This is a linkpost for https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-03-07/effective-altruism-s-problems-go-beyond-sam-bankman-fried#xj4y7vzkg
Try non-paywalled link here.
More damning allegations:
A few quotes:
At the same time, she started to pick up weird vibes. One rationalist man introduced her to another as “perfect ratbait”—rat as in rationalist. She heard stories of sexual misconduct involving male leaders in the scene, but when she asked around, her peers waved the allegations off as minor character flaws unimportant when measured against the threat of an AI apocalypse. Eventually, she began dating an AI researcher in the community. She alleges that he committed sexual misconduct against her, and she filed a report with the San Francisco police. (Like many women in her position, she asked that the man not be named, to shield herself from possible retaliation.) Her allegations polarized the community, she says, and people questioned her mental health as a way to discredit her. Eventually she moved to Canada, where she’s continuing her work in AI and trying to foster a healthier research environment.
Of the subgroups in this scene, effective altruism had by far the most mainstream cachet and billionaire donors behind it, so that shift meant real money and acceptance. In 2016, Holden Karnofsky, then the co-chief executive officer of Open Philanthropy, an EA nonprofit funded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, wrote a blog post explaining his new zeal to prevent AI doomsday. In the following years, Open Philanthropy’s grants for longtermist causes rose from $2 million in 2015 to more than $100 million in 2021.
Open Philanthropy gave $7.7 million to MIRI in 2019, and Buterin gave $5 million worth of cash and crypto. But other individual donors were soon dwarfed by Bankman-Fried, a longtime EA who created the crypto trading platform FTX and became a billionaire in 2021. Before Bankman-Fried’s fortune evaporated last year, he’d convened a group of leading EAs to run his $100-million-a-year Future Fund for longtermist causes.
Even leading EAs have doubts about the shift toward AI. Larissa Hesketh-Rowe, chief operating officer at Leverage Research and the former CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism, says she was never clear how someone could tell their work was making AI safer. When high-status people in the community said AI risk was a vital research area, others deferred, she says. “No one thinks it explicitly, but you’ll be drawn to agree with the people who, if you agree with them, you’ll be in the cool kids group,” she says. “If you didn’t get it, you weren’t smart enough, or you weren’t good enough.” Hesketh-Rowe, who left her job in 2019, has since become disillusioned with EA and believes the community is engaged in a kind of herd mentality.
In extreme pockets of the rationality community, AI researchers believed their apocalypse-related stress was contributing to psychotic breaks. MIRI employee Jessica Taylor had a job that sometimes involved “imagining extreme AI torture scenarios,” as she described it in a post on LessWrong—the worst possible suffering AI might be able to inflict on people. At work, she says, she and a small team of researchers believed “we might make God, but we might mess up and destroy everything.” In 2017 she was hospitalized for three weeks with delusions that she was “intrinsically evil” and “had destroyed significant parts of the world with my demonic powers,” she wrote in her post. Although she acknowledged taking psychedelics for therapeutic reasons, she also attributed the delusions to her job’s blurring of nightmare scenarios and real life. “In an ordinary patient, having fantasies about being the devil is considered megalomania,” she wrote. “Here the idea naturally followed from my day-to-day social environment and was central to my psychotic breakdown.”
Taylor’s experience wasn’t an isolated incident. It encapsulates the cultural motifs of some rationalists, who often gathered around MIRI or CFAR employees, lived together, and obsessively pushed the edges of social norms, truth and even conscious thought. They referred to outsiders as normies and NPCs, or non-player characters, as in the tertiary townsfolk in a video game who have only a couple things to say and don’t feature in the plot. At house parties, they spent time “debugging” each other, engaging in a confrontational style of interrogation that would supposedly yield more rational thoughts. Sometimes, to probe further, they experimented with psychedelics and tried “jailbreaking” their minds, to crack open their consciousness and make them more influential, or “agentic.” Several people in Taylor’s sphere had similar psychotic episodes. One died by suicide in 2018 and another in 2021.
Within the group, there was an unspoken sense of being the chosen people smart enough to see the truth and save the world, of being “cosmically significant,” says Qiaochu Yuan, a former rationalist.
Yuan started hanging out with the rationalists in 2013 as a math Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Berkeley. Once he started sincerely entertaining the idea that AI could wipe out humanity in 20 years, he dropped out of school, abandoned the idea of retirement planning, and drifted away from old friends who weren’t dedicating their every waking moment to averting global annihilation. “You can really manipulate people into doing all sorts of crazy stuff if you can convince them that this is how you can help prevent the end of the world,” he says. “Once you get into that frame, it really distorts your ability to care about anything else.”
That inability to care was most apparent when it came to the alleged mistreatment of women in the community, as opportunists used the prospect of impending doom to excuse vile acts of abuse. Within the subculture of rationalists, EAs and AI safety researchers, sexual harassment and abuse are distressingly common, according to interviews with eight women at all levels of the community. Many young, ambitious women described a similar trajectory: They were initially drawn in by the ideas, then became immersed in the social scene. Often that meant attending parties at EA or rationalist group houses or getting added to jargon-filled Facebook Messenger chat groups with hundreds of like-minded people.
The eight women say casual misogyny threaded through the scene. On the low end, Bryk, the rationalist-adjacent writer, says a prominent rationalist once told her condescendingly that she was a “5-year-old in a hot 20-year-old’s body.” Relationships with much older men were common, as was polyamory. Neither is inherently harmful, but several women say those norms became tools to help influential older men get more partners. Keerthana Gopalakrishnan, an AI researcher at Google Brain in her late 20s, attended EA meetups where she was hit on by partnered men who lectured her on how monogamy was outdated and nonmonogamy more evolved. “If you’re a reasonably attractive woman entering an EA community, you get a ton of sexual requests to join polycules, often from poly and partnered men” who are sometimes in positions of influence or are directly funding the movement, she wrote on an EA forum about her experiences. Her post was strongly downvoted, and she eventually removed it.
The community’s guiding precepts could be used to justify this kind of behavior. Many within it argued that rationality led to superior conclusions about the world and rendered the moral codes of NPCs obsolete. Sonia Joseph, the woman who moved to the Bay Area to pursue a career in AI, was encouraged when she was 22 to have dinner with a 40ish startup founder in the rationalist sphere, because he had a close connection to Peter Thiel. At dinner the man bragged that Yudkowsky had modeled a core HPMOR professor on him. Joseph says he also argued that it was normal for a 12-year-old girl to have sexual relationships with adult men and that such relationships were a noble way of transferring knowledge to a younger generation. Then, she says, he followed her home and insisted on staying over. She says he slept on the floor of her living room and that she felt unsafe until he left in the morning.
On the extreme end, five women, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they fear retribution, say men in the community committed sexual assault or misconduct against them. In the aftermath, they say, they often had to deal with professional repercussions along with the emotional and social ones. The social scene overlapped heavily with the AI industry in the Bay Area, including founders, executives, investors and researchers. Women who reported sexual abuse, either to the police or community mediators, say they were branded as trouble and ostracized while the men were protected.
In 2018 two people accused Brent Dill, a rationalist who volunteered and worked for CFAR, of abusing them while they were in relationships with him. They were both 19, and he was about twice their age. Both partners said he used drugs and emotional manipulation to pressure them into extreme BDSM scenarios that went far beyond their comfort level. In response to the allegations, a CFAR committee circulated a summary of an investigation it conducted into earlier claims against Dill, which largely exculpated him. “He is aligned with CFAR’s goals and strategy and should be seen as an ally,” the committee wrote, calling him “an important community hub and driver” who “embodies a rare kind of agency and a sense of heroic responsibility.” (After an outcry, CFAR apologized for its “terribly inadequate” response, disbanded the committee and banned Dill from its events. Dill didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
Rochelle Shen, a startup founder who used to run a rationalist-adjacent group house, heard the same justification from a woman in the community who mediated a sexual misconduct allegation. The mediator repeatedly told Shen to keep the possible repercussions for the man in mind. “You don’t want to ruin his career,” Shen recalls her saying. “You want to think about the consequences for the community.”
One woman in the community, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, says she was sexually abused by a prominent AI researcher. After she confronted him, she says, she had job offers rescinded and conference speaking gigs canceled and was disinvited from AI events. She says others in the community told her allegations of misconduct harmed the advancement of AI safety, and one person suggested an agentic option would be to kill herself.
For some of the women who allege abuse within the community, the most devastating part is the disillusionment. Angela Pang, a 28-year-old who got to know rationalists through posts on Quora, remembers the joy she felt when she discovered a community that thought about the world the same way she did. She’d been experimenting with a vegan diet to reduce animal suffering, and she quickly connected with effective altruism’s ideas about optimization. She says she was assaulted by someone in the community who at first acknowledged having done wrong but later denied it. That backpedaling left her feeling doubly violated. “Everyone believed me, but them believing it wasn’t enough,” she says. “You need people who care a lot about abuse.” Pang grew up in a violent household; she says she once witnessed an incident of domestic violence involving her family in the grocery store. Onlookers stared but continued their shopping. This, she says, felt much the same.
The paper clip maximizer, as it’s called, is a potent meme about the pitfalls of maniacal fixation.
Every AI safety researcher knows about the paper clip maximizer. Few seem to grasp the ways this subculture is mimicking that tunnel vision. As AI becomes more powerful, the stakes will only feel higher to those obsessed with their self-assigned quest to keep it under rein. The collateral damage that’s already occurred won’t matter. They’ll be thinking only of their own kind of paper clip: saving the world.
Following CatGoddess, I'm going to share more detail on parts of the article that seemed misleading, or left out important context.
Caveat: I'm not an active member of the in-person EA community or the Bay scene. If there's hot gossip circulating, it probably didn't circulate to me. But I read a lot.
This is a long comment, and my last comment was a long comment, because I've been driving myself crazy trying to figure this stuff out. If the community I (digitally) hang out in is full of bad people and their enablers, I want to find a different community!
But the level of evidence presented in Bloomberg and TIME makes it hard to understand what's actually going on. I'm bothered enough by the weirdness of the epistemic environment that it drove me to stop lurking :-/
I name Michael Vassar here, even though his name wasn't mentioned in the article. Someone asked me to remove that name the last time I did this, and I complied. But now that I'm seeing the same things repeated in multiple places and used to make misleading points, I no longer think it makes sense to hide info about serial abusers who have been kicked out of the movement, especially when that info is easy to find on other places. I prefer the Thing of Things approach.
Summary of my comments + my conclusions:
A brief note before we go all TL;DR:
On the subject of whether alleged perpetrators have been fired or defunded: CEA and Open Philanthropy both have anonymous forms you can use to report allegations of sexual misconduct.
As far as I can tell, both orgs take these seriously, though the ambiguous and worrisome Owen Cotton-Barratt case left me more confident in Open Philanthropy than CEA. For example, it seems like a long time since I've heard of Jacy Reese getting EA funding.
If you've been abused by someone in the EA/rationalist orbit, please consider reporting it!
Detailed comments:
I hope a fair read of the subtext of your comment is: available evidence points towards community health concerns being dealt with properly, and: there's not much more the community could do. I want to try to steelman an argument in response to this:
I am not very well connected in "hubs" like London and the Bay area, but despite a lack of on the ground information, I have found examples of poor conduct that go largely unpunished.
Take the example of Kat Woods and Emerson Spartz. Allegations of toxic and abusive behaviour towards employees were made 4 months ago (months after being reported to CEA). Despite Kat Woods denying these concerns and attempting to dismiss and discredit those who attest to their abusive behaviour, both Kat Woods and Emerson Spartz continue to: post in the EA-forum and get largely upvotes ; employ EA's; be listed on the EA opportunity board; and control $100,000s in funding. As far as I can tell, nonlinear incubated projects (which they largely control) also continue to be largely supported by the community.
I've accounted further evidence of similar levels of misconduct by different actors, largely continuing without impediment (I'm currently working on resolving these). And (if I understand correctly) Oliver Habryka, who knows both rationalist and EA communities well, seems to be surprised by low levels of integrity in these communities (though he's not attempting to benchmark off of larger society).
The argument would go: the reason cases in the article seem to be dealt with sufficiently, is that these are the only women who are willing to risk their reputation in rationalist/EA spaces by calling attention to bad actors. They were, after generating sufficient amounts of alarm, able to catalyse the problems to be fixed. However, they recognise in most cases this will not happen, and point to risk factors that make misconduct more likely (lack of social norms, polyamory ect.).
I know of multiple people who are currently investigating this. I expect appropriate consequences to be taken, though it's not super clear to me yet how to make that happen (like, there is no governing body that could currently force nonlinear to do anything, but I think there will be a lot of pressure if the accusations turn out correct).
Just to be clear, I am pretty happy with the levels of integrity in the core rationality community (though it's definitely also not perfect). The broader EA community has pretty big problems on this dimensions, but I also want to be clear that the EA community is still far above average for communities around the world here, it's just that reality doesn't grade on a curve and we tend to take much more ambitious and unconstrained actions in the world, so that failures of integrity and coordination can have much worse consequences. I do think people have historically been massively over-trusting both EA and Rationality and this has caused a lot of hurt, and I would like people to recalibrate to the high but not overwhelmingly high level of adequate trust.
I also think many commenters are missing a likely iceberg effect here. The base rate of survivors reporting sexual assault to any kind of authority or external watchdog is low. Thus, an assumption that the journalists at Time and Bloomberg identified all, most, or even a sizable fraction of survivors is not warranted on available information.
We would expect the journalists to significantly underidentify potential cases because:
Some survivors choose to tell no one, only professional supporters like therapists, or only people they can trust to keep the info confidential. Journalists will almost never find these survivors even with tons of resources.
Some survivors could probably be identified by a more extensive journalistic investigation, but journalism isn't a cash cow anymore. The news org has to balance the value of additional investigation that it internalized against the cost of a deeper investigation. (This also explains why news articles likely have a much higher percentage of publicly-known stories than the true percentage of all stories that are publicly known.)
There are also many reasons a survivor known to a journalist may decide not to agree to be a source, like:
Deciding it is best for their mental well-being not to reopen past trauma by being interviewed about it;
Not wanting the story of what happened to them broadcast in public, even anonymously, and possibly dissected on this Forum among other places;
Feeling that sharing their story would harm EA's object-level work, and deciding not to do so on that basis;
Concern that their anonymity could be unmasked;
Concern that the abuser could recognize them and retaliate, even if the general public can't;
Other reasons.
Thus, my prediction of the actual scope of a problem vs. how many people have come forward is something vaguely like an S curve.
An analogous inference from my field of work would be dealing with people caught drunk/drink driving. A very low percentage of episodes come to the authorities' attention. On the first arrest, it's plausible that the driver made a poor isolated choice and has only driven drunk once or a few times. On the second arrest, it's rather unlikely that the problem is isolated but it's plausible that it hasn't happened several dozens of times. On the third arrest . . . absent a reason to think the base rate of detection is way off for this person, there is an extremely high probability the person is drunk/drink driving an awful lot.
So based on the number of stories journalists found in which survivors were willing to speak to the journalists, what is the true number of stories and perpetrators? I don't have a good estimate, in part because I don't know how many of the stories in the news articles involve the same perpetrators.
I think good answers could be obtained by professional, independent, neutral researchers . . . but that won't be quick and won't be cheap. So someone would have to be willing to pay and pre-commit to publishing certain types of de-identified data.
[Edit: If you want a visual analogy about discovery, but one that doesn't overweight any one perspective, might I suggest the parable of the blind men and the elephant? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant ]
First of all, its a bit patronizing that you imply that people who aren't updating and handwringing on the Bloomberg piece haven't considered iceberg effect and uncounted victims. Iceberg effect has been mentioned in discussion before many times, and to any of us who care about sexual misconduct it was already an obvious possibility.
Second, the opinions of those of us who don't have problems with the EA community any worse than anywhere else (in fact some of us think it is better than other places!), also matter. Frankly I'm tired of current positive reports from women being downgraded and salacious reports (even if very old) being given all the publicity. So it's a bit of a tangent, but I'll say it here: I'm a woman and I enjoy the EA community and support how gender-related experiences are handled when they are reported. [I've been all the way down my side of the iceberg and I have not experienced anything in EA that implies that things are worse here than other "communities". I say this not to discredit reports women do put forward, but to balance the narrative]
Third, CEA is moving forward on getting data: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mEkRrDweNSdNdrmvx/plans-for-investigating-and-improving-the-experience-of
Next, please people, try to keep in mind other hypotheses and stop jumping the gun about EA til that community wide data does come out. I never ever wanted to post this and perhaps be mistakenly seen as minimizing victim experiences but now that iceberg effect is being discussed, some of you need to read this piece as the other possible side of the coin (the opposite hypothesis) before you make conclusions about EA or even rationality. Read here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers/
While we wait for better community-wide data over these coming months, please realize that these reports in the Bloomberg piece are (1) from years ago and (2) have to do much more with the rationality community than EA (they are different! If you remember one line from this comment remember that!!) and (3) just because they are new to you doesn't mean they are new to others of us here. Relatedly, you hearing about these reports right now doesn't mean EAs don't care and don't want to fix issues or aren't trying hard to make out the base of the iceberg 🧐, (4) the journalist did not do a good job of providing details that the community should care about like how these cases have already been handled, some over 5 years ago. (5) relatedly, please realize that it was not the journalist's goal here to help the EA community decide if it is safe or not. So don't read the piece like the journalist had you in mind and gave everything someone in your position with your goals to engage the EA community might need. You will have to decide safety for yourself, but realize you were not the Bloomberg journalist's intended audience. Their goal was to inform the non-rat public of things in rationalist history. You have to fill in the gaps for you, an EA, yourself, and be diligent in ways the journalist was not
General heuristics about reality like "iceberg effect" are fine to mention but they are also conjecture. I hope they are not enough to fully sway anyone that the EA community has a problem right now today. Especially because, again the Bloomberg piece is not even really about EA!
I needed to walk away from this thread due to some unrelated stressful drama at work, which seems to have resolved earlier this week. So I took today off to recover from it. :) I wanted to return to this in part to point out what I think are some potential cruxes, since I expect some of the same cruxes will continue to come up in further discussions of these topics down the road.
1. I think we may have different assumptions or beliefs about the credibility of internal data-gathering versus independent data-gathering. Although the review into handling of the Owen situation is being handled by an outside firm, I don't believe the broader inquiry you linked is.
I generally don't update significantly on internal reporting by an organization which has an incentive to paint a rosy picture of things. That isn't anti-CEA animus; I feel the same way about religious groups, professional sports leagues, and any number of other organizations/movements.
In contrast, an outside professional firm would bring much more credibility to assessing the situation. If you want to get as close as ground truth as possible, you don't want someone with an incentive to sell more newspapers or someone hostile to EA -- but you also don't want those researching and writing the report to be favorably inclined to EA either. If the truth is the goal, those involved shouldn't be even unconsciously influenced by the potential effect of the report on EA. This counts for double after the situation with Owen wasn't managed well.
Conditional on the news articles being inaccurate and/or overstated, an internal review is a much weaker shield with which to defend EA against misrepresentations in the public sphere because the public has to decide how much to trust inside researchers/writers. An outside firm also allows people to come forward who do not want to reveal their identities to any EA organization, and brings specialized expertise in data collection on sensitive topics that is unlikely to be available in-house.
As I see it, the standard practice in situations like this is to bring in a professional, independent, and neutral third party to figure out what is going on. For example, when there were allegations of sexual misconduct in the Antarctic research community, the responsible agencies brought in an independent firm to conduct surveys, do interviews, and the like. The report is here.
Likewise, one of the churches in the group of 15-20 churches I attend discovered a sexual predator in its midst. Everyone who attended any of the 15-20 churches was given the contact information for an independent investigative firm and urged to share any information or concerns about other possible misconduct anywhere in the group. The investigative firm promised that no personally-identifiable information would be released to the church group without the reporter's permission (although declining permission would sharply limit the action the church could take against any wrongdoer). The group committed, in advance, to releasing the independent investigative report with redactions only to protect the identities of survivors and witnesses. Those steps built credibility with me that the group of churches was taking this seriously and that the public report would be a full and accurate reflection on what the investigators found.
2. Based on crux 1, I suspect people may be trying to answer different questions based on this article. If one expects to significantly update on the CEA data gathering, a main question is whether there is enough information to warrant taking significant actions now on incomplete information rather than waiting for information to assist in making a more accurate decision. If one doesn't expect to significantly update on that data gathering, a main question is whether there is enough information to warrant pursuing independent information gathering. The quantum of evidence needed seems significantly higher for the first question than the second. (Either formulation is consistent with taking actions now that should be in undertaken no matter what additional data comes in, or actions where the EV is much greater than the costs.)
Thanks for coming back. Hm in my mind, yes if all you are doing is handling immediate reports due to an acute issue (like the acute issue at your church), then yes a non-EA contractor makes sense. However if you want things like ongoing data collection and incident collection for ~the rest of time, it does have to be actually collected within or near to the company/CEA, enough that they and the surveyor can work together.
Why would youIt seems bad [and risky] to keep the other company on payroll forever and never actually be the owner of the data about your own community?Additionally I don't trust non-EAs to build a survey that really gives survey respondents the proper choices to select. I think data-collection infrastucture such as a survey should be designed by someone who understands the "shape" and "many facets" of the EA community very well so as to not miss things. Because it is quite the varied community. In my mind, you need optional questions about work settings, social setting, conference settings, courses, workshops, and more. And each of these requires an understanding of what can go wrong in that particular setting, and you will want to also include correlations you are looking for throughout that people can select. So I actually think, ironically, that data-collecting infrastructure and analysis by non-EAs will have more gaps and therefore bias (unintended or intended) than when designed by EA data analysts and survey experts.
That brings me to the middle option (somewhere between CEA and non-EA contract), which is what I understand CEA's CH Team to be doing based on talks/emails with Catherine: commissioning independent data collection and analysis from Rethink Priorities. RP has a skilled/educated professional survey arm. It is not part of Effective Ventures (CEA's parent organisation), so it is still an external investigation and bias should be minimized. If I understand correctly,
CEA/CH team will give over their current data to RP[whoops nvm see Chatherine's comment below], and RP will build and promote a survey (and possibly other infrastructure for data-collection), and finally do their own all-encompassing data analysis without CH Team involved, [possibly but not decided yet]. That's my rough understanding as of conversation last month anyway.I do find the question of how data will be handled to be a bit tangential to this post, and I encourage people to comment there if concerned. Though I'd actually just caution patience instead. This is a very important problem to the Community Health Team, and I hope this separation (CHT/RP) is enough for people. Personally, the only bias I'd expect Rethink Priorities [and the CH Team] to have would be to work extra hard because they'd care a lot about solving the problem as best they can. EAs know that as best you can requires naked, unwarped truth, as close as you can get, so I don't expect RP to be biased against finding truth at all.
Now I find myself considering, "Well, what if RP isn't separate enough for people, and they want a non-EA investigator, despite risk that non-EAs won't understand the culture well enough for investigating cultural problems?".... And idk, maybe people will feel that way. But then I feel incredible concern and confusion: I would honestly wonder if there is any hope of building resilient trust between EAs and EA institutions at all. If some EA readers don't trust other skilled EAs to try really hard (and competently) to find the truth and good solutions in our own community, idk what to say. It's hard to imagine myself staying in EA if I thought that way. Hopefully no readers here do think that, hopefully readers think RP separation is enough, as I do, but idk, just making my thoughts known.
Thanks Ivy and Jason for your thoughts on internal and external investigations of problems of sexual misconduct in EA.
There are a few different investigation type things going on at the moment, and some of them aren’t fully scoped or planned. So it is a bit confusing. To clarify, this is where we are at right now:
Any competent outside firm would gather input from stakeholders before releasing a survey. But I hear the broader concern, and note that some sort of internal-external hybrid is possible. The minimal level of outside involvement, to me, would involve serving as a data guardian, data pre-processor, and auditor-of-sorts. This is related to the two reasons I think outside involvement is important: external credibility, and respondent assurance.
As far as external validity, I think media reports like this have the capacity to do significant harm to EA's objectives. Longtermist EA remains, on the whole, more talent-constrained and influence-constrained than funding-constrained. The adverse effect on talent joining EA could be considerable. Social influence is underrated; for example, technically solving AI safety might not actually accomplish much without the ability to socially pressure corporations to adopt effective (but profit-reducing) safety methods or convince governments to compel them to do so.
When the next article comes out down the road, here's what I think EA would be best served by being able to say if possible:
(A) According to a study overseen by a respected independent investigator, the EA community's rate of sexual misconduct is at most no greater than the base rate.
(B) We have best-in-class systems in place for preventing sexual misconduct and supporting survivors, designed in connection with outside experts. We recognize that sexual misconduct does occur, and we have robust systems for responding to reports and taking the steps we can to protect the community. There is independent oversight over the response system.
(C) Unfortunately, there isn't that much we can do about problematic individuals who run in EA-adjacent circles but are unaffiliated with institutional EA.
(A) isn't externally credible without some independent organization vouching for the analysis in some fashion. In my view, (B) requires at some degree of external oversight to be externally credible after the Owen situation, but that's another story. Interestingly, I think a lot of the potential responses are appropriate either as defensive measures under the "this is overblown reporting by hostile media outlets" hypothesis or "there is a significant problem here" hypothesis. I'd like to see at least funding and policy commitments on some of those initatives in the near term, which would reduce the time pressure on other initiatives for which there is a good chance that further datagathering would substantially change the desirability, scope, layout, etc.
I think one has to balance the goal of external credibility against other goals. But moving the research to (say) RP as opposed to CEA wouldn't move the external-credibility needle in any appreciable fashion.
The other element here is respondent assurance. Some respondents, especially those no longer associated with EA, may be more comfortable giving responses if the initial data collection itself and any necessary de-identification is done by an outside organization. (It's plausible to me that the combination of responses in a raw survey response could be uniquely identifying.)
Ideally, you would want to maximize the number of survivors who would be willing to confidentally name the person who committed misconduct. This would allow the outside organization to do a few things that would address methodological concerns in the Time article. First, it could identify perpetrators who had committed misconduct against multiple survivors, avoiding the incorrect impression that perpetrators were more numerous than they were. Second, it could use pre-defined criteria to determine if the perpetrator was actually an EA, again addressing one of the issues with the Time article. Otherwise, you end up with a numerator covering all instances in which someone reports misconduct by someone they identified as an EA . . . but use narrower criteria to develop the denominator, leading to an inflated figure. It would likely be legally safer for CEA to turn over its event-ban list to the outside organization under an NDA for very limited purposes than it would be to turn it over to RP. That would help another criticism of the Time article, that it failed to address CEA's response to various incidents.
Contingent on budget and maybe early datagathering, I would consider polling men too about things like attitudes associated with rape culture. Surveying or focusing-grouping people about deviant beliefs and behaviors (I'm using "deviant" here as sociologists do), not to mention their own harassment or misconduct, is extremely challenging to start with. You need an independent investigator with ironclad promises of confidentiality to have a chance at that kind of research. But then again, it's been almost 20 years since my somewhat limited graduate training in social science research methods, so I could be wrong on this.
I realized I missed the bit where you talk about how we might not need such intense data to respond now. Yes, I agree with that. I personally expect that most community builders/leaders are already brainstorming ideas, and even implementing them, to make their spaces better for women. I also expect that most EA men will be much more careful moving forward to avoid saying or doing things which can cause discomfort for women. We will see what comes of it. Actually I'm working on a piece about actions individuals can take now... maybe I will DM it to ya with no pressure at all o.o
[Deleting the earlier part of my comment because it involved an anonymized allegation of misconduct I made, that upon reflection, I feel uncomfortable making public.]
I also want to state, in response to Ivy's comment, that I am a woman in EA who has been demoralized by my experience of casual sexism within it. I've not experience sexual harassment. But the way the Bloomberg piece describes the way EA/rats talk about women feels very familiar to me (as someone who interacts only with EAs and not rats). E.g., "5 year old in a hot 20 year old's body" or introducing a woman as "ratbait."
Hi to reply to your last paragraph, I am sorry you have been on the recieving end of such comments. You say they are not "sexual harassment" but I want to help provide clarity and a path to resolution by suggesting that, depending on context, comments you have recieved may indeed be sexual harassment. Sorry I don't have US/CA law on hand to share but I'd guess it would be similar to the UK law on harassment (it's very short and worth reading!). I recommend readers pay close attention to sections 1.b. and section 4. Also, intention to harass is not a relevant factor usually[1]
While I recommend people try to keep in mind cultural differences as discussed here rather than always assuming bad intent (I've been on the receiving end of some ribbing from actual friends of mine for being "hot" in EA, which I dish back in different ways), it looks to me like you are already being very careful of what you report (as most women are). So I'd like to also encourage you and other women to look closely and consider whether comment you might receive might actually be harassment, intended or even on technicality. If the comment feels demeaning including assuming too much familiarity, please look twice. Either way, whether you feel reasonably sure it is classed as harassment or not, if you are bothered by a comment, please bring it up. Please have a conversation with the person or report (perhaps even to a mutual friend of you and the speaker) if you don't want to have the conversation yourself. I hope we can quell problems as a community, but to do that these things must be named at the time or else people doing troubling things keep doing them.
I understand it can be hard or feel overreactive to address comments like that. It isn't black and white and it's hard to see where they fall and you might not want to get people in trouble. But legal systems (for example like that law I posted) can provide us good precedent for how and why to address such comments anyway, and what aspects we should focus on, namely your feelings about the matter. If comments bother you I really encourage you to bring them up somehow (to the person or others you trust to handle it), and I hope this comment gives you the cultural context and social sanctioning to do so.
It is important to note when using the term harassment, that intention to harrass is not a deciding factor, legally. (other aspects of context may be though) But of course intention to harrass, or lack thereof, will likely make a difference in how much you are willing to discuss with the person themselves vs opting to report to someone else for them to handle, so I acknowledge that intention to harass is still good for us to keep in mind
Thank you for sharing this. I'm angry that you've had these experiences, and I'm grateful you were open to talking about them, even in response to a comment that some found unfriendly.
A lot of the frustration in my initial comment comes from not knowing how to react to things like the Bloomberg article as a mostly-lurker in the community. I don't know whether I'm going to end up chatting or collaborating with someone who makes sexist comments or sends cruel messages to accusers; I wish I knew whose work I could safely share, promote, etc., without contributing to the influence of people who make the community worse.
While a comment like yours doesn't name names, it at least helps me get a better handle on how much energy I want to put into engaging with these communities.*
*This is a process that takes the form of thousands of small adjustments; no one comment is decisive, but they all help me figure things out.
Jacy's org received funding from the SFF in 2022, if you consider that EA funding. More weakly, his organization is also advertised on the 80,000 hours job board. He also recently tried to seek funding and recruit on the forum (until he deleted his post, plausibly due to pushback), and thus still benefits from EA institutions and infrastructure even if that doesn't look like direct funding.
Forgive me for using an anonymous account, but I'm in the process of applying for SFF funding and I don't want to risk any uncomfortable consequences. However, I can't stay silent any longer – it's painfully obvious that the SFF has little regard for combating sexual harassment. The fact that Jacy was awarded funding is a blatant example, but what's more concerning is that Michael Vassar, a known EA antagonist, still appears to be involved with the SFF to this day.
It's alarming how Vassar uses his grant-making powers to build alliances in the EA community. He initiated a grant to Peter Eckersley's organization AOI after Peter's death. Peter was strongly against Vassar. Vassar seemed pleased that Peter's successor Deger Turan doesn't have the same moral compass.
That is very concerning; I've now read several separate accounts of his behavior toward others (friends, devotees, partners, strangers), and together they painted a terrible picture.
I plan on sending a concerned letter to SFF, though I'm not sure I expect it to do much. Others should consider doing the same.
But... this comment is false as far as I can tell? Like, I didn't express myself ideally in my comment below (which I think deserves the downvotes and the lower visibility), and it's an understandable misunderstanding to think that Michael still has somehow some kind of speculation grant budget, but at least to me it really looks like he is no longer involved.
Just to excerpt the relevant sections from the thread below:
Sorry, can you say more? I've been very closely involved with a lot of SFF operations in the last 3-4 years and I have never interfaced with Michael in that context.
My guess is you just totally made this up or heard a rumor from someone that did since I can't think of an interpretation under which this is true (edit: I was indeed confused and you were referring to his work as a speculation grantor, which makes more sense. See here for more followup)
Also, for the record, I find talking to Michael pretty helpful from time to time and wouldn't judge someone else for doing that. I do think it's not a good idea currently to put him into positions of power for various reasons, and like him having some distance from the broader community, but he is pretty smart and I learned a lot from him and some of his surrounding friend group.
Hi Habryka,
I found this comment disappointing to read.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230203024435/https://survivalandflourishing.fund/speculation-grants
I don't know Michael, nor how SFF works, but a <1minute google search suggests that Michael Vassar was serving as a grantor as of Feb 2022. His name has since been removed, but it is unclear whether this is because he is no longer involved, or because he has rescinded consent to have his name listed, or because SFF no longer wish to list his name. It is reasonable to think that Michael Vassar may still be involved with SFF if you take either of the latter two interpretations.
This came across unnecessarily defensive to me, and I'm surprised that you missed this interpretation for someone "very closely involved with basically all SFF operations in the last 3-4 years", given how easy this information was to find.
Additionally, did you know that Michael was involved in 2022, or had his name listed on the website? If you knew he was involved in 2022, but made the claim that you "can't think of an interpretation that this is true" because he's no longer involved in 2023, and accused burneraccountman of just totally making this up just because of that, this feels highly uncharitable to me (I would have expected you to clarify that you knew he was involved last year but this is no longer the case). If you did not know, then I suspect this is may be an update to how much you think you knew about "basically all SFF operations", and how well calibrated you are about confident claims going forward.
Oops, yep, sorry, I fucked up.
There is a largish number of people who are involved as speculation grantors who have a pretty small unilateral budget to make grants with, and I had in my mind totally not cached them as "being involved in SFF" (and do also think that's a kind of inaccurate summary, though one that I think is reasonable to have from the outside).
I agree that I should have remembered the speculation grant program, and am sorry for the blunt response.
I do think giving Michael a small speculation grant budget ($200k initially) seems reasonable, and the speculation grant program includes a lot of people including a lot of people who I wouldn't think of as being involved in the EA community at all. I was definitely interpreting the above as "had served as a recommender" or "has been institutionally involved with SFF", which I was confident was wrong, but missed important interpretations of the original comment, which totally was a miscommunication that's on me, especially given my confident response.
I also have access to an internal spreadsheet of speculation grantors and Michael is not listed on that, which does make me more sympathetic to my misunderstanding since I have looked at this spreadsheet a bunch more recently, and so was quite confident that he wasn't listed on that one. My current best model is that he is no longer a speculation grantor (maybe because his budget went to zero), though I find him being listed on the website but not on the internal spreadsheet confusing enough that I might be missing something.
No worries, thanks for the response.
He is no longer on the website, which might explain the discrepancy, unless you meant he wasn't on the internal spreadsheet even back in Feb 2022 or earlier?
Ooh, that's a webarchive link, I somehow completely missed that. Cool, yeah, looks like he was removed around the same time from the spreadsheet and from the public list, so I am now quite confident that he is no longer involved as a speculation grantor.
Makes sense, thanks again. One small nitpick on re-reading your last message:
I think I'd appreciate some clarification around your thought process around what kind of monetary value is acceptable for Michael (similar question for Jacy here).
I guess I get the sense that letting Michael act as a grantor is bad e.g. because of the signaling effects that SFF is willing to overlook someone's history of sexual harassment/assault etc, and not because the money will necessarily be poorly spent. Whereas you think 50k to Jacy is reasonable and 200k to Michael as a grantor is reasonable because it's sufficiently small that this effect doesn't matter? I basically don't follow, and I'd be interested in hearing more about your reasoning, if you're happy to clarify!
I mean, I don't think it makes sense to force everyone even vaguely nearby in the EA social network to defer to some EA consensus about who it is OK to engage with vs. not. I think it's important that people can somehow signal "I don't want my actions to be taken as an endorsement of the EA community, please don't try to interpret my actions as trying very hard to reflect the EA consensus ". The SFF has tried to do this in a lot of its writing and communications, and I think it's pretty important for people to be able to do that somehow.
I also think it's really important for grantmakers to somehow communicate that a grant from them is not a broad endorsement of all aspects of a project. This is actually frequently a huge obstacle to good grantmaking and there are all kinds of grants that things like the LTFF and OpenPhil and other grantmakers are averse to making because the grant would somehow inextricably come an endorsement of the whole organization or all individuals involved, and this prevents many good grants from happening.
Historically I have tried to fix this on the LTFF by just publishing my hesitations and concerns with individuals and organizations when I recommended them a grant, but that is a lot of work. It also stresses a lot of people out and gets you a lot of pushback, so I don't think this is currently a solution that people can just adopt tomorrow (though I would love for more people to do this).
I do also think that $50k is really not very much, and also the grant isn't "to Jacy", but to an organization that Jacy is involved in, which I think reduces potential harm by another factor of 2-3 or so. I personally quite disliked this grant, and think it's a bad grant, but I don't think it's a grant that I feel actually causes much harm. It just seems like a bad use of money that maybe causes a few thousand expected dollars in negative externalities.
There are grants that I would have paid serious money to prevent (like some historical grants to Leverage Research), but this is not one of them, and I think I would update a bit downwards on the judgement of a process that produces grants like this, but not much more.
On the other hand, I think the $200k speculation grant budget to Michael is actually a good idea, though definitely a high-variance choice and I could totally be convinced it's a bad idea. $200k as a regrantor is just really not very much (I think substantially less power than $50k of direct funding, for example), and as far as I can tell the grants he recommended were extremely unlikely to cause any problems in terms of weird power dynamics or pressure (I don't feel comfortable going into details since speculation grant info is private, but I do think I can share my overall assessment as these grants having been very unlikely to give rise to any undue pressure).
I do think this is a reasonable thing to worry about. I also think Michael is exactly the kind of person who has in the past suggested projects and perspectives that have been extremely valuable to me, and I think giving him some money to highlight more of those is totally a worthwhile investment. If I was doing something like giving him a speculation grant budget, I do think I would probably take some kind of precaution and block some grants that look maybe like they would involve weird power-dynamics, but it doesn't look like it ever came to this, so it's hard for me to tell what process might have been in place.
I also separately just want to iterate my own personal epistemic state, which is that I haven't heard of any credible allegations of sexual abuse for Michael. I personally find being around him quite stressful, I know many people who have had bad experiences with him, and he seems very manipulative in a ton of different ways, but I do want to distinguish this from the specific ground truth of sexual abuse and assault. As I said before, I don't currently want him to be part of my community or the Effective Altruism community more broadly.
I might totally be missing something, and if Michael was more closely involved in the community and would pose more of a direct risk, I would probably spend the (very considerable) effort investigating this in more detail, and I would currently be happy for someone else to investigate this in more detail and share as much as they can, but I also don't currently have the personal capacity with all my other responsibilities to investigate this much further (and my guess is the community health team also thinks there is no immediate urgent need given that he is really not very involved in community things these days).
I do want to avoid contributing to an information cascade that somehow updates on there being tons of confirmed evidence of sexual assault for someone, when at least I haven't seen that evidence. The only evidence I know of are these two tweet threads by a person named Jax (who I don't know), and in that tweet thread they also say a bunch of stuff that seems really extremely likely to be false to me, or extremely likely to lack a ton of relevant crucial context, so that I don't consider those allegations to be sufficient for me to update me very much.
Again, there is totally a chance I am missing information here, and I have my own evidence (unrelated to any sexual abuse or assault stuff) that makes me not want Michael be involved in the EA and Rationality community more than he currently is, and if other people have additional evidence I would love to see it, since this does seem at least somewhat important.
IIRC, Jax is Bryk is the one who made up the "math pets" allegation against me, which hopefully everyone knows to be false. I don't know anything about the state of the rest of the allegations against Michael, but if I'm recalling correctly that Jax is that particular known-false-accuser, we probably want to subtract anything from Jax and then evaluate the rest of the list.
I strong upvoted this because it's a great comment, with a lot of good info and perspective on grantmaking, but I would push back on the idea that there aren't "credible allegations of sexual abuse against Michael". Or, I wonder where you draw the line at defining "sexual abuse"? You yourself appear to admit he is troubling, and when in a relationship that can so easily just become sexual abuse, sexual gaslighting, sexually demeaning statements, etc. It's not like "sexual behavior" is a protected category. It's just another type of behavior. Sure it's a very special type of behavior that is attached very strongly to the buttons for dopamine, power, self esteem, and pleasure, but that doesn't make it special for an abusive personality type of person such that they would necessarily put a gate up in their minds around it... it makes it more likely they press that button. Especially once in relationship, it's important to remember sexual misconduct is not rare, for some portion of people (and it sounds like vassar is highly likely to be one of these), who suck at relating to others (like suck so hard it becomes abuse), sexual conduct is just another way to relate, and that poor (abusively poor) sexual relating can be very common for such people.
Whether or not their relationship was even 2-way toxic, it doesn't excuse sexual abuse so I am not sure I can think of a lot of context that makes up for it.
But anyway I agree with you that he shouldn't be in community anyway. It;s weird that for so many people sexual abuse would be the breaking point they want absolutely confirmed or denied, when actually there are a lot worse things someone can do before that. I do kinda wonder if people near him should run an intervention though, that unless he seek help for anger issues and other personality issues (did you know there are meds to reduce angry outburts? plus of course other treatments you prob know about, CBT, DBT, etc) and make detialed apologies and accountings of his wrngdoings and accusations til that point, they will cut ties. Like, that would be the agentic option if friends with someone like that. I don't get it. He is probably financially privileged so why can't he use his money to try to fix his issues? Red flag he isn't, or if he has he needs to do a public update to that effect, and what issues he is still struggling with (broken brain is real and maybe permanent but like it's better to admit than people think you don't care to try). Given his prominence in these discussions it is just insane that he has not done something like that. I would steer clear even personally tbh, but of course, I'm a woman so I expect he would scoff at me and mistreat me at any slip of mine which is not right.
Separate from the harassment accusations, Jacy (and ACE while he was there, where I expect he had influence but far from unilateral control) had a bunch of criticisms of their work I would also want addressed before I gave money to an org founded and run by Jacy and his spouse.
Totally. As I said in another comment, I think the grant was bad, but lots of grants made from the EA community are (in my opinion) pretty bad. It doesn't feel like the kind of decision that makes me go and try to actively stop someone from doing it.
I’m also curious about the thinking on this. By having Michael act as a grantor, SFF isn’t just overlooking his history of sexual misconduct. It is also potentially enabling further misconduct, since it is giving him power and he has a track record of abusing power.
Are you aware of the various allegations about his behavior? Is there a level of harm that you think merits rejecting someone entirely, rather than just from the broader community?
Feels quite extreme to me. Like, I would still be interested in talking to SBF for example, even though I think he deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison, since he also seems clearly extremely smart and might totally see things that I fail to see. I think Sam is the kind of person I am probably most hesitant to engage with though, since he is very charismatic and I would be slightly worried about my own sanity when engaging with him, though I can still definitely imagine situations where I would talk to him.
In-general I am not a huge fan of total punishment. I think even very bad people deserve to have some basic support and friends, as long as we actually really take seriously the obligation to limit the harm they can cause other people (I am also not categorically opposed to retribution as a component of a justice system, I just think isolation is a particularly bad dimension of punishment for various reasons).
For Michael, I think in my mind he has crossed many lines that make me really not want him to be part of the EA or Rationality community, and currently feel quite strongly about that.
What do you mean by rejecting someone entirely, and why does it entail not talking to them when you'd find this helpful? Is this about
Props for saying what is kind of a hard thing to say here. I agree there are people I listen to who I would not want in the community.
Hey can I just check a thing? Do people really think that someone asking other people out [Edit: okay thinking this is all he did has problems, because it requires taking his apology at face value despite how serious CEA took the claims] means that they should never be allowed to return to impactful work and request (and receive) funding? So treat this comment as a poll
Case details: (and agreevote directions below those)
[EDIT: Apologies, I wrote this hastily and it might be that he never did as much as I first implied, but then others feel he might have done worse. I recommend you make your own conclusions about Jacy by (1) reading pseudonym's comment below this one and (2) visiting Jacy's apology yourself: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8XdAvioKZjAnzbogf/apology ]
The rest has been edited:]
I don't know that much about the case but IIRC Jacy was apologizing for asking some women out on dates, clumsily. He did this online on FB messenger. I think before that apology he [was alleged to have done some inappropriate things] in the animal advocacy community somehow related to him, but had sworn to not do so again (a promise it looks like he probably kept). Anyway, he was apologizing for clumsy online flirting toward people who were not attached to the animal advocacy movement. There were no complaints from people who had worked for or with him. Jacy's accusers stayed anonymous so he couldn't address the complaints well, but he did apologize and take ownership to the best of his abilities and state that he would take time away to reflect and would be more considerate in future. IIRC he was never (publicly or maybe not at all?) alleged to have done sexual assault or even something most would consider harassment (which legally has a demeaning or disprespectful element, although come to think of it repeated asking out might be harassment) but more clumsy (perhaps overbearing?) flirting that (fairly!) women wanted addressed. It was 3 years after his apology for this repeated behavior that he got funding. The actual behaviors (not the apology) themselves were 3 years or older as well (one was even 7 years before the apology, so 10 years before he got 2022 funding).
So what do you guys think? Was 3 years long enough to mandate a period of reflection and pause of financial support? Answer via:
agreevote my comment to signal that you think after 3 years (given what he did and that he has had no issue since) (1) that it was okay that he be given funding for a competitive grant application or (2) that it would be okay that he be otherwise employed in animal welfare with EA dollars
Or:
disagreevote my comment to signal that you think he should not get EA funding again, period, or that 3 years later was much too soon for what he did
I'd be very interested if there is any woman who had one of those troubling incidents with Jacy who could chime in and say what she thinks about him getting funding 3 years after his apology.
I acknowledge that perhaps this question is also related to how much funding overhang there is (like I'd not like to see promising young women passed over for funding in favor of him) but back in 2022 I think there was more funding. For now please agreevote this question as though it is just a question of whether he should get funding ever at all, in some world where there is plenty of funding to go around.
[Edit: For posterity, I'll note that this poll was at -7 (5 votes) when I edited it. There is some margin of error I can figure out later based on that and how responses here change.]
I may chime back about the object level question around the case soon, but I do want to flag in the interim that this comment that suggests "Jacy had asked some women out on dates" is likely to be a misleading interpretation of the actual events. See also this thread, and this comment.
My view is that whether someone receives funding depends on the kind of work they are doing, as well as the level of risk they present to the community. On replaceability - he is pivoting to AI safety work. Would you say his difficult-to-replace nature in the animal space, to whatever extent this is true, translates to his AI safety work? His latest post was about establishing "a network of DM research collaborators and advisors". Is he difficult to replace in this context also?
I think it's fine for him to independently do research, but whether he should be associated with the EA community, receive EA funding for his work, or be in a position where he can be exposed to more victims (recruiting researchers) is less clear to me and depends on the details of what happened.
There has been no additional communication from CEA or Jacy acknowledging what actually happened, or why we can trust that Jacy has taken accountability for his actions, and is no longer a risk to members of this community, apart from the passage of time. Until then, I will point out the tension here that Jacy is someone who is barred from CEA events, but encouraged by 80,000 hours as a place to work at and is able to recruit from EAs without EAs having this knowledge, and will continue to raise this as a consideration so people can make better-informed decisions about potential risks in associating or working with Jacy.
Because of this lack of clarity, and because his organization's current plan does seem to involve exposure to new potential victims, I've disagree-voted. But I don't have a way of disagree-voting as 1 vote (it automatically gives 2), so take that into consideration also.
I will note that if you know about events that have happened 2 years prior to the SFF funding in 2022, this suggests there were incidents in 2020, which is after CEA's ban in 2019. If this is what you mean, this should update you negatively about whether Jacy has taken sufficient steps to make positive changes in this regard.
A few notes: (epistemic status: thinking out loud)
Replaceability of his Digital Minds entrepreneurship: I'll note that I think it is always hard to replace someone who will act as founder of something. Getting something off the ground (going from zero to one) is something very few people are willing, interested, or think of to do. Good entrepreneurs are a scarce breed, or, at least they are when you want more projects and have a funding overhang (we still do for stuff like this). And whenever you narrow it down to any domain, they become even scarcer, and I think if you narrow it down in to a domain that is new (like digital minds research), they become even scarcer than that.
If there were job listings for founders for ideas which are already exciting to funders, the zero to one problem could be easier solved eg "Funding has been secured for forming a network of digital mind research collaborators and advisors. Seeking suitable founder, apply here." Maybe Jacy and a dozen other people would apply and then we would know just how replaceable he is. But there are not and no one is doing this (this requires its own entrepreneur). Also there are certain implications of this I'd find very disrespectful to the people who had the key idea in the first place.. it's a bit dehumanizing like everyone is just a cog in the machine.
I think I'll note that usually grantmakers are going to measure this. And maybe we should trust them to, idk, if they are EA anyway, at least until further details are given. Like I think it's fine to ask for details but not fine to assume that the grantmakers made an egregious or community-harming decision (Now I think I have to obligate drop this thing although it's a tangent and I realize it complicates things and goes against my above poll intent).
We still don't know enough: I agree this is weird. If I were him, given the intense community backlash, I'd have next done a detailed writeup of everything I'd done with clarification of every relevant detail and what was going on in my mind at the time, then said I'd step back and would be receiving voluntary therapy, treatment, and/or social skills coaching until further notice, depending on what the writeup indicated. But expecting a pre-Gen-Z man to even think of doing this is like, a big ask. No insult to such men but society does not exactly set most of us up to think of that kind of solution, let alone pre-zoomer men. Also I think expecting a lot of details when the complainants remained anonymous might be an impossible ask (thought I think he could probably give more). I also wonder if having a norm where people are forced to bare open every embarrassing incident is good for EA morale... If they are akin to embarrassing incidents it would be better if he showed full details to the Community Health Team and they did a summary for potential grantmakers, employers etc of Jacy when requested (actually this has likely already been done, but I doubt that SFF looked at it in the case of the recent grant because they aren't exactly community-related in that way. Would be interesting and worth knowing if they did though and why they'd have decided to move forward anyway if they did). I'll also note that Jacy has already pushed back a lot on the expulsion from Brown for sexual misconduct and his insistence and other details give good reason to doubt the school made the right decision. And either way, if he did do something egregious, that was ~10 years ago from now (I think) which puts it outside of the statute of limitations and I think we should take our cue from that societal norm. He was punished (possibly quite overpunished) via expulsion and it is not our job to do so further. I would like to focus on rehabilitation and recent cases. It might be that without names Jacy can never address the cases to onlooker satisfaction, but perhaps proof of rehabilitation and actions taken to learn would help, and I don't really know why he didn't at least come back and talk about that.
CEA Events: I'm not sure that CEA would still hold their ban 3 years later, or if they haven't gotten around to lifting it, would be good if they'd comment if it ever seems relevant to know. I also remember [edit: IIRC but it looks like I likely didn't] reading that CEA felt that the Brown incident kind of tipped them to be more concerned, but if you are very unsure what to think about the brown incident, you might not want to decide as CEA did which was a risk-reduction standpoint rather than a serving justice (either clearing someone's name or convicting them) standpoint. Relatedly I'll note, attending EA events (a prime place for asking people out) might have a higher bar of entry for Jacy than getting funding. Events are prime places to interface with women (bigger con for Jacy attending) and they are not that important for people settled into doing their direct work already (smaller pro for Jacy attending). Events are helpful, sure, but they aren't going to be key to effectiveness for someone like Jacy. If CEA evaluated the risk as low but still just don't want him at events because there aren't enough pros to take any risks, that's their right and pretty reasonable. But using funding to do important work, granted by a fund which has a high bar for effectiveness is, by definition, just simply "important". The pros and cons scale here is going to tip way differently if he is a minimal risk.
Conjecture on exposure to "victims":
Sorry, are you referring to Jacy here? what key idea did he come up with?
Agree that it is not CEA's job to punish Jacy for his actions at Brown, but this was largely not what happened.
I agree, and lack of this after 3 years should be a reason to update against its existence or the extent Jacy actually cares about this.
One quick question-do you think if sexual harassment allegations are true, is the EA community more or less at risk if Jacy is an independent researcher with no interaction to other EA researchers, or if he's actively trying to form a research network, or if he takes a community building role?
I think in that set of claims, the one doing the most work is "establish that risk is pretty low", which in Jacy's case, is an open question. To respond to the other parts-EA women are not cannon fodder for non-EA women. The community health team's job is to protect the EA community and should not be based on the extent adjacent communities are adequately managing the situation. The EA community does not exist primarily to internalize the negative externalities of society, and members of the EA community should not be expected to sacrifice themselves like this.
Do you have nonpublic info on Jacy? Can you be more clear on the kinds of situations you are imagining? How many of these do you think would result in a ban from CEA events? I guess my view here is that in most situations that would lead to a ban from CEA events, the word "victim" is probably appropriate. I think again this points to the issues around lack of clarity here, as some may be indexing the level of severity based on other things that CEA have banned people for, which are much worse than "Jacy had asked some women out on dates", while you are basing this off other information or taking Jacy's apology at face value etc, which doesn't seem super well justified.
I mean, if we are talking about entrepreneurship replacability, that if it was his idea to form a network of digital mind research collaborators and advisors, and he wanted to lead it and was capable of doing so, it could be seen as disrespectful to push him off the idea of the project and find someone to replace him on an essentially-identical project.
Okay fair, I'm updating that I am misremembering reading what I thought I did, but if I ever find what I'm thinking of I'll add it.
Fair. I mean I kind of wonder if he expected people to get over it (which if it really was minor, he probably would expect), and was recently blindsided by the response to his March post. Maybe we will see a writeup soon (but probably not, you are right)
I guess I consider it the wrong question? Like obviously the answer is the former has less risk to the EA community, but I don't think minimizing risk is the only thing that matters? The degree of risk is the most important thing? Above a certain threshold of risk I would just want to do the most impactful one. We don't know the risk.
I agree, and I did specifically include that clause for that reason FWIW. I will go back and italicize it to make it clear. I believe that I really did consider this also negates the rest of that paragraph such as thinking of EA woman as cannon fodder etc.
No. I can say that relevant thing I was imagining (among other scenarios) was something like repeated asking out after saying no (which is technically harassment) or making sexual or attraction-based comments (also harassment depending on badness of comment and whether the context and relationship implies it is disrespectful or degrading) and a response from CEA something like "he clearly has a tendency to make women uncomfortable and this seems net negative for the events, so why honestly even allow him to come and possibly make another mistake, even if he is learning? Let's just ban him and be done with it.". However I acknowledge this is unfounded and these are just some possibilities among other worse possibilities.
I completely agree with you. And yeah I think that's a good point, that my taking the apology at face value is not "super well justified". I actually wasn't exactly trying to defend Jacy in particular. But trying to begin some discussion which might be relevant to determining if there is a punishment-over-rehabilitation framework in this community and where that line should be drawn. I can't say anything about Jacy's case in particular, and I also don't claim that CEA made a mistake about him or operated under any problematic framework when making their decision about him. To me it does feel really weird though, that if it was so bad, that CEA didn't make it more public so we could all better trust to steer clear or something. That does seem like it would become a missing stair concern, which actually maybe is what happened with him getting funding, idk. Anyway something bad does seem to be going on here (like maybe an overzealous reaction years later, or, I'm thinking more likely after this and another conversation, a non-transparent-enough culture which might lead to missing stairs. In fact either could be present in EA culture even if not in Jacy's case). And whatever it may be, I am starting to worry it will catch up with EA and at least some of its members eventually, in unpleasant ways (in some sense this whole thread is one of those ways).
I am now thinking that the root thing, the meta-thing upstream of us discussing whether Jacy's funding was okay or not, is more worth addressing than actually answering the question "how and where did Jacy get funding and was it okay knowing what we know".
Sorry I should have written 3 years. I think I was rounding down due to lack of clarity on months but clarifying months makes it look like it should have been 3 years or even slightly over 3 years. Sorry about that
Good points about AI, I just deleted the animal section
I agree with you, Ivy. I think it's deeply unfortunate that some paint Jacy with the same brush as predators like Michael Vassar. Is it wrong to ask someone out on Facebook Messenger? I don't mean to diminish how unsolicited romantic advances can make people uncomfortable, but it seems difficult to draw a coherent line between Jacy's actions and any time anyone asks anyone else out.
Jacy's public/influential role complicates his actions, but Jacy's frank apology and years-long lack of recidivism speak to the good faith of his effort to re-earn the community's trust. I don't think it's wrong for Jacy to receive funding from the community today.
Is that what happened? It's never been made public, and the accusations against him in college were much more serious.
Do you have details of his college expulsion and accusations? I honestly couldn't find them. After going through the whole discussion of his apology I could only find his own letter about it from 10 years prior saying it was an incorrect expulsion and also someone linked some other cases of Brown doing a poor job on sexual misconduct cases: IIRC other courts deemed that the brown committee mishandled cases of students accused of sexual misconduct. It appears in one case (not necessarily Jacy's but I've seen this happen myself elsewhere, so I'd actually bet more likely than not that if it was allowed to happen one time it happened in Jacy's case too) that the students had banded together and written letters of unsubstantiated rumors to the Brown committee (eg, assuming what they'd heard in the gossip mill to be true and then trying to make sure the committee "knew" the unsubstantiated rumors, perhaps stating them as fact not even relaying how they had heard it), and then the Brown committee actually did use the letters as evidence in the University tribunal. The actual US court said that Brown, in doing this, went against due process. To reiterate, that was another Brown case not Jacy's, but I'd like to hear what actually happened in Jacy's case if we were to count an offense from 10 years ago (which I now think CEA also mostly did not).
I'm really not trying to defend Jacy here. Actually after reading more and someone even DMed to have a conversation, I do expect he did worse than mentioned in his apology but that any victim won't go public so those of us on the outside will never know for sure. But I'd also like to exhibit why I didn't much discuss the college expulsion, and I still won't jump the gun that, whatever he did, it necessarily deserved expulsion because it looks like Brown at that time may have been both incredibly bad at handling such cases and incredibly rife with rumor mill.
Plus it was still 10 years ago, and as I said elsewhere he has been punished (possibly overpunished) for that. I know that punishment might not assuage concerns of safety (I've been repeatedly surprised that questions of rehabilitation and self improvement have been so missing from the discussion of him, like no one seems to care that he also sent apologies directly to the women and also no one has wondered if there is a way he could make it up to the community via self-improvement efforts, although I don't think he has focused on this), but to me safety is the important thing. I guess I'm still unsure what safety level to put Jacy at in my mind today even if I'm becoming more sure he did some troubling things left out of his apology in his past.
In pushing back on bringing up the college thing, I see myself not as defending Jacy, but as pushing back on an instinct to trust decisions of others, which might lead us into unwarranted disgust reactions and type-casting, which, to me, gets in the way of figuring out what matters about his presence, which, to me, is how safe he is to have around today (10 years after the expulsion).
I know that some people don't find his work the most worth doing/granting to, but some people do, and if it is worth doing, his actual safety would be worth figuring out and making transparent.
(That said, as I conclude here, I'm now more interested in what is going on upstream, as to why this is so hard to figure out)
[Additional Reflection: I wish potential granters or collaborators of Jacy would speak to the women (maybe CEA would put them in contact?), and see what they think. While I don't think their perspectives should be "the be all end all", I find myself really wishing I could defer to their thoughts today about concrete actions like grantmaking given the passage of time. There are cases in my own life regarding men who I've had complaints about, where I would continue to have concerns about safety and I'd want others to act as though he is still a risk (forever or for some very long amount of time). But there are also other cases, from my own experience as a victim, where depending on the person's evident growth, I might say, "I think it's been long enough and it's probably okay now".
If I were a potential collaborator with Jacy I'd personally be very reluctant to assume that victims and people in the know feel the former or the latter, which in my case would mean I'd dig deeper with the EA Community Health Team. I'd also feel frustrated and concerned if I couldn't find out more, and probably not grant but feel there was some informational injustice occurring. I hope that CEAs processes allow for thorough understanding by well-meaning parties who need the info, and even potential requests to be put in contact with the victims respectfully. If SFF did not go looking for opportunities to thoroughly check things, I do find that troubling/risky/bad of SFF.
But if systems are not in place for that, I'm not sure we can expect potential collaborative actors such as SFF to just trust nontransparent decisions for the rest of time. It will depend on the case as to exactly how long, but after some amount of time without more complaints we should expect the scales for actors who would otherwise collaborate with past-accused to sort of tip against trusting the old nontransparent decision. They will at some point put much higher probability that it is not relevant to decisions they are faced with today. There will also, simultaneously, begin a period of time where people who view the old decision with different credences get upset at those whose scales tipped toward disregarding the old decision sooner than their own scales lead them too. This means there will be division and some predictable social unrest, until enough time has passed that basically everyone is ready to make peace with/disregard the nontransparent case (which may take 50 years idk). This is a bug of the world which will occur within communities of good people, because communities of good people still put different credences on things. It is not fully- mitigated by people trying to be "better" so it has to be fixed on a system level.
Since I started this topic of checking in about Jacy, I'm becoming more sure that Jacy did some serious things, but I'm also becoming less sure we can judge actors like SFF for attempting to collaborate anyway in cases of non-transparency. Jeff K just wrote a good and short piece about this a couple days ago. I see 4 possible cases here:
I'm pretty sure multiple of these possibilities can be ruled out by the people in the know, or even random people who do a little digging, but I'm burned out on it for now.
First, I want to broadly agree that distant information is less valuable, and no one should be judged by their college behavior forever. I learned about the Brown accusation (with some additional information, that I lack permission to pass on, and also don't know the source well enough to pass it on) in 2016 and did nothing beyond talking to the person and passing it on to Julia*, specifically because I didn't want a few bad choices while young to haunt someone forever.
[*It's been a while, I can't remember whether I told Julia or encouraged the other person to do so, but she got told one way or another]
The reason I think the college accusations are relevant is that, while I tentatively agree he shouldn't face more consequences for the college accusations, they definitely speak to Ariel's claim there's been no recidivism, and in general they shift my probability distribution over what he was apologizing for.
I don't necessarily think these concerns should have prevented the grant, or that SFF has an obligation to explain to me why they gave the grant. I wouldn't have made that grant, for lots of reasons, but that's fine, and I generally think the EA community acts too entitled around private grantmakers.
But I do think that confidently asserting that the only thing Jacy did was "ask some people out over FB messenger" is likely inaccurate, and it is important to track that. It might be accurate to say "the only thing he has been publicly accused of is asking people out" or "the only thing he has admitted to is asking people out" or "No one has provided any proof he did anything beyond ask people out", but none of those are the same as "the only thing he did is ask people out".
Or there could have been new information I missed, which is why I phrased it as a question.
I'm leaving a lot of your comment unresponded to because I think you're refuting the claim that the college accusations mean Jacy shouldn't have gotten the SFF grant, and I agree with that and never meant to imply otherwise. I just want to separately track what Jacy actually did, and what has been publicly acknowledged. Rereading the thread now I see why it didn't come across that way; I'm pretty sure I read Ariel's comment in the front page feed without realizing it was a response to something else.
I think that most of your comment is reasonable, so I'm only going to respond to the second-to-last paragraph. Because that is the bit that critiques my comment, my response is going to sound defensive. But I agree with everything else, and I also think what went on with my original comment leads back into what I see as the actual crux, so it's worth me saying what's on my mind:
I have long ago edited the original comment where I wrote that. I didn't change that particular wording because I wrote the original on mobile (which I deeply regretted and am now incredibly averse to) so I didn't have fancy strikethrough edit features, even when I tried on PC (I didn't realize it worked like that). Without strikethrough ability, I thought it would be epistemically dishonest to just edit that sentence. Instead I promptly, right after that sentence, told people to make their conclusions elsewhere in a way that I feel clearly tells readers to take that part with a grain of salt. All in all I edited that comment ~5 times. I don't have the spoons to re-edit again given I think it's fine.
More importantly, the transparency of info is obviously a problem if someone like me who usually tries to be pretty airtight on EA Forum things had to edit so much going back and forth from "here's a thing" to "maybe he did worse" to "maybe he did less" to "maybe he did worse" again. That's not okay. And now I feel like I'm getting punished for trying to do what no other outsider of the case was willing to try to do (that I saw)... figure out the ground truth [and what it means for EA behavior] publicly.
Honestly trying to figure out what happened regarding Jacy was a heckin nightmare with people coming out of left field about it after each correction I tried to make, including over DM (again not publicly), and giving multiple comments to comb through on multiple other posts and with their own attached threads. It's good people chimed in sharing the existence of different pieces of discussion/info that I'd guess hardly any single person knew every single bit of, but damn, I have to be honest that I'm now really frustrated about what a nightmare it was. I was trying to do a public service and it was a huge waste of time with little to glean for certain. [And some of the more interesting bits are not public and I feel very, very weird about that, even saying that I now know of (know of, not know for certain) stuff others don't and can't find out about (I can't even doublecheck myself).]
Was that always the expected outcome just lurking underneath the surface? If so then why would people judge SFF? I'm no longer surprised SFF just granted tbh. They saved themselves the time I wasted. I no longer expect any single person to get it right and I see that as a problem worth talking about because that will lead to either (1) actually-abusive people getting involvement sooner which is a safety risk, or (2) appearing-abusive-but-actually-non-abusive people getting involvement sooner which is a PR-risk and comfort risk.
I apologize for fucking up. I am now frustrated at myself for even trying. But if people other than me care about my messed up original comment they need to look at the systems because other people will fuck up as I did. It just won't be public til after the decision is made, if ever. And you won't get to correct them as they make their fumbles along the way.
I'm sorry. it sounds like you've taken a lot of flak for that comment, and having had that same experience I know it's miserable. FWIW I was never responding to or criticizing your comment, only Ariel's. Probably I saw it in the front page feed without checking the larger context. Or I only skimmed your comment and didn't notice he was repeating a claim.
Plausibly I'm culpable for not noticing it was a repeated claim rather than original. Maybe the way comments are displayed on the front page with minimal context contributed.
It's all I'm aware of, to the extent of my knowledge. I'm unfamiliar with the accusations against him in college, and could retract my above comment if given sufficient evidence.
Thanks for this context!
My understanding is that SFF regranting is pretty separate from the CEA/Open Phil network, since that I don't hear much about them on the Forum or in other EA spaces. But this is still a useful update about SFF* and a corrective to something I said that could have been misleading.
*I don't know anything about Jacy outside that post, and I should acknowledge that it's possible he's apologized and reformed to whatever degree was appropriate and should at some point make his way back to good standing in EA — but I haven't seen positive evidence of that either, so he seemed like a fair example to use.
Just to be clear, $50k really isn't a lot of money and the SFF is not "EA funding" in the sense that many recommenders who participate in the process have little connection to the EA community and that any recommender can unilaterally make grants to organizations.
I wouldn't update much on this. The SFF process funds a lot of stuff that is quite controversial, but this does not reflect nor convert into broad community support (and I personally think this is better than the decision that both the LTFF and Open Phil face where a grant is also seen as an endorsement of the org, which frequently muddles people just trying to think about marginal cost-effectiveness).
What's an acceptable amount of money, and what's an unacceptable amount of money?
I didn't make a claim personally that SFF was EA funding, which is why I said "if", though I think many people would consider SFF a funder that was EA-aligned. They have an EA forum page, their description is "Our goal is to bring financial support to organizations working to improve humanity’s long-term prospects for survival and flourishing." which sounds pretty EA, and they were included in a List of EA funding opportunities, with no pushback about their inclusion as a "funder that is part of the EA community" (OTOH, they are not included in the airtable by Effective Thesis)
I don't really understand what you mean by a process that gives an organization $ that isn't seen as endorsement of the organization. Can you clarify what you mean here?
I agree with the above comment but a minor correction (I think):
I am unsure what ought to happen here, but agree the status quo is misleading.
He's currently listed on the website as co-founder, and he was the one who shared the post that included the call for funding and job application on the EA forum. His bio says "@SentienceInst researching AI safety".
What gives you the impression that he is no longer officially involved?
Oh yeah I'm wrong.
Michael Vassar is still active in the EA community as a grant giver at SFF. He recently initiated a grant to the new president of AOI after the death of the founder Peter Eckersley, which casts a bad mark on his successor.
Peter Eckersley had a strong moral compass and stayed far away from Vassar. The new president, Deger Turan, was either clueless or careless when he sold out Peter's legacy.
Hey! Angela Pang here. I am working on a unified statement with the person who I am referring to in that excerpt, Robert Cordwell: https://www.facebook.com/angela.pang.1337/posts/pfbid034KYHRVRkcqqMaUemV2BHAjEeti98FFqcBeRsPNfHKxdNjRASTt1dDqZehMp1mjxKl?comment_id=1604215313376156¬if_id=1678378897534407¬if_t=feed_comment&ref=notif
I actually wanted to say that I felt like Julia Wise handled my case extremely respectfully, though there still wasn't enough structural support to reach a solution I would've been satisfied with (Julia Wise wanted to ban him, whereas I was hoping for more options, but it seems like other reports came in a few weeks ago so he's banned now), but that can change.
I consider most of EA quite respectful, though I caught sexual harassment at least once at EAG (which I don't think was reported, since the woman in question called it out quickly and the man apologized). CEA handles reports well, though I've only reported Robert.
My complaint lies with the rationalist culture and certain parts of the rationalist community much, much more than CEA, since the lack of moderation leads to missing stairs feeling empowered. Overall, I think CEA did a decent job with my case at least, and I appreciate Julia Wise's help!
If they had more options for victims or if it was clear what is EA vs. rationalist community vs. adjacent communities, I think I would have reported everything far sooner. The structure really just isn't there to make you feel supported enough even if most people in EA are extremely supportive. I'm talking to Julia Wise about some ideas now on how to incentivize reporting before things snowball uncontrollably. There's much more context I'll include later in a unified statement with Robert, so stay tuned!
FYI: IIRC/IIUC, Bryk is the one who made up the thing about my having a harem of submissive mathematicians whom I called my "math pets". This is false; people sufficiently connected within the community will know that it is false, not least since it'd be widely known and I wouldn't have denied it if it were true. I am not sure what to do about it simply, if someone's own epistemic location is such that my statements there are unknowable to them as being true.
It is known to me that Bryk has gone on repeating the "math pets" allegation, including to journalists, long after it should've been clear to her that it was not true.
My own understanding of proper procedure subsequent to this would be to treat Bryk as somebody having made a known false allegation, especially since I don't know of any corresponding later-verified/known-true allegations that she was first to bring forth; and that this implies we ought to cross everything alleged by Bryk off any such lists, unless there's independent witnesses for it, in which case we can consider those witnesses and also reconsider the future degree to which Bryk ought to (not) be considered as an evidential source.
(If I am recalling correctly that Jax started the "math pets" thing.)
The article paints a disturbing picture of systematic abuse.
Sections of your comment like
come off as incredibly trivializing and is further evidence of the dismissive attitude toward these serious problems that the community prefers to downplay and ignore.
I should clarify that "particularly bad" should be "unusually bad", and by "unusually" I mean "unusual by the standards of human behavior in other professional/intellectual communities".
If someone writes an article about the murder epidemic in New York City, and someone else points out that the NYC murder rate is not at all unusual by U.S. standards, and that murder tends to be common throughout human society, is that a trivializing thing to say?
You can believe a lot of things at once:
I'm in the position of believing many things at once, and I remain unconvinced that EA and rationality are unusually bad communities to be in, if a person seeks community. But I am reading comments and trying to learn, and I think there are plenty of things EA and rationality could do better on this front.
I am encouraging you to try to exercise your empathetic muscles and understand the difference for a sexual assault victim to read a top comment that categorically condemns such actions, insisting that we need to do better as a community, compared to one that says “humans are gonna human”.
Your analogy does not share the same relevant features as in this case. We’re not a city, we’re a community. One that should try to be a welcoming space that takes one’s concerns seriously instead of dismissing them because they might not be above the base rate.
Hey, fenneko literally included:
And they closed with "I am..trying to learn, and I think there are plenty of things EA and rationality could do better on this front."
FYI that your comment reads as unfair, or bad-faith, or possibly even disingenuous.
It also reads to me as patronizing to women, expecting that they can't follow the nuance of the discussion and see empathy in kenneko's comment. It is clearly there. We can still expect that all our members engage in good faith. I'm a sexual assault victim (and of other types of sexual misconduct) and have reported EA-adjacent men who have done troubling things in the community, and I thought kenneko's comment (this one and the top level one) was great.
NOTE: I also believe you have misused the term sexual assault. We aren't just talking about sexual assault. We are talking about all types of sexual harrassment and misconduct. For example, I think only one instance mentioned in Time or Bloomberg was assault. I really am hoping people can keep terminology straight, because the classifications exist for reasons.
Furthermore, if a community wants to command billions of dollars and exert major influence on one of the world's most important industries, it is both totally predictable and appropriate that society will scrutinize that community more rigorously and hold it to a higher standard than a group of "NPCs".
edit: typo
That's reasonable. But :