FWIW, the current CEO didn't join until Feb 2024 and the new growth strategy didn't come until maybe 6–12 months after. I think the effects of CEA's current approach wouldn't be captured in data until later. Although, this is still useful for showing that there isn't already a significant satisfaction trend that's been recorded.
I appreciate this and I think it's good to just be able to say "I find it hard to engage with your messages," so in that spirit I will try to keep this one short, I know I tend to write a lot:
first point: reasonable. I held that theory loosely. I wasn't under the impression that this belief was widespread, but I think it's very possible that more people think EA is worse than comparable communities than I expect. As a separate point, I also do think this piece has struck a nerve for some and I hear you on that point.
not sure about second point, I think the hypothesis that your methodology is not the main crux is reasonable
thanks for engaging more fully. It's your post and I don't want to make your comment section feel super overwhelming, so I'll just commit to not commenting on this post further.
Nathan, I genuinely think this is more emotional for you than it is for me. Yes, sexual harassment is a personal topic for me, but it's also one I've thought about a lot on an intellectual level. And further, I have no emotional commitment to the question of whether EA is better, the same, or worse. I've previously written that I guess it's probably about the same as comparable communities.
It is definitely true we have had several interpersonal interactions over the years and we don't get on, but the epistemic feedback that I wrote, I meant sincerely and without prejudice. It has several agree votes. I recommend you try reading it again and really consider it, if you'd like to. As a nudge, my feedback was not "you didn't respond to each one of my points." Of course, you also don't have to read it! I'm sure I am more glib and frustrated in my tone when I talk with you, so I don't mean to suggest that our personal frustrations don't come through at all on my end. And as others have pointed out, if the original post contained a better analysis and a more genuinely curious tone, I think this whole post would've gone over differently. I genuinely think I could write a post: "how do rates of sexual harassment in EA compare to other communities?" and it would be very well written and it would probably go over great, I'm sure I'd get some pushback but I wouldn't mind. But I mean it sincerely when I say, I don't find this question particularly important so this isn't something I would personally bother writing. I'm sure someone else could also do a great job, or CH could write this very well, but it's a matter of finding someone who can write these kinds of things well, has the motivation, and the time for it.
"My impression is that, if asked, many people would say that EA is significantly worse than other spaces."
I found this useful! It's good to know what others are seeing & hearing. FWIW, my personal experience with this is something vague, like:
I know I've seen tweets to this effect over the years. I think I remember someone prominent mentioning that they found EA (and EA conferences) to be somewhat worse than econ (on sexism or similar)
My in-person experience with this type of thing is much more nuanced. I.e. when I discuss this with community members or adjacent, I don't usually hear one claim about whether EA is better or worse, I tend to hear a more nuanced collection of ways in which EA might be particularly bad, and other ways in which it compares to past jobs, industries, communities, etc. I've definitely heard from women who were frustrated/tired of the sexism and left. This happens in comparable communities if you consider, e.g., tech comparable.
Several times, I've personally mentioned that I don't suspect EA is particularly worse, both online and in-person. In june, 2025, I wrote "I don’t think the EA community is particularly sexist. As it turns out, sexism is everywhere. I also don’t think it’s particularly not sexist, though that’s tricky for me to gauge as one person with one set of experiences. However, I do feel comfortable saying that EA has a unique flavour of sexism that I had to learn to navigate and defend against." I've personally never had any problems making this claim or faced visible social repercussions for it. FWIW I'm not actually sure I still think this, I basically just don't know what I think. If someone actually had good data on this or carefully reasoned thoughts, I'd definitely read it.
"Re "why do we even care about a baseline?" Ime, when harassment gets brought up (e.g. on the forum), people say that there were basic/common/cheap/expected mitigations that would have prevented the incident."
My hot take is that, a lot of the people who suggest this don't have a super developed understanding of sexual harassment, or they don't have much real-world experience, or they're quite young. I personally don't think there is some quick fix. Partly because EA has unique features that drive its gendered-issues. Unfortunately, this is actually a more doomy view than the idea that there are quick fixes, because it further supports that women who find the community difficult to tolerate/navigate should just leave.
Over the past couple months, I've intentionally began to try and distance myself from EA and been much happier for it (I don't do in-person meetup type stuff much anymore, am trying to do less "directly EA" online stuff, and I don't know if I'd ever consider doing meta-EA work again). I guess you could say that I'm implying EA is worse than comparable communities, but I don't mean it that way. It's just like, these days I do my job and hang out with my friends/family, and I only check the forum if I get an email notification that my post has been mentioned because I forgot to turn off email notifications for mentions :')
So I guess that's where I'm coming from when I say that I personally don't care much for this comparison. I feel like I have enough personal, direct, and specific data to conclude something is going wrong and something isn't meeting my standards. I'm realising that's a way in which I'm ill-placed for this discussion. If I didn't have a pretty thorough view formed over years, base rate might also be the first thing I want to understand. I guess I'm just personally well past that, but I've updated that this specific idea is worth discussing on the forum. I'm sceptical it will ever be done well, but alas.
I've noticed a pattern of a particular rhetorical move you tend to use, whereby you sidestep engaging meaningfully with people's points and instead continue to ask pointed questions. With these questions, it's relatively clear that you have one answer you agree with and expect back. If you don't get that answer, you tend to simply continue posing further questions, sidestepping other points, and pushing in the direction of a specific answer. If this method eventually produces an answer you're looking for, or something close, I then see: "great, now that we've established [narrow thing of x] to be true through my questioning, we can conclude [original claim I've been trying to prove all along]." Sometimes, I've noticed you'll do this even if the person hasn't exactly agreed with narrow thing of x. I think this is unproductive and poor epistemics.
Let me explain. The steel man of your point is: to understand a problem, you need to understand its magnitude. Yes, agree. Again, as per my edit, I was being glib. Let me be more precise.
I'll take my events example. I do want to understand base rates. I want all data, data is great! Let's pretend at most events, 10% of attendees are harassed. At my event, I find out it's 40%. Or, in a different example, it's 0.2%. Both of these are important and significant differences. Now, the base rate becomes quite important to understand and investigate.
Let's say, I find out that at my event, it's 8%. This is more comparable to the case presented in your post. My boss wants me to write an internal document about harassment at events. The first paragraph may include a base rate, for grounding. The internal document will not be titled "our events are not worse than baseline!" and the vast majority of the document will not focus on making this case. Because, what's the point? It would be a waste of my manager's time. I'll write about what problems I suspect are occurring at our events (hopefully I have a good model of this, or can investigate), and I'll talk about potential interventions we might be able to take, if any.
To the second point, you have indeed misunderstood. I've never seen a post that says, "The average donation per person within EA per year is so much higher than middle income donations generally! And yet, we still keep trying to encourage giving in the EA community. Are we understanding the scope of the giving problem? Are we somehow implying EAs aren't already way better than baseline?" And I've never seen a post that says, "woah, people are always debating about veganism and whatnot but, EAs are way lower than the base rate anyways, so why are we not explicitly acknowledging that when we try and suggest people should consider veganism? Or offsetting?" My point was never that these numbers can't be found. My point was that, we do not set our moral standards on baselines. We ask people in this community to care about suffering and to be morally ambitious. Why can't we ask that of sexual harassment, as well.
There is the wider community, and then there is the professional ecosystem. I would put forward the following: at the point where you are reading a detailed account of sexual harassment supported by two independent investigations and a settlement, it is very easy to write a supportive comment. Especially for those with approximately nothing to lose by offering support. The real test isn't "when presented with a publicly documented case that has strong evidence, can you say something nice?" It's "within the professional ecosystem, if instances of potential or substantiated sexual harassment occur in your own organisation, can you respond appropriately." The second is much harder, but it is also the thing that actually matters for the health of the community. And then we can try to extend this to wider community-building (what happens within your city group? What happens at your events?), these things also matter a lot, but it can really vary by location, group, time, etc.
I hope this doesn't come across as ungrateful! I'm eternally thankful for the kind words I received, and those words did help me a lot. But the thing that would have helped much more was if the incident had been handled correctly by the appropriate people. The fact that it was handled poorly by so many people for so long has to indicate a systemic issue. The question is then whether CEA is uniquely bad here, or whether their systemic issues echo something that is also true of other organisations in the space. In my personal experience, it really depends and it really varies. I do think CEA is weirdly/uniquely bad, for many reasons (including its convoluted org structure and the complicated process of dissolving EV over the past year or so, and its other unique histories), but I'd also guess some organisations have similar issues and know of some that have had worrying incidinces. Others don't, to my knowledge and they are just very well run from what I can tell. There are also many exceptional organisations in this community! It all gets quite complicated, really.
In terms of off-line actions taken: Personally, I was very touched by the incredible response of some organisations to my post behind the scenes. While I can't talk about them, there were some legitimately exceptional and above-and-beyond responses. So anyways, I think regardless of the forum's debates, there are people who are very sad about this problem the community has (whether or not it is better or worse than baseline), and there are people putting in significant effort to improve things. There are a lot of people who care.
One overall thought: I wonder if what you're picking up on isn't an implicit belief that EA is uniquely bad, but the reality that people are very invested in EA. The reactions are strong and strongly worded partly because people in this community want this community to be good. They care about it, many are morally scrupulous, they're invested in its health and ability to function, they know the people in it. I don't think they're implicitly thinking "this is so much worse than anything comparable." My guess is that if you asked directly whether EA is worse than a comparable community, most would say "I'm really not sure" or "probably not? I don't know." That's been my personal experience.
I also think the comparative framing is somewhat beside the point here. EA isn't trying to reduce sexual harassment around the world, but it is strongly trying to community-build, and the relevant question for community-building is whether this is a place people can thrive in. Given that trying to answer the question of whether EA is "better or worse" is somewhat difficult, it's worth asking how important that question really is.
One thing I love about my current organisation is they are incredibly conscientious in how they build community and support their members. As someone who has now done event planning for this community for more than 3 years, I can't even imagine trying to ask if the baseline of harassment at my events is like other comparable events. I would much rather put my time and effort into making my events safer and more welcoming. In the same way that, I don't ask if the baseline satisfaction with the content at my events is the same as the average event, because I would rather put my effort into improving the content, and so on. (Edit: I was glib with my events comparison & wording, I like data & base rates are worth knowing and can help provide context and grounding, but I hope my directional point is clear)
I'll also say this, though I suspect it won't be well-received: there's something strange about a community that advocates for reducing suffering and encourages moral ambition retreating into "well, what's the baseline?" when sexual harassment comes up. What's the baseline of people who eat meat? What's the baseline of how much the average middle-income person in a developed country donates? I understand it's not exactly the same thing, but it's disheartening to see the baseline framing applied seemingly only here.
Now that I think about it, I've never seen Banksy and 80,000 Hours podcast host Zershaaneh Qureshi in the same room.....
FWIW, the current CEO didn't join until Feb 2024 and the new growth strategy didn't come until maybe 6–12 months after. I think the effects of CEA's current approach wouldn't be captured in data until later. Although, this is still useful for showing that there isn't already a significant satisfaction trend that's been recorded.
I appreciate this and I think it's good to just be able to say "I find it hard to engage with your messages," so in that spirit I will try to keep this one short, I know I tend to write a lot:
Nathan, I genuinely think this is more emotional for you than it is for me. Yes, sexual harassment is a personal topic for me, but it's also one I've thought about a lot on an intellectual level. And further, I have no emotional commitment to the question of whether EA is better, the same, or worse. I've previously written that I guess it's probably about the same as comparable communities.
It is definitely true we have had several interpersonal interactions over the years and we don't get on, but the epistemic feedback that I wrote, I meant sincerely and without prejudice. It has several agree votes. I recommend you try reading it again and really consider it, if you'd like to. As a nudge, my feedback was not "you didn't respond to each one of my points." Of course, you also don't have to read it! I'm sure I am more glib and frustrated in my tone when I talk with you, so I don't mean to suggest that our personal frustrations don't come through at all on my end. And as others have pointed out, if the original post contained a better analysis and a more genuinely curious tone, I think this whole post would've gone over differently. I genuinely think I could write a post: "how do rates of sexual harassment in EA compare to other communities?" and it would be very well written and it would probably go over great, I'm sure I'd get some pushback but I wouldn't mind. But I mean it sincerely when I say, I don't find this question particularly important so this isn't something I would personally bother writing. I'm sure someone else could also do a great job, or CH could write this very well, but it's a matter of finding someone who can write these kinds of things well, has the motivation, and the time for it.
Hi Caleb! :)
I found this useful! It's good to know what others are seeing & hearing. FWIW, my personal experience with this is something vague, like:
My hot take is that, a lot of the people who suggest this don't have a super developed understanding of sexual harassment, or they don't have much real-world experience, or they're quite young. I personally don't think there is some quick fix. Partly because EA has unique features that drive its gendered-issues. Unfortunately, this is actually a more doomy view than the idea that there are quick fixes, because it further supports that women who find the community difficult to tolerate/navigate should just leave.
Over the past couple months, I've intentionally began to try and distance myself from EA and been much happier for it (I don't do in-person meetup type stuff much anymore, am trying to do less "directly EA" online stuff, and I don't know if I'd ever consider doing meta-EA work again). I guess you could say that I'm implying EA is worse than comparable communities, but I don't mean it that way. It's just like, these days I do my job and hang out with my friends/family, and I only check the forum if I get an email notification that my post has been mentioned because I forgot to turn off email notifications for mentions :')
So I guess that's where I'm coming from when I say that I personally don't care much for this comparison. I feel like I have enough personal, direct, and specific data to conclude something is going wrong and something isn't meeting my standards. I'm realising that's a way in which I'm ill-placed for this discussion. If I didn't have a pretty thorough view formed over years, base rate might also be the first thing I want to understand. I guess I'm just personally well past that, but I've updated that this specific idea is worth discussing on the forum. I'm sceptical it will ever be done well, but alas.
I've noticed a pattern of a particular rhetorical move you tend to use, whereby you sidestep engaging meaningfully with people's points and instead continue to ask pointed questions. With these questions, it's relatively clear that you have one answer you agree with and expect back. If you don't get that answer, you tend to simply continue posing further questions, sidestepping other points, and pushing in the direction of a specific answer. If this method eventually produces an answer you're looking for, or something close, I then see: "great, now that we've established [narrow thing of x] to be true through my questioning, we can conclude [original claim I've been trying to prove all along]." Sometimes, I've noticed you'll do this even if the person hasn't exactly agreed with narrow thing of x. I think this is unproductive and poor epistemics.
You said, "The community response to that case was pretty unified," which was my jumping off point.
Let me explain. The steel man of your point is: to understand a problem, you need to understand its magnitude. Yes, agree. Again, as per my edit, I was being glib. Let me be more precise.
I'll take my events example. I do want to understand base rates. I want all data, data is great! Let's pretend at most events, 10% of attendees are harassed. At my event, I find out it's 40%. Or, in a different example, it's 0.2%. Both of these are important and significant differences. Now, the base rate becomes quite important to understand and investigate.
Let's say, I find out that at my event, it's 8%. This is more comparable to the case presented in your post. My boss wants me to write an internal document about harassment at events. The first paragraph may include a base rate, for grounding. The internal document will not be titled "our events are not worse than baseline!" and the vast majority of the document will not focus on making this case. Because, what's the point? It would be a waste of my manager's time. I'll write about what problems I suspect are occurring at our events (hopefully I have a good model of this, or can investigate), and I'll talk about potential interventions we might be able to take, if any.
To the second point, you have indeed misunderstood. I've never seen a post that says, "The average donation per person within EA per year is so much higher than middle income donations generally! And yet, we still keep trying to encourage giving in the EA community. Are we understanding the scope of the giving problem? Are we somehow implying EAs aren't already way better than baseline?" And I've never seen a post that says, "woah, people are always debating about veganism and whatnot but, EAs are way lower than the base rate anyways, so why are we not explicitly acknowledging that when we try and suggest people should consider veganism? Or offsetting?" My point was never that these numbers can't be found. My point was that, we do not set our moral standards on baselines. We ask people in this community to care about suffering and to be morally ambitious. Why can't we ask that of sexual harassment, as well.
There is the wider community, and then there is the professional ecosystem. I would put forward the following: at the point where you are reading a detailed account of sexual harassment supported by two independent investigations and a settlement, it is very easy to write a supportive comment. Especially for those with approximately nothing to lose by offering support. The real test isn't "when presented with a publicly documented case that has strong evidence, can you say something nice?" It's "within the professional ecosystem, if instances of potential or substantiated sexual harassment occur in your own organisation, can you respond appropriately." The second is much harder, but it is also the thing that actually matters for the health of the community. And then we can try to extend this to wider community-building (what happens within your city group? What happens at your events?), these things also matter a lot, but it can really vary by location, group, time, etc.
I hope this doesn't come across as ungrateful! I'm eternally thankful for the kind words I received, and those words did help me a lot. But the thing that would have helped much more was if the incident had been handled correctly by the appropriate people. The fact that it was handled poorly by so many people for so long has to indicate a systemic issue. The question is then whether CEA is uniquely bad here, or whether their systemic issues echo something that is also true of other organisations in the space. In my personal experience, it really depends and it really varies. I do think CEA is weirdly/uniquely bad, for many reasons (including its convoluted org structure and the complicated process of dissolving EV over the past year or so, and its other unique histories), but I'd also guess some organisations have similar issues and know of some that have had worrying incidinces. Others don't, to my knowledge and they are just very well run from what I can tell. There are also many exceptional organisations in this community! It all gets quite complicated, really.
In terms of off-line actions taken: Personally, I was very touched by the incredible response of some organisations to my post behind the scenes. While I can't talk about them, there were some legitimately exceptional and above-and-beyond responses. So anyways, I think regardless of the forum's debates, there are people who are very sad about this problem the community has (whether or not it is better or worse than baseline), and there are people putting in significant effort to improve things. There are a lot of people who care.
One overall thought: I wonder if what you're picking up on isn't an implicit belief that EA is uniquely bad, but the reality that people are very invested in EA. The reactions are strong and strongly worded partly because people in this community want this community to be good. They care about it, many are morally scrupulous, they're invested in its health and ability to function, they know the people in it. I don't think they're implicitly thinking "this is so much worse than anything comparable." My guess is that if you asked directly whether EA is worse than a comparable community, most would say "I'm really not sure" or "probably not? I don't know." That's been my personal experience.
I also think the comparative framing is somewhat beside the point here. EA isn't trying to reduce sexual harassment around the world, but it is strongly trying to community-build, and the relevant question for community-building is whether this is a place people can thrive in. Given that trying to answer the question of whether EA is "better or worse" is somewhat difficult, it's worth asking how important that question really is.
One thing I love about my current organisation is they are incredibly conscientious in how they build community and support their members. As someone who has now done event planning for this community for more than 3 years, I can't even imagine trying to ask if the baseline of harassment at my events is like other comparable events. I would much rather put my time and effort into making my events safer and more welcoming. In the same way that, I don't ask if the baseline satisfaction with the content at my events is the same as the average event, because I would rather put my effort into improving the content, and so on. (Edit: I was glib with my events comparison & wording, I like data & base rates are worth knowing and can help provide context and grounding, but I hope my directional point is clear)
I'll also say this, though I suspect it won't be well-received: there's something strange about a community that advocates for reducing suffering and encourages moral ambition retreating into "well, what's the baseline?" when sexual harassment comes up. What's the baseline of people who eat meat? What's the baseline of how much the average middle-income person in a developed country donates? I understand it's not exactly the same thing, but it's disheartening to see the baseline framing applied seemingly only here.