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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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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)

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)

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)

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. 

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)
2
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 :)

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)

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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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.

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.
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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.

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
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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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Rochelle Shen
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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!)
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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.
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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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Lorenzo Buonanno🔸
I removed a name from this comment after a request to the mod team
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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

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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whistleblower10
Rochelle Shen brought this person into the thread and should remove them from the thread.
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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.
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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. 
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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. 
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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]
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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.
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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.
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redsun
How then should RS have handled the issue? Do enlighten me.
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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".
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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.
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orellanin
What happens to people on this blacklist?
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gated
One of them recently failed to get investors because those saw them on the list. 
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redsun
Many women are also saved because this is actually the only way we can identify rapists and avoid them.
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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.  
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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.
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gated
Why did she laugh the victims off until it was convenient for her?
0[comment deleted]

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.
[anonymous]65
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0

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.

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.

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.

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)

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?

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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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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titotal
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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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Lorenzo Buonanno🔸
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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”

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

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)

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/

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.

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.

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)

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.

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)

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)
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.

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)

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)

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. 

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.

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.

7
Jeff Kaufman 🔸
Downvoted for unilateralism. We should talk about whether this information should be listed here, not jump to posting it.

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.

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)

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.

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)

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?
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.
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.

[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!

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. 

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)

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. 

9
Ivy Mazzola
Yup that's in there!

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.

9
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]

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
... (read more)
1
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).
2
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).
1
Rebecca
Link should work now

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? 

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.

5
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?

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

 


 

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)
4
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
1[comment deleted]
7[comment deleted]

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.

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)

5
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.
1
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.
2
ChanaMessinger
Yup, your point seems quite reasonable to me. I'll be thinking about it!

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).

3
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.

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.

3
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.
4
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. 
8
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]
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.
6
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.
2
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

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)

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)

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)
-11
purple_cat

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).

5
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.

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?

5
sapphire
I doubt she agrees with the accusations but I assume she knows they exist.

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.

1
sapphire
Pm'd you

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. 

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.

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.)

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.

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).

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.

Ben_West🔸
Moderator Comment21
7
0

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.

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.

4
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.

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.)

4
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.

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.

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?)

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.

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

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.

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.)

-12
David Thorstad
7
fenneko
That's a fair point — I've removed the name and Twitter link.
4
David Thorstad
Thank you! :).

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.

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?

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.

6
orellanin
This comment is currently at -6 agreement votes. Does anyone want to explain to me why this is so?

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.

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."

-2[comment deleted]
[comment deleted]15
2
3

Good point. Removed, as requested. 

4
fenneko
Per David's comment, I recommend removing this name and the linked spreadsheet.
4[comment deleted]

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)

2
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.

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)

1
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.

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)

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?

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.

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). 

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)

[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)

3
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.

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.'
 

5
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.
4
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.

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.

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.]

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.

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!

1
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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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. 
 

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

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)

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.

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?

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)
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. 

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. 

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. 

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)