I'm making a credible accusation of harassment at the cost of my reputation, time and mental energy and you're strawman attacking me for two words in the whole excerpt based on a subjective definition of "heavily downvoted" to call me overall dishonest? Dude. 

Yea so we are talking about those two words and not the rest of what you have to say. I prefaced my whole comment as much. If you want to criticize me for not engaging with your other points my response is mostly "I'm not a woman" and I know Ivy is busy writing up a response anyway better than I could.

In the meantime, I'm allowed to only focus on a single point where I have 2 cents to share.

And those 2 cents remain that I think it is uncontroversial for someone to be accused of being dishonest if they obfuscate the support they have from a community they've criticized of being unsupportive.

If you feel that me having this take additionally also invalidates your entire harassment accusation, I can only say it doesn't, that is not my intent, and I could make additional recommendations that I could DM you that don't feel appropriate in public.

I make it very clear where I can that the Time article was a good thing for the EA community and happily bonk any would-be downplayers. And in doing so happily defend you speaking out.

Feel free to disagree with my exact framing but be more careful before accusing someone of intentional fabrication/lying and puncturing the overall credibility of people who are already taking much personal and reputational risk to talk about their truths.

I don't think it is a good norm to tell others they shouldn't accuse you of something they genuinly think/feel might be going on just because doing so - you feel - will hurt your overall credibility and reputation.

I also seriously doubt your personal and reputational risk is really taking a hit from my one point. I don't doubt you feel that it is and I'm sorry you have to feel that, but I don't think that it actually is taking a hit.

Dishonesty implies intention. One day, when it's your turn to tell your story, others may dismiss you as well based on small disagreements in adjective use

The thing is, I feel like, when that happens, I'll thank people for pointing out something that seems like a reasonable objection. Maybe I had a blindspot and they were pointing something out, out of concern for that blindspot.

I'll tell them their feeling that I did something dishonest is valid. That's their valid experience.

Then I'll kindly reassure them for reasons x,y,z I am an honest person they can trust. If I made a mistake and missed some detail, I'd add their information to my story.

The intention of my statement was to convey that there was heavy backlash against my post, which I believe is accurate.

I think what a lot of people are trying to say is that your statement would have been much stronger and this intention of yours would actually be met more, if you additionally talked about the support you got from the EA community - and hey maybe this is absolutely nothing - but I don't recall this being a claim you ever made.

When a scientist runs an experiment and additionally points out all the ways their empirical claims could be wrong or have been misinterpreted, it strengthens their claim since it highlights they have considered other viewpoints before reaching their conclusion.

strawman attacking me

I don't understand how my conservative politician example is a strawman attack. Happy to have it pointed out and change my mind.

You're using the word sexually liberal / open-minded /interesting interchangeably. Catholic nuns can be interesting, monogamous people can be open minded. Private sexual preferences have nothing to do with interestingness or open minded ness. 

A valuable point I am glad you brought up so I can clarify that of course I believe Catholic nuns can be interesting and open minded and even sexually liberal in beliefs without practising. I'd hate to make anyone feel otherwise. I'm not using them interchangeably. I said "sexually liberal and less open-minded" indicating two separate things, not two synonymous things. Private sexual preferences can totally be related to someone's interestingness, sexually liberal mindset and open-mindedness and there is nothing wrong with that. Some things correlate and this is hardly controversial. And just because I acknowledge they correlate for me (interestingness is subjective after all) does not mean I'm saying other groups cannot be interesting, sexually liberal or open-minded. Likewise poly people can be dull and closed-minded as well.

People just aren't black-and-white enough to be easily categorized.

I kinda also just want to stop here and point out that it is a private relationship preferences, not sexual preferences. A lot of polyamorous people aren't even sexual. There are poly people that just sleep together cuddling, yet have full blown loving relationship polycules complete with horrendously messy breakups like any monogamous relationship.

I met a a poly man this year that - to my shock - is asexual. Mostly shocking because he presented to me as interested in sex like me but when I talked to one of the (many) women he is or has dated I found out he doesn't care much for sex.

And there is nothing wrong with me being more interested in this asexual poly man with multiple girlfriends (some of  said girlfriends whom I might add are interested in sex) as a direct consequence of his relationship dynamics. Me assigning him more status in my social circles is no more a moral problem than traditionally monogamous people giving status to people who are traditionally married. Different social groups have different social status hierarchies. Both are as valid as any preference you might have where everyone is consenting to be a part of a social dynamic.

I am not just talking about professional relationships. I'm also talking about what the community should value. Treating women differently as higher/lower status based on their sexuality is simply wrong. 

You cannot police people's preferences when nobody is being harmed. That is wrong. If there are zero problematic power dynamics (e.g. no professional relationships), consenting adults can do as they please. A woman, just like any man, has every right to assign status to different people based on whatever reasons they choose. We all do this instinctively and automatically. The problem is not that that treating women differently as higher/lower status based on whatever preference you might have is wrong - it is that doing so insensitively can hurt someone and that hurting others is wrong.

In eras long forgotten I've had brief but magical "poly-heaven" moments where I'm dating multiple people and everyone is happy and it is sheer bliss, but I don't go loudly proclaiming it all to all my friends who aren't happy with their dating lives. That would be incredibly insensitive of me. Just because someone is lower status on some subjective metric doesn't mean I want them to viscerally feel it. We should all be kindly helping lift each other up.

A lot of people are intentionally monogamous ( like me). Assigning them default lower status due to their private relationship preference is an awful practice that shouldn't be adopted community wide. 

So I'll start by saying it is absolutely awful you feel like the EA community is assigning you lower status for being a monogamous woman. I have to ask though, isn't this something where you can look at the individuals who were this insensitive towards you and call them assholes without calling the EA community as a whole asshole-ish?

When I, as a poly person, hang out with my more conservative mono friends, they don't make me feel lower status. I'm their friend. However, I am lower status around them relative to their status hierarchy, especially when it comes to my viability as a mate. I accept and respect that I'm lower status around them. 

A perhaps better example ("more conservative mono" is a bit too vague) is that when I a hang out with my death metal friends who have crazy tats and know everything about metal music and playing instruments I likewise have lower relative social status. And perhaps an illustrative example here is that yes, some in the death metal community do put more status on tattoos while some do not - which, like polyamory to EA, is wholly separate from what the core of the community is actually focused on, namely death metal music. I accept and respect that to some people within the metal community I'm lower status due to not having tattoos. They aren't being mean to me by assigning me lower status.

However, if a particular strictly monogamous person or death metal friend went out of their way to highlight or was insensitive about my relative low status, I'd call them an asshole. I would not however call the death metal community as a whole asshole-ish for assigning me lower status due to my private preference of not wanting to have tattoos. And I wouldn't say they are wrong to value tattoos and should only appraise my social status based on my love of death metal.

Assigning people status based on their private relationship preference is not something that is adopted community-wide in EA. Assigning status based on your tattoos is not something adopted community-wide in the death metal community. In both cases though there might be an epiphenomenon where the people you hang out within the EA/Death Metal community just happen to also be into polyamory/tattoos, but that doesn't mean their personal preference and the status hierarchies you experience because of those preferences are a community-wide practice.

You might immediately want to counter-argue that "the sum aggregate of statuses being assigned is what takes something from individuals practising it to it being a community-wide practice." In anticipating this counter-argument, let's look at my death metal analogy and see how it can come crashing down:

Let's assume that women with tattoos disproportionately find themselves in favourable career positions in the death metal community which is not relative to their actual career skill. Women without tattoos do not see this advantage. Let's assume this is a result of increased professional networking opportunities afforded to women with tattoos as a direct result of many high in power and status in the death metal community disproportionately giving social status to women with tattoos (And it is only due to this and NOT due to problematic romantic relationships with problematic power dynamics). Consequently we enter vicious feedback loop of women without tattoos feeling dis-empowered and unfair pressure to get tattoos to get ahead. And those that wont put up with this obvious bullshit just decide to leave the Death Metal Community altogether despite their talent.

I think we are now looking dead in the eye at something much more like what you're afraid of is happening in the EA community. You're saying that even absent problematic power dynamics and the appearance of nobody is being harmed, actually women are still being harmed.

So I think there are a few further steps we need to take before we start calling out the entire Death Metal community:

• Women with tattoos actually have to be less competent than women without that aren't getting said career positions. It's totally possible that actually there are just more competent Death Metal women with tattoos and their tattoos are completely unrelated to their getting their positions
  • Women who feel pressured to get tattoos might just be pattern-matching on something that isn't actually relevant to their professional success in the Death Metal Community
    • In the EA community I have not seen broad evidence of poly women being treated preferentially professionally because they are poly
• It has to be broadly systemic and not just a feature of some subset of the community 
  • It shouldn't be something like Sonia points out appears to occur mostly in The Bay Area which appears to have features conducive to abusive dynamics
    • If there was some city where a scandal took place in the Death Metal community where some women appeared to have gotten preferential treatment due to their tattoos, it would be pretty unthinkable for anyone to conclude "The Death Metal Community is abusive" instead of "The Death Metal Community in this city is abusive"
• Nobody caring to course correct, no action being taken.
  • I really doubt I need to make a case that concerns of women are being taken seriously. If they weren't the number of women in EA wouldn't be growing.

If  things were true, however, we are no longer talking about individuals who are assholes but an entire community that has a deep rot.

But for sub-points I added I don't think any of them hold for the EA community. 

Ergo, I think the correct response is to call out individuals. Which has happened in the EA community a bunch of times leading to said individuals being banned from the EA community (or other punishments that make sense)

Which also speaks to a broader point: if you're poly you're interesting and get invited to speak on the Clearer Thinking podcasts etc etc

 

May be you're struggling to understand my point, so let me try to demonstrate why this sort of language is troubling. If you substitute the word "poly" with "white" ( ethnicity)/"male" (gender)/ "homosexual"(orientation)  or other equivalents, this sentence sounds so wrong. I don't think that my choice / programming of sexuality is something that needs work, I love being monogamous, just like how I don't feel lesser because of my gender or ethnicity. All other things being equal, I want to be given equal status as someone else with a different sexuality, just like how I want the same status as a man / white person / a person of different nationality. That's all.

Thank you for trying to make your point clearer. I appreciate this a lot. I'm beginning to think we have an unusually high inferential distance between us, but actually at the object-level we don't disagree on a lot at all. 

So, actually, all those do occur and frequently. Certain black (ethnicity), women (gendar), homosexual (orientation) people have interesting stories to tell because of their experience tied to their ethnicity/gendar/orientation and get invited to podcasts because of it. So the sentence doesn't strike me as "wrong" per se. It strikes me as feeling wrong. 

But, if it isn't just because of some protected characteristic, it is totally ok for people to assign others more social status, in part, because of protected characteristics. People assign people who are women/black/homosexual <insert-reason-here> more status because their experience as a <insert-category-here> is essential to whatever they have to share - e.g. it is something where they are oppressed

Likewise, polyamory is quite stigmatised and we don't really have many role-models or representation. So, when someone is speaking for us and they do so eloquently, it is only natural that we assign this person more status because they can do so - and doing so is intricately tied to their identity in being poly. Someone who isn't poly that can still "talk as well" wouldn't get the status. This would be problematic for the same reason that we don't assign status to a white man who can "talk as well" about the experience of being black as someone who is black.

I guess the question then is, if you possibly don't feel it wrong to assign a women more social status for being a good role-model for women as a woman, why do you feel uncomfortable when poly people are assigned more status for being a good role-model for poly people as a poly person themselves? This, like AI Alignment in the EA community, is status working in the right way and incentivising good and worthwhile behaviour in the poly community.

I might feel bad or left out due to this, but that is not really that different from a woman feeling bad and left out when they compare themselves to other women who have gained social status in part for sharing their experiences as women.

Also I just want to explicitly state I didn't mean for anything I wrote to imply I think your programming of sexuality is something that needs work. I'll also add, in case you're worrying whether you've offended me, nothing you've written thus far has made me feel like you think my programming of sexuality is something I need to work on. 

This is actually status working the right way. Status can be used as an incentive to promote behaviors we want from people because humans are great incentive maximizers. We want alignment researchers to gain status by producing high quality alignment work, because EA thinks this work is of high impact. Conversely, we want more people to aspire to become alignment researchers because this work is highly regarded / high status in EA. Unlike promoting certain type of technical AI work over others in EA, the community should not promote a certain type of sexuality  over others. Let EA be about doing good alone, and decoupled from sexuality / race / ethnicity / orientation. 

And some people want to meet more people who have cool tattoos or more people who are polyamorous. Humans are going to throw out incentives to get what they want. The answer is not to quash it, it is to teach people to do so maturely, tactfully and with kindness. I like big-tent EA so people with near any preference might also like doing EA stuff. They might even be EA leaders. But we shouldn't let their preferences automatically lead us to conclude that is the preference of the community as a whole.

And maybe I'm too woke but I'd caution against trying to decouple doing good from sexuality / race / ethnicity / orientation completely. A full understanding of people's identities, I think, is important to doing good better. A sex-race-ethnic-orientation blind approach might invalidate people's experiences, especially those that are marginalized.

For anyone that actually read this whole damn comment, if you are in the Bay Area for the next month I'd love to meet you at the EA Taco Tuesday meetup and give you an appreciative high five, lol, even if you disagree with me. I'll be highly talkative excitable guy in the panda hat.

EA might want to hire competent women but competent women might not want to stick around if they're lower status due to factors outside of their control such as sexuality/race/etc.

I fully agree with this point, but I have a hard time drawing the line from what my and Ivy's topic of conversation is and this. What I think you're talking about is a problem where power dynamics is involved including mentor/mentee relationships and coworkers etc etc. This is a separate topic from the social status increase and feeling-dejected by it that Ivy and I are talking about.

I'll try an illustrate why with an example:

When I was at an EA party the other night a woman I had just met brought up the topic of orgies. I immediately found her more interesting and it opened the span of conversation to many other varied topics not even related to sexuality. She didn't break any norms, she didn't try to make people feel uncomfortable, she brought the topic up in a funny socially intelligent way. Her social status in the group in this setting increased. EAs trend towards being open-minded enough to talk about anything. Nothing wrong with this. Another pertinent example: When I met one of my closest EA-adjacent friends in the world for the first time: within 5 minutes we were both talking about the topic of suicide and our own personal struggles. Naturally I also immediately found her more interesting and it opened the span of conversation to many other varied topics not even related to suicide. Her openness increased her social status at said party where people were EAs and EA-adjacent open-minded types.

If these women had been at a conservative catholic social gathering their social status would have decreased with this behaviour. And there is nothing wrong with a different social setting having different status hierarchies.

I bring up this example because your comment begs the question: do you think it is problematic these women brought up these topics and that status hierarchies should be different in EA as a community, as a whole?  Because we don't allow this kind of talk at EA conferences and it has finally come down (as it should) that where power dynamics are concerned this kind of talk between coworkers is likely to be problematic. But if what you're saying is that absent any professional setting, absent any coworker or mentee/mentor relationship, people who identify as "EAs" should still not grant anyone any social status for being interesting when the topic of sexuality is brought up... what you're effectively demanding is for thousands of people around the world to change their personality and become less sexually liberal and less open-minded. 

Now mind you, when I was in my early twenties, I would have felt left out and dejected at these EA parties where people are freely talking about said sexual topics where I don't have any status because of factors outside of my control. I certainly would have felt like my dating life is some sort of proxy for not being good enough to be part of EA and that it was locking opportunities away from me. But how I feel and how things are are two different things.

It would have been wrong for me to make the leap from "I feel like I'm not high status and not good enough at this EA party" to "EAs wont hire me because I'm not high status enough and sexually liberal enough at their EA parties." I think this is the mistake you are making when you say "Status and success are fairly related in many ways in the real world, because status opens doors and signals greater opportunity." This is an obviously true statement in some contexts (e.g. mentor/mentee or grant/grantee relationships etc) and an obviously false statement in the context that Ivy and I are talking about.

That said, an obvious crux here that would convince me that we have a problem that requires action is if the number of women in EA does indeed dwindle or show a downward trend. I don't see that happening.

If anything the EA Community's gendar ratio over the years (including at EA casual socials) is trending towards becoming more women-heavy suggesting to me that women are feeling more comfortable as a whole in the movement rather than less so.

This doesn't mean that there haven't been incidents that have made some women feel unwelcome or unsafe. These are serious and need to be dealt with. But I'm unconvinced this is indicative of a larger trend. I talk about this view of mine more in this comment on a post by Maya saying they are sad, disappointed and scared of the EA community.

And guess what: she updated her initial negative view towards the EA community after considering the full context of things as you can see in her comment here:

Thanks for your comment - for all who are interested, I did reach out to Scott and he provided me with an in-depth explanation of some of the context behind Kathy's accusations and suicide. His explanation provided me with a deeper understanding of the situation and helped me realize that action was taken to check the validity of some of Kathy claims and that there was a more involved and nuanced response to the situation than I realized initially. 

Final quick point:

Status in EA should be a function of doing good and should be sexuality-neutral, period.

I believe sexuality can be a means of doing good. I think healthy sexuality and specifically talking about it has liberated thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, across history. It's as valid something to talk about as mental health as an EA cause area. If some are better at talking about it - even if it makes me feel uncomfortable and left out - it's ok for them to get social status for it.

This is not really entirely different from how when EAs talk about AI Alignment and get status for it that I also feel uncomfortable and left out for not being smart enough. Let their social status increase. It's my problem for feeling insecure, not theirs.

Likewise it is my problem for feeling like I "need to be better at being poly to be EA." This is something I genuinely feel. But I know I don't have to be poly to be fully welcome and I know the feeling is my own problem, not something that is a provably strong indictment against the EA community.

"They're not offered a seat on the fast boats, not because they're not smart/hard working but because they're rejecting sex/ have different relationship preference. "

I think you've completely misunderstood what Ivy means by "fast boats." She is talking about fulfillment through intimate human connection. Not fulfillment through professional success. Makes more sense? By boats being "sped up" Ivy means that sexual positivity is allowing many people to experience a level of fulfilling human connection much sooner in their life than they otherwise might have. Ivy isn't talking about money and professional power here at all.

^ Moved this paragraph to top of comment because I thought it more important than the rest of my comment below:

I think you have a much higher burden of proof you haven't met yet to show your comment isn't a slippery slope fallacy you're invoking. I can go into why I think this looks like a slippery slope if you like or can you see why I'd see it that way?

"If success is not just a function of impact / work but also a function of sexual liaisons / sexuality"

Success and status are not synonymous. You can be high social status with everyone wanting to hear about your interesting polyamorous life, but at the same time you can be completely unsuccessful professionally. I can think of at least one EA woman off the top of my head who has been poly with multiple prominent EAs, who has social status because of this, and whose professional career hasn't benefited at all. If anything it hindered her professional life's growth because God knows being polyamorous means being an unpaid therapist to multiple people, which takes time and energy away from other endeavors.

Just because someone gains social status from something in some group that said group thinks is cool doesn't mean that this increased status translates into easier professional success in any meaningful way we need to be worried about.

People gain status in LGBTQ social circles if they come out as gay, especially if the coming out story makes for a compelling story (hell, in any social setting where you can tell a compelling story you gain status). I don't think this means we need to be worried that - for sake of argument - queer theatre productions are preferentially hiring actors with compelling stories to tell about their own private sexual history instead of hiring the most competent actors. They'll hire the most competent actors - they have tickets to sell. The EA community will hire the most competent women - they have a world to save.

I don't think we're anywhere close to needing to be concerned that the social status some in EA gain from talking about poly in a compelling way leads to preferential career treatment.

Because social status and professional success aren't synonymous and one isn't causally linked to the other, and because you appear to have misunderstood what is meant by "fast boats" I think all the chain of connections you've drawn aren't connected to anything I or Ivy have said at all.

Strongly agree with you on everything you wrote.

Fun-fact: even though I've been in multi-year poly relationships even I don't know if poly is right for me. I nominally identify as polyskeptic. This loosely means I believe more people than not are trying to be poly without realising that poly is sub-optimal for reaching their goals (whatever their goals are). I acknowledge I might be projecting here, because my dating life really only "took off" the way I wanted after I stopped trying to be poly and was nothing else other than "single." 

That said, I do also have some empirical backing for my belief: I've spoken or know of at least 2-3 long-time poly EAs (i.e. poly for most of their dating life) that have since gone mono. I think the interesting thing was one of them saying they were shocked by how much more fulfilling mono was than they expected it would be given "poly-metaphysics" is what they strongly subscribed to before. 

Which also speaks to a broader point: if you're poly you're interesting and get invited to speak on the Clearer Thinking podcasts etc etc. You gain status just due to your private relationship preference in EA, or such is my perception. Nobody cares if you're mono.

But, this is getting to a point where I need to go to work and I'd like to talk with you over video chat instead to continue - perhaps on EA Gather.town to make it public. DM'd you :)

So as a poly/poly-adjacent EA of many years I'll start by saying I strong upvoted your post and that insofar as a vision for a better tomorrow is concerned, your comment was poetry to my ears. I am very much aligned. Beautiful stuff.

However, this little nugget just keeps coming back to me and it irks me:

"On the other hand, we do poly and flexible sexual connections and those of us who are engaged in those things will even try and help you figure out if it's for you. Poly is fun. Sex is fun. Play and curiosity are fun. These are some of the major fun things our community does have going for it when comes to hedonism [and utopian way of life, over the rest of society.]"

I think you're making the poly-part of the community sound way more accessible than it actually is. You possibly have a blindspot here because you don't know what it is like to be on the outside trying to get in (?).

So here's the thing. If poly for you in the community is this fantastically amazing, then it is a tragedy of a vastly worse degree than many EAs might even realize that they can't be part of it.

I'm reminded of some study I read about years ago that showed that the mental health of people in third world countries decreased markedly when they were shown just how much better off people in first world countries are. Those in the control group that showed clear ignorance over how Europeans lived were... Happier.

Honestly, after reading so much poly-discourse on the forum lately I'm very surprised this point hasn't been raised. An obvious model for what is going on, in my head, is that the poly-backlash is part of a larger backlash against the "moral fulfillment and life fulfillment and career fulfillment and hedonism fulfillment and just-everything-important fulfillment" that is perceived to be held and disproportionately concentrated among few in EA.

Fwiw, I think your view that a leftward shift in EA would increase popularity is probably Americocentric. I doubt it is true if you were to consider EA as a global movement rather than just a western one.

Also, fwiw, I've lost track of how many people I've seen dismiss EA as "dumb left-wing social justice". EAs also tend to think the consequence of saying something is what matters. So we tend to be disliked both by free speech absolutists and by people who will never concede that properly discussing some controversial topics might be more net positive than the harm caused by talking about them. Some also see EA as tech-phobic. Steven Pinker famously dismissed EA concerns about AI Alignment. If you spend time outside of EA in tech-optimism-liberal circles you see a clear divide. It isn't culturally the same. Despite this, I think I've also lost count of how many people I've seen dismiss EA as " right-leaning libertarian tech-utopia make-billionaires-rich nonsense"

We can't please everyone and it is a fool's errand to try.

One person's "steven pinker style techno-liberalism, with a free speech absolutist stance and a vague unease about social justice activism" is another person's "Ludite free speech blocking SJW"

If following principles does not clearly push EA one way or the other, also then so be it.

I disagreed with the Scott analogy but after thinking it through it made me change my mind. Simply make the following modification:

"Leading UN climatologists are in serious condition after all being wounded in the hurricane Smithfield that further killed as many people as were harmed by the FTX scandal. These climatologists claim that their models can predict the temperature of the Earth from now until 2200 - but they couldn’t even predict a hurricane in their own neighborhood. Why should we trust climatologists to protect us from some future catastrophe, when they can’t even protect themselves or those nearby in the present?"

Now we are talking about a group rather than one person and also what they missed is much more directly in their domain expertise. I.e. it feels, like the FTX Future fund team's domain expertise on EA money, like something they shouldn't be able to miss.

Would you say any rational person should downgrade their opinion of the climatology community and any output they have to offer and downgrade the trust they are getting their 2200 climate change models right?

I shared the modification with an EA that - like me - at first agreed with Cowen. Their response was something like "OK, so the climatologists not seeing the existential neartermist threat to themselves appears to still be a serious failure (people they know died!) on their part that needs to be addressed - but I agree it would be a mistake on my part to downgrade my confidence in their 2100 climate change model because if it"

However, we conceded that there is a catch: if the climatology community persistently finds their top UN climatologists wounded in hurricanes to the point that they can't work on their models, then rationally we ought to update that their productive output should be lower than expected because they seem to have this neartermist blindspot to their own wellbeing and those nearby. This concession though comes with asterisks though. If we, for sake of argument, assume climatology research benefits greatly from climatologists getting close to hurricanes then we should expect climatologists, as a group, to see more hurricane wounds. In that case we should update, but not as strongly, if climatologists get hurricane wounds.

Ultimately I updated from agree with Cowen to disagree with Cowen after thinking this through. I'd be curious if and where you disagree with this.

I just read your whole comment carefully(sorry it was long). Appreciation is subjective and hard to quantify but votes are, you can look at the drive link I posted to do the math of vote counts ( ~75 downvotes count for me as "heavily downvoted", my comments were also appropriately downvoted as you can see in the comment graph relative to parent/child nodes in the comment trees, so from my perspective it is a reasonably correct characterization). Given that you're (delicately but still) accusing me of being deliberately dishonest,  do you want to correct that characterization?

My quick 2 cents on this point (rest of the points are probably above my pay-grade): I think if we were to poll say... the entire world's population the vast majority of people would say they don't feel a post of theirs was "heavily downvoted" unless it was net negative - and only then if it was strongly net negative.

You are totally free to have your own subjective feeling of what counts as "heavily downvoted" and it is allowed to deviates from the norm, but you deliberately chose not to clarify how your definition is different from the standard definition most anyone would think about. This isn't exactly dishonesty in my mind, but definitely feels like a tactic a politician who isn't upfront would use.

Given that you're (delicately but still) accusing me of being deliberately dishonest,  do you want to correct that characterization?

It's a fair accusation to make. Like... uncontroversially so as well. Why wouldn't it be? Let's assume we have some government-funded project to combat sexual harassment. Let's assume a vote was cast on whether the project should remain funded. Let's say the votes were more positive than negative. If some seedy politician got up and said the project was clearly and obviously "heavily downvoted" and nowhere highlighted that actually most people voted in favour of it, you would be fucking pissed and right to accuse him of being dishonest. He didn't technically lie and if said politician then responded with:
 

"How well  this government-funded project works for women is subjective and hard to quantify but votes are, you can look at this here chart to do the math of vote counts ( ~75,00000 downvotes count for me as "heavily downvoted",  as you can see in this graph relative to parent/child nodes in the comment trees, so from my perspective it is a reasonably correct characterization). Given that you're (delicately but still) accusing me of being deliberately dishonest,  do you want to correct that characterization?"

Would you say he is right and it is complete and utterly unfair to accuse him of being dishonest? We can go into the details of whether he was technically lying or not all we want, but it is still a fair accusation to say they are being dishonest.

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.

Note that a lot of people seemed to agree with my initial comment. I’m not sure what to make of that.

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.

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.

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.