still should not respond to punishment, but should rethink their rhetoric strategically and should strive for more accuracy. I agree that the organizer of an event with a conservative audience may justifiably remove such a person for purely causal reasons if he thinks ey would be bad for the event

@Sinclair Sorry what's the respond to punishment bit? Why wouldn't I respond to that?

It feels like people do respond to incentives actually

@NathanpmYoung Yeah I think these scenario flips don't account for the fact that Hanania is still saying pretty terrible stuff *this* year, not 10+ years ago.

@PeterWildeford yeah --- I respect him a lot and tell everyone to read him, but people seem overly compelled by his "retvrn to civic libertarian / classical liberaliism" creds. I think I've read every single non-premium substack post since "pronouns are worse than genocide", and he pretty often will motte "if you look at this nuance with the sentence structure in this obscure piece of civil rights case law, it's clear that civil rights create perverse incentives that destroy a lot of value in spite of being sometimes well-meaning" and then bailey "civil rights are bad". Does the US before civil rights case law strike you as successful on civil libertarian / classical liberal grounds? It's hard not to kinda "copenhagen ethics" civil rights caselaw, holding it to the standard of a perfect system instead of a likely counterfactual system.

Another factor is he may be "strategic voting" here and there (like when he gets super mean about poor black people or about offendable women) --- he thinks the world is epistemically and in many other ways hobbled by people bending over backwards to overdo being sympathetic about poverty or not offend women, so he would be expected to overdo his "vice signaling" or "defection on the etiiquette game" to make a point / correct against an opposite overcorrection. So at reflective equilibrium I'd expect him to be roughly nicer, in these particular ways.

If I get a signal from a couple people that it would be valued, I will make the time investment to trawl substack for receipts of my motte/bailey claim.

@Sinclair Do you think Hanania actually dislikes autistic rationalist libertarian transwomen who want to mind their own business? I think he more just dislikes "trans extremism", the teaching of gender ideology in schools, the Judith Butler ideology that gender has no genetic basis, etcetera. He keeps saying that his problem is the "LGBT movement" is that they are not just a libertarian movement. Anyway, I think the "LGBT movement" is heterogeneous and not monolithic, and one needs to distinguish between autistic rationalist libertarian transwomen who want to mind their own business, and radical leftist activists who want to infiltrate the education system, tell 5 year olds that gender is fake and that they should consider using they/them, very insistently replace the use of "pregnant women" with "birthing people" (this is ideologically motivated; some people are naturally intersex/hermaphroditic and there have been instances of people with a Y-choromosome giving birth for decades, but the language choice is new), and so on and so forth.

At least that's my read, and I do think he has gotten a lot more socially liberal over the last few years and his views change often (another data point: he went from being pro-Taliban, pro-Russia, pro-China to being pro-US, pro-Israel, pro-Ukraine etc in a few years). See for instance his Quillette article. I also don't think he has a big problem with autistic rationalist transwomen or with Caitlyn Jenner. I would have to think that his views on transgender aren't so extreme, or have moderated since Musk bought twitter. He was always saying that once Musk bought twitter, he would stop worrying about gender ideology so much.