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Sanjay34
30
18

At a time when the community has gone through so much, it's hard to hear this.

I confess there's a part of me which wants to disengage from this. I'm tired of worrying about whether EA culture has a problem with fraud, racism, or other things that I find offensive. 

But I shouldn't disengage.

Just because my emotional energies have been zapped by previous dramas, it doesn't reduce the suffering experienced by victims of sexual abuse.

So first I'm going to say something which I think is obvious and uncontroversial to everyone:

Sexual abuse and harassment are wrong, and should not happen.

Secondly, I hereby take this pledge:

---

A pledge of solidarity to those who have suffered from sexual harassment or abuse

If you are upset or suffering because you have been abused or harassed, and you disclose this to me, I pledge to do the following:

  • I will listen and provide you with emotional support -- if you're upset, your distress will be my first priority at the outset.
  • I will not ask you questions to try to work out whether you are telling the truth. I would much rather trust and provide emotional support to someone who later turns out to have been lying than to question -- even subtly -- the legitimacy of someone who has suffered sexual abuse.
  • I will support you to work out the most appropriate next steps. I recognise that choices about your next steps may be complex, and I will not try to rob you of agency as you work out the best way forward.

---

In the spirit of the second bullet point of my pledge, I haven't done any work to assess the truth or otherwise of the claims in this article. And I didn't need to in order to feel disturbed by it.

I also don't claim to be the best standard-bearer of opposing sexual abuse and harrassment -- I don't consider myself one of the top EA leaders, and I have no direct experience of having been a victim of sexual abuse. I'm simply one person (out of many, I believe) who think that EA should be deeply opposed to sexual abuse and harassment.

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skyblue20-2
0
1

Skepticism over this kind of pledge as a mechanism for making things better. 


I am glad you posted this and it got so many agree votes.

It is concerning if people do not understand how this kind of pledge makes things better by:

1. Making people more likely to report incidents of harassment or abuse

2. Reinforcing that this community is a space that wants to be safe and welcoming to women.

This makes me feel like EAs may need much more sensitivity/harassment/discrimination/etc. training than non-EAs do. And highlights the need for stricter workplace dating and sexual harassment policies in EA orgs.

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1
skyblue20
I did not see how this in any way implies "I do not support the appropriate authorities from investigating whether the report is a lie" which is the only problematic scenario here. Not immediately grilling the victim on the legitimacy of their claim when they are opening up to you about a traumatic event and instead providing emotional support makes a lot of sense to me. The cost to me of providing emotional support to a non-victim is low and the cost of immediately being challenged on truthfulness to a real victim is very high.
2
keller_scholl
I think there are different interpretations that people can take of what it implies. One reading is that the pledge specifies how the pledger responds in the moment, with the person in pain. Another reading would talk about how they reacted through the entire resulting community process. I parsed it as the former, but what you're describing seems to be closer to the second.
See in context
by whistleblower9
3 min read 459

267

CommunityBuilding effective altruismCEA Community Health and Special Projects TeamCriticism of the effective altruism communityDiversity and inclusion
Frontpage
This is a linkpost for https://time.com/6252617/effective-altruism-sexual-harassment/

Link-post for the article "Effective Altruism Promises to Do Good Better. These Women Say It Has a Toxic Culture Of Sexual Harassment and Abuse"

A few quotes:

Three times in one year, she says, men at informal EA gatherings tried to convince [Keerthana Gopalakrishnan] to join these so-called “polycules.” When Gopalakrishnan said she wasn’t interested, she recalls, they would “shame” her or try to pressure her, casting monogamy as a lifestyle governed by jealousy, and polyamory as a more enlightened and rational approach.

After a particularly troubling incident of sexual harassment, Gopalakrishnan wrote a post on an online forum for EAs in Nov. 2022. While she declined to publicly describe details of the incident, she argued that EA’s culture was hostile toward women. “It puts your safety at risk,” she wrote, adding that most of the access to funding and opportunities within the movement was controlled by men. Gopalakrishnan was alarmed at some of the responses. One commenter wrote that her post was “bigoted” against polyamorous people. Another said it would “pollute the epistemic environment,” and argued it was “net-negative for solving the problem.”

 

This story is based on interviews with more than 30 current and former effective altruists and people who live among them. Many of the women spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid personal or professional reprisals, citing the small number of people and organizations within EA that control plum jobs and opportunities.

...

Many of them asked that their alleged abusers not be named and that TIME shield their identities to avoid retaliation.

 

One recalled being “groomed” by a powerful man nearly twice her age who argued that “pedophilic relationships” were both perfectly natural and highly educational. Another told TIME a much older EA recruited her to join his polyamorous relationship while she was still in college. A third described an unsettling experience with an influential figure in EA whose role included picking out promising students and funneling them towards highly coveted jobs. After that leader arranged for her to be flown to the U.K. for a job interview, she recalls being surprised to discover that she was expected to stay in his home, not a hotel. When she arrived, she says, “he told me he needed to masturbate before seeing me.”

 

The women who spoke to TIME counter that the problem is particularly acute in EA. The movement’s high-minded goals can create a moral shield, they say, allowing members to present themselves as altruists committed to saving humanity regardless of how they treat the people around them. “It’s this white knight savior complex,” says Sonia Joseph, a former EA who has since moved away from the movement partially because of its treatment of women. “Like: we are better than others because we are more rational or more reasonable or more thoughtful.” The movement “has a veneer of very logical, rigorous do-gooderism,” she continues. “But it’s misogyny encoded into math.”

 

Several of the women who spoke to TIME said that EA’s polyamorous subculture was a key reason why the community had become a hostile environment for women. One woman told TIME she began dating a man who had held significant roles at two EA-aligned organizations while she was still an undergraduate. They met when he was speaking at an EA-affiliated conference, and he invited her out to dinner after she was one of the only students to get his math and probability questions right. He asked how old she was, she recalls, then quickly suggested she join his polyamorous relationship. Shortly after agreeing to date him, “He told me that ‘I could sleep with you on Monday,’ but on Tuesday I’m with this other girl,” she says. “It was this way of being a f—boy but having the moral high ground,” she added. “It’s not a hookup, it’s a poly relationship.” The woman began to feel “like I was being sucked into a cult,” she says.

Standard disclaimers apply about 'not all polyamory' - there are plenty of perfectly healthy polyamorous relationships out there - but its implementation in EA seems to play a significant role in many of the examples cited.

Perhaps more worrying is the fact that the women would only speak under conditions of anonymity due to EA's centralisation of power over funding and employment in a few (overwhelmingly male) hands.

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Julia_Wise🔸455
136
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I’m responding on behalf of the community health team at the Centre for Effective Altruism. We work to prevent and address problems in the community, including sexual misconduct.

I find the piece doesn’t accurately convey how my team, or the EA community more broadly, reacts to this sort of behavior.

We work to address harmful behavior, including sexual misconduct, because we think it’s so important that this community has a good culture where people can do their best work without harassment or other mistreatment. Ignoring problems or sweeping them under the rug would be terrible for people in the community, EA’s culture, and our ability to do good in the world.

My team didn’t have a chance to explain the actions we’ve already taken on the incidents described in this piece. The incidents described here include:

  • Ones where we already took action years ago, like banning the accused from our spaces
  • Ones where we offered to help address the situation and the person affected didn’t answer
  • Ones we weren’t aware of

We’ll be going through the piece to see if there are any situations we might be able to address further, but in most of them there’s not enough information to do so. If you ... (read more)

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rachelAF158
35
2

There's a lot of discussion here about why things don't get reported to the community health team, and what they're responsible for, so I wanted to add my own bit of anecdata.

I'm a woman who has been closely involved with a particularly gender-imbalanced portion of EA for 7 years, who has personally experienced and secondhand heard about many issues around gender dynamics, and who has never reported anything to the community health team (despite several suggestions from friends to). Now I'm considering why.

Upon reflection, here are a few reasons:

  1. Early on, some of it was naiveté. I experienced occasional inappropriate comments or situations from senior male researchers when I was a teenager, but assumed that they could never be interested in me because of the age and experience gap. At the time I thought that I must be misinterpreting the situation, and only see it the way I do now with the benefit of experience and hindsight. (I never felt unsafe, and if I had, would have reported it or left.)

  2. Often, the behavior felt plausibly deniable. "Is this person asking me to meet at a coffeeshop to discuss research or to hit on me? How about meeting at a bar? Going for a walk on the be

... (read more)
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agunning23
5
0

In my personal experience a good deal of sexual assault/harassment etc. goes unreported (especially at universities) because especially if you personally know the perpetrator as a friend or romantic partner you often have pretty complicated feelings about escalating things.

I think making clear the default outcome of reporting is "you have a conversation with someone a good deal more experience than you about what steps tend to be taken in these cases and if they've heard anything else and you get agency around the result" rather than "you set in motion a process against this person you have a very hazy understanding of" helps a lot. (the health team's policy around confidentiality seems good for this reason).

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Luke Freeman 🔸14
1
0

Thank you for sharing your experience here. I’m really sorry to hear about these gender dynamics and how it’s affected you personally, your motivation and your career.

Do you have any suggested actions you’d like to see to help prevent this being repeated?

(I imagine organisations having policies about appropriate professional conduct and actively working on DEI would help to some extent with these issues. But I’m not sure what specifically, how much it’d help, and if there’s other things that you implied that I missed.)

—

Also, on a separate note, my understanding is that the community health team would like to hear about general experiences like this (even if you don’t want to “report” anything/anyone specifically and want any action taken) as they often provide advice to organisations/groups/community spaces/write forum posts about ways of improving the health of the community more generally and hearing things like this would help to put good policies in place and spread ideas around appropriate conduct etc.

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Julia_Wise🔸121
33
0

To give a little more detail about what I think gave wrong impressions - 

Last year as part of a longer piece about how the community health team approaches problems, I wrote a list of factors that need to be balanced against each other. One that’s caused confusion is “Give people a second or third chance; adjust when people have changed and improved.” I meant situations like “someone has made some inappropriate comments and gotten feedback about it,” not something like assault. I’m adding a note to the original piece clarifying.

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Ben Stewart96
18
1

What proportion of the incidents described was the team unaware of?

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titotal25
13
3

I think this question is very important. There must be a reason why people are not reporting bad behaviour to the health team. Either they don't know what the team does, or they know what it's meant to do, but don't trust it. Either case points to room for improvement, either in the team or in the wider EA community. 

As an example: None of the  newcomer resources seem to mention the community health team at all. It seems possible that a significant proportion of people that are new or more casually involved are unaware of it's existence. Given that predatory behaviour is often focused on newcomers and inexperienced members, this seems like a clear oversight. 

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Jalen_Lyle-Holmes
I think this is a good point (that lots of people especially newcomers might not be aware of the community health team's role when they might need it). I've been engaging with EA a lot online since maybe 2015, and in person since 2018, and I was aware of the community health team for a while but I wasn't aware that it played this particular role of investigating claims and taking action e.g. banning people, until I think last year. 
Peter Wildeford56
40
3

Thanks Julia. While I do not want to imply the problem is solved, I think our community is a lot better due to your team's work, and I deeply appreciate that. Having a thoughtful and proactive team working on this seems very helpful for keeping our movement healthy.

I do think, insofar as is possible, some more transparency and specifics (especially on this one) could be very reassuring to myself and the community.

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None of them along the line Know what any of it is worth102
59
13

I'm worried and skeptical about negative views toward the community health team and Julia Wise.

My view is informed by the absence of clear objective mistakes described by anyone. It also seems very easy and rewarding to criticize them[1].

I'm increasingly concerned about the dynamic over the last few months where CEA and the Community Health team constantly acts as a lightning rod for problems they have little control over. This dynamic has always existed, but it has become more severe post-SBF. 

This seems dysfunctional and costly to good talent at CEA. It is an even deeper issue because these seem to be one of the few people trying to take ownership and help EA publicly right now. 

I'm not sure what happens if Julia Wise and co. stop. 

  1. ^

    The Guzey incident is one example where a detractor seems excessive toward Wise. I share Will Bradshaw's view that this is both minor and harmless, although I respect and would be interested in Nuno's dissenting view. 

    (Alexey Guzey wrote a book chapter, that he would be releasing publicly, that was critical of MacAskill's content in DGB, to Julia Wise. Wise sent the chapter to MacAskill, which Guzey asked her not to do. It's unclea

... (read more)
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Matt Goodman
I think this might be partly due to the complex structure (and subsequent re-structure) of CEA. 'CEA' used to be a dual name for both a legal entity and the community building organisation.  I think this led me in the past to having a vague idea of what 'CEA' was, and thinking that the public-facing  Community Health Team was representing all of it and responsible for more than they were. This is kind of a separate issue though, here I'd just like to say I'm grateful for the work the Community Health Team does, and don't want to distract from the discussion of the accusations made here.
Brennan W.29
4
1

I believe the TIME article has been updated since its original publication to reflect your response. If you have the chance, would you be able to comment on the updated version?

Excerpt taken as of 18:30 PST 3 Feb 2023:

"In an email following the publication of this article, Wise elaborated. “We’re horrified by the allegations made in this article. A core part of our work is addressing harmful behavior, because we think it’s essential that this community has a good culture where people can do their best work without harassment or other mistreatment,” Wise wrote to TIME. “The incidents described in this article include cases where we already took action, like banning the accused from our spaces. For cases we were not aware of, we will investigate and take appropriate action to address the problem.”"

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agunning10
4
0

I suspect a very relevant factor influencing whether people are willing to come forward and talk to the team  is "how alienated/ accepted do they feel by EA culture in general", given that you come across as very much of that culture; for me this is something that helps a lot compared to say your average HR dept?

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0
Sick_of_this
From the Time article:  How can any victim of sexual harassment feel comfortable approaching you with any concerns given these comments?
Jeff Kaufman 🔸91
30
2

These are quotations from a table that are intended to illustrate "difficult tradeoffs". Does seeing them in context change your view at all?

(Disclosure: married to Wise)

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Lukas_Gloor17
16
8

I think the "or third chance" could be phrased differently. Sure, in specific circumstances, that might be appropriate, but it shouldn't sound like a general rule.  Second chances should suffice. People rarely change.

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸42
19
1

In the article it isn't presented as a general rule or suitable for all situations, though? It's presented in the table of things they're trying to balance as the opposite of "Don’t try to be a rehabilitation space - that’s not a good use of the EA community", which is also not appropriate in all circumstances.

(Also, at the time this was posted no one pushed back on this, and the top comment is Nuno's "I appreciate the section on tradeoffs, and I think it makes me more likely to trust the community health team.")

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Lukas_Gloor14
11
1

Okay, that seems right. In the article, it's worded like this: 

Give people a second or third chance; adjust when people have changed and improved

The second part of the sentence adds some nuance, as does the contrast table.

Still, I remember feeling a bit weird about the wording even when that article came out, but I didn't comment. (For me, the phrase "third chance" evokes the picture of the person giving the third chance being naive.) (Edit: esp. when it's presented as though this is a somewhat common thing, giving people third chances in "evidence this person is a bad actor" contexts.) 

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NunoSempere30
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Because at face value it makes sense to tailor the severity of the countermeasure to the severity of the offense, and I imagine that Wise was commenting on incidents order of magnitude less severe than the ones mentioned in the article.

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How can situations with false accusations be caught and handled, together with real sexual misconduct? 
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MathiasKB🔸277
113
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This was incredibly upsetting for me to read. This is the first time I've ever felt ashamed to be associated with EA. I apologize for the tone of the rest of the comment, can delete it if it is unproductive, but I feel a need to vent.

One thing I would like to understand better is to what extent this is a bay area issue versus EA in general. My impression is that a disproportionate fraction of abuse happens in the bay. If this suspicion is true, I don't know how to put this politely, but I'd really appreciate it if the bay area could get its shit together.

In my spare time I do community building in Denmark. I will be doing a workshop for the Danish academy of talented highschool students in April. How do you imagine the academy organizers will feel seeing this in TIME magazine?

What should I tell them? "I promise this is not an issue in our local community"?

I've been extremely excited to prepare this event. I would get to teach Denmark's brightest high schoolers about hierarchies of evidence, help them conduct their own cost-effectiveness analyses, and hopefully inspire a new generation to take action to make the world a better place.

Now I have to worry about whether it would be more appropriate to send the organizers a heads up informing them about the article and give them a chance to reconsider working with us.

I frankly feel unequipped to deal with something like this.

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thebluelagoon157
38
4

A response to why a lot of the abuse happens  in the Bay Area:

"I am one of the people in the Time Mag article about sexual violence in EA. In the video below I clarify some points about why the Bay Area is the epicenter of so many coercive dynamics, including the hacker house culture, which are like frat houses backed by billions in capital, but without oversight of HR departments or parent institutions. This frat house/psychedelic/male culture, where a lot of professional networking happens, creates invisible glass ceilings for women."

tweet: https://twitter.com/soniajoseph_/status/1622002995020849152

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Peter Wildeford73
34
5

Hi! I listened to your entire video. It was very brave and commendable. I really hope you've started something that will help get EA and the Bay Area rationalist scene into a much healthier and more impactful place. I think your analysis of the problem is very sharp. Thank you for coming forward and doing what you did.

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4
Akash Kulgod
Thanks for the video,  I found it very helpful. If you don't mind me asking, what does the 'psychedelic' in your description point towards? I don't think you mention it in the video and I'm curious as I was part of some "psychedelic communities" and wonder what dynamics I may not have been paying attention to.
thebluelagoon15
7
0

Thanks for these responses, I'm glad the video was helpful!

The psychedelic use is a great point-- I didn't go into it as much as I should have.

Casual psychedelic use is very much part of tech Bay culture. When a woman is on psychedelics, she often cannot consent to sexual activity because she does not have proper awareness of her environment or what is happening. The casual psychedelic use creates situations where date rape is more likely to happen. 

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temporalis23
12
29

What should I tell them? "I promise this is not an issue in our local community"?

I've been extremely excited to prepare this event. I would get to teach Denmark's brightest high schoolers about hierarchies of evidence, help them conduct their own cost-effectiveness analyses, and hopefully inspire a new generation to take action to make the world a better place.

Now I have to worry about whether it would be more appropriate to send the organizers a heads up informing them about the article and give them a chance to reconsider working with us.

I frankly feel unequipped to deal with something like this.

You're venting, but I'll try to answer helpfully. The right thing to say is surely:

  • Sexual assault is very bad.
  • If anyone is aware of any specific incident, they should contact the CEA team or their local law enforcement.
  • We try to prevent it, and expel those who commit it (including some of the people in this story).
  • It occurs in every community.
  • There is little reason to think the EA community in general is much more or less problematic here than other movements (unless you think polyamory and drugs are risk factors).
  • It is impossible for any large decentralized movement to reduce the rate to
... (read more)
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Peter Wildeford60
33
4

There is little reason to think the EA community in general is much more or less problematic here than other movements (unless you think polyamory and drugs are risk factors).

There are other risk factors, though. Drug use definitely. I don't think polyamory is a risk factor, but a relative lack of committed relationships in EA definitely is one (makes for more propositioning in general).

As well as being younger-skewed and male-skewed - that increases risk.

Encouraging a lot of people to start their own projects and get funded directly by someone in the community, as opposed to working at a larger org, increases risk.

Group housing and sharing accommodation, while not inherently bad, definitely increases risk.

In general, the intense mixing of personal and professional boundaries is an even more important risk factor, especially in combination with the other factors.

A lot of these factors are less present in other communities.

(To be clear, a lot of these risks also can have offsetting benefits.)

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temporalis
This seems like a very strange view? Polyamory allows for more propositioning in general because even people in committed relationships can proposition people.
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Peter Wildeford
I guess I mean to say "I don't think polyamory is a risk factor, but more open / single relationship status in EA definitely is one". Like if you have a polyamory relationship set that you're happy with and it's closed and you don't proposition anyone to add, that would have the same level of security as a married non-poly couple.
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temporalis
Probably worth tabooing 'poly' here. As far as I can tell, basically every critic of poly is referring to relationships that are at open to new participants, and every defender of poly wants to defend those relationships also. If you want you can come up with a new definition: open_poly: a person in a relationship with someone else who is still open to more relationships. The debate then becomes whether it is fine to be open_poly, or if there are significant costs and hence open_poly people should cease to be open. I think basically every critic of poly would be satisfied if the existing relationships continued but ceased accepting new members. And based on your comment it seems like you basically think that open_poly does bring significant incremental risk vs a counterfactual of non-open.
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Peter Wildeford
What I'm getting at is the risk factor comes from open anything, regardless of whether it is poly or mono. Agree that tabooing is helpful here. (Though to be clear I'm obviously not suggesting people stop trying to find romantic partners. Just like I'm not asking people to stop being male or young. Risk factors are risk factors even if they're out of our control or have clear benefits.)
MathiasKB🔸46
40
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This is absolutely not how I'm going to go about dealing with it.

If I were on their side and somebody at any point responded to my concerns with a trivializing reminder that rape and abuse, in fact, happens in every community, I would nope out immediately.

I appreciate that this comment is trying to be helpful, but I feel a responsibility to point out that this is outright harmful advice.

EDIT: Sorry, I phrased myself with unnecessary meanness. To be clear the reason this, in my opinion, is poor advice is not because the arguments themselves are wrong. The reason is that what matters in good communication is to signal an understanding of the counterpart's concerns, and even if these arguments are right they send the wrong signal.

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temporalis39
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Either you believe these problems are much more common in the EA community than other communities and this poses a risk to the kids or you don't.

If you do believe we are much worse than average, and this would put the kids at risk, asking how you should do movement building to highschoolers is probably the wrong question. You just shouldn't do that movement building.

Probably however you don't believe that the EA movement is much worse than average, (because there is basically no evidence for this), and don't believe that your community building would actually put the kids in any significant danger. If this is the case, this is the crux of the matter. It's important to acknowledge their concerns and show you're not being dismissive, both as a matter of politeness and honesty and as a rhetorical matter. That was the purpose of the first bullet points. But you also need to explain the actual reason for your view. They are intelligent people capable of making their own decisions in light of the evidence, and they deserve the right to evaluate the facts and come to their own conclusions. Relative frequency estimates aren't 'trivializing', they are the most important fact for their decision making.

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MathiasKB🔸38
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I think you are right and I overreacted.

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temporalis
No worries comrade, glad to help.
Dawn Drescher17
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Yeah… I’d feel completely overwhelmed if I had to do the interpersonal crisis management that you have to do there on top of the normal preparations. There are people in the community who are good at community health–related crisis management though. Maybe someone (me?) could put together a rolodex of community health contractors who could help out in such situations, either paid by CEA or by the teams they are helping?

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okaycomputer
I am an outsider to this community. You are still doing good things. You can change the affiliation. Wipe "Effective Altruism" away. At the end of the day, your good work is being co-opted. Your gut feelings are real, and you should react appropriately.
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timunderwood
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Catherine Low🔸218
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We (the Community Health team at CEA) would like to share some more information about the cases in the TIME article, and our previous knowledge of these cases. We’ve put these comments in the approximate order that they appear in the TIME article. 

 

Re: Gopalakrishnan’s experiences

We read her post with concern.  We saw quite a few supportive messages from community members, and we also tried to offer support. Our team also reached out to Gopalakrishnan in a direct message to ask if she was interested in sharing more information with us about the specific incidents. 

 

Re: The man who

  1. Expressed opinions about “pedophilic relationships”
  2. “Another woman, who dated the same man several years earlier in a polyamorous relationship, alleges that he had once attempted to put his penis in her mouth while she was sleeping.” 

We don’t know this person’s identity for sure, but one of these accounts resembles a previous public accusation made against a person who used to be involved in the rationality community. He has been banned from CEA events for almost 5 years, and we understand he has been banned from some other EA spaces. He has been a critic of the EA movemen... (read more)

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Keerthana Gopalakrishnan29
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Hi Catherine, thank you for clarifying what measures were taken regarding each instance reported in the TIME article and for directly addressing each point.

Regarding my previous post, here's more context from a previous discussion on why I haven't yet involved CEA's Health team: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sD4kdobiRaBpxcL8M/what-happened-to-the-women-and-effective-altruism-post?commentId=MxJqDoNTqLxkPthzy I'll probably share more thoughts, especially regarding why I spoke to TIME, women-friendly culture updates a movement can take and more perspectives when time permits me to think more clearly about this topic and write them down. Obviously, SA is a high stress discussion; a lot of context is lost in translation and in medium of communication; people can misrepresent/misinterpret; people also have jobs and other commitments; but I'm hoping we will have more clarity over time/ update to a better state overall as a society given enough time. 

Meanwhile, I'd like more clarification on one matter. I'm one of those people who connected Charlotte, the author of the TIME article with the curious case of the Aurora Quinn Elmore, an unofficial SA mediator who interviews p... (read more)

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Catherine Low🔸25
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Thanks Keerthana. I'm afraid I don't know anything about CFAR's processes. It might be worth you reaching out to CFAR directly: contact@rationality.org.

I look forward to reading your 
> women-friendly culture updates a movement can take
If and when you choose to share. 

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AnonymousEAForumAccount14
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I understand that CEA doesn’t have any special insight into CFAR’s decision to use Aurora Quinn Elmore for mediation. But I’d guess CEA has quite a lot of information about CFAR including non-public info, and that other EAs could benefit from knowing at least the gist of this. If someone was considering attending CFAR programming (or working for CFAR) and asked the community health team if there were any concerns they should know about, what would you tell them? Has the community health team received complaints about CFAR aside from the Brent incident, and if so, how many? Does the community health team have any concerns about CFAR soliciting attendees via the EA Forum? 

CFAR’s use of Aurora for mediation is part of a pattern of highly questionable policies and decision-making. I’m sure CEA is aware of the utter debacle around CFAR's mistakes regarding Brent and their failure to safeguard a minor (among other mistakes) in that situation. There has been discussion of other issues as well, not all related to sexuality, but many related to troubling power dynamics. As one EA put it : 

CFAR's track record includes a litany of awful mistakes re. welfare and safeguarding where ea

... (read more)
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Anthony Repetto
It's a bad sign that you were being downvoted! I gave you my upvote!
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AnonymousEAForumAccount
Thanks Anthony, I appreciate the support! Despite any downvotes (which I anticipated), I think this is an important issue and I hope the community health team responds. And FWIW I'm open to the idea that their response could make me feel less concerned about CFAR than I currently do. 
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Keerthana Gopalakrishnan
+1 :)
Rochelle Shen215
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I am one of the people mentioned in the article. I'm genuinely happy with the level of compassion and concern voiced in most of the comments on this article. Yes, while a lot of the comments are clearly concerned that this is a hard and difficult issue to tackle, I’m appreciative of the genuine desire of many people to do the right thing here. It seems that at least some of the EA community has a drive towards addressing the issue and improving from it rather than burying the issue as I had feared.

 

A couple of points, my spontaneous takeaways upon reading the article and the comments:
 

  • This article covers bad actors in the EA space, and how hard it is to protect the community from them. This doesn't mean that all of EA is toxic, but rather the article is bringing to light the fact that bad actors have been tolerated and even defended in the community to the detriment of their victims. I'm sensing from the comments that non-Bay Area EA may have experienced less of this phenomenon. If you read this article and are absolutely shocked and disgusted, then I think you experienced a different selection of EA than I have. I know many of my peers will read this article and feel unc
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Rochelle Shen47
21
7

MY RECOMMENDATIONS

 

Given my experiences, I have a few insights that may help guide good future practices.

My recommendation here is to create systems of checks and balances that do not allow for conflicts of interest to enable biased decisions. I think that expecting a person in a position of power to make the correct judicial decision regarding a conflict with people they are close with is an incredibly difficult ask, and I am not surprised that cases are often handled poorly or to the dissatisfaction of the community. 

 

  • Create some kind of educational content around how to be a good ally to victims and how to identify bad situations so people can intervene. As a bystander, if you see a peer piling drinks onto the youngest girl at the party with the intent to take her upstairs, it would be nice to intervene rather than ignore the intended consequences. If a victim comes to you following a traumatic event, it would be nice if you’ll be compassionate and understand that they often intentionally won’t tell you what happened out of pain or shame, and it would be fantastic if you patiently wait to hear their story rather than gather evidence out of the omissions to build a
... (read more)
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Lorenzo Buonanno🔸
I've removed the name of a user from the above comment after a request to the mod team, in light of our new policies on revealing personal information on the Forum
Holly Elmore ⏸️ 🔸28
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Now that I realize who you are and which house this was-- do you think it's fair to describe that house as an EA house? 

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Rochelle Shen17
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You are absolutely right that it was not an EA house. Only 30-50% of the house was EA-affiliated at any point, and it is noted as so in Time. It was primarily the EA members who were involved with the harassment I experienced. Moreover, EA's who I didn't even know, including the moderator,  who did not live in the house became involved as the situation escalated. I am happy to share more details offline to prove that this absolutely was an EA related situation, but I am avoiding disclosing the whole story out of courtesy to individuals and in hopes that we can have a productive conversation about how to improve the toxic culture that produced these negative experiences.

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agunning18
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1

yeah from my experience there are at least two clusters of incidents of

  • people who talk about dark secret psychological/sociological hacks the normies don't want you to know (these people tend to lean more rationalisty and are going to be an extremely tiny percentage of people who comment on this forum)
  • (usually much less severe) possibly autistic people who are socially oblivious of how they are throwing their weight around but well meaning

i think there's probably quite a lot of value in warning people to be cautious around people who seem like they're in the first cluster (and I'd mostly associate poly/kink types with the second)

if you are mostly talking about the first cluster I think we are to a very real extent talking past each other -- especially in the bay area ea/rat circles are extremely ideologically heterogeneous

 


 

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David Johnston
Are such threats believable? Is there a broader culture where people feel that they’re constantly under evaluation such that personal decisions like this are plausibly taken into account for some career opportunities, or is this something that arises mainly where the career opportunities are within someone’s personal fiefdom?
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Rebecca
My understanding is that the original “don’t unfairly harm someone’s reputation”, “don’t make men feel that a slip-up or distorted accusation will ruin their life ” and “give people a second or third chance" comments were not in any way referring to sexual assault allegations. (see Julia's comment here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JCyX29F77Jak5gbwq/ea-sexual-harassment-and-abuse?commentId=tFxjdj34q8xoaWut3).
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pseudonym
When I click your link it says "comment not found". That being said, it is confusing to suggest that these criteria are nothing to do with sexual assault allegations when the appendix contains at least three cases related to sexual misconduct, and potentially more, depending on whether you read between the line (e.g. hosting couchsurfers).
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Rebecca
Link should work now
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1[comment deleted]
Marzhin202
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Would someone from CEA be able to comment on this incident?

'A third described an unsettling experience with an influential figure in EA whose role included picking out promising students and funneling them towards highly coveted jobs. After that leader arranged for her to be flown to the U.K. for a job interview, she recalls being surprised to discover that she was expected to stay in his home, not a hotel. When she arrived, she says, “he told me he needed to masturbate before seeing me.”'

Was this 'influential figure in EA' reported to Community Health, and if so, what were the consequences? 

[Caveat: Assuming this is an influential EA, not a figure who has influence in EA but wouldn't see themselves as part of the community.]

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Peter Wildeford75
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I also found this incredibly alarming and would be very keen to hear more about this.

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Julia_Wise🔸70
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The woman did bring this concern to us. I don't want to share details that would break her privacy, but I did my best to follow her wishes as far as how the matter was handled.  My post on power dynamics was informed by that situation.

Looking back at the situation, I’m not sure about some aspects of how I handled it. We’re taking a renewed look at possible steps to take here.

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Peter Wildeford112
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Thanks. Is this person still active in the EA community? Does this person still have a role in "picking out promising students and funneling them towards highly coveted jobs"?

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Fermi–Dirac Distribution38
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Seconding Peter Wildeford's questions.

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Simon_M32
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Just bumping this in case you've forgotten. At the moment there only seem to be two possibities: 1/ you forgot about this comment or 2/ the person does still have a role "picking out promising students" as Peter asked. I'm currently assuming it's 2, and I imagine other people are too.

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ChanaMessinger45
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We are working actively on this, but it is going to take more time. As a general point (not trying to comment on this situation in particular), those are not the only two possibilities, and I think it's really crucial to be able to hold on to that in contexts where there's issues of legality, confidentiality and lots of imperfect information flow.

Edit note: I at first had "local point" instead of "general point", which I meant in a mathy way, like the local logic of the situation point rather than speaking to any of the context, but looking back I don't think that was very clear so I've edited to clarify my meaning.

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Peter Wildeford39
11
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Hey, thanks for the response. I think simply acknowledging my message and telling me you are working on it is a great first step, and I really appreciate that. Saying "We're looking into this, hold on for a few weeks" is actually genuinely helpful.

I also recognize that you and the Community Health team have a very difficult job even under the best of circumstances, so I have a lot of sympathy for this being very hard.

So I apologize though that my role here still has to be pushing you for more information, since I run an organization with multiple concerned staff members (including myself). Like you, I am also under a lot of pressure here, especially given it is an unusually tense time.

So to be clear, I am not looking to learn the identity of the person. Though I'd love to know who it was, I understand it may just not be possible to know. I get that. I don't even really need details. But I would really love to hear about (A) whether this person is still in the movement and (B) whether they still have a role that allows them 1-1 contact with a lot of young women. I don't particularly need any details, though I guess an (A) Yes (B) Yes answer would definitely make me want more details. Also given the lack of response, you must understand that imaginations naturally run rampant to fill the gaps in negative ways, as much as we might want to tamper them.

Thank you again for all your work.

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ChanaMessinger
I totally understand how you're seeing your role and why you're pushing here. I'm really sorry, I can't answer questions right now, but really hope to be able to next week.
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Peter Wildeford
Thanks Chana. I'm glad we can both see each other's perspectives. I look forward to hearing more next week. Committing to a response and a rough timeline is already very helpful.
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ChanaMessinger
Just to be clear so I don't look better than I deserve now (and possibly worse in some future timelines), the "hope" is operative there; I wish I could make a firm commitment, but I can't. But it gives us a starting point that we can come back to if needed.
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ChanaMessinger
Hi Peter - these posts (from Owen and from the UK boards) + comments from me and Julia on the latter have just gone up that might have the information and comments you're looking for.
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Peter Wildeford
Thank you. I am still considerably unhappy with how this situation was handled but I accept Julia's apology and I am glad to see this did come to some sort of resolution. I'm especially glad to see an independent investigation into how this was handled.
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Jason
I imagine not many people would meet the description of the person , so I think it's plausible that publicly providing further information of that sort would allow for the person's identification -- despite what I understand to be the harassment survivor's request that the person not be publicly identified.
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Peter Wildeford
I don't need any description of the person. I just want to know in broad strokes what the risk level is, so I can advise my organization accordingly. Hence the two-part yes/no questions.
Jason26
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I'm saying that Time gave a description that likely narrowed down the list to a few people. Let's say there were five to ten people it could reasonably apply to. If CH told you the person is no longer in EA, or is in EA but no longer performing that role, you could probably identify the person by looking into what those five to ten were up to nowadays. Even if there were more candidates, presumably you could significantly narrow the list with those answers.

Thus, if CH doesn't have permission from the survivor to answer those questions and had agreed to keep the person's identity confidential, answering them could breach that promise. They would need to go back to the survivor and ask permission to make additional disclosures.

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Simon_M
I know I'm probably being dense here, but would it be possible for you to share what the other possibilities are? Edit: I guess there's "The person doesn't have the role, but we are bound by some kind of confidentiality we agreed when removing them from post"
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ChanaMessinger
No, it's a reasonable question. I hope to be able to answer these questions better next week. I'm really sorry, I know that's not very helpful.
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Peter Wildeford
I don't see how confidentiality would prevent anyone from literally saying "The person doesn't have the role, but we are bound by some kind of confidentiality we agreed when removing them from post", which would actually be a reassuring thing to hear.
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ChanaMessinger
Hi Simon -  Two posts (from Owen and from the UK boards) + comments from me and Julia on the latter have just gone up that might have the updates you're looking for.
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Simon_M
Peter Brietbart29
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Agreed. There's a lot of harrowing claims in the piece, but this one had me go "What the fuck" out loud. 

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ChanaMessinger
Hi Marzhin -  Two posts (from Owen and from the UK boards) + comments from me and Julia on the latter have just gone up that might have the information and comments you're looking for.
fenneko182
43
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From the article:

Another woman, who dated the same man several years earlier in a polyamorous relationship, alleges that he had once attempted to put his penis in her mouth while she was sleeping.

This rang a bell for me, and I was able to find an old Twitter thread (link removed on David's request) naming the man in question. At least, all the details seem to match.

I'm pretty sure that the man in question (name removed on David's request) has been banned from official EA events for many years. I remember an anecdote about him showing up without a ticket at EAG in the past and being asked to leave. As far as I know, the ban is because he has a long history of harassment with at least some assault mixed in. 

I don't know who introduced him to Sonia Joseph, but if she'd mentioned him to the people I know in EA,  I think the average reaction would have been "oh god, don't". I guess there are still bubbles I'm not a part of where he's seen as a "prominent man in the field", though I haven't heard anything about actual work from him in many years.

Anyway, while it sounds like many people mentioned in this article behaved very badly, it also seems possible that the incidents CEA k... (read more)

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Ben_West🔸52
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They are also is not a fan of EA,[1] which would make them an even odder example for this article, if that is indeed who they are referring to.

  1. ^

    (Previous version cited evidence; removing as per David's suggestion)

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fenneko
I've removed the name of the alleged person and the Twitter link as a result of David's comment. I'd recommend you do the same here.
Aptdell21
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And I hope that Aurora Quinn-Elmore, if this depiction of her is accurate, sees her mediation work dry up.

For what it's worth, prior to reading this article, I knew Aurora by reputation as someone who was aggressively feminist. I remember having a conversation with a [edit: conservative-leaning] woman at a party who told me something like: "I tried to have a discussion with Aurora about consent, and I wasn't able to get through to her. You might want to avoid kissing her or anything like that, to stay on the safe side."

Needless to say, this leaves me feeling fairly confused about what's actually going on.

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Henry Stanley 🔸36
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I guess I don't even really understand her relevance. Fully a third of the TIME article is about her mediation in an EA house, and makes her bad behaviour out to be emblematic of problems at the core of EA, but she's... just some random person, right?

From some online digging: she's listed as an attendee at EA Global 2016. She appeared on the Clearer Thinking podcast in 2021. She's never posted on the EA Forum or LessWrong, at least not under her own name that I can find. Her relationship with EA seems at the most to be very, very slight. Am I missing something about her relevance in this whole thing?

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ruthgrace27
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I have had a terrible mediation experience with her where she was friends with the other party and not friends with me. This tracks with the Time Mag reporting where she did a mediation while dating one of the parties. Do not let her mediate anything. I saw once that she specializes in or was looking to help survivors of sexual assault. Stay away from this person.

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸10
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This tracks with the Time Mag reporting where she did a mediation while dating one of the parties.

Maybe? The article has " Quinn-Elmore told TIME, adding that although she spoke to both parties and recommended a path forward, she didnt consider this to be an official mediation."

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orellanin
This comment is currently at -6 agreement votes. Does anyone want to explain to me why this is so?
ruthgrace10
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I think that sometimes when someone has a good experience with a mediator they doubt that it's possible for other people to have bad experiences. Also Aurora is actually on this forum and messaged me to ask if I wanted to do a session so she can listen to the impact she's had on me and I absolutely do not. If you mention that you had a negative experience with her, she might message you too, so watch out.

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[comment deleted]15
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Deleted by AdminTeam,
Reason: Requested account deletion
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JL16
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Good point. Removed, as requested. 

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fenneko
Per David's comment, I recommend removing this name and the linked spreadsheet.
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David Thorstad13
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I think the article was fairly clear: "TIME is not naming the man, like others in this story, due to the request of one or more women who made accusations against them, and who wanted to shield themselves from possible retaliation". 

Please respect the wishes of women who face serious threats of professional and personal harm and have chosen to take steps to protect their identities. 

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Habryka [Deactivated]124
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The accusations are public and have already received substantial exposure. TIME itself seems to be leveraging this request for confidentiality in order to paint an inaccurate picture of what is actually going on and also making it substantially harder for people to orient towards the actual potential sources of risk in the surrounding community. 

I don't currently see a strong argument for not linking to evidence that I was easily able to piece together publicly, and also like, probably the accused can also figure out. The cost here is really only born by the people who lack context who I feel like are being substantially mislead by the absence of information here. 

I'll by-default repost the links and guess at identity of the person in-question in 24 hours unless some forum admin objects or someone makes a decent counterargument.

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Peter Wildeford56
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I personally found seeing a copy of the name and information (e.g., tweet) prior to its removal very clarifying for this particular instance (though other alarming instances still remain unresolved to me, and I hope they are similar). I suppose having the details without the name is still helpful, but I'm unsure. I find myself very conflicted when thinking through the request not to share this information -- I want to be respectful, I don't want to harm any victims, and I don't want to be a unilateralist.

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Habryka [Deactivated]45
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Reposting the concrete accusations: One of the accusations here seems very likely to be about Michael Vassar and one of his previous partners, who accused Michael publicly a few years ago about "[putting] his penis in her mouth while she was sleeping". 

Michael used to be somewhat central in the EA/Rationality community, but has not been for around 5-6 years, and also has been banned from the vast majority of large EA and Rationality-adjacent events and gathering spaces. He also very explicitly does not identify as "an EA" and indeed would consider himself more as an active enemy of the movement.

(Note: This comment is not an endorsement of the accusation representing the situation accurately. I haven't looked into this, and I don't really have much of any additional evidence on what happened here.)

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Pablo42
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Michael used to be somewhat central in the EA/Rationality community

Vassar was pretty central in the rationality community (president of MIRI, co-founder of Metamed, active LessWrong contributor, etc.), but not in the EA community. I don't think he ever considered himself an EA, and was an early vocal critic of the movement.

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RyanCarey29
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Yes, Vassar was more than "somewhat central" in the rationality community. When I first visited SF in 2013 or so, he was one of the main figures in the rationalist tradition, especially as transmitted face-to-face. About as many people would recommend that you hear Michael talk as any other individual. Only 1 or 2 people were more notable. I remember hearing that in the earlier days, it was even more so, and that he was involved in travelling around to recruit the major early figures in the rationalist community from different parts of the US. 

Although I can't say for sure, I would also bet that there's dozens of unofficial rationalist events (and a few unofficial EA events) that he attended in the last five years, given that he was literally hanging out in the miri/cfar reception area for hours per week, right until the time he was officially banned.

Whereas he was orders of magnitude less present in EA world (although his presence at all is still bad).

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Pablo20
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Whoever disagreed-voted my comment, could you explain why (feel free to PM)? I never ask for downvote or disagree-vote explanations, but I think I know the history of EA pretty well and I'm fairly confident that what I say above is accurate, so your explanation will either reveal that you are mistaken or cause a significant and valuable update for me.

ETA: Noe that the above was written when the disagree-vote count was negative.

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Habryka [Deactivated]31
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Update: Someone on community health asked me to wait at least until Monday since they are trying to think it through and are somewhat under water right now. Seems reasonable to me, so I'll wait.

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Ben_West🔸Moderator Comment21
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Mod here.

  1. It's fine to link to information which is already easily publicly available. (I.e. don't link to a Facebook post from seven years ago that they accidentally set to be public, but it's okay to link to a very public Twitter thread.)
  2. We may ask you to rot13 encrypt names so that your comment is not discoverable via search engine while still being useful to people reading this post
  3. Don't share addresses, contact info, or other information that could be used to harass someone, and don’t incite harassment

See more on our norms here.

Note: this is a statement about what violates Forum norms, not what is ethical. There might be compelling reasons not to post this even if it doesn't technically violate our rules.

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Julia_Wise🔸23
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Community health request, different from the moderation decision on whether this is allowed:
The person whose Twitter thread has indicated elsewhere that she doesn't think the accused should be identified, because that could reveal information about other women in the piece. The community health team is requesting that people not link to her Twitter thread.

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Jason
If people are going to be allowed to use names in a post or comment pertaining to someone's private life, there should be at least a norm/rule of rot13'ing those names upfront rather than having them up in cleartext unless and until a mod notices it.
Ben_West🔸10
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Good thought, I very much prefer norms that don't require moderators to notice things.

It's hard to make a "bright line" rule here though. Maybe something like:

If you are sharing information about a specific individual which you believe they would not want associated with them, consider rot13ing the information so it's not discoverable via search engine

?

(This is offhand and coming just from me, I suspect other moderators might have different opinions.)

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Jason
Maybe the bright line rule is that if another Forum user asks you to rot13 a name in a discussion that even arguably implicates the principle of respect for the named person's private life, you are expected to do so and can appeal to the mods if you think that request was inappropriate. I think it's hard to avoid a unilateralist problem either way on this one until mods can weigh in. Since I think the harm of erroneous rot13 is low, I would prefer to give a temporary veto to a single user who thinks rot13 is necessary than allowing a single user to decide that cleartext is appropriate. I expect there would be few if any unreasonable rot13 requests, and thus very few appeals.
Lorenzo Buonanno🔸17
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I would personally prefer for you/us not to publicly write the name, to set a very clear precedent that we respect these kinds of requests (unless there is a very strong reason not to), and because the relevant information (i.e. the individual has been banned from EA events for years, and is not currently a fan of EA) has been written in other comments.

Written in a personal capacity, not as a mod

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Habryka [Deactivated]93
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I have seen confidentiality requests weaponized many time (indeed, it is one of the most common ways I've seen people end up in abusive situations), and as such I desperately don't want us to have a norm of always erring on the side of confidentiality and heavily punishing people who didn't even receive a direct request for confidentiality but are just sharing information they could figure out from publicly available information.

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Aptdell16
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I'll by-default post repost the links and guess at identity of the person in-question in 24 hours unless some forum admin objects or someone makes a decent counterargument.

I think the best counterargument would probably be something like: posting links and guessing the identity would deter other survivors from coming forwards. I feel like my model of what deters survivors from coming forwards is pretty bad, and I would want to read the literature on this (hopefully there is a high-quality literature?)

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RobertM65
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I'm pretty confused about what's going on here.  The person who made this accusation made it on Twitter under their real name using an unlocked account, and the accusation remains public to date.  Is the concern here that the accused did not previously know of the accusation against them, but would be made aware of it by this discussion?

 

(I'm not sure whether I'd want them named in absence of a request to the contrary, but I don't understand the implied threat model and think other explanations for the request are plausible, given the whole "public tweet" thing.)

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David Thorstad
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fenneko
That's a fair point — I've removed the name and Twitter link.
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David Thorstad
Thank you! :).
sapphire11
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The alleged perpetrator seems to be at least tolerated by some influential people. About Two years ago Anna Salomon wrote:

(1) X seems to me to precipitate psychotic episodes in his interlocutors surprisingly often, to come closer to advocating physical violence than I would like, and to have conversational patterns that often disorient his interlocutors and leave them believing different things while talking to X than they do a bit later.

(2) I don't have overall advice that people ought to avoid X, in spite of (1), because it now seems to me that he is trying to help himself and others toward truth, and I think we're bottlenecked on that enough that I could easily imagine (2) overshadowing (1) for individuals who are in a robust place (e.g., who don't feel like they are trapped or "have to" talk to a person or do a thing) and who are choosing who they want to talk to. (There were parts of X's conversational patterns that I was interpreting as less truth-conducive a couple years ago than I am now. I now think that this was partly because I was overanchored on the (then-recent) example of Brent, as well as because I didn't understand part of how he was doing it, but it is possible th

... (read more)
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Jeff Kaufman 🔸27
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While I don't really disagree, I think it's worth pointing out that Anna here is talking about pretty different behaviors (precipitating psychotic episodes, approaching advocating physical violence, misleading reasoning, yelling) than we're talking about here (sexual abuse).

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sapphire
Would be extremely surprising if she didn't know about the sexual abuse allegations. They are very well known among her social circle. Despite this she has chosen to defend the fellow.
Jeff Kaufman 🔸28
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My interpretation of Anna was that if she thought there were credible allegations she would have included them in her long list of potentially undesirable actions?

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sapphire
I doubt she agrees with the accusations but I assume she knows they exist.
Peter Wildeford11
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Probably important nitpick: The last bit of your first quoted paragraph misses a redaction.

Given what I've heard of this person, I'm really surprised and dismayed by the tolerance of this person by some, and wish they wouldn't do that.

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sapphire
Pm'd you
-11
purple_cat
Elinor150
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Having read the full TIME article, what struck me was if I replaced each mention of ‘EA’ with ‘the Classical Music industry’ it would still read just as well, and just as accurately (minus some polyamory). 

I worked in the Arts for a decade, and witnessed some appalling behaviour and actions as a young  woman. It makes me incredibly sad to learn that people have had similar experiences within the EA community. While it is something that should be challenged by us all, it is with regret that I say it is by no means unique to the EA community. 

I admire the people who have spoken out, it's an incredibly hard thing to do,  I hope that they are receiving all the care and support that they need. But, I also know this community is full of people trying really hard, and actually doing good.

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titotal105
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I have been saddened to learn of similarly bad behaviour in other communities I have been involved in. However it's important not to let the commonness of abuse and harassment in broader society as an excuse not to improve. (I'm 100% not accusing you of this by the way, it's just a behavior I've seen in other places). 

EA should not be aiming for a passing grade when it comes to sexual harassment. The question is not "is EA better than average", but "is EA as good as it could be". And the answer to that question is no. I deeply hope that the concerns of the women in the article will be listened to. 

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸99
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I agree that EA should aim to be as good as it could be, but comparisons to other communities are still helpful. If the EA community is worse than others at this kind of thing then maybe:

  • Someone considering joining should seek out other communities of people trying to do good. (Ex: animal-focused work in EA spaces vs the broader animal advocacy world.)

  • We should start an unaffiliated group ("Impact Maximizers") that tries to avoid these problems. (Somewhat like the "Atheism Plus" split.)

  • We should be figuring what we're doing differently from most other communities and do more normal things instead. (Ex: this post)

[EDIT: this also feeds into how ashamed people should feel about their association with EA given what's described here.]

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Lin BL32
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I am pretty certain it wasn't intended that way but:

Some EAs should start an unaffiliated group ("Impact Maximizers") that tries to avoid these problems. (Somewhat like the "Atheism Plus" split.)

Set off minor alarm bells when reading it, more so than the other bullet points, so I tried to put some thought into why that is (and why I didn't get the same alarm bells for the other two points).

I think it's because it (most likely inadvertently) implies "If people already in the movement do not like these power dynamics (around making women feel uncomfortable, up to sexual harrassment etc) then they should leave and start their own movement."(I am aware this asks for some people, not necessarily women/the specific person concerned by this, to start the group, but this still does not address the potentially lower resources, career and networking opportunities). This can almost be used as an excuse not to fix things, as if people don't like it they can leave. But, leaving means potentially sacrificing close relationships and career and funding opportunities, at least to some degree. Taken together, this could be taken to mean:

If you are a woman uncomfortable about the current norms o... (read more)

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Vilfredo's Ghost25
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I think you're just playing in to a broader cultural problem here. Too many younger EAs are too invested in getting a job at an EA organization, and/or in having the movement as a part of their identity (as distinct from the underlying ideal). If you think the movement has serious flaws that make it not a good means for doing the most good, then you should not be trying to work for an EA org in the first place, and the access to those opportunities is irrelevant.  

 

People should not be using the movement for career advancement independent of the goal of doing the most good they can do with their careers (and in most cases, can't do that even if they intend to, because EA org jobs that are high-status within the movement are not similarly high-status outside of it).

 

I find the EA movement a useful source of ideas and a useful place to find potential collaborators for some of my projects, but I have no interest in working for an EA org because that's not where I expect I'd have the biggest impact. I think the movement as a whole would be more successful, and a lot of younger EAs would be a lot happier, if they approached the movement with this level of detachment. 

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Lin BL
I believe you are conflating several things here. But first, a little tip on phrasing responses: putting the word 'just' in front of a critical response makes it more dismissive than you might have intended. Agreed to that as stated, but I think this is a straw man. Things can both be bad in some ways, and better than some other options, but that doesn't mean any flaws should be dismissed. This could even go to the extreme of (hypothetically) 'I know I can have the highest impact if I work here, so I will bear the inappropriate attention of my colleagues/will leave and not have the highest impact I can'. Some people may think that working at an EA org is the highest impact thing they could be doing (even if just for the short term), and career paths are very dependent on the individual. EA basically brands itself as the way to do the most good, so it should not be surprising if people hold this view. I was writing up my first comment it was with the broad assumption of 'connections/opportunities within EA = connections/opportunities that help you do the most good' (given the EA forum audience), not as a judgement of 'EA is the only way of having a high impact' (which is a different conversation). I also have thoughts on this one, but this again is a different conversation. EA is not the only way to have a very high impact, but this should not be used as an excuse for avoiding improvements.
Jeff Kaufman 🔸16
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Hmm, yes, that's not what I was trying to say. Edited to change "Some EAs" to "We", to make it clearer that this is not addressed specifically to people who have experienced harassment.

The first and third bullet point do not have this same issue, as the first one does not explicitly reduce existing opportunities for people

I think this is probably not true: there are probably people considering joining EA who would find EA a much easier place to get funding than their other best opportunities for trying to do the kind of good they think most needs doing.

(Overall, what I was trying to communicate with my comment is that how EA compares to other communities is something that would be relevant to decisions many people might be making.)

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Lin BL13
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Thanks for your response!

I don't think changing "some EAs" to "we" necessarily changes my point of 'people concerned should not have to move to a different community which may have fewer resources/opportunities', independent of who actually creates that different community.

Note that my bigger point overall was why the second bullet point set off alarm bells, rather than specific points on the others (mostly included as a reference, and less thought put into the wording). That said:

there are probably people considering joining EA who would find EA a much easier place to get funding than their other best opportunities for trying to do the kind of good they think most needs doing.

I agree with this. I added "although may reduce future opportunities if they would benefit a lot from getting more involved in EA" after "i.e. someone considering joining EA does not have as much if anything already invested in it" a couple of minutes after originally posting my comment to reflect a very similar sentiment (however likely after you had already seen and started writing your response).

However, there is very much a difference between losing something that you have, and not gaining something t... (read more)

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸27
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should not have to move to a different community which may have fewer resources/opportunities

To be clear, I'm very much in favor of efforts to make EA better here. I think the CEA Community Health Team's (disclosure: my wife is on that team) work is important, that many EAs need to be more aware of how power dynamics impact relationships (disclosure again), and that fixing this should not primarily fall on the people impacted.

I added "although ..." a couple of minutes after originally posting my comment to reflect a very similar sentiment (however likely after you had already seen and started writing your response).

That's right, sorry!

I also think the second bullet point is probably not a good idea even if we did know that EA has higher rates of this sort of issues than you'd expect: Atheism Plus didn't go very well! I'm not saying that any of the three points are things that would definitely be worth doing in that world, but they're an illustration about how the information of whether EA does have higher rates would be relevant to decisions people might make.

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Lin BL
That's good to hear re in favour of efforts to make EA better (edited for clarity). Thanks for your engagement on this. Agreed with the necessity for awareness around power dynamics with the nuance of fixing this not having to fall on the people impacted by it. I found it good to see that post when it came out as it points out things people may not have been aware of.
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Peter Wildeford56
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I strongly agree here. As far as I know (but I have limited experience), EA does better than all other social movements I have been a part of (animal advocacy, new atheism) on the question of sexual harassment. But I still think we have much room to improve - we should.

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JamesÖz 🔸92
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Funnily enough, I think EA does worse than other communities / movements I'm involved with (grassroots animal advocacy & environmentalism). My partner and other friends (women) have often complained about various sexist issues when attending EA events e.g. men talking over them, borderline aggressive physical closeness, dismissing their ideas, etc., to the point that they doesn't want to engage with the community. Experiences like this rarely, if ever, happen in other communities we hang out in. I think there are a few reasons for why EA has been worse than other communities in my cases:

  • I think our experiences differ on animal issues as when groups /movements professionalise, as has been happening over the past decade for animal welfare, the likelihood that men will abuse their positions of power increases dramatically. At the more grassroots level, power imbalances often aren't stark enough to lead the types of issues that came out in the animal movement a few years back. EA has also been undergoing this professionalisation and consolidation of power, and seems like the article above highlights the negative consequences of that. 
  • As has been noted many times, EA is current
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Lauren Maria132
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Pointing out the %70 male number seems very relevant since issues like this may contribute to that number and will likely push other women (such as myself) away from the movement.

While I haven’t experienced men in EA being dismissive of my ideas (though that’s only my personal experience in a very small EA community) I have found that the people I have met in EA are much more open to talking about sex and sexual experiences than I am comfortable with in a professional environment. I have personally had a colleague in EA ask me to go to a sex party to try BDSM sex toys. This was very strange for me. I have worked as a teacher, as a health care professional, and have spent a lot of time in academic settings, and I have never had an experience like that elsewhere. I also felt that it was being asked because they were sussing out whether or not I was part of the “cool crowd” who was open about my sex life and willing to be experimental.

I found this especially strange because there seem to be a lot of norms around conversation in EA (the same person who asked me to go to that party has strong feelings about up-keeping these norms) but they for some reason don’t have norms around speaking about sexual relationships, which is taboo in every other professional setting I have been a part of. I think having stronger “norms” or whatever you want to call it, or making discussions like this more taboo in EA, would be a good start. This will make it less likely that people in EA will feel comfortable doing the things discussed in this article.

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Aptdell18
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I have found that the people I have met in EA are much more open to talking about sex and sexual experiences than I am comfortable with in a professional environment. I have personally had a colleague in EA ask me to go to a sex party to try BDSM sex toys.

I would guess this is a mixture of

  • Founder effects: Sexuality being a topic of discussion in communities which were precursors to EA. EA didn't originate as a professional community.

  • Openness to weird ideas: The idea that buying a $40K car instead of a $30K car means you gave up an opportunity to save a life is pretty weird. The idea that vast numbers of people could exist in the future and our overwhelming moral priority should be to ensure that they're living happy lives is pretty weird. The idea that shrimp welfare is super important is pretty weird. These are all intense, extraordinary conversation topics. Polls show most people masturbate. Most of us don't talk about it. But if anyone talks about it, I imagine it's a person who is comfortable with (or even delights in) intense, extraordinary conversations more generally.

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Ben_West🔸29
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fwiw, I haven't personally experienced this much in EA; my guess is that individual variation in local groups explains more of the difference than any EA-wide thing.

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titotal26
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EA may not have originated as a professional community, but it is one now.  And that means raising the standards and changing the norms to exclude behavior such as the ones described above. 

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Aptdell
Agreed.
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Cornelis Dirk Haupt
Didn't EA originate as a professional community though specifically in the context of finding effective charities and 80k? I have a hard time picturing an early EA community that isn't professionally focused. Though maybe I didn't get into EA early enough to know. Strongly agree with your second point regarding openness to weird ideas.
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Aptdell
Not in the Bay Area. Polyamory was a big discussion topic on LessWrong as far back as 2011: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kLR5H4pbaBjzZxLv6/polyhacking
Peter Wildeford55
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Thanks for sharing your experience and that of your partner. I agree that experiences here can differ dramatically. And I admit I in particular have very limited experience with discrimination by nature of being a white man in a position of power in my community.

I definitely have seen men talking over women and dismissing their ideas within EA and this does bother me and I do try to point it out when I see it (e.g, "Hey I think Sarah wanted to make a point here").

I do personally think a more balanced gender ratio would be helpful for improving EA culture and would love to do what I can to recruit and retain women into EA.

While I do agree that "woke" and "cancel culture" can have some excesses, I am incredibly disappointed to see these excesses used to dismiss any possibility of a legitimate point about a particular axis of race/gender/nationality/language/etc. disparities, and I currently see this as the bigger problem in EA right now.

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Arepo39
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men talking over them... dismissing their ideas

While I think these behaviours are antisocial, it seems preemptive to label them as sexist without looking at whether they're unique to women. As a man, I've had many men and some (though a smaller proportion of) women talk over me or dismiss my ideas. I consider it jerkish behaviour - and quite possibly more common among EAs than the population at large - and I try to discourage it when I see it done to others (I usually don't it mind too much in a 1-on-1) but it doesn't seem obviously mysogynistic.

(Borderline aggressive physical closeness sounds more likely to be gender specific)

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Eevee🔹23
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I'm not super familiar with the idea, but I think the idea here is that many people (unconsciously or otherwise) think that women are easier to interrupt, dismiss, or talk over. It's the bias that's sexist, not the act itself.

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Arepo17
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You could make that claim, but then it should be evidenced. Personally I have noticed my tendency (which I try to suppress!) is more readily to interrupt/dismiss people who are shorter than me, which seems to accord with the data.

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Peter Wildeford44
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I think the evidence is there to the same extent as your height evidence:

We find a number of significant differences, including the fact that women are more often interrupted overall and that men interrupt more often women than other men, in particular using speech overlap to grab the floor (Eecke & Fernández, 2016 "On the Influence of Gender on Interruptions in Multiparty Dialogue")

It also matches my personal experience.

I think there's a natural reason to feel defensive when faced with this since it carries the label "sexist" which kinda takes a wide range of badness of behavior under one label, but I think this is frequently an unconscious bias people have so I don't mean it to suggest you or others are bad people, but just that we can do better.

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Arepo
That evidence wouldn't explain why (or show that) EAs would be more sexist. The behaviour James Ozden describes sounds consistent with, for example, EA containing a higher proportion of aspy types who, generally lacking some awareness of social norms, are more inclined to talk over everyone.
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Peter Wildeford
You seem to be really hung up on the term "sexist" and I think I get that. I think it's very clear there is unintentional and unconscious sexism in the EA movement, like there is everywhere else. I'm not calling anyone bad. But I am going to throw a "Isolated Demand For Rigor, Five Yard Penalty" at your argument here.
Arepo13
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Of course there's sexism (unconscious and otherwise) in the EA movement.

But with the very strong caveat that I believe citing logical fallacies can lead to nothing more productive than arguments over whether the fallacy was correctly cited, I submit that this whole thread is a discussion about  whether sexism is more than averagely prevalent in EA (for healthy reference classes),  and, therefore whether EAs should put more resources into the problem.

In that context, I would argue the latter is the isolated demand for rigour, for which I'm making an in-context demand for justification.

[ETA: for the record I weakly agree that we should put more resources into the problem. I just don't want us to sabotage our epistemics while making that determination]

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Peter Wildeford
I'm sorry I'm very confused what we are supposed to be discussing. I thought earlier you were arguing that there's no sexism in EA because people who are interrupting women could just be interrupting people with lower height or just interrupting everyone equally. I was arguing against that. I'm personally not saying "EA is more sexist than relevant reference classes". I don't think I believe that, or it would depend a lot on the reference class... and there appears to be notable within-EA variation. I probably am saying "we should put more resources into figuring out sexism in EA", but that's not what I thought we were talking about, and of course I'd want to think a lot more about what that's supposed to look like, what "more" means, what "resources" means, what "figuring out sexism" means, etc.
Arepo14
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I certainly didn't mean to claim that. I've known of multiple examples of sexism in EA. I think the comment to which I originally replied might not have been another such example, and wanted to guard against assuming it was.

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timunderwood
Lol, and now I'm wondering how much I do of that as someone over six foot/ 185cm
Robi Rahman37
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  • As has been noted many times, EA is currently about 70% male, whilst environmentalism/animal advocacy is majority women.  I would be fairly confident that a more balanced gender ratio would mean less misogyny towards women. 

I don't think the 70/30 gender ratio causes misogyny. I think it amplifies experiences of it among women because they are the minority here. Imagine a group of 100 EAs, 70 men and 30 women, and a group of 100 environmentalists, 30 men and 70 women. Suppose 10% of all men do something misogynistic towards a random woman in their group. Then 23% of EA women experience misogyny compared to only 4% of environmentalist women, even though each individual man in each group is equally likely to have behaved misogynistically.

(Prior to seeing this post, I'd have conjectured that men in EA are less likely than men elsewhere to behave misogynistically, and maybe that's still true, but these reports are really alarming.)

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ao31
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This idea has been called the Petrie multiplier. I agree that this probably makes things worse for women in EA.

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸15
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Suppose 10% of all men do something misogynistic towards a random woman in their group.

If instead you model it as X% of all men do something misogynistic toward women they encounter instead of as toward a random woman in the group you end up with something much less skewed.

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David Higgs
I think that both modeling choices would make sense depending on which specific type of misogyny is the concern. For example, interruptions would seem likely to fit your model better, while asking a woman out in an inappropriate manner might be fit by the random group member model better. Although I think that the group size is realistically going to be smaller than 100 in almost all cases, often far smaller, which would also lead to less skew. Edit: although if instead of considering how many women experience >0 instances of (significant) misogyny, and instead consider how much misogyny on average each woman experiences, then it would go back to being heavily skewed by the proportion of genders in each group.
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None of them along the line Know what any of it is worth
Ozden comment contains great (but predictable) points.  He also packs in his self-interested argument, into this extremely important/sensitive heated discussion: Don't have a lot of time to explain, but this isn't true, it's almost the opposite. The power structures in distributed movements exist and are controlled in different ways, sometimes producing pretty bad behavior but with more dubious leadership/management. DxE, for example, had an almost existential problem with sexual misconduct/abuse. This was probably connected to second-tier leaders and the distributed, chapter-like system, as opposed to Wayne actively courting it.  When I spoke to Wayne (and the subsequent leadership), they pointed to reforms such as central sexual harassment policies and enforcing a better culture. While I don't know how substantive these reforms were, something like this would be probably involved in a true solution. Being "top down" helps a lot, as well as having a professionalized staff/leadership to execute this.    Don't have time to put in an essay, but there's a much longer thread here about distributed movement and power, and also a separate thread here about sexual harassment and animal advocacy. On the latter point, we got multiple layers of a nightmarish "motte and bailey" that is ongoing—we're approaching the point of non-viability in attaching EA to us. Incredibly, these articles aren't in the top 5 things I would need to communicate to EAs right now. On the plus side, Ozden's comment did produce a great thread by Lauren Maria, who is a thoughtful and brilliant leader.
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Tsunayoshi
Just wanted to point out that Peter and you seem to mention two different classes of behaviors. While the behaviors you mention certainly create a more unwelcoming environment to women and shouldn't be welcome in EA environmens, I don't think they would meet the (legal ?) definition of sexual harassment and may not be the types of actions Peter had in mind.
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lc
My guess is that EA is currently male because aggressively quantifying and measuring charitable giving is an activity that appeals primarily to men. As long as that remains true, and Effective Altruism remains Effective Altruism in that way, my prediction is that the gender ratio will remain the same, just as most hobbies and social groups maintain similar gender ratios over time even when people work really hard to change them. If this form of harassment is inherent to male-dominated activities then that would be pretty sad. I'm pretty sure the standard left-American take on everyday harrassment is straightforwardly compatible with believing it's not very important in a world with existential risk and malaria and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and that this is a sensible position for EAs to hold even when they're not explicitly "anti-woke".
Peter Wildeford27
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I strong disagreed (but did not downvote) this comment for a few reasons:

(1) I don't think there's any evidence that EA is an inherently and immutably male activity, and we shouldn't assume such. EA is currently male-skewed, yes, but I was involved in a college "venture philanthropy" group that involved explicit rankings of non-profit organizations (quite similar to EA in many ways) and it was female-skewed, and I've observed this in my broader experiences with venture philanthropy (though don't have statistics to confirm). There's a lot of ways EA can end up male-skewed (or venture philanthropy can end up female-skewed) without it being an inherently and immutably male or an inherently and immutably female activity.

(2) Even if EA is an inherently and immutably male-leaning activity in general (which I don't necessarily agree with per above), there's a lot of value in finding ways to involve the remaining ~50% of the population, so surely we'd want to find ways to make it less male-leaning on the margin. Thus writing off the idea of being more inclusive to men seems needlessly dismissive and reductive and leaves a lot of impact and opportunity on the table.

(3) If you care about ach... (read more)

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lc20
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(1) I don't think there's any evidence that EA is an inherently male activity, and we shouldn't assume such.

There's at least some evidence, in that it's a tradition that is currently mostly participated in by men.  I don't know exactly what you mean by "inherently" or what brand of evidence you're looking for, but it's not really relevant to the discussion that the cause for the difference in interest be  biological or social or whatever. These sorts of gender ratios seem hard to "correct" when it comes to C.S. departments and Magic the Gathering tournaments, and my guess is that with EA it will be similar. If someone wants to prove me wrong then I'd welcome the attempt.

(2) Even if EA is a male-leaning activity (which I don't necessarily agree with per above), there's a lot of value in finding ways to involve the remaining ~50% of the population, so surely we'd want to find ways to make it less male-leaning on the margin. 

Well, that depends, doesn't it? If "making EA less male-leaning on the margin" means coming up with fewer WELLBYs, then plausibly "making EA less male" means making EA less able to accomplish its goals. 

Often what I've seen academic departments... (read more)

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kta14
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I agree with this (what Peter said) and also have a couple stuff to add:

  1. Just so you know, in the Philippines, generally women are considered more charitable, and this somewhat manifests in EA Philippines, where we are mostly women. This might not account for the quality of who is more likely to “quantify charity” but definitely gender is not binary, and I think it’s limiting to say “men more likely; that’s why this community is made up like this.”

Maybe what you say is because there are more men in the movement, but I don’t think it’s simply because men “quantify charity more;” I think that statement is very limiting. There are a ton of factors as to why predominantly white men are those who are into EA, and I think even just the idea that they generally can afford to be philanthropic is one of them (not that this is negative since it’s good they help and presumably wanna help effectively).

  1. I think saying sexual harrassment doesn’t matter if there XYZ other stuff happening might be in utilitarian cases kinda true, but this belief gives leeway to damaging the movement longer-term. Let’s say 1000 years from now we theoretically obliterated x-risk but knowingly or unknowingly allo
... (read more)
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Elinor
I agree wholeheartedly with the two comments above. 
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kta
Agreed... I think similar stuff happen in many communities and social groups, and I think maybe EA gets tricky 'cause it's like, hey, aren't we generally good people? So shouldn't we like... be outliers and like... be people who are sensitive and stuff and by a given, never sexually harrass? So not that it's any less important, but EA ends up sticking out because of that.    To me, EAs being nice is usually the case, as per the usual impression of non-EAs who see EA conferences ("wow, this was the nicest crowd I've ever seen!) but we are not infallible, and should never justify bad behavior and keep improving especially given who we are (i.e., EAs; like what you said, "is EA as good as it could be"). And I think we should keep assessing how norms/spaces enable/allow upsetting behavior like those in the article to happen
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skyblue20
  My intuition would be that a community of altruists that care so deeply about the suffering of all beings should be much much better than average when it comes to sexual assault/sexual harassment both in terms of prevalence and handling of incidents? Which means that even if we find we are average, it is shocking because it suggests that there are certain aspects of this community's culture that are negative enough to drag us back to being average from much much better?  
ChanaMessinger62
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Interestingly, a friend in academia claims the norms are much much better there. I certainly would guess there's just more general acceptance of hooking up with people in your community in EA versus professional communities, though I suspect that in e.g. queer or feminist communities there's tons of dating and hookups.

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RyanCarey68
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I can think of problems like this with non-EA academics too. There was a a famous medic who taught at my undergrad degree and iirc gave weird physical compliments to female students during his lectures, and I can think of at least one non-EA prof who made multiple female students uncomfortable.

Having said that, my personal hunch would be that things are worse in EA. Some of the reasons are unpopular to talk about, but they include it being quite male, young (including minors), poly, aspie, less professional and due to what we are discovering can be quite a fine line between consequentialism and amorality. In some of these respects, it resembles the chess community and the atheism community, which have had significant problems.

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Devin Kalish
I can understand some of these even where I disagree, but could you elaborate on why a group being more “aspie” contributes to sexual harassment (disclosure I am an aspie, but in fairness I’m also male and feel that I understand that one much more).
RyanCarey27
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The cases I know of come disproportionately from more aspie people, and I can think of at least one case where the person didn't think that they had done anything wrong. This would make sense, because aspie people are on average less competent at judging the lines of socially acceptable behaviour

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Eevee🔹
Yeah, let's be careful not to stigmatize aspies here.
Sarah Eustis-Guthrie36
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I disagree. IMO, many of the issues that EA faces when it comes to sexual harassment/abuse stem from aspects that are particular to the community itself. I did research for a book on this topic, and sexual misconduct and abuse thrive in contexts where power is more concentrated and there is less accountability; basically, the harder it is to speak up about someone, the more likely that their bad behavior will go unchecked and they will continue hurting people.

EA (particularly Bay Area EA?) tends to concentration of power among particular figures. And concentration of many kinds of power, including control over funding and job opportunities as well as things like social status. EA can also be pretty insular. If speaking up about someone means endangering your job and your friends, it’s harder to speak up. That’s not even getting to the fact that you might be endangering your housing situation, or might be worried about how it might affect your impact on the world. 

These factors are not totally unique to EA -- I spent a long time in the classical music world as well, and concentrations of power let countless bad actors off the hook. But I would say that they're particularly severe within EA, and understanding the particular factors that worsen things allows for more targeted solutions.

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Amber Dawn146
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This feels complicated to say, because it's going to make me seem like I don't care about abuse and harassment described in the article. I do. It's really bad and I wish it hadn't happened, and I'm particularly sad that it's happened within my community, and  (more) that people in my community seemed often to not support the victims. 

But I honestly feel very upset about the anti-polyamory vibe of all this. Polyamory is a morally neutral relationship structure that's practiced happily by lots of people. It doesn't make you an abuser, or not-an-abuser.  It's not accepted in the wider community, so I value its acceptance in EA. I'd be sad if there was a community backlash against it because of stuff like this, because that would hurt a lot of people and I don't think it would solve the problem. 

I think the anti-poly vibe also makes it kind of...harder to work out what's happening, and what exactly is bad, or something? Like, the article describes lots of stuff that's unambiguously bad, like grooming and assault. But it says stuff like 'Another told TIME a much older EA recruited her to join his polyamorous relationship while she was still in college'. Like, what do... (read more)

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸72
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I agree that the article moves between several situations of issues of hugely varying severity without acknowledging that, and this isn't very helpful. And I like that EA is able to be a welcoming place for people who enjoy relationship structures that are discriminated against in the wider world. But I did want to push back against one particular piece:

Polyamory is a morally neutral relationship structure that's practiced happily by lots of people. It doesn't make you an abuser, or not-an-abuser.

In figuring out how we should view polyamory a key question to me is what it's effects are. Imagine we could somehow run an experiment where we went back to having a taboo on non-monogamy regardless of partner consent: how would we expect the world to be different? Some predictions I'd make:

  • People who enjoy polyamorous relationships would be worse off.

  • Some people would be more productive because they're less distracted by partner competition.

  • Other people would be less productive because getting a lot done was part of their approach to partner competition.

  • Some people would have kids who otherwise wouldn't, or have kids earlier in life.

  • ...

  • There would be less of the

... (read more)
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Amber Dawn31
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[this is partly also responding to your response to Kelsey below]

I think I view this differently because I prize personal freedom (for everyone) really highly, and I also think that the damage of community disapproval/the norms being 'against' you is pretty high, so I would be hesitant to argue strongly against any consensual  and in-principle-not-harmful relationship style, even if there was evidence that it led to worse outcomes. In that situation, I'd try to mitigate the bad outcomes rather than discouraging the style. 

To get a sense of why poly people are upset about this, imagine if someone was like 'there are better outcomes if people are celibate - you save so much time and emotional energy that can be spent on research! So you should break up with your partner'. You'd probably have a strong 'uh, no, wtf, I'm not doing that' reaction. And maybe you'd say 'oh I would never say anyone would break up with their partners', but depriving someone of future potential positive relationships is also bad, and... like... maybe I'm just neurotic or not assertive enough or something, but if someone says 'X is bad', and I do X, I am inclined to take that seriously. 

I also t... (read more)

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸
I'm confused by your analogy to celibacy because the analogous statements seem really different from anything I've said or think? I don't think there are better outcomes if people refrain from polyamory, haven't told anyone they should break up, and don't think polyamory is bad. This is getting deeper into a hypothetical ("what I think I would do in an alternative world where I had strong evidence that polyamory was harmful") that I don't think is very helpful? If you really want to know what I would do in this situation I'm willing to continue, but I'm nervous about people misinterpreting and thinking that I'm talking about a non-hypothetical.
Amber Dawn11
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I'm sorry to have misinterpreted you. I guess I'm confused by what your broad point is now - where do we disagree? I think I don't understand why you disagree with my comment that 'Polyamory is a morally neutral relationship structure that's practiced happily by lots of people. It doesn't make you an abuser, or not-an-abuser.'
 

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸
I'm not sure we disagree all that much, and I'm sorry for giving the impression otherwise! Where I think we disagree is that I don't think we can just take neutrality as an assumption? Instead, it matters what the effects are.
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Arepo
Please mentally reimagine this comment for some other 'chosen'-stigma subgroup - being gay, trans or whatever.   You're not wrong that in some abstract sense there's a fact of the matter about having more people be that way makes the world better or worse, but that doesn't mean it's +EV to do armchair speculation about. And raising such speculation in response to someone saying they feel targeted by prejudice seems like particularly unempathic timing.
enchantingacacia56
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I am only tangentially involved in EA, but have been actively polyamorous for around ten years, so I hope it's not too callous for me specifically to say that that was the most striking part of the article. The article includes a lot of sensationalizing and othering language around polyamory, including the repeated use of "join a polyamorous relationship" to mean dating someone who's polyamorous, and the 'so-called “polycules.”' line. 

I agree that it's bad behavior for polyamorous people to pressure mono people to be poly, talk about monogamy as "less enlightened", and such (and agree with quinn that it would reduce avenues for attacks on our community to actively discourage this behavior); but I think it's kind of dishonest to discuss this without mentioning that mono people can be overly quick to categorize positive discussion of polyamory as "pressuring people to be mono", due to the marginalized position of polyamory in society and the biases that creates. 

The article itself is an example: 

Prominent figures in EA have cast polyamory as a more “rational” romantic arrangement. The philosopher Peter Singer, whose writing is a touchstone for EA leaders, seemed to end

... (read more)
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quinn49
28
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I cosign this comment completely. 

I have a cheap thing polyam folks can start doing today that would make a decent amount of progress over time. 

more downvotes and social sanctions for the "monog is unenlightened" meme. 

I know when people get excited about an awesome new social technology they want to scream it from the rooftops, and they think "why didn't I try this sooner was I some kind of primitive?" But when you say that out loud, others hear "so you're saying I'm a primitive".

I've seen numerous comments and anecdotes of meatspace conversations that go further than that! "letting jealousy run your life means you need therapy" or "you've been brainwashed by the conformist masses of romcoms", when they happen in our community they're not downvoted into oblivion (yet, growth mindset)!  

I don't think it's a referendum on community engagement in polyamory for us to listen to the complaints of people who are either obligate monog and had an experiment in polyam go south or monog and not interested in experimenting or questioning it. 

(Keep in mind, many queer people go through the stage of skepticism that there exist any properly truly straight people at all. I sure did. This is seen as something to grow out of in the queer community. Let's assert that assuming everyone would be polyam if they just tried harder to be civilized is something to grow out of, too). 

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Xavier_ORourke29
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Pollyamory is not necessarily a bad thing in all contexts and all implementations, and I'm not claiming that everyone who practices is an abuser - but on its face it seems intuitive that the prevalance of polly in a community would interact with frequency of sexual harrasment/assult (especially when layered on top of other things like high prevalance of aspergers+mood dissorders+professional relationships between members of the community).

I'm not advocating this entirely, but just to illustrate the point - imagine if most people in EA had cultural attitudes such that:

- It's taboo to have sex or cuddle with somebody who you're not in a serious committed relationship with
- Propositioning someone who already has a partner was considered a vile thing to do, and could lead to serious humiliation for the proposer
- Being in a long term, stable, exclusive partnership was seen as a very high-status signal, and having many sexual partners was considered low-status 

If the culture in EA was more like this, (for better or worse), the frequency of unwanted physical advances would certianly be lower, right?

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kta13
5
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I agree that the article had an anti-polyamory vibe and that doesn’t seem helpful in it of itself and damaging to some who are not doing anything wrong. But I do think some discussion is warranted, not to be against polyamory, but for how our community treats it in such a way that it affects some dynamics (‘cause it can be tricky!)

For me, the broader picture is,

The blurry professional/personal line EA generally has + a polyamory subculture used negatively + powerful men who are more likely to harass gives a complex equation that can lead to behavior like that discussed in this article. The article could’ve been more explicit about this. In sum for me, what seems damaging is qualities of the community that encourage/enable people to cross lines in such a way that allows some minorities to get harassed in this way.

Also just to add, most poly people I know in EA are respectful and the explicit culture I’ve been exposed to doesn’t encourage crossing lines; perhaps the implicit culture is a bit more sensitive.

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Wil Perkins
Morally neutral doesn’t mean risk neutral. Also, as others have pointed out, if you have a community where norms around dating are clearly problematic, then increase the amount of people dating, things are likely to get messy. I do think that this is a unique EA/rationalist polyamory issue though. I’m friends with quite a few polyamorous people in other scenes like partner dance, and things are handled much better there. Personally it seems the lack of understanding or care about social cues and the ‘holier than thou’ attitude in the Bay Area EA polycules is what is driving most of this bad behavior.
Scott Alexander136
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In 2018, I collected data about several types of sexual harassment on the SSC survey, which I will report here to help inform the discussion. I'm going to simplify by assuming that only cis women are victims and only cis men are perpetrators, even though that's bad and wrong.

Women who identified as EA were less likely report lifetime sexual harassed at work than other women, 18% vs. 20%. They were also less likely to report being sexually harassed outside of work, 57% vs. 61%. 

Men who identified as EA were less likely to admit to sexually harassing people at work (2.1% vs. 2.9%) or outside of work (16.2% vs. 16.5%)

The sample was 270 non-EA women, 99 EA women, 4940 non-EA men, and 683 EA men. None of these results were statistically significant, although all of them trended in the direction of EAs experiencing less sexual harassment. 

This doesn't prove that EA environments have less harassment than the average environment, since it could be that EAs are biased to have less sexual harassment for other reasons, and whatever additional harassment they get in EA isn't enough to make up for it; the vast majority of EAs have the vast majority of interactions in non-EA environmen... (read more)

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AnonymousTurtle13
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Conditional on being a woman in California, being EA did make someone more likely to experience sexual harassment, consistently, as measured in many different ways. But Californian EAs were also younger, much more bisexual, and much more polyamorous than Californian non-EAs; adjusting for sexuality and polyamory didn't remove the gap, but age was harder to adjust for and I didn't try.  EAs who said they were working at charitable jobs that they explicitly calculated were effective had lower harassment rates than the average person, but those working at charitable jobs that they didn't expliclitly calculate were higher. All of these subgroup analyses were very small sample size.


Could you share (maybe approximate) numbers and percentages, like you did for the full stats?

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jacquesthibs137
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People have some strong opinions about things like polyamory, but I figured I’d still voice my concern as someone who has been in EA since 2015, but has mostly only interacted with the community online (aside from 2 months in the Bay and 2 in London):

I have nothing against polyamory, but polyamory within the community gives me bad vibes. And the mixing of work and fun seems to go much further than I think it should. It feels like there’s an aspect of “free love” and I am a little concerned about doing cuddle puddles with career colleagues. I feel like all these dynamics lead to weird behaviour people do not want to acknowledge.

I repeat, I am not against polyamory, but I personally do not expect some of this bad behaviour would happen as much if in a monogamous setting since I expect there would be less sliding into sexual actions.

I’ve avoided saying this because I did not want to criticize people for being polyamorous and expected a lot would disagree with me and it not leading to anything. But I do think the “free love” nature of polyamory with career colleagues opens the door for things we might not want.

Whatever it is (poly within the community might not be part of the issue at all!), I feel like there needs to be a conversation about work and play (that people seem to be avoiding).

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Arepo
I would just like to note that the phrase, 'I have nothing against <minority group>, but...' should ring alarm bells for anyone who's ever been concerned about casual racism, sexism, ageism or any other socially-acceptable-at-the-time prejudice.
Cornelis Dirk Haupt31
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I wanted to downvote this comment. I think discussion on the topic and the dynamics it raises are very much worth discussing without being branded a bigot.

But then I did the exercise of replacing "polyamory" with "gay men" and "monogamous" with "straight" in the comment you responded to and was pretty horrified with the result.

It totally reads like a comment then that would have been socially acceptable not too many years ago, but that we strongly condemn now as homophobia.

I'm kinda just sitting with this info processing it, not entirely sure what conclusion to draw just yet.

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Arepo
I agree with both points - I don't think it's productive to call people names, but I do want to draw attention to the parallel you make in this and many of the other comments on this page. [ETA Maybe bisexuality would be a better metaphor, just for the practical reason that it matches better with the concern people are voicing that 'this sort of behaviour' naturally implies a larger number of sexual/romantic dynamics]
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jacquesthibs
I honestly didn’t know how to talk about it either, but wanted to point at general vibes I was getting. While I’m still confused about what‘s the issue exactly, contrary to my initial comment, I don’t really think polyamory within the community is a problem anymore. Not because of Arepo’s comment specifically, but because there are healthy ways to do polyamory just like other forms of relationships. It’s something that I thought was true before writing the comment, but was a bit confused about the whole mixing of career and “free love” with everyone in the community. Maybe only talking about “free love” mixed with power dynamics and whatever else would have been better. I don’t know really know. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything as someone confused about all this, but still wanting to help. I felt it was the kind of thing that a lot of people were thinking, but not saying it out loud. That said, I think Sonia’s video cleared up some things a bit for me. It points to the larger amounts of “hacker houses”, networking, sex, and money in the Bay Area. She also points to polyamory not being the problem. However, she says while those things shape the structure of the problem, it’s power dynamics that ends up being the main root issue. It sounds to me like she is pointing to people will sometimes try to become polyamorous with others by abusing power dynamics (even though this is not inherent to most polyamorous relationships at all). Are power dynamics the whole story? I don’t know. Note that a lot of people seemed to agree with my initial comment. I’m not sure what to make of that.
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Cornelis Dirk Haupt
No judgement from me. You're talking to someone who used to be quite homophobic and polyphobic and having a caring community where I could be accepted for where I was and work through my thoughts without being labelled an insta-bigot was precisely what I needed. A friend of mine recently pointed out that polyamory during the 80's free love era still only made up like 0.8% of relationships in Canada. Today, even without a mass social movement, in Canada that figure sits around 5% - there has been such an increase that the Canadian government is actually examining the situation to try and figure out if laws should be changed (given the entire system pre-supposes monogamy).   What this suggests to me is that polyamory is orders of magnitude more visible now to EAs that wouldn't even have known much about it before (other than maybe in the abstract). Novelty of this sort can be uncomfortable (it was for me at first), hence your post getting so many upvotes. Many new to actually seeing polyamory in the real world feel uncomfortable too, even if they cant quite put a reason on why. I strongly urge anyone reading this sentence to watch Sonia's video.  Given we haven't heard the same kind of scandals (I don't think?) outside of the bay  (and there are many non-Bay Area poly EAs in the world) and women are reporting it is indeed worse in The Bay, I think looking at the entire situation through the lens of what is different in the Bay Area (i.e. Power Dynamics) is much more fruitful. nit: a lot of monogamous people engage in cuddle puddles. Problem here is, like you said, the career colleagues part leading to potential abuses of power dynamics. 
2
Gustavo Ramires
I would say the relationship of a person is private, and it seems arrogant for us (Effective Altruists) to decide what relationship styles society at large should accept -- specially considering that we want to be welcome to all different cultures, from East and West, including indigenous cultures. What should not be acceptable is any form of harassment, and it seems like a pretty good universal norm that Effective Altruism community gatherings and workplaces should be focused on that mission - EA. That's not to say relationships are completely banned and shunned, but it should be common knowledge that this is not what EA is for (finding partners) - and advice that it should be strongly avoided.  It should be clear what EA spaces are for (not purely for socialization, for finding partners, etc., but for helping others effectively and discussing how to achieve that!) Note: unless there is clear consensual will from all parties and it happens outside EA of course - I don't think banning consensual relationships outright is wise or necessary.  Note2: I read a comment somewhere recently that 'You are allowed to ask people out at essentially all places, as long as there is immediate acceptance/consensus; however many places rightfully ban non-consensual approaches, i.e. rejected approaches. This may seem unfair, but it isn't since there are really many other places that allow people to meet each other and where the norms allow asking people out'. We should promote a spirit of inclusiveness of all cultures and persons, and this probably requires establishing some norms around avoiding some kinds of behavior. Edit: There seems to be strong disagreement about this comment, I'd appreciate clarifications. I might retract some things.
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keller_scholl
Directly funding advocacy against particular relationship styles is something that we take seriously as a possible cause area: the numbers don't currently seem to check out compared to alternatives, but a strong stance against child marriage seems like a very reasonable position for EA to take. "community gatherings" is an incredibly vague category that stretches from "socializing over a meal at an EAG" to "dinner at someone's house that they invited their friends, all of whom are EAs, to". I don't think it's useful to try to identify events that way, and saying that people can't have the latter because those events are not for helping others effectively is clearly too far. Personally, I think EAs are pretty good about not branding informal social events as EA Events TM, but that distinction in branding doesn't necessarily mean that much to anyone.
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Gustavo Ramires
There seems to be strong disagreement about my comment, so I'll explain why I believe it's somewhat arrogant for Effective Altruists to take a definite position in some relationship styles (certainly not all!): (0) Like I said, this is a deep cultural issue, which evades many of the conventional tools of Effective Altruism. It doesn't mean we cannot discuss it, or even have personal opinions, but it seems that we should avoid taking position on it (as a movement), without consensus of society, given we probably lack the expertise and tools to make such judgement. (1) Some relationship styles probably have conventional (contemporary) wisdom to cause harm to people. That includes abuse, or things that form consensus in social sciences to be harmful. I don't know much about customs around child marriage, but it seems like something that can be discussed, in light of cultural literature as well. (2) It seems that polyamory is very much a cultural gray area, and I don't think there's any kind of consensus on whether it could be harmful and in what ways, or whether it could be good for individuals  (reminder: things like this need to be seen from many points of views, not only through studies, but also from personal experiences that are very complicated -- think trying to justify numerically your favorite food. It's very difficult, it tends to evade conclusive and analytic evidence, instead appealing to intuition and maybe long discussions on taste and other factors that elude this kind of argument) (3) This sort of evades from the core of Effective Altruism, that is to address most urgent and effectively actionable causes. I don't think policing relationship styles, around the community or not, or even minor cultural norms, is something we should focus on: again, unless we can back it from a social science consensus (and straightforward quality of life impacts), specifically because I don't think this will prevent suffering one way or another as much as focusing on
keller_scholl18
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Thank you for the response. I discarded my point by point response, because I think I have a more elegant explanation: I parse your argument as saying that because there is and should be a high degree of uncertainty around the net harm/benefit of polyamory, we should avoid taking a position on it. 

I think that is a fine position to have. I don't think it's particularly relevant, because my parse of Keerthana Gopalakrishnan's perspective is that she thinks polyamory is harmful and there is strong evidence for this.[1] And certainly critics of polyamory can point to a long anthropological tradition and a great number of studies, and advocates can note that those studies are for a wildly different context from modern international elites.

If polyamory is maybe slightly bad, then I think it's reasonable for EA social consensus, let alone institutionalized EA, to favor letting people make their own choices. We don't demand that every member eat an optimally healthy diet or practice gratitude journaling, in part because there are substantial differences between people and in part because people get to live their own lives.

If polyamory is very harmful and the evidence for this is... (read more)

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Holly Elmore ⏸️ 🔸111
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These are anonymous quotes from two people I know and vouch for about the TIME piece on gender-based harassment in the EA community:

Anon 1: I think it's unfortunate that the women weren't comfortable with the names of the responsible parties being shared in the article. My understanding is that they were not people strongly associated with EA, some of them had spoken out against EA and had never identified as an EA or had any role in EA, and an article with their names would have given people a very different impression of what happened. I guess I think someone should just spell out who the accused parties are (available from public evidence).

Anon 2: I want EAs to not be fucking stupid 😭

"Oh geez this Times reporter says we're doing really bad things, we must be doing really bad things A LOT, that's so upsetting!"

yet somehow "This New York Times reporter says Scott Alexander is racist and bad, but he's actually not, ugh I hate how the press is awful and lies & spins stuff in this way just to get clicks"

And yes, this included reports of people, but like I've met the first person interviewed in the article and she is hella scary and not someone I would trust to report accurately ... (read more)

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Lorenzo Buonanno🔸
A section of this comment was reported as unnecessarily rude and offensive, and on a second read, I agree. Claiming that someone is "hella scary" is needlessly inflammatory. If the quoted comment was posted directly on the forum, it would have gotten a warning. Quoting a message should not be a way to get around that. Let's also keep in mind that this is a particularly sensitive topic, so we should be even more careful about living up to our very high discussion standards. Please don't do this again
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Holly Elmore ⏸️ 🔸
Why did you remove both quotes then?
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Lorenzo Buonanno🔸
I don't understand, what did I remove? I meant to only temporarily redact a name from your comment. Did I accidentally make more changes? I absent-mindedly didn't make a copy, sorry   Edit: community health and mod teams have replied here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JCyX29F77Jak5gbwq/ea-sexual-harassment-and-abuse?commentId=7vGd37wuAA4wo9t2P feel free to add the name back after reading those comments
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Matt Goodman
I feel uncomfortable with this kind of public character judgement of an alleged victim. Especially when it's presented without a source or evidence backing up the claim she's 'hella scary'
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Rochelle Shen
"And yes, this included reports of people, but like I've met the first person interviewed in the article and she is hella scary and not someone I would trust to report accurately on this."   Adorable attempt at character assassination. See rhetorical technique here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming  Not that it matters but the person you are describing as "hella scary" and unreliable is a very decorated robotics researcher whose career has made incredible intellectual contributions in her field. I would like to counter and ask what makes you so keen to exclude her narrative?   EDIT: To anyone who is good faith skeptical of the above claim of deflection, let me point out how absurd it would be to counter any other claim (ie, "The sky is blue" or “Capitalism is the best form of economic organization ever”) with “well I can’t engage with the argument because this person is hella scary”
Habryka [Deactivated]29
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Not that it matters but the person you are describing as "hella scary" and unreliable is a very decorated robotics researcher whose career has made incredible intellectual contributions in her field.

I really don't know how to handle sharing takes like this in-public, especially from an anonymous source, but I do feel like "very decorated robotics researcher" does not feel super related to how much I would trust someone to accurately report things in an article here. 

For the record, I know approximately nothing about the person in-question, I just felt like this argument felt weird and kind of like a non-sequitur.

(Edit: I guess you do say "not that it matters", so I might just be misreading the tone here, so feel free to ignore this)

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Holly Elmore ⏸️ 🔸18
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2

I'm vouching for this anonymous person's judgment although I can't personally verify their assessment of that person's character.

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titotal
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Lorenzo Buonanno🔸
Lorenzo Buonanno🔸Moderator Comment89
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Hey everyone, the moderators want to point out that this topic is heated for several reasons:

  • Lots of relevant information comes from people's personal experiences, which will vary a lot.
  • Harassment and power dynamics are often emotionally loaded and can be difficult to discuss objectively.
  • Polyamory is something that a lot of the world stigmatizes, so some people will be defensive (whether merited or not), and some will be subconsciously biased against it. This makes it hard to discuss without assuming that some people are hostile.
  • The facts mentioned in the article are very serious and disturbing, and some readers have experienced similarly appalling episodes

So we want to ask everyone to be especially understanding and generous when discussing topics this sensitive.
And as a reminder, harassment is unacceptable. One resource that exists for this is the Community Health Team at CEA. You can get in touch with the team here. If you ever experience harassment of any kind on the Forum, please reach out to the moderation team.

Edit: added the last bullet point after a useful comment

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JoshuaBlake
This comment not acknowledging that it might be difficult for some people to discuss or engage with because they've gone through harrowing experiences seems like a big oversight. Very much feels like you're trying to "both sides" this.
Lorenzo Buonanno🔸17
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Hi Joshua, thank you so much for the feedback.

I agree: the main reason why these topics are hard to discuss, and we should be especially sensitive, is that many people have gone through horrifying experiences, and I should have mentioned this in the comment.

I'm thinking of adding a bullet point "The facts mentioned in the article are very serious and disturbing, and some readers have experienced similarly appalling episodes", do you think that would make it clear?
In hindsight, this comment was posted too quickly after reading the post, and I should have worded it better. I'll make sure to mention your point explicitly on the next similar thread.

This comment was adapted from a comment mods made on a similar thread, that sadly had devolved into arguments that I think didn't fully live up to our (very high) discussion standards. I erred on the side of posting early hoping it would lead to more compassionate discussions, but I think I overcorrected and made a mistake.

 

Edit: added the bullet point

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SantaRKlaas
+1 for both sides
[anonymous]65
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A lot of people are discussing why the community health team isn't doing more or why more people don't go to them, but it seems to me that it is (mostly?) because their powers are extremely limited. They can ban people from events that they sponsor or they can inform others about situations. Both of these options might be desired by some victims of harassment or assault  but those actions are also extremely limited in scope. They can't ban people from conferences they don't sponsor, they can't fire people who they do not directly employ, they can't ban people from private events, and they obviously can't take any legal action outside of saying "hey, have you thought about going to the police about this?" The majority of EA-related activity is outside the direct jurisdiction of CEA. So it seems to me very expected that most victims will not find it worthwhile to go to them for reasons that are completely unrelated to how competently they handle these situations.

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Linch18
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I directionally agree with you. However, they do have a few other levers. For example, local EA groups can ban people based on information from CH. Grantmakers can also ask CH for consultation about people they hear concerning grapevine rumors about and outsource this side of investigations to them.

Some of this refers to what I refer to as "mandate" in my earlier shortform that I linked.

I agree that they can't make many decisions about private events, take legal action, or fire people they do not directly employ.

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Jason27
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And I think even that has to be done carefully to manage legal risk -- EVF has significant assets in a notoriously pro-plaintiff jurisdiction for libel/slander suits. (I'm naming the legal entity as CEA has no legal existence.)

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Aptdell
I wonder if it would be worth spinning off Community Health into its own org, to decouple it from those assets and put it in a more favorable legal jurisdiction? Could also help it be more of a trusted neutral party.
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Jason
Possibly. You can sue anyone anywhere -- the question is whether a court that can actually do anything to you will enforce the foreign judgment. US courts are very skeptical toward UK libel/slander judgments in general because the UK courts do not apply standards required by the US Constitution. However, one would have to look at whether they would be more willing to enforce where the plaintiff actually lives in the UK and is not a "limited-purpose public figure" and/or where the judgment was for something like tortious interference with business relations. Dealing with foreign lawsuits can be dicey -- often you are faced with the choice of defaulting and defending against enforcement in your home jurisdiction, or defending in the foreign country and accepting the court's jurisdiction. So the upshot is that an independent Community Health would probably still have to consider the jurisdiction in which the person being reported lives.
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Aptdell
If they moved from the UK to the US, would that help defend against libel/slander lawsuits from Americans?
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Jason
Likely so, although I am not a UK lawyer.
Nathan Young58
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As someone who is prone to think in the abstract I'm probably gonna leave it a week before trying to have a standard discussion of this.

That's not to say there can't be on depth discussion, but I sense a lot of hurt here and it feels like it might be better to wait.

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Nathan Young
So I think in hindsight a week is too long and probably there can be more analytical discussion from about now.  Nor do I think that I want to chill more rat-style discussion, but I think sometimes some people in the community want to be upset before moving to classical discourse and (currently) I think it's good to wait a couple of days to let that happen. 
MaxRa54
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What do you think of the idea to do a broad anonymous survey of women in EA regarding their experiences related to romantic and sexual behaviour in EA settings?

I imagine it could provide some useful information like

  • In what EA sub-communities it's more or less prevalent (which would help with prioritizing interventions and potentially learning from sub-communities that might do a good job preventing issues)
  • If women have more or fewer bad experiences related to sexual and romantic advances in EA settings compared to similar non-EA settings
  • If women know who they can reach out to, and feel comfortable reaching out to those places

Potential difficulties

  • Identifying and reaching all women with relevant experiences might be difficult?
    • I assume there are some online groups for women in EA, and maybe orgs like Magnify Mentoring have a good network to share something like this?
    • Maybe one could ask respondents to share the survey with other women who they think have had relevant experiences?
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Ivy Mazzola29
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1

[EDIT: This project has been passed on to the CEA Community Heath Team, and folded in to a much larger investigation which will gather and analyze data from many other sources in addition to a survey. Thank you to all who messaged me questions and thoughts. All of this (plus all I have done and thoughts I have) have been passed on to Catherine Low who is orchestrating the project. You can read her announcement, posted Feb 14th, here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mEkRrDweNSdNdrmvx/plans-for-investigating-and-improving-the-experience-of ]

FYI for anyone reading this and thinking about taking on this project, I'm moving forward with a similar survey idea today.

It's been percolating in my mind since November, so I think it might take me less time than many others. But please DM me if you want to help or have ideas you think I may miss!

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Arepo13
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To add to MaxRa's 'wishlist', I would add questions about location and other demographic, to see if the patterns we've been discussing elsewhere in this thread (eg the Bay area being particularly problematic) are real. 

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Ivy Mazzola
Yup that's in there!
MaxRa10
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0

Thanks for doing this Ivy! 

I imagine many people would be very interested in the results of this survey. As probably not many people saw your comment here, I could imagine it being worth to share your plans as a stand-alone post and to wait with sharing it widely until maybe end of week, as I imagine many people have good ideas to share here and would be excited about helping make the survey as informative as possible.

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Ivy Mazzola
[Edit: The list of stakeholders/beta-testers has grown quite a lot so it might take over a week from today (Tuesday Feb 6) to get it out and finish all the review I want. I'm likely to make a forum post on this survey in a day or two, to set expectations on timing and let the community know things are being done. The remainder of this comment has been updated for what's true today] Thanks! Well I'd rather not use the forum front-page to promote a work-in-progress. The survey is already looking pretty long, and the survey is for all EAs of all genders so it will be quite a community-wide effort already. I don't want to use people's potentially limited energy for this topic by making them read a pre-post.  FWIW I also posted in the Women and Non-Binary EA Facebook group, which has been getting some good responses and DMs. I've also had a deep discussion with Catherine Low of the Community Health Team and she'll be as involved at all the key junctions. I also hope to specifically get feedback from at least a couple of the women in the TIME piece, the leaders of the EA Diversity Group (who messaged me), GSand, J_J, and ~5 people who do survey design professionally (the Rethink Priorities Survey Team, Spencer Greenberg of Guided Track, and an Austin EA I know). I have only messaged maybe 20% of these people so far and I'd rather not make a public post til I've messaged all of them. From there it will be shared to other beta-testers' (like my friends and EAs who messaged me wishing to beta-test).  And then it will done and be shared with the community broadly.  I think this is enough that I don't need to make a standalone post to request feedback (though good to share to set people's minds at ease). It's also already a lot of things for me to track tbh. But if anyone is reading this here, you can still DM me or comment your thoughts or ask to get involved!  
2
MaxRa
Thanks for the response, yeah I agree that this does sound like you're reaching out to sufficiently many people with good ideas to make this survey particularly informative. FWIW, if I understand your reservations correctly, I personally wouldn't worry  a) that sharing your work-in-progress plans comes across as a promotion of your work. I think it's a project that is meant to help the broader EA community and requesting feedback for a survey / offering to adapt a survey based on requests from others is reasonable, collaborative and useful. b) about taking up people's time, as I feel like people can decide for themselves what they want to spend their limited time on and I'd then make that decision for them. Looking forward to read the results, thanks again for doing this!
5
Ivy Mazzola
[I edited my comment above to more accurately reflect the state and timeline of project, and this comment is my way of pinging you that. I'm likely to make a pre-post sometime after all, just cuz of setting people's minds at ease that things are being tried and projects are in the pipeline re: EA gender/sex stuff]
5
catan
Ivy has personally been involved in a cover up of more than one assault perpetrated by EA members. I would highly recommend for someone impartial to be responsible for this piece of work. 
Ivy Mazzola19
3
1

Some concerns and critiques are understandable, because a complex situation occurred in a local EA group under my leadership. But these characterizations and conclusions are untrue: 

  1. that I was "involved in a cover up" 
  2. that the EA member did "assault" 
  3. that I am not "impartial"[1] 
  4. (accidental?) that there are multiple noteworthy "EA members". I think catan just spoke hastily here. 

There is one, and only one, sex-related or gender-related case of an EA member that I handled in any notable way. It is true that this EA man had "more than one" incident, but those were not assaults, never within EA or rationalist spaces or professional spaces, and not ongoing, they were in his past. I simply became privy to some of his private history, and, in this case, due to particular features of the case I explain below, I chose to balance safety with discretion (not secrecy or coverup). 

I did not defer any report or delay in handling any current sex-related incident. Again, there were no incident reports made against him nor any request that he be removed from the group or anything like that. I'll also note that, in EA or my own life, when I have come across a man doing... (read more)

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4
Ian Turner
A broad survey seems good but it might also help to specifically survey conference attendees, since it might help eliminate some sample biases and since the in-person nature of conferences seems to facilitate some of the harassment.
2
skyblue20
Actually, if someone is doing a survey, what I am now very interested in is knowing what value different groups in the community get from various kinds of experiences in EA spaces. For example, I'm curious how most women would weigh being in an EA space (including EAGs, local EA events, EA houses, etc) that lets them access healthy professional networks free from the tensions of inappropriate* sexual/romantic advances against being in an EA space where they are able to find find EA partners. (I am implying that there is a tradeoff here.) I am also curious if the men in the community have an opposing view - if so, it might be important to think about how  the existing state of the community  (that may have been shaped by the views of the majority gender) may make it less attractive to women currently in or considering joining the community. *example of inappropriate - young EA job seekers being propositioned by potential bosses/seniors in their field after making it clear to them that they were looking for job opportunities/contacts/mentoring in that field.
gated53
5
4

I am a person who lived in the house mentioned in the article. I witnessed firsthand everything as it
happened.


FIRST. You should know that journalist DECLINED to investigate this story. She reached out to the
accused person asking for a comment and, when faced with evidence that went against her narrative,
said "Clearly, everything is more complicated than I thought. But I am on a deadline - will be
publishing this tomorrow".


SECOND. You should know that anyone who lived in the house will tell you that the house co-lead used the sexual misconduct accusations for blackmail. She went on to accuse of sexual misconduct multiple people who didn't side with her (INCLUDING ACCUSING ONE GAY PERSON OF ASSAULTING A FEMALE. WHICH FEMALE SAID HE DIDN'T DO). Was she terrified of her male co-lead? Apparently not, because in the months that followed this story (and before the article got published), she would constantly ask the accused person for "favors", including throwing her birthday in his house. There are at least 3 people that have heard her say:  “Get me the lease by Friday at Midnight or I will go to the press, lawyers, and the police with these accusations.” HER BLACKMAIL HAS BEEN RECOR... (read more)

A moderator has deactivated replies on this comment until
Ben_West🔸Moderator Comment23
5
0

Mod here. It seems like this thread has devolved into a debate about what a non-EA house leader did at a non-EA house. I'm locking the thread.

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redsun12
3
1

I was also involved in the situation.

Please do not doxx other victims, ESPECIALLY when they are underage.

Rochelle Shen was the only person to step into the situation. The rest of the housemates showed an extremely poor understanding of sexual violence and rationalized away serious acts of abuse and rape. The perpetrator used "messy breakup" as a way to rationalize away acts of domestic abuse. The perpetrator  called his other victims to blackmail them into silence. The housemates ignored many other warning signs and red flags from this guy, including assaults and gropings of multiple unrelated women.

Without Rochelle Shen, there would still be a serial predator owning the lease of a group house full of young and underage women. She is a hero.

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8
gated
Rochelle spent the first few months of allegations saying that her house co-founder ex is a pathological liar.  She only changed this narrative after an argument with people in the house, completely manipulating the narrative and saying that people turned on her because she is a victim of sexual misconduct. When [redacted], founder of Neighborhood, tried to coordinate this situation, she threatened him with allegations too.  To be clear - another woman already mentioned in the article has been lied to by Rochelle too. 
8
redsun
I am in contact with the victims. They report Rochelle as consistently supporting them and calling out rapists and rape apologists at the house. She was the only person who actively got the perpetrator off the lease and out of the house-- not naval-gazing into a Google doc of expected value calculations and asking the victims to be quieter about speaking out.
2[comment deleted]
0
whistleblower10
Rochelle Shen brought this person into the thread and should remove them from the thread.
1
redsun
Witch-hunting RS was precisely why the perpetrator was able to continue (and is still continuing) predating on young women in the Bay Area.
-1
gated
Then why did she continue organizing events with him in the months after the story? It is not just the house that can confirm it. 
-1
redsun
Comments like gated's are precisely why Silicon Valley is such a misogynistic place: why women are afraid to speak up and why women cannot defend other woman without getting reputationally slaughtered.  gated's comment is precisely the rape apologism that makes it very hard to hold predators accountable for sexual violence. You also notice the conflation of rape/sexual assault with a bunch of random made-up infractions to distract from the issue.
-1
gated
I am not apologetic of sexual misconduct. I also have been supporting a number of victims through similar situations. Which is why I can not take it when people use sexual allegations for their own gain.
2
redsun
How then should RS have handled the issue? Do enlighten me.
5
gated
At the time the situation was happening, the house formed a council that asked both Rochelle and her male co-lead to step down ( she mishandled the coordination of the allegations). The male co-lead stepped down in favor of the council. Rochelle refused to step down. Instead, she launched a campaign of threats against people in the house, reminding everyone she had "political connections".
6
orellanin
Would any of these females be willing publicly say so? Also, what was communication in this group house / social group like; when the co-head accused people of sexual assault, is it safe for me to assume that there's a record of that accusation? By blackmail, do you mean saying "Get me the lease by Friday at Midnight or I will go to the press, lawyers, and the police with these accusations." or something else? (If people aren't willing to talk about this publicly, but anyone who knows me can confirm or disconfirm any of this, please reach out to me!)
-3
gated
I will reach out to them to ask. For the underaged girl - she understandably asked everyone to leave her out of this situation, but there are screenshots from communication with her and her brother which can be shared privately (if they agree to this)  
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redsun
Mods, please delete this comment. It is doxxing one of the victims and her privacy.
0
gated
These are double-standard all the way. She was doxed by [name removed by moderator]. Now that everyone knows she is not a victim and can say as much, you want to silence this?
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Ben_West🔸
Mod here. Please don't share any conversations without consent from all parties involved. It's fine to share if you get consent but please censor the names.
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gated
Yes, did not plan to share without consent
2
Lorenzo Buonanno🔸
I removed a name from this comment after a request to the mod team
4
whistleblower10
There is a blacklist that will list anybody who tells the truth about this as being "complicit in attacks".  The house co-lead credibly threatens anybody who tells the truth about this with being added to the blacklist, for which there is no due process. Anybody can be marred, without recourse, potentially forever. The blacklist is not robust to bad actors.
-3
orellanin
What happens to people on this blacklist?
0
gated
One of them recently failed to get investors because those saw them on the list. 
-4
redsun
Many women are also saved because this is actually the only way we can identify rapists and avoid them.
-4
gated
Sexual misconduct shouldn't be treated lightly. As we shouldn't treat lightly people who blackmail others for personal gain. I think EA community should consider creating a list of people who use social movements for their own gain - in this case Rochelle Shen.  
1
redsun
Rochelle Shen is thankfully harsh on sexual misconduct. The other residents of the house did not investigate the issue, showed a poor understanding of sexual violence, and gave the perpetrator a free pass.
-1
gated
Why did she laugh the victims off until it was convenient for her?
0[comment deleted]
-12
Rochelle Shen
NunoSempere49
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7

Significantly worse than what I expecting, so sorry to hear.

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NunoSempere36
30
3

(I was expecting "Breaking: awkward nerds don't know how to flirt", not "One recalled being “groomed” by a powerful man nearly twice her age who argued that “pedophilic relationships” were both perfectly natural and highly educational"

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timunderwood32
17
7

Is that what you expected after accounting for a Chinese Robber effect, and that the journalist is actively looking for the worst stories they could find, and then framing them in the worst way they can manage?

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Rochelle Shen
Speaking on behalf of my own personal interactions with the reporter, the described events in the article are far much milder than what I really experienced. I did not want to tell the full severity of the story because I genuinely care about the Effective Altruism movement, and though numerous individual actors behaved in a coordinated and awful way, I still see the promise in having a positive conversation about how the movement can change. That being said, if people try the same intimidation tactics on myself and my peers again, I will probably share more of the evidence I've gathered over the past year to give a clearer picture on what actually happened.
2
orellanin
Can you be more specific here; were you declining to tell the full severity of the story in order to protect the reputation of the EA movement? I would prefer you didn't do that (but by the same logic, if you did, I very much appreciate you [EDIT: saying] so!). We can have a discussion about the relative merits of reputation vs integrity (as in https://sideways-view.com/2016/11/14/integrity-for-consequentialists/ ; I don't endorse all the reasoning in that post) but I don't really know where to start. Separately, I would prefer if you share more of the evidence regardless of your reasons against doing so. Please let me know if I can do anything to make you or others more comfortable doing so!
2
zchuang
What sort of institutional safeguards would enable you to share the full extent of what occurred assuming you wanted to share and it would help your healing (beyond what you've already written)?
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Peter Wildeford
Me too. Very distressing and sad.
2
SantaRKlaas
Without further context, I have no reason to think the latter doesn’t mean the former. People spin things.
-11
SantaRKlaas
Nathan Young34
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2

Fwiw I wasn't particularly surprised.

I don't know what the expected level should be, but I've heard stories a bit like this.

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burner38
30
28

It's surprising to me that polyamory continues to be such a sacred cow of EA. It's been highly negative for EA's public image, and now it seems to be connected to a substantial amount of abuse. There's a number of reasons our priors should suggest that non-monogomous relationships in high trust, insular communities can easily lead to abuse. It's always seemed overly optimistic to think EA could avoid these problems. Of course, there have been similar ongoing discussions in the Berkeley Rationalist community for a number of years now. 

This seems like one of the most important community issues to reflect on. 

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Jonathan Mannhart33
12
3

I voted disagree & want to explain why:


I don't think it's a “sacred cow" in EA and I don't think there are a number of reasons our priors should be that way.  I very strongly don't think it can be generalised to that extent. (Background: I've been on the receiving end of some bad social dynamics in which polyamory kind of played a role. Think unwanted attention of a person with more social power, not knowing what to do about it, etc. So I think I  know what I'm talking about, at least to a small extent.)
 

I think the main negative prior should be "is there a distinction between professional and romantic/sexual relationships and do people feel pressured/unsafe". 

In the Time piece, in every instance, this has been problematic. I think once social groups remove too many barriers between "professional" and "romantic/sexual", you can run into problems (i.e. become more "cult-like"). Unhealthy interplay between romantic and professional connections is exactly one of the big things what the community team and people like Julia Wise are concerned with (and what they are for), and I personally think they're doing a good job.

I think it's perfectly okay (and extremely p... (read more)

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸13
5
1

polyamory continues to be such a sacred cow of EA

I'm not sure what you mean by this?

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burner14
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3

Something that is above question or criticism or question (see here), in this case because discourse is often cast as intolerant or phobic 

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Robi Rahman24
13
4

Jeff was probably not asking what "sacred cow" means; more likely the question was asking in what way polyamory is a sacred cow of EA. I will grant that EA is more tolerant of most personal traits than society typically is, and therefore is more supportive of polyamory than other groups just by not being against it, but it's not anywhere in any canonical EA materials, and certainly not a sacred cow. Plenty of EAs are criticizing it in this very thread.

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8
burner
This seems a bit obtuse. In any local EA community I've been a part of, poly plays a big part in the culture.  This is sort of true, but most of them are receiving a lot of downvotes. And this is the first time I've seen a proper discussion about it. 
2
Amber Dawn
It literally is intolerant. Like if you are saying "we shouldn't tolerate this in the community", that just is intolerant. 
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burner
Ok, fortunately that is not what I am saying. 
Ben Millwood🔸26
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2

Could you clarify what concretely you do want to happen, then, if not less tolerance of polyamory? What would be different, if polyamory was not a sacred cow? What are the possible conclusions we could come to after reflecting on this?

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burner
 I don't have a particular agenda about "what should happen" here. I've said we should scrutinize the ways that polyamorous norms could be abused in high trust communities. I'm not sure what the outcome would be, but I would certainly hope it's not intolerance of poly communities.  I would readily agree that some - perhaps most - of these problems could also be solved by ensuring EA spaces are purely professional, but it does seem a bit obtuse to not understand that someone could feel more uncomfortable when asked to join a polycule at an EA meet up than simply being asked on a date.  I think an ideal outcome would to reduce the association between EA and poly - such that poly is not a major cultural touchstone within EA - while keeping EA a welcoming and respectful place for poly people. 
Amber Dawn11
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26

I don't see why priors should make us suspect non-monogamous relationships would lead to more abuse than monogamous ones.

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burner27
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5

I'm very surprised by this. There are number of anthropological findings which connect monogamous norms to greater gender equality and other positive social outcomes. Recently arguments along these lines have been advanced by Joseph Henrich, one of the most prominent evolutionary biologists. 

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸43
17
3

Isn't the research on this almost all comparing monogamy to polygyny? But polyamory, especially as practiced among EAs and adjacent groups doesn't seem very similar to polygyny to me?

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burner10
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2

I certainly don't think it's conclusive, or even strong evidence. As I said, I think it's one thing among many that should inform our priors  here. There's also a different vein of anthropological research that looks at non-monogamy and abuse in cults and other religious contexts, but I'm less familiar with it. 

The alternative - accepting norms of sexual minorities without scrutiny - seems perfectly reasonable in many cases, but because of those reasons I don't think it should be abided by here, especially in light of these women's accounts. 

I emphasize there shouldn't be any hostility or intolerance to polyamorous people, just the way polyamorous norms might create the potential for abuse in EA spaces (or generally in high trust, insular environments). 

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Amber Dawn14
3
3

What's the mechanism whereby it leads to greater gender equality? 

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸31
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2

The article burner linked has:

In suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses. By assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (i) the spousal age gap, (ii) fertility, and (iii) gender inequality. By shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, normative monogamy increases savings, child investment and economic productivity. By increasing the relatedness within households, normative monogamy reduces intra-household conflict, leading to lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death and homicide.

This doesn't seem very relevant to the kind of issues discussed in the Time article, though?

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ben.smith36
31
4

I think polyamory as it is described in the articles mixes complex webs of personal relationships with professional ones. Romantic connections within polyamorous communities can be complicated even without entanglement with professional concerns. When you bring in layers of professional connections on top of that, I can see why there might be an extra dimension of vulnerability to coercion and exploitation.

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[anonymous]26
12
8

Totally agree that mixing romantic relationships with professional ones can in certain contexts create conflicts of interest, but I really fail to see how this is unique to polyamory. Plenty of monogamous people develop romantic relationships with their supervisors, plenty of monogamous people unfairly favor their partners (or more often, their partner's sibling or other close connection), and plenty of monogamous people have wide webs of deep platonic friendships that introduce complications that are completely analogous to polyamorous relationships. This attitude seems a bit dismissive of the reality of deep platonic friendships, which for many people are more committed and loving than the average romantic relationship. 

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Gil37
13
4

The difference, from my perspective, is that the mixing of romantic and work relationships in a poly context has much more widespread damage. In monogamous relationships, the worst that can happened is that there is one incident involving 2 or so people, which can be dealt with in a contained way. In poly relationships, when you have a relationship web spanning a large part of an organization, this can cause very large harm to the company and to potential future employees. I, frankly, would feel very uncomfortable if I was at an organization where most of my coworkers were in a polyamorous relationship.

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ben.smith11
4
1

I agree with you that mixing romantic relationships with professional ones occurs among people who are monogamous or don't identify as polyamorous.

I personally wouldn't like to see EAs discouraged from being polyamorous. I'm not actively polyamorous myself, but I wouldn't want to see people restricted to more traditional romantic styles, like monogamous marriage, because I think many of those relationship styles developed in a very different social and technological context than the context we have now. Our culture at large probably benefits from people pioneering and exploring relationship styles that are more suited to our current sociotechnological context. In addition, I think it would be somewhat of a human rights issue for, say, employers in the movement to be telling people how to order their romantic lives.

That said, what I mean to say was that if your romantic life involves more people--which I think it can in polyamory (that is the aim for many, perhaps!), you'll have a larger and more complex web of romantic connections. If those people are also those you have professional connections with, then there is the potential for your professional and romantic webs to overlap. W... (read more)

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7[anonymous]
Okay, I think I misunderstood your previous comment to be relating more to conflicts of interest--I agree it's important to be mindful of overlap between romantic connections and professional life for these reasons, and that it is especially important for people with many partners in the same field to be mindful of this (whether they have many partners because they are a serial monogamist, have a lot of casual sex, or practice a particular style of polyamory)
7
Xavier_ORourke
Another important difference with monogomy is that it's taboo to make a proposition to somebody who's already married or already in a serious relationship, so people don't make them as often.
Benevolent_Rain35
16
0

Is there perhaps too much emphasis on punishment and not enough on prevention? Skimming through comments there is a lot of talk about reporting and dealing with situations. But I have a feeling there are too many of these situations occurring in EA. I feel like there is a lot of work to do in terms of culture and here I think CEA cannot be expected to do this alone. I think the onus is on us males to e.g. really make it clear whenever we overhear conversations that are inappropriate to make this clear, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us feel or if the person making the inappropriate comments has power. I am happy to work with people if there is a group of males that want to get together e.g. a pledge and collect signatures or some other initiative that could give people more comfort in combating bad culture (just DM me). 

Also, I think there is a distinction to make between EA in general and people employed by EA orgs. For the former, as we are  a big tent, I do not expect us to be able to have as low "case numbers" as e.g. McKinsey. But for employees in EA orgs I expect us to be best in class. We are after all altruists and should take this part of our identity ser... (read more)

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Sanjay34
30
18

At a time when the community has gone through so much, it's hard to hear this.

I confess there's a part of me which wants to disengage from this. I'm tired of worrying about whether EA culture has a problem with fraud, racism, or other things that I find offensive. 

But I shouldn't disengage.

Just because my emotional energies have been zapped by previous dramas, it doesn't reduce the suffering experienced by victims of sexual abuse.

So first I'm going to say something which I think is obvious and uncontroversial to everyone:

Sexual abuse and harassment are wrong, and should not happen.

Secondly, I hereby take this pledge:

---

A pledge of solidarity to those who have suffered from sexual harassment or abuse

If you are upset or suffering because you have been abused or harassed, and you disclose this to me, I pledge to do the following:

  • I will listen and provide you with emotional support -- if you're upset, your distress will be my first priority at the outset.
  • I will not ask you questions to try to work out whether you are telling the truth. I would much rather trust and provide emotional support to someone who later turns out to have been lying than to question -- even subtly -- the le
... (read more)
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Will Bradshaw18
12
5

I'm honestly baffled by all the downvotes & disagreevotes this is getting. I'm really struggling to see anything objectionable in Sanjay's comment; indeed, it seems like a clearly positive and valuable contribution. Our community would be a better place if more people made (& meant) clear statements in this vein.

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸65
33
1

I didn't vote on this either way, but I think the response was probably negative because:

  • People are wary of the effects of a general "assume the accuser is right" approach. I'm completely on board with the approach in the pledge if a friend comes to me, but with community-level accusations this can turn into "whoever says something first wins".

  • Skepticism over this kind of pledge as a mechanism for making things better.

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keller_scholl
I think there are different interpretations that people can take of what it implies. One reading is that the pledge specifies how the pledger responds in the moment, with the person in pain. Another reading would talk about how they reacted through the entire resulting community process. I parsed it as the former, but what you're describing seems to be closer to the second.
-2
skyblue20
I am glad you posted this and it got so many agree votes. It is concerning if people do not understand how this kind of pledge makes things better by: 1. Making people more likely to report incidents of harassment or abuse 2. Reinforcing that this community is a space that wants to be safe and welcoming to women. This makes me feel like EAs may need much more sensitivity/harassment/discrimination/etc. training than non-EAs do. And highlights the need for stricter workplace dating and sexual harassment policies in EA orgs.
aella44
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9

I mostly disagreed based on "I would much rather trust and provide emotional support to someone who later turns out to have been lying than to question -- even subtly -- the legitimacy of someone who has suffered sexual abuse.", which feels dangerous to me personally if it were adopted as a community norm. do appreciate the general spirit of attempting to help though.

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1
skyblue20
I did not see how this in any way implies "I do not support the appropriate authorities from investigating whether the report is a lie" which is the only problematic scenario here. Not immediately grilling the victim on the legitimacy of their claim when they are opening up to you about a traumatic event and instead providing emotional support makes a lot of sense to me. The cost to me of providing emotional support to a non-victim is low and the cost of immediately being challenged on truthfulness to a real victim is very high.
Jason33
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3

Epistemic status: somewhat angry

Preliminary notes: To control length, I'm going to refer generically to misconduct and survivors, although I recognize that there is a wide range of problematic sexual/relational behavior and that the appropriate responses will vary based on the specific behavior in question. Also, this is a EA Forum comment, not a concrete proposal, so should be taken at a fairly high level of generality. I haven't done any real legal vetting on any of these thoughts, and some do carry a degree of legal risk.

I'm more focused on senior EAs here, not because I have any reason to think there is more misconduct among that group, but because I'm particularly upset about the abuse-of-power angle, and some of my comments are directed specifically toward that angle. For more junior EAs, the decentralized elements of the EA movement create somewhat different challenges. My comments about senior EAs are not intended to imply a position either way on how possible misconduct by non-senior EAs should be addressed.  I haven't attempted to define "senior EA," and consider the possibility that some people might be "limited-purpose senior EAs" -- for instance, someone might be ... (read more)

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Buck18
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8

Re 2: You named a bunch of cases where a professional relationship comes with restrictions on sex or romance. (An example you could given, which I think is almost universally followed in EA, is "people shouldn't date anyone in their chain of management"; IMO this is a good rule.) I think it makes sense to have those relationships be paired with those restrictions. But it's not clear to me that the situation in EA is more like those situations than like these other situations:

  • Professors dating grad students who work at other universities
  • Well-respected artists dating people in their art communities
  • High-income people dating people they know from college who aren't wealthy

I think it's really not obvious that those relationships should be banned (though I don't feel hugely confident, and I understand that some people think that they should be).

I'm interested in more specific proposals for what rules along these lines you might support.

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Jason29
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1

So, I think the first question is something like: "Could a reasonable person in the shoes of the lower-status person conclude that rebuffing the overtures of the higher-status person [1] could result in a meaningfully adverse impact on their career due to the higher-status person taking improper action?"[2] 

I think in the vast majority of cases following your three hypotheticals would result in a "no" answer to this question. For instance, most professors have relatively little influence on the operations of other universities, or on the national job market for PhDs. The non-wealthy party in the third hypothetical has no right to the wealthy party's money, so the fact that the wealthy person responds to rejection by not sharing their wealth is not improper action. In contrast,junior EAs do have a right to a meritocratic hiring process in which their decision not to have sex with someone is not a liability.

In answering question one, I would not assess the moral compass of the higher-status person, but would answer the question based on their role, power, and influence. Way too many organizations have gotten themselves into trouble with "We trust X executive to do the ... (read more)

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Quadratic Reciprocity28
9
0

I appreciate the amount of detail you go into in your comments.

As a woman / "junior EA" / recent "EA student", I do feel some amount of wariness around my dating choices being policed/restricted out of a desire to protect me and think there has to be a bar for when that seems appropriate - having rules against bosses/professors starting romantic relationships with current employees/students is above that bar but I currently think many potential situations of senior EAs dating more junior people in their field they interact with in social contexts (or students who are not much younger) would not be above that bar. 

It feels like there are two problems here (which overlap):

  1. EAs who have some type of influence using that in bad ways to harm the careers / social reputation of people who have rejected them. To the extent that this is a problem, I think more explicitness helps, both in stating conflicts of interest and in propositioning people
  2. More junior EAs feeling pressured into saying yes or not calling out bad behaviour because they think the above could happen, regardless of whether it actually could. This is affected by junior EAs feeling uncertain about what kinds of influence
... (read more)
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2
Jason
Thanks for sharing this. To begin with, if most "juniors" or students don't support any specific proposed rule along these lines, then the idea is bad and it should not be enacted.  I do not have any clear idea of where the "bar" should be. I certainly agree that imposing a prohibition on certain seniors, as well as lesser restrictions, would be paternalistic (as are prohibitions/restrictions in other professions, such as the rule of professional conduct that bans me from starting a sexual relationship with a client). Identifying circumstances that justify a prohibition or restriction would certainly be a difficult line-drawing exercise, which is one of the reasons I left "senior EA" undefined and included a step two at which the policymaker examined whether alternatives to prohibition would be sufficient.  I should have been clearer that evaluating at step two also includes consideration of background issues like whether there is a solid process in place to detect potential retailatory behavior, whether there is an independent third-party adjudication process for those who believe they have experienced retailiation, etc.
Buck15
10
7

Thanks for the specific proposals.

The reasonable person also knows that senior EAs have a lot of discretionary power, and thus there is a significant chance retailatory action would not be detected absent special safeguards.

FWIW, I think you're probably overstating the amount of discretionary power that senior EAs could use for retaliatory action.

IMO, if you proposition someone, you're obligated to mention this to other involved parties in situations where you're wielding discretionary power related to them. I would think it was wildly inappropriate for a grantmaker to evaluate a grant without disclosing this COI (and probably I'd think they shouldn't evaluate the grant at all), or for someone to weigh in on a hiring decision without disclosing it. If I heard of someone not disclosing the COI in such a situation, I'd update strongly against them, and I'd move maybe halfway towards thinking that they should have their discretionary power removed.

If some senior person decided that they personally hated someone who had rejected them and wanted to wreck their career, I think they could maybe do it, but it would be hard for them to do it in a way that didn't pose a big risk to their own... (read more)

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Linch13
7
0

For what it's worth, my current vote is for immediate suspension in situations if there is credible allegations for anyone in a grantmaking etc capacity where they used such powers in a retaliatory action for rejected romantic or sexual advances. In addition to being illegal, such actions are just so obviously evidence of bad judgement and/or poor self-control that I'd hesitate to consider anyone who acted in such ways a good fit for any significant positions of power. I have not thought the specific question much, but it's very hard for me to imagine any realistic situation where someone with such traits is a good fit for grantmaking. 

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Jason12
7
1

Thanks, Buck. It is good to hear about those norms, practices, and limitations among senior EAs, but the standard for what constitutes harassment has to be what a reasonable person in other person's shoes would think. The student or junior EA experiences harm if they believe a refusal will have an adverse effect on their careers, even if the senior EA actually lacks the practical ability to create such an effect.[1]

The reasonable student or junior EA doesn't know about undocumented (or thinly documented) norms, practices, and limitations among senior EAs. I would give those more weight in the analysis if they were published, reasonably specific, and contained explicit enforcement mechanisms. As it is, I think the reasonable student/junior would rely on broader social understandings -- in which rebuffing sexual advances from more powerful people can seriously harm one's career.

In my view an effective COI mechanism requires someone other than the conflicted individual to have (a) knowledge of the conflict; (b) a reasonable ability to detect conflicted behavior (or behavior inconsistent with a recusal); (c) the power to deal with the conflicted individual and the conflicted behavior; ... (read more)

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2
Arepo
Fwiw, someone was just observing on a different thread how many 'burner' or similar accounts have recently been showing up on the forum. So it seems like many junior EAs do in fact believe that being negatively identified by senior EAs could be harmful to their prospects.
3
NickLaing
I like the idea of providing free independently source legal, psychosocial and financial support to victims who might want it. This might be practically difficult for conflict of interest reasons among others, but I think it would show good faith and lower barriers for victims to pursue justice if they wanted to take that path.
1
Jason
There are some functions that should be housed in an organization with significant financial, operational, and legal independence from the main EA organizations. That would require either community funding, or a long-term grant.  I was envisioning that such an organization should be available to coordinate the investigation of alleged misconduct by senior EAs, and I think having certain survivor-support functions housed outside of CEA would serve the interests of both survivors and CEA (which then wouldn't have to worry about managing potentially serious conflicts of interest). I don't have a clear opinion on whether / to what extent most of EA's response to misconduct more generally should be housed in an independent organization.
Indahouse28
22
7

With the utmost respect to the CEA community health team, I think that they are, in their current form, largely unable to sufficiently manage significant parts of their community health, especially issues around sexual harassment.

 From what I can see from the CEA website, other than Julia Wise, nobody in the team has been trained and worked in mental health, psychology or social work. Moreover, it is not clear that anyone in the team has worked in, or has experience in, managing sexual harrassment or trauma-based counselling. Given that the movement is relatively large and growing, and given that concerns in this area were known before, why has this not been prioritised? 

Even having a trained professional as a contractor would be a relatively low-cost way to appropriately support community health, especially pertaining to sexual harassment.

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Arepo27
8
2

I would be very interested to hear a breakdown of how much these issues are reported in EA circles by geography. Notwithstanding this comment, it sounds from the anecdotes in this thread like it very much is concentrated in the Bay area. I was moderately involved in the London EA scene for several years, and while I obviously can't rule out that this happens there, my general impression was that that community would have looked extremely dimly on anything like the abuses of power described in the OP (I found out retrospectively about one or two such incidents over the course of several years, and my understanding was they were dealt with firmly, and the main offender has not been welcome in EA circles since).

If it turns out it is concentrated in the Bay area, that point seems worth acknowledging openly, doing some serious investigation into, and asking whoever the community leaders are there to take  responsibility for whatever is causing the problem - including, possibly, resigning, even if they had no direct responsibility for it.

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸15
4
1

my general impression was that that community would have looked extremely dimly on anything like the abuses of power described in the OP

I'm not in the Bay or London, but I would expect the abuses of power describing the OP to be looked at extremely dimly anywhere? Is there something in the article or about your impression of the situation that leads you to think they were viewed differently in the Bay than they would have been in London?

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Arepo
If it does in fact happen substantially more often there, I would take that in itself as pretty strong Bayesian evidence that something about the culture there makes would-be abusers more confident that they can get away with harassment.
[anonymous]27
9
7

Standard disclaimers apply about 'not all polyamory' - there are plenty of perfectly healthy polyamorous relationships out there - but its implementation in EA seems to play a significant role in many of the examples cited.

What evidence is provided that polyamory itself played a role? Can you name a single instance that could not be replaced by, say, a single man (or for that matter, married and monogamous man who is willing to cheat)  sexually pressuring or harassing women? What is the relevance of polyamory?
 

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸49
30
4

married and monogamous man who is willing to cheat

One of the differences is that if someone is doing something they know is illicit they're likely to be a lot more careful about it because they're taking a larger risk. If you're monogamously married and proposition someone you don't really know at a conference it might get back to your partner.

I wish people would be more careful around relationships in general, and aware of the effects of power dynamics and how their decisions might impact others, but I do expect for many people "your partner might find out, so don't hit on someone who might not be into it because they might tell" would be a big consideration.

could not be replaced by, say, a single man ...

It's rare for the high-status men to be single, including in communities where polyamory is not practiced.

So in an alternative version of the EA community which was much more similar to the rest of the world in having very low rates of consensual non-monogamy (plus the level of scrupulosity EAs would bring to opposing cheating) I'd expect many fewer cases where someone was using their institutional power for sexual ends. I don't think this would do much, though, to handle this kind of issue among, say, EA college students.

(Not advocating we prohibit EA leaders from being consensually non-monogamous or otherwise discourage polyamory, but trying to answer "What is the relevance of polyamory?")

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[anonymous]10
4
3

I strongly disagree with both these points. Look at some of the famous recent cases of high profile sexual predators, and many if not most were married--Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Andrew Windsor, etc. are all married. Some of these people divorced and remarried later and I don't know if all of their accusations were all during marriages (though many clearly were), but if not, then that just undermines your second point, which also strikes me as not an especially strong correlation. Also, look at the very high rates of sexual harassment in communities (economics, philosophy academia, Hollywood, many religious communities) where most people are married. 

Suppose your second point about high-status men being disproportionately married was true though. Suppose further that for whatever reason, it seemed slightly less true in EA, with lower overall marriage rates than the general population. What would you think about a post that ended with "Standard disclaimers apply about 'not all ' - there are plenty of perfectly healthy single men out there - but its implementation in EA seems to play a significant role in many of the examples cited."? 

(plus t

... (read more)
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Jeff Kaufman 🔸
I think this is only disagreement with my first point? My second point was that in the broader world it's rare for high-status men to be single, and giving several examples of married high-status men seems to go in that direction? On the first point, my claim isn't "monogamously married men don't hit on people they shouldn't or otherwise harass people because of the risk of it getting back to their partner" -- that is clearly not true. Instead, I'm saying I'd predict that they're less likely to, and they're likely to try to be more attentive to whether their interaction seems to be wanted because of the higher risk to their reputation. I think this is currently true: EA has a lot of people who care a lot about strictly following rules and sticking with commitments, and I think EAs would on average judge someone harshly for cheating than non-EAs. But I do think EAs are generally more opposed to sexual harassment than non-EAs? Which again isn't to say it doesn't happen or even that it necessarily happens less here than elsewhere -- as described in the article and in various metoo posts it does happen, and it happens more than we should accept.
[anonymous]13
4
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So it seems you think being single is just as likely to result in a high propensity to commit sexual assault as being polyamorous, but it just happens to be the case that most high status men are not single? Is that a fair description of your views? 

If so, would you equally supportive of posts about how marriage rates in EA are too low relative (assuming this was true) to the general population and how this is somehow a problem and potentially dangerous for women?

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸
Not exactly, but close enough. As I wrote in my response to Kelsey I don't think we should be discouraging polyamory. I was trying to answer your "What is the relevance of polyamory?" question, and talk about how this effect on interpersonal harm is one of the considerations in trying to figure out whether discouraging polyamory is a good idea. Your question also conflates "single" as in "non-married" and as in "non-partnered" in a confusing way.
[anonymous]10
4
1

Your question also conflates "single" as in "non-married" and as in "non-partnered" in a confusing way.

Agreed,  my bad, I meant non-partnered.
 

I was trying to answer your "What is the relevance of polyamory?" question, and talk about how this effect on interpersonal harm is one of the considerations in trying to figure out whether discouraging polyamory is a good idea.

I guess my point was that if the community had lower rates of romantic relationships than the rest of society, it would be a very non-remarkable thing and it would be very odd to bring up people who chose to be single or norms that are very accepting of choosing to be single on rates of sexual assault or harassment. It would also feel very offensive to me if I were a single person and there was open discussion of whether my choice to be single was somehow increasing sexual assaults either directly because I was more likely to commit assault or indirectly by promoting it as a norm. I'm all for saying offensive things that need to be said, but in this case there seems to be almost no evidence to back it up. 

I get the sense that even though the arguments around polyamory and sexual assault are almost identical to the arguments around singleness by choice and sexual assault, one is treated very differently because it is perceived as weird and deviant.

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸
If our community had elevated levels of people being single by choice, where this was of the "lots of romantic interactions, but no commitment" and not the "few romantic interactions" variety, I absolutely expect people would be pointing to it as a potential contributor to higher rates of unwanted romantic or sexual interactions. This does not mean I would be trying to discourage people from being single by choice, but I could see us having the same conversation we are now where I talk about how I think it probably leads to a higher level of issues and that is one thing to consider in deciding whether one should discourage it.
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Arepo
  This seems like an extremely speculative way of justifying what does indeed sound to me like prejudice. You could just as easily opine that 'if someone is doing something they know is illicit they're likely to be a lot more aggressive about it' or similar.
Arepo17
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It did make me wince to see the comment 'Gopalakrishnan was alarmed at some of the responses. One commenter wrote that her post was “bigoted” against polyamorous people' unironically in the same article as 'EA’s polyamorous subculture was a key reason why the community had become a hostile environment for women'. 

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Alexander Herwix 🔸
Disclaimer: I haven’t read the full article but I think a common position one could take here is the following: Polyamory makes sexually promiscuous behavior permissible and some might argue „virtuous“ in a way that it encourages conflicts with conventional understanding of love and sexual relationships. Polyamory might not be „bad“ in principle but could be a contributing factor to people feeling emboldened and morally justified in making sexual advances even when they are not appropriate. So the claim here is not that non-polyamorous people could not have behaved similarly but that the rate of non-polyamorous behaving in such ways is lower because of more „guilt“ and „shame“ associated with sexually promiscuous behaviors. EDIT: After some rethinking of the formulation of the sentence above, I would change it to: So the claim here is that polyamory might attract some people prone to predatory behaviors who feel like they can justify their own attitudes and behaviors this way. It could be easier to tell yourself that what you are doing is polyamorous and that’s why other people are freaked out by what you do rather than deal with the fact that your behavior may be over-the-line. I think this line of thinking should not be dismissed outright as I don’t have any data that could back either side on this one. My gut says there could be something to the argument but mostly in the sense that I think that polyamory could cover a heterogeneous group of people who may express more extreme positions on a spectrum here. Some or most polyamorous people may be more sensitive to such issues but a few people may really feel emboldened and justified to behave in predatory ways.
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Alexander Herwix 🔸
If you downvote or disagree it’s quite helpful to explain why. I think this is a reasonable comment that provides a possible answer to the question that was posed. I would argue it makes a contribution to the discourse here and deserves to be engaged with. For me it seems really difficult to disentangle whether downvotes are just „soldier mindset“ or actually grounded in deliberate reasoning. Just downvoting without any kind of explanation seems like it should be reserved for clear cut cases of „no contribution“.
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Arepo
I didn't downvote, but but found your comment (and many like it on this page) uncomfortable to read, because it strongly echoes historical negative attitudes towards other minority subgroups. One could almost rewrite it word for word about, say, gay culture: I suspect we both find the edited paragraphs a pretty unpleasant lens to look through, even though it doesn't say anything that is technically false.
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Alexander Herwix 🔸
Thanks for the response. I agree that this might not be „pleasant“ to read but I tried to make a somewhat plausible argument that illustrate some of the tensions that might be at play here. And I think this is what the comment that I replied to asked for. Also I would argue that the comment „holding up“ when we are switching to related phenomena (at least sex positive gay culture) could actually be an indicator of it pointing to some general underlying dynamics regarding „weirdness“ in relation to orthodoxy. Weirdness tends to leave more room for deviance from established norms which may attract people with tendencies toward rule breaking. And since being gay has become much more accepted by the mainstream and less „weird“, so has the potential for misuse by bad faith actors. All of this should not be interpreted as me having anything against polyamory or other practices currently perceived to be weird per se, actually, I find there are very interesting arguments in favor of polyamory and I am many regards holding weird positions myself (e.g., vegan, etc.). I have friends who have polyamorous relationships. But given it’s status in the current environment, it still might be an attraction point for nefarious people simply by virtue of being „weird“ and, thus, more open for misuse.
Maddie26
5
0

Hi There! I'm using a pseudonym here because I, too, fear retaliation for speaking about my experience, as my abuser is still involved in the EA movement and is friends with at least one staff member involved in investigating these claims.

This abuser is fairly well known in other communities for his behavior and has been ejected from many of them. Below are some things he has done, which I have either experienced first hand or been party to via his own admissions or those of his victims. (CW: Rape, abuse)

I can confirm that some subset of the below claims were made known to EA staff in the past, and that I haven't seen any evidence of anything having been done about it, aside from one of the victims being ostracized by EA staff. This unfortunately leads me to believe that this problem is in fact systemic within the EA community.

Problematic behaviors by the perpetrator:

  • Doxxing a rape victim
  • Posting a rape victim's restraining order online, falsely claiming that she was lying.
  • Encouraging online harassment of said rape victim in a manner that reached her professional colleagues.
  • Sexually assaulting multiple women
  • Drugging multiple women in a manner that caused at least one to black out
  • Spr
... (read more)
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Catherine Low🔸24
2
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This sounds really horrifying Maddie. I'm so so sorry you (and other victims) have had to go through this. I'll send you a direct message to work out if and how I might be able to help you and prevent future harm from this person.   
(BTW I'm Catherine from CEA's Community Health team). 

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8
Maddie
Hi Catherine, that is very kind of you; thank you so much! I wanted to let you know that I really appreciate your support and also that I might be a little slow to reply occasionally due to the number of things I have going on right now, but that I'll be sure to check back and keep on it.
Lauren Maria20
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Hi, thank you for sharing your experiences.  Can you please share who the perpetrator is? If you don't want to post online, would it be possible to DM it? Based off of what you shared here, it is important for other women in EA to not be around this person.

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Maddie
Hi Lauren, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. I'm going to think a bit more about whether I can share his name without compromising myself or other people he has impacted. This will probably mean mostly going through official channels, but I may also be able to DM you after checking in with some people about whether it feels safe and appropriate to them. Thank you again for your kind and thoughtful reply. It means a lot.
1
Lauren Maria
Thanks for your reply. I definitely understand that it may cause more harm to share that information, so please don’t feel pressured. Take care.
Sarah Eustis-Guthrie25
15
1

It’s terrible to see how people have suffered due to harassment and abuse in the community. I think this is an important time for us to reflect as a community on what we need to be doing differently. 

Some aspects of the problem are more easily tractable (clearer policies on reporting misconduct at orgs; better systems for responding to misconduct), while others stem from aspects of EA that are pretty deeply-rooted (centralization of power; blurry work/life boundaries and a high level of romantic/professional entanglements). Many people seem to be pretty bought into the more entrenched aspects I mentioned, but I feel that their downsides haven’t been sufficiently accounted for. At the very least, I think we need to more robustly account for their risks, and factor them into community norms and behaviors. 

If you’re harassed by someone who controls your funding, and they’re also a beloved community member with high status, it’s going to be inherently so much harder to speak up. Yet many EA orgs have harassment policies that are poor or non-existent. Multiple people have told me that they feel such policies aren't necessary in EA because this is a high-trust community with well-intentioned people. I'd argue that when personal and professional lives are so entangled, strong policies are more, rather than less important. 

I'd be eager to hear what other actionable changes people feel would be valuable.

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skyblue2011
4
0

Yet many EA orgs have harassment policies that are poor or non-existent.

This is very alarming and should be corrected immediately.

 

Multiple people have told me that they feel such policies aren't necessary in EA because this is a high-trust community with well-intentioned people.

Non-EA organizations don't have sexual harassment policies because they suspect all their employees/members to be predators! It is so that the minority of people who engage in bad behavior don't slip through (or in case of the incidents in this article, keep slipping through) the cracks and feel emboldened by the lack of such policies.

 

Many people seem to be pretty bought into the more entrenched aspects I mentioned, but I feel that their downsides haven’t been sufficiently accounted for. At the very least, I think we need to more robustly account for their risks, and factor them into community norms and behaviors.

I think the community being mostly very  young, male, low EQ and most importantly inexperienced  leads to biases that make EAs think they will be unaffected by (or are brilliant enough to easily overcome) issues that other organizations and communities experience and actively t... (read more)

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5
Jason
If organizations don't want to adopt good policies for the right reasons, they may want to meditate on how excited employment-discrimination attorneys will get when it is explained that the defendant organization didn't have any meaningful harassment policy or training because they were a "high-trust community with well-intentioned people." I hesitate to frame it that way, but it may be the only way to get some people's attention.
sapphire25
40
44

This is what happens when you centralize power so much. I'm so sorry for what happened. So many people remaining silent and covering for abusers. 

(it shouldn't matter but for the record I have multiple partners)

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Alexander Herwix 🔸13
9
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While this is a simple comment, I am a little bit surprised by the down votes and strong disagreement signaled. Could people who strongly disagree with this comment point out their reasoning?

Without having thought too much about this, I do think that it seems plausible to consider the effects that centralized decision making has on enabling or at least not discouraging these types of behaviors.

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Peter Wildeford54
24
5

I disagree voted but did not downvote. The reason is that while I find the behavior in this TIME article incredibly alarming and abhorrent, I do not think that centralization of EA contributes to the behavior nor do I find decentralization would help (EDIT: though actually this is oveconfident, see caveat added below). In fact, my rough guess is that centralization is fairly helpful here by allowing harassing behavior to be known and being able to effectively gatekeep events etc. from harassers (EDIT: though actually this is an overgeneralization, see caveat added below).

I do however find it clear this article points to some EAs being incredibly unthoughtful about power dynamics to a dangerous degree. I would like to see that fixed. I recommend reading Julia Wise's article on the issue. People who abuse power dynamics in this way have no place in the EA movement I want to promote and would have no place at Rethink Priorities.

~

Edited to add some caveats after discussing this with two people independently: I do think that there are both important downsides and upsides to consider for each of more marginal centralization and more marginal decentralization. Most notably hearing about ... (read more)

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Alexander Herwix 🔸15
3
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Thank you for the thoughtful reply! I think the kind of debate that you indicated to have had is exactly what we need to make sense of such emotionally difficult and complex topics.

Even if you come to the conclusion that other framings seem more useful to you, we can’t have confidence in such conclusions if they are made ex ante without deliberate engagement with the content. So thanks for doing that!

I personally think that we may need to take more time to really try to understand and explore the problem we are facing here, before focusing on solutions. I have the feeling that something broader than „isolated incidents“ of sexual harassment is the right way to frame the problem here. There have been „community-related“ issues after issues popping up over the last few months. We should step back and try to look at the whole picture here and try to understand the mechanisms and drivers that lead to such events. I think this is happening to some degree but it still feels like we could be doing this more explicitly and openly. I really think there’s a lot at stake regarding the future development of the movement.

Sorry, this got meta pretty quickly…

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸11
5
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I can also think of ways decentralization makes things worse (e.g., in my very limited past experience I've personally witnessed decentralization make an abuser be able to move easily from small group to small group without people knowing).

As an example of this, I'm involved in the contra dance community which is almost entirely organized at the level of individual dance groups. I can think of several examples of people who moved on to a different group after getting kicked out of their original group, sometimes multiple times.

Some of this is that the contra dance world doesn't have any group with the role of CEA's community health team (disclosure: my wife is on that team), but even if it did have one it would be very hard to coordinate with the hundreds of local groups around the country. In a decentralized system it's very hard to share information about bad actors to the people who need to know it without making it essentially public, and making things public is often a large escalation that people who report problems to you don't want.

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Alexander Herwix 🔸
But those are two very different communities / movements and I don’t think that the situations are similar. As you said, there is something like CEA and the EA movement also has the ambition to act in a somewhat coordinated fashion to solve the world’s biggest problems, whereas dance groups grow like wild flowers wherever and whenever enough people interested in dance come together regularly. I am not saying that there is nothing to learn by comparing these different situations but this doesn’t seem to be an argument against the theory that centralization of power could have somehow contributed to creating an environment in which people felt badly treated or even harassed. Rather it seems to be more of an illustration that preventing such behaviors is a really difficult problem regardless of concentration of power.
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Jeff Kaufman 🔸
That's a pretty different claim from the "this is what happens when you centralize power so much" that started this thread!
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Alexander Herwix 🔸
My point here was that the conclusion that can be drawn from your example is orthogonal to the question of how concentrated power is. Your example did not provide much evidence against the claim that concentration of power may be a contributing factor to the issue here. Feel free to reread my prior comment.
kta23
10
0

(This might be a rambly comment but these are thoughts that plopped out of me after reading the article, particularly after reading the quote by Julia Wise, “How do you figure out what is a community problem versus what is a Bay Area problem or sex problem or something else?”)

I generally think sexual harassment in EA is just extremely more complicated because of how intertwined we all are, and how much we would be willing to put aside (e.g. bad feelings in interpersonal relationships) for optimizing working for "the greater good" (e.g. let's not ruin this person's career)

This "intertwinement" leads to many complicated things. If you report someone, they might be reprimanded in some form, either subtly or in a big way. Then depending on how they were reprimanded, you'd figure out a way how to deal with them in case you see them again since they're in the EA community, after all. And if they're banned, but online, you can be emotionally mature, but I don't think those feelings go away easily for everyone.

And if you choose not to report (e.g. because it was too "small" to be a report, because they're friends with your friend, because they're working in an environment near you), they'l... (read more)

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kta23
17
1

I'm quite sad to see "When Gopalakrishnan said she wasn’t interested, she recalls, they would “shame” her or try to pressure her, casting monogamy as a lifestyle governed by jealousy, and polyamory as a more enlightened and rational approach." – I've only supposed this was possible due to my personal feelings of some dynamics in the community, and I actually feared it (as someone who has had personal issues with polyamory) but am sad to have heard it actually concretely happened in this way; I really hope it doesn't happen anymore. 

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Tyler Johnston13
8
4

This was really upsetting to read. I really feel for the people impacted, and even if it’s not perfect, I'm glad that this piece was published and don't want to miss any lessons to take from it.

Most sexual harassment is never reported. I wonder if we could reduce any perceived barriers to reporting by creating a wider air gap between CEA (which has, by its nature, conflicts of interest inside the community) and the people tasked with first receiving and responding to reports. Right now, it seems reports are read first by CEA staff, and the confidentiality policies are a bit vague.[1] It could lower the barrier to reporting if the complaint was initially received and handled by a person or organization outside of the EA community (personally and professionally), or at least adjacent to it.

Then, after discussing with the external affiliate and learning more about confidentiality, policies, steps forward, etc., people can decide what they want to do next (be it ending the conversation there, forwarding it to the community health team, forwarding the complaint to other institutions —even straight to law enforcement for severe issues, etc.)

To be clear, I think the community health te... (read more)

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ChanaMessinger
Thanks for bringing this up; we have talked about approaches like this [having an external affiliate], and have done some early considering of the costs and benefits.  One thing I want to flag is that “All of this relies on a team member at CEA first reading and responding to the complaint, of course” is not quite true, since people can make an appointment to call a contact person and talk at the beginning of the call about level of confidentiality without revealing anything about the concern. (This has happened with me [note: I don’t usually take cases, it was a special situation], and we talked through my confidentiality policy before proceeding).  Appreciate the flag about our confidentiality policies being vague. We have confidentiality policies listed here but had thought talking it through with each person would allow us to convey more nuance and specificity to their situation; I’m going to take another look at the current setup.
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Tyler Johnston
Thank you for all the work your team has done, and is doing, on this issue. And thanks for clarifying the point about reading and responding — I worded it poorly and I've retracted it in my comment. But I do think the sort of thing I was gesturing at is just what you mentioned: right now, the structure is intended such that info is given after a conversation with CEA has been started and some level of nuance and specificity to the individual situation has been divulged. I see the benefit to that — I guess there are tradeoffs in everything — but I also wonder if some people might prefer more info on confidentality and options without having to open dialogue with CEA disclosing any specifics of their situation. I don't know if that's true, though. I'm not an expert on this by any means, just trying to contribute to brainstorming a bit. I do think reading the forum post you linked helped me understand a bit more about this.
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ChanaMessinger
Yup, your point seems quite reasonable to me. I'll be thinking about it!
Brian_Tomasik12
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One thing that could help with at least some of the milder cases mentioned in the article would be to have more spaces where EAs can go specifically for dating, so that there would be less flirting and asking people out in the gray zone between personal and professional interactions.

Buck's reciprocity.io is one example of this, though it could be good to have a more complete EA dating website not tied to Facebook. A Tinder-style website requiring mutually swiping right would help with the problem of some women getting swamped with romantic interest, although many EAs (including me) have fond feelings toward a site more like OkCupid as of 2010 where you could see long profiles and message anyone. EA speed-dating sessions and matchmakers are also options. "Date me" docs are another way to ensure that both parties are interested in dating because the person with the doc waits for other people to reply, rather than asking people proactively.

If we had thriving spaces where EAs went specifically for dating, there would be less need or temptation to ask people out in other contexts, which means people who came to EA without wanting any romantic attention could reduce the amount of it they... (read more)

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Max Utility6
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I think this is the relevant place to share this community accountability post alleging coverup of rape and anti-transgender behavior patterns at CFAR on the part of Anna Salamon and others: https://everythingtosaveit.how/case-study-cfar/

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Ian Turner4
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Just brainstorming some things that could be done about this:

  • Commission a research report summarizing the best evidence based interventions to prevent harassment and discrimination.
  • Provide an ombudsman or other contact for victims that is outside the power system of EA. Perhaps a law firm could be retained for this purpose?
  • Provide anti-harassment, bystander intervention, or manager training at conferences or employers. This should be targeted to those who are perceived as being in a position of power (such as grantmakers or executives).
  • Conduct ongoing surveys to quantify the problem and see if it is getting better or worse. This could also help with transparency.
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lc1
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I'm skeptical by default of accusations of sexual misconduct that don't name the perpetrator, even when the source is anonymous, in 2023. That seems to include most of the accusations here. 

Which is not to say definitively that the piece is untrue - everything in it could very well be accurate - just that the way the piece is now, it's essentially set up to do maximum damage to EA while limiting EA leadership's ability to take productive action against the offenders, and that makes me at least suspicious that events have been distorted.

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Davis_Kingsley-4
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I think polyamory has been a problem in the EA (and rationalist) communities for a long time and led to both some really uncomfortable and concerning community dynamics and also just a lot of drama and problems. Multiple high-profile women have told me that they felt pressured to be polyamorous by men in the community and/or felt that polyamory was bad but they didn't feel comfortable speaking up against it, and I've faced some degree of community social backlash myself for speaking out (even informally!) against polyamory. 

In general I think this has been kind of an ongoing issue for quite some time, and I wish we had resolved it "internally" rather than it being something exposed by outside investigators.

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Kelsey Piper164
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I am very bothered specifically by the frame "I wish we had resolved [polyamory] "internally" rather than it being something exposed by outside investigators."

I am polyamorous; I am in committed long-term relationships (6 years and 9 years) with two women, and occasionally date other people. I do not think there is anything in my relationships for "the community" to "resolve internally". It would not be appropriate for anyone to tell me to break up with one of my partners. It would not be appropriate for anyone to hold a community discussion about how to 'resolve' my relationships, though of course I disclose them when they are relevant to conflict-of-interest considerations, and go out of my way to avoid such conflicts. I would never ask out a woman who might rely on me as a professional mentor, or a woman who is substantially less professionally established. 

There are steps that can be taken, absolutely should be taken, and for the most part to my knowledge have been taken to ensure that professional environments aren't sexualized and that bad actors are unwelcome. Asking people out or flirting with them in professional contexts should be considered unacceptable. People who ... (read more)

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ElliotJDavies59
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I'm concerned that Davis' comment was not interpreted in good faith.

I imagine a comment criticising a culture of alcohol consumption in a community, leading to higher rates of violence. I reply stating what will the community do to stop me safely and legally consume alcohol, ban me from drinking it? 

This "personalised oppression" framing is seems obviously fallacious if you substitute polyamory for any other behaviour. 

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Kelsey Piper69
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Hmm, if Davis had said "I think pressure to be polyamorous has been a problem in the community..." or "I've received backlash for speaking out against dynamics surrounding polyamory" then I think I would have reacted differently.

But he said "I think polyamory has been a problem" and "I've received backlash for speaking out against polyamory". He has indeed long been outspoken against polyamory -- not against dynamics in polyamory that make the community unwelcoming or unprofessional, against the practice under all circumstances.  He has told me at other times that polyamory is inherently immoral and wrong and that no one should ever be polyamorous, which inclined me towards the broader interpretation of what he was trying to say.  

I agree many people in the comments do not object to anyone practicing polyamory, but to pressures and dynamics it can create, and those comments did not give me the same reaction. But Davis in particular does think, and has said to me, that my relationships are inherently immoral and that polyamory is never acceptable  and I think the wording of his comment reflected that belief of his, and that's why his framing bothered me when the framing in these other comments (which was focused on specific potential harms) did not bother me. 

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸41
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Thanks for writing this! I think there's a lot of knee-jerk anti-poly sentiment in the comments and humanizing polyamory is valuable. I agree with you that most of the problems people are ascribing to polyamory are actually not specific to polyamory at all.

Before I continue, I want to be clear that I think your relationships are positive and I'm glad you have them. And I also think this about poly people in general.

But outside those steps, what would it mean to "handle" my polyamorous relationships? What would "resolving polyamory" look like"? Are we talking about statements from formal organizations about which relationship styles are permissible? Informal social sanction aimed not at misconduct but at anyone in a nontraditional relationship? Why is that something that the 'community' should do?

Imagine that we had strong evidence that powerful people having multiple simultaneous relationships is more likely to lead to interpersonal harm. The harm would only happen through actions that would still be bad in themselves (coercive propositioning etc), but their being poly could magnify that harm by offering more opportunities and making them generally bolder. Personally, I t... (read more)

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Kelsey Piper38
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That seems basically reasonable to me,  though it feels operative that you would be acting in your independent capacity as a person with opinions who tries to convince other people that your opinions are correct. I'd be much more uncomfortable with an EA institution that had a 'talking people out of polyamorous relationships' department. 

I think there are some forms of social pressure which are fine for individuals to apply but which are damaging and coercive if they have formal institutional weight behind them, so calls for "people who agree with me polyamorous relationships are damaging" to advocate for that stance don't make me uneasy the way calls for "the community" to "handle" those things make me uneasy. 

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Davis_Kingsley19
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Yes, I'm not sure this needs to be said but just to be clear -- I also don't think CEA or whatever should have a "talking people out of polyamorous relationships" department, and this would seem like a bizarre overreach to me.

I'm thinking of things much more along the lines of "discourage the idea of polyamory as 'more rational' and especially polyamory pressure in particular", not "make EA institutions formally try to deconvert people from polyamory" or whatever.

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Davis_Kingsley20
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To be clear, the thing I was wishing we had resolved internally was much more the widespread pressure to be polyamorous in (at least some parts of?) EA rather than individual people's relationships; as you say, it would not be appropriate for the EA community to have a discussion about how to "resolve" your personal relationships.  What would that even mean?

However, I think that this is far from the first time that major cultural issues with polyamory and unwelcome pressure to be polyamorous have been brought up, and it does seem to me that that's the kind of thing that could have been handled earlier if we were more on the ball. In the article, Gopalakrishnan mentions having raised her concerns earlier only to be dismissed and attacked, told that she was "bigoted" against polyamorous people, etc. -- and she is not the first one to have raised such issues either!

Ideally, I'd like to see an EA culture that doesn't promote polyamory over monogamy or use it to pressure people into unwanted romantic or sexual relationships, and I think that can be accomplished without community organizations overstepping their bounds.

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸47
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In the article, Gopalakrishnan mentions having raised her concerns earlier only to be dismissed and attacked, told that she was "bigoted" against polyamorous people

The article has "One commenter wrote that her post was 'bigoted' against polyamorous people."

While Gopalakrishnan has deleted the post and the comments are no longer visible, my memory is that the comment describing her as saying something bigoted was reasonable?

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸27
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Gopalakrishnan has deleted the post and the comments are no longer visible

While she deleted her cross-post, the original post is still up: Women and Effective Altruism.

The comment calling the post "bigoted" is listed on https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/monica if you scroll back to comments from three months ago. It was:

I completely agree that OP raises totally legitimate points that are worthy of being taken seriously.

However, I am grateful for you initial comment and really disagree that the issue here is being emotional and impressionistic. The problem with the post is that it is bigoted. OP makes a central issue of people not respecting one's "poly/mono" choice and then proceeds to suggest that women in poly relationships are unhappy and that poly men are uniquely likely to be sexual predators. This is all framed as a matter of OP's experience, and I have no reason to doubt the truthfulness of it all. But that doesn't excuse framing the issue as a matter of one's choice to be poly or not. Imagine if this framing was done for any other group. Even if you have legitimate negative experiences with members of a certain group, framing the issue as relevant to membersh

... (read more)
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8[anonymous]
Thank you for adding context, Jeff. I was the original commenter and will add that I have never suggested that polyamory is for everyone or that it is inherently more rational or superior. I merely ask that people mind their own business. I stand by my original claim that the post was bigoted. To clarify, I do not think it is bigoted to think that polyamory is unwise or that it creates unhealthy dynamics (I disagree, but that's a different matter). I do think it is bigoted to claim without solid evidence that people who practice it are more likely to commit assault. I also think that regardless of what dynamics it creates, it is wildly inappropriate to suggest that the mere prevalence of polyamory should in any way be"addressed by the community" (Kelsey explained this better than I could, so I will leave it at that).
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titotal
I agree that this would be bigoted. But as far as I can tell, the linked post never claimed this?  All I can see is the OP recounting cases of her own experience with predatory behaviour within the EA community, where several people tried to pressure her into becoming polyamorous.  The post literally states that "this is not a criticism of polyamory itself". I think the characterization of the post as bigoted is completely out of line. 
ElliotJDavies49
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Multiple high-profile women have told me that they felt pressured to be polyamorous by men in the community

I too have (consistently) seen this, so I am grateful to hear it being brought up publicly

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ozymandias44
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I think that relevant context for backlash against Davis Kingsley's anti-polyamory views is that he is an orthodox Catholic. His anti-polyamory views are part of a set of fairly extreme views about sexuality, including being opposed to homosexuality, masturbation, contraception, premarital sex, and any sexual intercourse other than PIV. He has also expressed the viewpoint that polyamory should be socially stigmatized and people should be pressured into monogamy. I believe that much, perhaps most, of the backlash he has faced is due to the overall set of his beliefs and that it was disingenuous for him not to include this context. 

Obviously, I am opposed to sexual harassment and to pressuring people towards any relationship style.

[Note: comment edited to use Davis's preferred terminology for his style of Catholicism. The first sentence originally said "traditional". I'm sorry for using terms for his beliefs that he doesn't identify with.]

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Kelsey Piper45
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Yeah, I was surprised to see Davis claiming in this comment section that he merely thinks we should combat inappropriate pressure to be polyamorous (which of course we should do!) and of course I want to create space for his views to evolve if they have evolved, but the views he is expressing here are not the views he has routinely espoused in the past, and "I've faced backlash for my views" without explaining what the views were does seem disingenuous to me. 
 

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Davis_Kingsley29
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I am a Catholic -- though I would not call myself a traditionalist -- and I believe what the Church teaches, including on matters of sexuality. Bringing my religion up in this way feels like a character attack that ought to be below the standards of the EA Forum though, and I'm grieved to see it.

My posts here are not saying "Polyamory is a sin, convert to Catholicism." They are not saying "you should be pressured into monogamy." Those things seem much more contentious than what I'm going for here. Instead, I am saying that there has long been in fact the exact opposite pressure in at least parts of the EA community, with people being pressured away  from monogamy and towards polyamory, and this has had negative consequences.

I don't think this is an issue that requires people to accept Catholic teaching on sexual morality to see as an issue -- and indeed the TIME article critical of EA norms here certainly does not seem to have been written from a traditionalist Catholic perspective!

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸39
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My posts here are not saying "Polyamory is a sin, convert to Catholicism."

No, but if you say "polyamory has been a problem in the EA (and rationalist) communities for a long time" and people know that you do in fact believe polyamory to be immoral, it's completely reasonable for them to respond as Kelsey did?

If you want people only to respond to the more limited "people should not be pressured into polyamory" perhaps you should say that explicitly?

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Davis_Kingsley17
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No, but if you say "polyamory has been a problem in the EA (and rationalist) communities for a long time" and people know that you do in fact believe polyamory to be immoral, it's completely reasonable for them to respond as Kelsey did?
 


Most people don't know that and I wasn't asserting it here -- that would be much more controversial and much more of a debate than I wanted to have, and further one that I don't think is very appropriate for the EA Forum! My hope is (was?) that even people who quite disagree with me -- including many polyamorous people -- would have common cause in opposing the pressure to be polyamorous that has been prevalent.

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸21
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Imagine I wrote:

I think veganism has been a problem in the EA community for a long time and has led to some bad dynamics where people have been pressured to go without food that meets their nutritional needs, including residential multi-day events where only vegan food was served.

If someone, knowing my views on animals that are probably about as well known as your views on sexual morality, responded as if I was saying animal welfare doesn't matter, I think that would be pretty reasonable. And if I didn't want that interpretation I'd need to drop the "veganism has been a problem" bit and just talk about the particular bad dynamics I was opposed to.

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Davis_Kingsley34
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It's also worth noting that I am an adult convert to Catholicism and was involved with the Bay Area rationalist and EA community (and uncomfortable with the "polyamory pressure" in that community) for years before joining the Church, including some time when I didn't take religion seriously much at all. Claiming or implying that I hold my views (or faced backlash against them) just because I'm Catholic does me a disservice.

I note also that others in the community who are not (as far as I know) Catholic have faced backlash for their views against polyamory or the related pressure, that as I understand it there are several who are afraid to speak up publicly even now, and so on.

As such, ozymandias's comment feels like a really unfair way to summarize the situation.

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Ariel Simnegar 🔸27
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I also think it’s quite reasonable for a religious person to give secular arguments for worldviews which also happen to be held in their religion.

For example, if Davis was making a humanistic argument for why people should take Giving What We Can’s 10% pledge, then accusing him of disingenuously trying to sneak in the “Catholic agenda” of giving a tithe to the poor doesn’t seem fair.

Or imagine if a Jain was giving a humanistic argument for why people should be vegetarian, and they were accused of disingenuously trying to sneak in the “Jain agenda” of animal welfare.

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ZachWeems
Clarifying for forum archeologists: "traditionalist" in Catholicism refers to people who consider the theological claims and organizational changes in Vatican II to be illegitimate, or at minimum taken too far. Catholics who consider the Church to have divinely guided authority over religious and moral truths will sometimes call themselves "orthodox" (lowercase) Catholics, to distinguish themselves from those who don't accept this & from traditionalists who accept everything up to Vatican II. So, ozymandias intended to indicate "Davis accepts the Vatican's teaching on sin, hell, sexual mores, etc". Davis objected to an adjective that implied he rejects Vatican II.
Ariel Simnegar 🔸17
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Minor side point, not to distract from what you’re actually trying to say:

Davis’s views were endorsed by most of the Western world for thousands of years, and continue to be endorsed by billions of people today, including a substantial portion of the Western population. Thus, I don’t think the word “extreme” is an accurate characterization of his views.

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purple_cat-4
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I do not agree with redacting the identities of the accused. (agree with this comment: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JCyX29F77Jak5gbwq/ea-sexual-harassment-and-abuse?commentId=tQfPCeSGrhonCtJ4g )

If you have information you believe should be public but don't want to post it yourself, DM me and I'll post it for you, keeping the source in confidence.

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Jeff Kaufman 🔸
Downvoted for unilateralism. We should talk about whether this information should be listed here, not jump to posting it.
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