All of Catherine Low's Comments + Replies

Given that EAGx Utrecht might be the most convenient EAGx for a good chunk of Western Europe, I'm not sure how important it is to have a goal for a % speakers with strong Dutch connections rather than Europe connections. But the density of talented Dutch folk in the community is very high, so you might hit 35% without any specific goal to do so.

Thanks for the public update. Some readers might also be interested in what actions and decisions EV and the Community Health team have been taking around this.

• Over the last 9 months Owen has not been allowed to attend EV-run events and in-person spaces (like EA Global and EV run offices). EV exec is currently deciding how EV will interact with Owen going forward, and are planning to publish that in the future. They have sought external advice and advice from our team.  
• We are in communication with Owen about professional updates on his end so we

Thanks for sharing all this information Kat. It seems like this situation has been very difficult for everyone involved. Members of the community health team will look through the post, comments and appendix and work out what our next steps (if any) will be. 

Catherine from Community Health here. I was aware of this grant application. After discussion with my colleagues in Community Health who were also aware of the same concerns about Nonlinear mentioned in this post, I decided not to advise EAIF to decline this application. Some of the reasons for that were:

• The funding was for a project run by three other people (not Nonlinear staff), and I had no concerns about those people working on this project
• The three people were not going to be living with Kat and Emerson, which made risks to them lower
• At that sta

The situation with person L was deeply tragic. This comment explains some of the actions taken by CEA’s Community Health team as a result of their reports.

The situation with person L was deeply tragic. This comment explains some of the actions taken by CEA’s Community Health team as a result of their reports.

Hi Mandelbrot, 

Thanks for sharing. The stories of individual women from Silicon Valley are very harrowing. 

This point in struck me:

> The men who victimized us are shaping the world. We are canaries for their disregard for human dignity.

It is a deeply sad thing about the world that those who wield power are often unethical or ignorant of the plight of those who they affect. With the improvement in AI technology, I’m expecting rapid changes in who (or what) wields power, so I’m feeling very anxious about this getting worse. 

I enc... (read more)

In case you missed it, and you're interested. I've put some updates relating to the the Community Health and Special Projects Team thinking and actions about concerns about Nonlinear on Ben's initial post. 

• General statement (10th Sept)
• An incomplete list of actions we’ve taken to reduce risk of other people ending up in similarly bad situations (11th Sept)
• Rough timeline and thinking (New - 20th Sept)

Some confidentiality constraints have been lifted in the last few days, so I’m now able to share more information from the Community Health and Special Projects team to give people a sense of how this case went from our perspective, and how we think about these things. 
 

Previous updates:

• General statement
• An incomplete list of actions we’ve taken to reduce risk of other people ending up in similarly bad situations.

To give a picture of how things happened over time:

• Starting mid last year, our team heard about many of the concerns mentioned in this p

Catherine from CEA’s Community Health and Special Projects Team here.  I have a different perspective on the situation than Jaime does and appreciate that he noted that “these stories have a lot of nuance to them and are in each case the result of the CHT making what they thought were the best decisions they could make with the tools they had.” 

I believe Jaime’s points 1, 2 and 3 refer to the same conflict between two people. In that situation, I have deep empathy for the several people that have suffered during the conflict. It was (and still is... (read more)

 Hey Morpheus. This comment provides a partial answer to your question. 

Hey Agrippa, this comment provides a partial answer. 

Thanks for the questions Morpheus_Trinity. I’m sorry but we are not able to give a response to most of your questions. This comment provides a partial answer. 

I understand your desire to know this information, Morpheus_Trinity. I’m sorry but we’re not in a position to share all that information here. This comment provides a partial answer.

Thanks for asking Yadav. I can confirm that:

• Nonlinear has not been invited or permitted to run sessions or give talks relating to their work, or host a recruiting table at EAG and EAGx conferences this year. 
• Kat ran a session on a personal topic at EAG Bay Area 2023 in February. EDIT: Kat, Emerson and Drew also had a community office hour slot at that conference. 
  Since then we have not invited or permitted Kat or Emerson to run any type of session.
• We have been considering blocking them from attending future conferences since May, and were planning on making that decision if/when Kat or Emerson applied to attend a future conference.

I’m on CEA’s Community Health and Special Projects team, and I sometimes contribute to EAG and EAGx event admissions and speaker decisions. I can understand your concern Lauren Maria. I’d really like for EA events to be places where attendees can have a high level of confidence in the other attendees (especially the attendees in positions of power). CEA does a small amount of vetting of speakers and organisations attending the career fairs. We also have our regular admissions process, where we sometimes choose to reject people from attending... (read more)

I’m one of the Community Liaisons for CEA’s Community Health and Special Projects team. The information shared in this post is very troubling. There is no room in our community for manipulative or intimidating behaviour.

We were familiar with many (but not all) of the concerns raised in Ben’s post based on our own investigation. We’re grateful to Ben for spending the time pursuing a more detailed picture, and grateful to those who supported Alice and Chloe during a very difficult time. 

We talked to several people currently or formerly involved in ... (read more)

Hey Rainer and Mandy. This is really exciting!

My first suggestion would be to sync up with Animals Aotearoa which are an EA aligned, EA Animal Welfare funds funded org.

[I used to be involved in Animal Advocacy work in NZ (and in EA NZ) - I'm now in the UK, but I still have contacts and can intro you to some folk. Let's talk at EAG London if not before]. 

Thanks to all the commenters asking us about whether our response is different depending on the person’s perceived value to the community and world. The community health team discussed responding to these questions when this post was first written, but we wanted all relevant team members to be able to carefully check and endorse our statements, and it was a very busy time. So we put our response on hold for a bit. Apologies for the delay.  

First, I want to say that our team cares a lot about the culture of EA. It would be a terrible loss to EA’s ... (read more)

Thanks Ivy and Jason for your thoughts on internal and external investigations of problems of sexual misconduct in EA.

There are a few different investigation type things going on at the moment, and some of them aren’t fully scoped or planned. So it is a bit confusing. To clarify, this is where we are at right now:

1. Catherine, Anu and Lukasz from the Community Health team are investigating the experiences of women and gender minorities in EA. 
   1. Analysing existing data sources (in progress - Rethink Priorities has kindly given us some (as yet) unpublished d

Thanks for this lovely post. I have SO many reasons to love effective altruism, here’s one (maybe I'll write more later):

Truthseekingness

I’ve been seeking out truthseeking communities all my life, but they all fell short of my goals until I found EA. Some examples:

• I studied particle physics - what could be more truthseeky than trying to find the fundamental nature of the universe? Back then, a bunch of particle physicists claimed to believe in a class of theories called “supersymmetry” - and I never understood why - there was no evidence for it, and I neve

I haven't personally heard any instances of this, but it's certainly possible :(

Hi all -

This post has now been edited, but we would like to address some of the original claims, since many people have read them. In particular, the author claims:

1. They have identified 30 incidents of rape or abuse with strong ties to EA, as well as 14 that are “EA adjacent”
2. They have been fighting assault in EA since 2016

Here is some context: 

• The author emailed the Community Health team about 7 months ago, when she shared some information about interpersonal harm; someone else previously forwarded us some anonymous information that she may have compil

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. 

Thanks for all the suggestions and comments on this post! I have read them and will respond. 

I know some commenters have been trying to square the uncertainty I express in this post with the allegations in TIME. I’ve added a new comment where I’ve shared the Community Health team’s understanding about most (not all) of the cases:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JCyX29F77Jak5gbwq/ea-sexual-harassment-and-abuse?commentId=jKJ4kLq8e6RZtTe2P 

Hey Aella, I appreciate you telling your story. I’m really sorry that you’ve experienced people lying about you, and making harmful assumptions about your intent . That really really sucks. 

I’ve put more information about most (not all) of the Community Health team’s understanding of the TIME cases in this comment:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JCyX29F77Jak5gbwq/ea-sexual-harassment-and-abuse?commentId=jKJ4kLq8e6RZtTe2P 
It might clarify some of your questions about individual cases. 

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 a... (read more)

Thanks Lorenzo!

I have no idea. I couldn't work out how to list it as "Community ". I'm guessing the mods haven't categorised it yet.

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). 

I've loved being a participant in several of JohnW's Wits and Wagers events, and have run it a couple of times myself since. It is my favourite evening retreat activity. Better than karaoke IMO!

Happy Pineapple user here!
I found myself in pressing need of an assistant, and was particularly wanting to hire someone with context about the EA community. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of talented people that had signed up to Pineapple's list (including several people I had worked with through my former role doing Group Support with CEA). My colleague and I looked through the details of all the available people, and sent a short trial task to several people on the list. We then gave one person a (paid) work trial, and then hired them. The proc... (read more)

Oh wow! This is  fantastic news. Both because he'll have influence on the $29.4 billion :O!, and that his appointment might reflect a bigger change in USAID policy in general. 

Ooh, that is a good one!

Oh, how could I have forgotten the onion test! I'll add that in. Thanks 

I'm glad that FLI put this FAQ out, but I'm nervous that several commenters are swinging from one opinion (boo, FLI) to the opposite (FLI is fine! Folks who condemned FLI were too hasty!) too quickly.  

This FAQ only slightly changed my opinion on FLI's grantmaking process. My best guess is that  something went very wrong with this particular grant process. My reasoning:

I'd be surprised if FLI's due diligence step is intended to be a substantial part of the assessment process. My guess it that due diligence might usually be more about formalities ... (read more)

In addition to the groups listed on the forum that Holly mentioned, here is a long list of EA Facebook Groups you could check out (this list is quite dated so many groups might be inactive). 

Hey Maya, I'm Catherine -  one of the contact people on CEA's community health team (along with Julia Wise). I'm so so sorry to hear about your experiences, and the experiences of your friends. I share your sadness and much of your anger too. I’ll PM you, as I think it could be helpful for me to chat with you about the specific problems (if you are able to share more detail) and possible steps. 

If anyone else reading this comment who has encountered similar problems in the EA community, I would be very grateful to hear from you too. Here is ... (read more)

Hey AllAmericanBreakfast. I'm Catherine from the Community Health team. I'm so so sorry to hear that your friend was raped. If at all possible, I want to make sure they have support, justice, and that the perpetrator doesn't have the opportunity to do this again. It doesn't matter if your friend doesn't identify as EA, if your friend, or the perpetrator are  involved in the EA community in anyway we're here to do our best to help.  I'll reach out via PM.

I’m so sorry to hear about your negative experiences in EA community meetups. It is totally not okay for people to feel pressured or manipulated into sexual relationships. The community health team at CEA is available to talk, and will try to help resolve the situation. You can use this form to contact the team (you can be anonymous) or contact Julia Wise julia.wise@centreforeffectivealtruism.org or Catherine Low catherine@centreforeffectivealtruism.org  directly. 

If a crime has been committed (or you have reason to suspect a ... (read more)

Hey KenC, CEA's groups team has created this document with some information and guidance. 
There is no official stance, but the info might help a bit. Feel free to reach out with more questions. 

Thanks so much for your kind response Jonathan! 
I'll be discussing ways to explain the role better with the next community contact people . I hope we can prevent future attendees from experiencing the discomfort you felt. 

Hi Jonathan, 
I’m Catherine from CEA’s Community Health team. Thanks so much for sharing your experience, and I'm so sorry you felt uncomfortable.

A minor clarification: Each EAG or EAGx conference has a community contact person (or two). They are sometimes members of CEA's community health team, but often they are either members of the local EA community or are members of CEA's events team. It is not our intention for people to feel that they are being monitored.

I believe the person you are referring to is Ollie from CEA’s events team, whose role is to... (read more)

This bill does seem very important. It is hard to know what will help or hinder the political process, so I recommend that folks in the EA community don't try to do a public coordinated effort try to influence the content or outcome of this proposed bill - at least for now. 

My understanding is that the people involved in drafting this bill are aware of the EA community, so they know they can reach out when and if they think that would be helpful.

I agree that sending kids to ineffective schools isn't an effective thing to do! I don't this this is what any EA organisations recommend though. While there have been some studies that suggest deworming improves school attendance, I understand that this is not commonly believed to be a big effect anymore. 

GiveWell recommends deworming charities because of evidence that deworming could have a positive impact on income in the long term. You can read more here https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/deworming - I think this is interest... (read more)

I admit I was a bit sad when Jonathan took this role because I thought he'd do more good in Community Building (my field of work). "Surely an Office Manager couldn't be as impactful!" I bemoaned. But now that I've worked a while in Trajan house my eyes have been opened to the value of an outstanding office manager, and I've had to eat my words (and arrange to move to Oxford so I can work there permanently). So I think this role is surprisingly high value.

Here: https://join.slack.com/t/eagroups/shared_invite/zt-3ws1vk1v-spLPUkYxNTkpT1RpnC1YLQ

Welcome Quinn!