I Regret Bashing Eliezer Yudkowsky. Paul Graham Should, Too.

Many years ago, a prominent Silicon Valley thinker, Eliezer Yudkowsky, made a stupid comment on Facebook. I don’t remember his exact statement. But it was something along the lines of, “I see no evidence that animals are conscious in the way human beings are.”

This was a preposterous and immoral statement. The overwhelming consensus of neuroscientists, ethologists, and other experts in animal behavior and cognition is that animals are conscious in the same way that human beings are. And the denial of this fact, by our legal and moral systems, has led to grave moral consequences, including unspeakable torment — e.g., being buried or boiled alive — inflicted on billions of sentient beings.

I was flabbergasted that someone who was (and is) as seemingly intelligent as Eliezer would make such a statement. My reply, which I forget, was something like this: “Someone should check his home to make sure he’s not torturing puppies.” I was swiftly blocked by Eliezer and have never interacted with him again.

I was reminded of this incident when I saw on X that Eliezer had made another statement that some saw as preposterous and immoral. A prominent figure in tech, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham, had posted the video of a child in Gaza crying over his murdered father. Eliezer responded to Paul with this:

Why do you believe that any of this is true? Serious question. I haven't been able to find any blog with two serious nerds fighting it out, each side says the other side's stuff is all fake, and each side has compelling instances of other-side stuff being fake.

Paul replied to Eliezer by insulting him: “WTF is wrong with you.” And many others in the Free Palestine movement converged on that same sentiment, including mockery from the CEO of a prominent AI company. Eliezer’s critics surely felt, as I felt when I condemned Eliezer a decade ago, that they were morally justified in bashing him. After all, the evidence of war crimes in Israel is overwhelming, and the failure by the international community to effectively challenge these crimes has caused unspeakable suffering.

But there is a more important question that should be asked before we leap to bash people who make preposterous or immoral statements.

Does bashing wafflers actually help?

And the evidence from social movement research is that it does not. To the contrary, purity tests of this sort, especially towards people who are waffling in good faith, are often the kiss of death for a movement’s growth and success.

My first conversation with the legendary empirical sociologist Doug McAdam established this for me; he recounted the powerful ability of the Civil Rights Movement to draw in people of all walks of life and ideologies, including large numbers of white Christians who waffled on broader questions of racial equlaity.

So too did my exposure to compelling research by Ziad Munson showing that around half of pro-life activists started out in the movement opposed to, or at least ambivalent about, its primary mission of protecting the unborn. If the pro-life movement had condemned these wafflers, instead of welcoming them, it would have lost half its power.

But very often, that is exactly what movements do: undercut their own power by bashing, rather than welcoming, people who waffle and fail a movement’s purity tests. This is what I did to Eliezer a decade ago. I could have appealed to Eliezer’s reason and belief in moral consistency rather than mocking him. Even if I didn’t convince him, that would have made his many followers feel more welcome in the animal rights camp. Instead, I bashed him, and that attitude probably hurt my standing within the rationalist and EA communities for years.

Similarly, Paul Graham and other supporters of Free Palestine could have welcomed Eliezer’s questions instead of mocking him. Even if they did not convince him to join the cause, this would have signaled to people who were waffling, as Eliezer was, that they were welcome in the movement. Instead, by bashing him, they probably made many people feel, “This movement is full of assholes. Why should I give a damn about their cause?”

So why do movement supporters so often make the mistake of bashing rather than welcoming wafflers? There are at least two reasons. The first is that we simply let our own emotions get the better of us. We are personally outraged by the atrocities committed in the world, and it hurts us that others do not see things the same way. This is an understandable reaction but a regrettable one. Impact-oriented people should avoid it.

The other reason, however, is that the incentives provided to movement supporters are often skewed towards bashing rather than welcoming wafflers. Wafflers threaten a movement’s identity by casting doubt on the zeal of its adherents. And there is a real threat that wafflers with bad intentions will spread this doubt like a cancer; this is the problem of co-opters. But the majority of wafflers are probably acting in good faith. Effective movements must earn their support rather than oust them.

I learned this lesson a decade ago, though I still struggle to put into this practice. For all the suffering beings of this earth, I hope that other leaders learn this lesson, too.

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Speaking of good lessons, Lincoln Quirk posted a wonderful blog about culture that I’d highly recommend. While his experience is primarily from business, the lessons apply to social movements, too. Give it a read.