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My experience at the controversial Manifest 2024 — EA Forum
forum.effectivealtruism.orgComment by TracingWoodgrains - I'm not particularly happy to see people within this community immediately present and accept the framing that Manifest was controversial because people reacted harshly to an article explicitly aimed at smearing a community I belong to with reckless disregard for truth and bizarrely sinister framing of mundane decisions, written by people who proceeded simply by reading a guest list without even bothering to attend the event they were writing about. In that regard, Manifest is only controversial in the same sense Scott Alexander was controversial when the New York Times wrote about him.
To name something is often to make it so; to lead with the framing that Manifest was controversial is to encourage other people to see it that way, yielding to the frame of people who treat EA itself as controversial. That has an impact on everyone who attends, organizes, and puts effort into it. I recognize that your own experience was mixed and have no problem with you sharing that and exploring it, but I think it's worth being cautious about frame-setting in the title in that way, particularly given its potential impact on early-career organizers or guests.
I was excited and honored to be invited to Manifest. It's the first conference that went out of its way to invite me as a special guest, more-or-less the first place I spoke openly under my own name, and a place that gave me the opportunity to meet and speak with people I have read and admired for years. It was an extraordinarily valuable experience for me, one where I seized the opportunity to give a light-hearted presentation on a niche topic, chat with and learn from many of my role models, and generally enjoy meeting people in person who I have only had the chance to interact with online.
I am extremely confident that an article aimed not at attacking the conference but at presenting an even-handed, cohesive picture of the experience as a whole would read very differently to the Guardian article and would include many mo
…And if it weren’t for that one joke by Hannibal, Bill Cosby would be very uncontroversial.
TracingWoodgrains was the person who wanted to create ‘themotte’ but leftwing right?
I genuinely don’t know, but I would believe it 100%. He seems like an arrdestiny-esque debate pervert in a reply-guy world. I think a “left wing” motte would suit him
Well done.
Looked it up, and guess which sub he mods, could be that im thinking of a different guy who came into sneerclub to go ‘we should setup some better rational arguments against the Rationalists’, which is always quite the waste of time.
Edit: While looking into this, I see that TracingWood was on a podcast with Jesse Singal of all people. (Also talked about, why Keffals is bad or something (I didn’t listen, and I don’t know that much about what Keffals did or didnt do wrong, but eurgh at Singal talking about trans people, and wow the fans of this podcast are quite transphobic on reddit (protip, that you dislike a transperson (who might even done bad things) is no reason to mock all trans people you shits)))
Until a month ago, TW was the long-time researcher for “Blocked and Reported”, the podcast hosted by Katie ‘TERF’ Herzog and relentless sealion Jesse Singal.
That is correct, it was called TheSchisim.