All of Catherine Low🔸's Comments + Replies

Thanks for sharing these Annika and Sam!

I'd recommend you (and anyone using these resources) check out the EA Groups Resources page on the approach to politics and polarised issues, so you can check out some considerations of when/how to raise such issues in your group

https://resources.eagroups.org/approach-to-politics-and-political-issues 

It is important to know that, in the US (and lots of other countries)

charities or organizations funded by charities are NOT allowed to engage in political campaigning.
Including

• financial support for a campaign, inclu

Hi Yarrow, thanks for looping back on this. 
Yes, we did do this project, which involved looking at existing data and doing some new interviews with community members, and looked at existing literature on women and non-binary people's experiences in different communities, and what seems to improve things. Based on all this, we wrote an extended internal document, and shared some recommendations with a variety of EA organisations and EA groups. We think this information could be of use to more community members, but for some bureaucratic reasons a writeup hasn't made it on to the Forum - sorry about that. 

What a great spreadsheet. It gives me wonderful old-school EA vibes. 
Do you have a fav seitan recipe? 

I've made seitan 3 times. 1x failure, 1x fairly good, 1x amazing but really time consuming. 

Correct! It is a great book!

I look back fondly to 10 years ago at EA Global: Melbourne. It was small, simple, the catering was (literally) carrot sticks, corn chips and hummus, and it hugely influential to me. I knew no one before I arrived, but the conference photo shows many people I've gone on to work with and become close friends with. 

This talk was a highlight - I remember it bending my mind in ways it hadn't been bent before, and it hammered home just how hard our mission to improve the world actually is: 

The counterfactual attendances at EA conferences is a pretty interesting metric (at least for us at CEA) - I'm glad you're tracking that. 

Great to hear of all your progress over 2024 Gergő and Milán!

(And thanks for the thanks! In retrospect I think those initial meetings with EA Hungary might have been among my most useful meetings with group organisers!)

I'm thrilled to have an EA conference in my home town (thanks @Gavin Bishop 🔹 and @Ruben Castaing for leading this event)!

For those of you who are considering coming -- a little (biased) plug from me:

The EA Christchurch and the EA Aotearoa New Zealand communities have been active for 10 years now, with a handful of very engaged EAs who have dedicated their careers to EA-aligned work of various types (community building, donation funnelling, civilisational resilience, AI safety, animal advocacy, probably other things too that I've forgotten), and many othe... (read more)

This is a great story of someone taking a selfless and high expected value bet, that sadly didn't work out. 
I'm grateful and impressed that you tried so hard to make the donation happen Santeri!
I hope Mikko gets a new kidney ASAP, and that you both experience excellent health in the future.  

Depopulation is Bad

I think humans are good. And larger groups of people can do a lot more (more innovation, more cultural activities, more variety of human experiences). 

Right now, in 2025, I would not advocate for more people due to animal welfare and environmental costs of having more people. 

But looking at the many countries that have gone through a very demographic transition to less-than-replacement fertility (and all the other countries that seem to be following a very similar trajectory), I'm worried that the population will plummet shortl... (read more)

Thanks for those analyses Lorenzo! I was aware of the claims that people don't tend to be good at knowing what makes them happy or unhappy (thanks to an old 80K article!), but it didn't occur to me that this could have influenced this data.  

With this in mind it seems fairly possible that the real distribution should be more negative. Despite that, I still feel that the data feels like a positive update for me. 
a) There are just quite a few people reporting that being in EA is good for their mental health - and I don't want to doubt that too much... (read more)

Turns out Rethink Priorities have been funded by EA Funds to work on something that could shed some light on this question. I'm looking forward to hearing how they get on at gathering survey respondents and seeing the results they get.

I'm really not sure. 

I do think it is likely that many people get exposed to EA and realise it isn't a great space for them personally, and choose not to engage as a result. These people won't have filled in the EA Sometimes those people might not be a good fit for EA anyway -- they have different priorities or values in their lives. But I expect some would have been very value aligned and gotten a lot out of being involved, so that is the group I'm worried about.  

The Rethink Priorities data makes me (tentatively) a little less worried that a la... (read more)

This sounds plausible. Unfortunately I don't think we or Rethink Priorities have this data to do this breakdown at the moment. 

Our World In Data has amazing daily data insights. This one from a couple of days ago is astonishing to me. https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/in-the-last-30-years-almost-everybody-in-bangladesh-gained-access-to-electricity 
 

I'm a bit of a Benthamite "The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but rather, 'Can they suffer?'"

For any plausible (to me) guess about which non-human animals are capable of suffering, there are far far more non-human animals living in terrible conditions than humans in similarly bad conditions, and there just seems to be so many underfunded and underexplored ways we could help reduce that suffering. I've also seen some cost-effectiveness estimations that indicate you can help thousands of animals a lot for the same cost as helping o... (read more)

Thanks for your questions James 

> This should therefore be easily transferable into feedback to the grantee. 

I think this is where we disagree - this written information often isn’t in a good shape to be shared with applicants and would need significant work before sharing. 

> The post you linked by Linch and the concern he raises that by being transparent about the reasons for not making a grant may risk applicants overupdating on the feedback seems unfounded/unevidenced. I also question how relevant given they weren't funded anyway, s... (read more)

Hi Frida, 

I’m really sorry you had a bad experience with our team. You are welcome to share your experience with our team lead Nicole (nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org).  

Sometimes people want to discuss a concern with us confidentially  – our confidentiality policy is outlined here. This means we sometimes don’t have permission to talk to the person concerned at all, or can't share many details as it might identify the people that came to us. In those cases we sadly aren’t in a good position to discuss the situation in d... (read more)

The EA donation swap project has had very little usage over the last couple of years and has been officially discontinued.

You can find out about tax deductible effective giving options in your country by checking out Giving What We Can's guide.

I’d like for Marisa to be remembered for all the many ways she contributed to the EA Community, and the causes we all care about. 

She contributed in so many ways, that I know I’m going to miss a bunch of things. I guess that was one striking feature of Marisa – she saw things that needed to be done, or heard people’s requests for help or advice, and she didn’t hesitate to leap in to help. In particular, she did an impressive amount to help us be a welcoming, inclusive and supportive community for newcomers to EA and to people of backgrounds underrepre... (read more)

I’m devastated by this news. From the first time I worked with Marisa, 7 years ago, it was clear she had a deep compassion for others (human and animal), an ability to authentically connect with a wide range of people, a sharp mind, fantastic sense of humour, and unwavering motivation. 

During these last couple of years where Marisa was desperately unwell, I always hoped that she would one day hit on some successful treatment for her agonising illness and she’d make her way back to the optimistic, future focussed, extraordinarily driven person I first ... (read more)

I think the general question of whether enlightenment is real, and if so how could more people achieve it, is a very interesting one and I'd be interested in reading more about.  

I did want to note that I don't think that Spencer's twitter poll is much evidence for your headline statement "More than 50% of EAs probably believe Enlightenment is real". I think the EAs people who follow Spencer, and choose to respond to this poll are going to be a reasonably skewed section of the community. 

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!