As described, this type of event would not make me unrestrained in sharing my opinions.
The organizers have additional information regarding what opinions are in the bowl, so are probably in a position to determine which expressed opinions are genuinely held. This is perhaps solvable but it doesn't sound like an attempt was made to solve this. That's fine if I trust the organizers, but if I trust the organizers to know my opinions then I could just express my opinions to the organizers directly and I don't need this idea.
I find it unlikely that someone can pass an Ideological Turing Test for a random opinion that they read off a piece of paper a few sentences ago, especially compared to a genuine opinion they actually hold. It would be rather depressing if they could, because it implies that their genuine opinions have little grounding. An attendee could deliberately downplay their level of investment and knowledge to increase plausible deniability. But such conversations sound unappealing.
There are other problems. My guess is that most of the work was done by filtering for "a certain kind of person".
Besides, my appeal to authority trumps yours. Yes, they successfully lobbied the American legal system for the title of doctor - arguably this degrades the meaning of the word. Do you take physicians or the American legal system to be the higher authority on matters of health?
The AMA advocates for US physicians, so it has the obvious bias. Adam Smith:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
I do not consider the AMA an impartial authority on matters such as:
I therefore tend to hug the query and seek other evidence.
The example here is that I'm working for an NGO that opposes iodizing salt in developing countries because it is racist, for reasons. I've been reading online that it raises IQ and that raising IQ is good, actually. I want to discuss this in a safe space.
I can do this by having any friends or family who don't work for the NGO. This seems more likely to work than attending a cancellation party at the NGO. If the NGO prevents me from having outside friends or talking to family then it's dangerous and I should get out regardless of its opinion on iodization.
There are better examples, I could offer suggestions if you like, probably you can also think of many.
We can't reliably kill agents with St Petersburg Paradox because if they keep winning we run out of resources and can no longer double their utility. This doesn't take long, the statistical value of a human life is in the millions and doubling compounds very quickly.
It's a stronger argument for Pascal's Mugging.
Gilliland's idea is that it is the proportion of trans people that dissuades some right-wing people from joining. That seems plausible to me, it matches the "Big Sort" thesis and my personal experience. I agree that his phrasing is unwelcoming.
I tried to find an official pronoun policy for LessWrong, LessOnline, EA Global, etc, and couldn't. If you're thinking of something specific could you say what? As well as the linked X thread I have read the X thread linked from Challenges to Yudkowsky's pronoun reform proposal. But these are the opinions of one person, they don't amount to politically-coded compelled speech. I'm not part of the rationalist community and this is a genuine question. Maybe such policies exist but are not advertised.
Edit: I apologize. Read in context Gilliland's comment about "keeping rat spaces clean" is referring to keeping them clean of racists, sexists, and fascists, not clean of right-wing people. I am striking the paragraph.
Them: The point of trade is that there are increasing marginal returns to production and diminishing marginal returns to consumption. We specialize in producing different goods, then trade to consume a diverse set of goods that maximizes utility.
Myself: Suppose there were no production possible, just some cosmic endowment of goods that are gradually consumed until everyone dies. Have we gotten rid of the point of trade?
Them: Well if people had different cosmic endowments then they would still trade to get a more balanced set to consume, due to diminishing marginal returns to consumption.
Myself: What if everyone has exactly the same cosmic endowment? And for good measure there are no diminishing returns, the tenth apple produces as much utility as the first.
Them: Well then there's no trade, what's the point? We just consume our cosmic endowment until we run out and die.
Myself: What if I like oranges more than apples, and you like apples more than oranges?
Them: Oh. I can trade one of my oranges for one of your apples, and we will both be better off. Darn it.
No, the effect size on bankruptcies is about 10x larger than expected. So while offline gambling may be comparable to alcohol, smartphone gambling is in a different category if we trust this research.
Of course some of those can be influenced by gambling, eg it is a type of overspending. Even so, Claude estimated that legalized online gambling would raise the bankruptcy rate by 2-3% and agreed that 28% is surprising.
The concept of marriage depends on my internals in that a different human might disagree about whether a couple is married, based on the relative weight they place on religious, legal, traditional, and common law conceptions of marriage. For example, after a Catholic annulment and a legal divorce, a Catholic priest might say that two people were never married, whereas I would say that they were. Similarly, I might say that two men are married to each other, and someone else might say that this is impossible. How quickly those arguments have faded away! I don't think someone would use the same example ten years ago.
Thanks for clarifying. By "policy" and "standards" and "compelled speech" I thought you meant something more than community norms and customs. This is traditionally an important distinction to libertarians and free speech advocates. I think the distinction carves reality at the joints, and I hope you agree. I agree that community norms and customs can be unwelcoming.