[Epistemic status: I’ve done a lot of thinking about these issues previously; I am a female mathematician who has spent several years running mentorship/support groups for women in my academic departments and has also spent a few years in various EA circles.]
I wholeheartedly agree that EA needs to improve with respect to professional/personal life mixing, and that these fuzzy boundaries are especially bad for women. I would love to see more consciousness and effort by EA organizations toward fixing these and related issues. In particular I agree with the following:
> Not having stricter boundaries for work/sex/social in mission focused organizations brings about inefficiency and nepotism [...]. It puts EA at risk of alienating women / others due to reasons that have nothing to do with ideological differences.
However, I can’t endorse the post as written, because there’s a lot of claims made which I think are wrong or misleading. Like: Sure, there are poly women who’d be happier being monogamous, but there are also poly men who’d be happier being monogamous, and my own subjective impression is that these are about equally common. Also, “EA/rationalism and redpill fit like yin and yang” does not characterize my experiences within the EA movement at all. I’m sure there are EAs who are creeps that subscribe to horrible beliefs about gender, but the vast majority of EAs I know are not like that at all. In a similar vein, regarding the claim “many men, often competing with each other, will persuade you to join polyamory using LessWrong style jedi mindtricks while they stand to benefit from the erosion of your boundaries”—I completely agree that this is absolutely awful if/when it happens, but I also think this is a lot less common than this post makes it sound.
Overall, the post seems to do a mixture of pointing out legitimate problems and making angry overarching accusations that I don’t think are true. I believe this post comes from a place of hurt, and I am sincerely sorry that you’ve had such negative experiences. I really do want the EA community to improve at this, and I want the people who’ve given you such bad experiences to be appropriately dealt with so that they don’t harass others in future. However, I don’t think this post as written will help much, because the overarching accusations are likely to turn people off from taking the rest of the post seriously.
[ETA: Wanted to add that the supportiveness and collaborative brainstorming suggested in the thread above by Megan, Keerthana, and Rockwell totally do seem helpful and productive to me, and I am excited to see this happening.]
[Second ETA: This comment was written in response to an earlier version of this post. Since then the author has made several edits which make what I’ve said here somewhat irrelevant.]
Availability bias informed by personal experience affects our perception of rate of incidence a lot. So I added this stat.
“Edit: I have personally experienced this more than three times in less than one year of attending EA events and that is far too many times.”
I have two other female friends I talk to who are not ready to speak up yet who were involved longer and report higher numbers.
Also, the post is not optimized for analytical/argumentative quality. My only goal is to speak my mind, my authentic experience and bring awareness that this happened to me and others I know. I would like to see these issues fixed but I am not overly invested in it yet, because there are also lots of interesting things to do in the world.
Yep, you are totally right about availability bias and I don’t mean to downplay at all your experience—that’s awful and I’d be delighted to see more efforts by EA groups to prevent this sort of thing.
And yeah, if you don’t feel like optimizing for argumentative quality that’s valid and my comment isn’t worth minding in that case! Not your job to fix these issues, and thank you for taking the time to bring awareness.
Experienced what 3 times in a year? Being asked out multiple times by the same person? Not having your no respected? Asked to join a polycule? I don’t get what the grievances are tbh
When you say that the author’s experience is uncommon, what evidence do you draw on? Having been an event organizer to whom some women feel safe reporting, I have heard a few reports of similar nature. That said, even one case is one too many.
To some experiences, anger is an appropriate and healthy response. When you say that this post “comes from a place of hurt”, it sounds as if you’re positioning that as a reason to criticize it. I’m worried that this raises an unreasonable standard for reports of harm. By the nature of the matter, victims have feelings about what they experienced. They should not be expected to present comprehensive analysis or perfect solutions because that’s not a job they willingly signed up for. If they have enough activation energy to report harm even though it is a charged topic for them or they fear backlash, it behooves us to honor their reports. A judgment whether to endorse or not endorse a report puts every reader in the position of judge, jury, and executioner, which I don’t think is the most helpful from a long-term view towards community health. Emotional charges can be taken at face value—as an indicator that this topic has hurt feelings, not more and not less.
Yes, I agree with what you’ve written here. “This comes from a place of hurt” was actually meant as hedging/softening; “because you have had bad experiences it makes sense for your post to be angry and emotionally charged and it should not be held to the same epistemic standards as a typical EA Forum post on a less personal issue.” Sorry that wasn’t clear.
My response was based on my impressions from several years being a woman in EA circles, which are that these issues absolutely do exist and affect an unfortunately high number of women to various extents, and also that some of what’s described in this post is atypically severe. (Obviously, none of this should ever happen, to any degree of severity, and I really want to see EA get better at preventing it!) Originally, I wasn’t clear on the fact that the post was written as a personal report of harm experienced, and that its descriptions of the severity were not intended as universal claims about what is typical. The author has now made a number of edits which make the scope/intent of the post much clearer, thereby obviating much of my comment. I agree that the idea of “endorsing” someone’s report of their own experience is not useful for the reasons you describe, and on further reflection I do want to be more careful in future to respond to reports of harm in ways that don’t disincentivize reporting—that is the last thing I want to do!
I object to how closely you link polyamory with shitty behaviour. At one point you say this you are not criticizing polyamory, but you repeatedly bring it up when talking about stuff like the overlap of work and social life, or men being predatory at EA meetups.
I think men being predatory and subscribing to ‘redpill’ ideologies is terrible and we shouldn’t condone it in the community.
I feel more complicated about the overlap between social life and work life, but I take your general point that this could (and maybe does in fact) lead to conflicts of interest and exploitation.
But neither of these is strongly related to polyamory, polycules etc. I worry that you are contributing to harmful stereotypes about polyamory.
I agree with the take that there’s nothing inherently wrong in polyamory. I think what the author is highlighting is the practice of excusing shitty behavior under the guise of polyamory (the “Jedi mind tricks” they’re referring to). Impressionable people are convinced to override their intuitions about what a healthy and respectful intimate relationship looks like by people with more power that claim to have more advanced thinking about sex and pair bonding.
It’s not the author’s fault that polyamory is being co-opted this way, they’re merely the canary in the coal mine. There are further explorations outside of EA on how concepts of polyamory have been used for abuse, for example here: https://www.polyfor.us/articles/more-than-two-metoo-response
I agree with your sentiment that cultural power dynamics and bad behavior around work/life intermingling and polyamory should be disentangled.
I think the crux of OP’s argument is that she feels like poly EA men are more responsible for this cultural issue since she feels like they are more likely to make sexual advances and extend invitations that make her feel uncomfortable.
If a crime has been committed (or you have reason to suspect a crime has been committed), we encourage people to report the crime to the police.
In the future I’d also be happy to talk with community members about the codes of conducts and other processes that CEA and the wider EA community has in place, and listen to their suggestions.
Larger events or groups are more likely to have a code of conduct — for example the code of conduct at CEA events makes clear that unwanted sexual attention does not belong at these events. Our conferences also have at least one community contact person available on site to help with any personal or interpersonal problems that come up. We encourage anyone experiencing uncomfortable treatment at one of these conferences to let us know so we can address it.
Smaller EA events and groups are less likely to have these formal systems. Whether there are formal systems or not, culture is shaped largely through more informal interactions, the vibe set by organizers, etc. For group organizers, we encourage reading these community health resources. And we hope everyone in EA spaces will think about how each of us shapes the culture.
It’s true that in past years I was the main person working on these kinds of cultural things, but at this point the community health team has (thankfully!) grown. The CEA groups team and events team also think about these issues, and want to support events and groups (whether run by CEA or not) as healthy spaces.
As Catherine said, we’re happy to talk more about ideas that community members have about shaping the culture and ideas you have for preventing and addressing problems.
As a somewhat separate point: fwiw, I’m a woman and I’ve not experienced this general toxicity in EA myself. Obviously I am not challenging your experience—there are lots of EA sub-communities and it makes sense that some could be awful, others fine. But it’s worth adding this nuance, I think (e.g., from what I’ve heard, Bay Area EA circles are particularly incestuous wrt work/life overlap stuff).
To add another data point, I have witnessed some of what has been described in here and worse. The only thing I’ve never seen is a woman getting a position while sexually involved with a man, except for monogamous couples like Bill & Melinda Gates. The opposite seems much more often the case in poly-circles, where talented women are unfairly excluded from career opportunities because male decision-makers in the orgs don’t want to get in trouble.
Yes, it seems difficult and also important to say:
-you and your friends have had multiple bad experiences
-the EA community should work to become safer and better
-women reading this post shouldn’t feel worried to attend an EA event; lots of women in EA haven’t had these same experiences (especially women living in different cities or countries from you)
Kirsten, how many incidents of harassment would need to be reported to warrant your worry? How many is too many that it is no longer worth risking your safety?
women reading this post shouldn’t feel worried to attend an EA event; lots of women in EA haven’t had these same experiences
You’re defeating the point of my post. Women need to be on the look out when engaging with EA if they don’t want to be exploited, at least in SF and NYC. Among them:
Not be drinking or using psychedelics without a trusted girlfriend to look after you and make sure you get home ok
Avoiding putting yourself in a position of dependence on a bad male actor
Cutting off friendships with bad male actors, and letting your girlfriends in EA know what’s up
For a community that is so alarmist for 5 or 1 or 0.1 percentage of X-risk from AI, giving a wide berth for sexual harassment is utterly hypocritical. Kathleen Forth’s suicide is not enough. The anonymous reports I linked is not enough. My own narration is not enough. You can make an evaluation of your own safety and risk tolerance ( assuming your gender here based on your post but feel free to correct me), but please let other women decide for themselves how much risk is acceptable and what dynamic is worth engaging with.
I feel a little conflicted, because on the one hand I want to respect and make space for you reporting your own experience. On the other hand, you are actually making concrete suggestions that I don’t agree with—suggestions that would make my life, as a woman in EA, worse. So I don’t know how to respond.
For context about me, I do know of several instances of sexual harassment in EA, some of which were handled better than others. I also know of instances of sexual harassment at my former university, and my former church, and my workplace.
The casual assumption that people make that obviously the only reason Caroline could have become CEO was because she was sleeping with SBF is annoying when I see it on Twitter or some toxic subreddit. Here I expect better. Plenty of people at FTX and Alameda were equally young and equally inexperienced. The CTO (a similarly important role at a tech company) of FTX, Gary Wang, was 29. Sam Trabucco, the previous Alameda co-CEO, seems to be about the same. I have seen no reason to think that Caroline was particularly unusual in her age or experience relative to others at FTX and Alameda.
Thank you for responding. I read “Some of these men control funding for projects and enjoy high status in EA communities and that means there are real downsides to refusing their sexual advances and pressure to say yes, especially if your career is in an EA cause area or is funded by them. There are also upsides, as reported by CoinDesk on Caroline Ellison.” I have seen a number of people pass around https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/10/bankman-frieds-cabal-of-roommates-in-the-bahamas-ran-his-crypto-empire-and-dated-other-employees-have-lots-of-questions/. I have seen a number of assertions that Caroline received the job because of a sexual/romantic relationship with SBF. I haven’t seen anyone assert any other “upsides” that make sense in specific relation to Caroline Ellison. Would you mind clarifying what upsides you were referring to if not the CEO position?
[2022-11-13: Edit to include more of the context of the quote]
Whether the fact Caroline slept with SBF was instrumental to her becoming CEO of Alameda is not really the point—this kind of nepotistic, incestuous work environment is not healthy. It also doesn’t detract from the long list of very serious problems the OP mentioned? Why take such a confrontational attitude to someone who is reaching out for support?
Honestly, I think you are just making a category error. This isn’t a philosophy article, it’s someone sharing their personal experiences of sexual harassment. I just don’t think it’s helpful or to the point to act like this, and frankly, I don’t understand it on a human level.
Did Caroline sleep with SBF? Yes. From what I understand—which isn’t a whole lot—she did so both before and during her time at Alameda. Might that have benefitted her? Very probably, though no, we’ll never know for certain because we don’t have a counterfactual timeline.
I’ll note in passing that you are not representing the OP’s original statement accurately, which for someone who is such a stickler for exact, verifiable truth claims, is surprising.
>”Having loyal and pliable lieutenants is common for powerful, ambitious people”
And therefore it’s okay for those powerful, ambitious people to curry sexual favour in the workplace, create an environment where women feel pressured to have sex to protect or further their career, and where sexual intrigue, pursuit and—potentially—abuse becomes normal?
Because when male authority figures sleep with female colleagues, it introduces all of those dynamics into the workplace, regardless of whether it did or didn’t advance the careers of the women they slept with.
I’m saying that it’s unclear how the collapse of FTX, the role of the poly relationships, predatory male sexual behavior, or the culpability of EA culture are linked, despite being welded together into one set of claims in this post. Also, it seems like Caroline E probably had a lot of agency and power (but I’m happy to learn otherwise).
The underlying issue that is motivating this is that there’s many issues and throwing this into this high temperature environment will burn them.
I have a lot of anecdotes that could be useful. To the degree it’s actually true (and writing here is useful; and completely ignoring the values/interests of EA) I’m with you and the OP in stopping this abuse, some aspects of which seems plausible and real to me.
I won’t participate if it turns into a very low quality overreaction or leads to something that consumes a lot of time in EA and doesn’t help women.
Well, FTX was filled with EA staff, and FTX’s inner circle was nepotistic and incestous. Nepotistic and incestuous workplaces are bad, and the OP is saying that she has experienced much the same in dealing with EA. I don’t really see what’s complicated about that?
How is this your priority in responding to this long list of personal experiences, which have no doubt distressed the OP, and pose enormous questions for the movement?
This community’s lack of basic decency and kindness—sacrificed to a sterile and callous ideal of rationality—is one of the many reasons why I disassociated from it a long time ago.
I’m also sorry to hear this has been your experience and as both a woman and the director of EA NYC, I am always here to discuss cultural issues and possible recourse, as is our dedicated EA NYC community health coordinator, Megan Nelson: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSerQKtoQULEjuGGqTaKPoqj-WwCZJqKKri_pi0fdQ-Ag5xANQ/viewform
We both think about these topics a lot and are working to steer the community in an increasingly healthy and safe direction.
I’m piggybacking on Rocky’s comment. Keerthana, I’m so sorry to hear that you had this experience in the EA NYC community (and beyond), and I’m grateful to you for talking about it.
As Rocky said, this is the kind of issue that we are thinking about and trying to address. If anyone reading this would like to discuss concerns about EA NYC community health and culture, please feel free to reach out using the (anonymous) form above or to email me at megan@effectivealtruism.nyc.
Hi Rocky, if you’re looking to improve on the situation (I read you’re an EA director), I’m down to help and have some ideas. EA has a lot of good core ideas, and can be a better force with processes and structures supporting inclusion.
I feel kind of complicated about my previous comments on this post. I do still stand by what I said. But I feel kind of bad that my comments have got more karma than the post itself, because I do think that we should worry about toxicity towards women in the community, and many of the things Keerthana describes are really bad and on balance, I think I’m happy she wrote this post.
The reaction to this post (and my comments) exemplifies a dynamic I’ve seen before on the Forum, where people’s posts are disregarded, criticized, downvoted etc because they are emotional, impressionistic, openly angered or outraged, emphatic… etc, and praised for being detached, dry, measured, caveat-ed… We should care about epistemics, but I think sometimes readers of the Forum are not charitable enough to people who communicate in different ways to them.
I think this a really important point about the dynamic of criticism toward emotionally raw posts. I see the reactions to this post as illustrative of the very problem that the OP is describing about using LessWrong jedi mindtricks to ignore boundaries and frankly to rationalize harrassment. In this case, a member of the community has shared their personal experiences and reactions to toxic behavior, and a significant number of people seem to be responding with criticisms of the intellectual merit of the post, as if the post were a logic exercise and not a situation which is uncomfortable and threatening for real people.
I don’t mean to imply that we as a community should never engage in a more detached dialogue about the causes and possible solutions to the sexual harassment and misogyny described. However, I feel really uncomfortable when I read comments saying that expressing anger is useless or that the author should have done more to describe different possible interpretations of their experience or ways in which their experience may not be representative of everyone’s. I wish I could believe that this forum is a place where I could describe my own experiences without fearing that people will treat feelings of sadness or anger as some kind of prompt for a rationalist debate.
On that note, inspired by Keerthana’s bravery in sharing, I will mention my own experiences as a woman in EA. I am not a well-known member of the community or a frequent forum poster, but I am using an alternate account because of what I described in the paragraph above. I have experienced quite a bit of casual misogyny in interactions in EA spaces. I have walked away from a handful of conversations at EA events feeling that people have dismissed my ideas, mansplained topics about which I am knowledgable, or aggressively interrupted and silenced others. I sometimes read forum posts that make concerns about gender-based violence or community health feel like a footnote. I am thankful that this describes a minority of my experiences, but unfortunately it’s enough to make me wary when participating in EA events.
I completely agree that OP raises totally legitimate points that are worthy of being taken seriously.
However, I am grateful for you initial comment and really disagree that the issue here is being emotional and impressionistic. The problem with the post is that it is bigoted. OP makes a central issue of people not respecting one’s “poly/mono” choice and then proceeds to suggest that women in poly relationships are unhappy and that poly men are uniquely likely to be sexual predators. This is all framed as a matter of OP’s experience, and I have no reason to doubt the truthfulness of it all. But that doesn’t excuse framing the issue as a matter of one’s choice to be poly or not. Imagine if this framing was done for any other group. Even if you have legitimate negative experiences with members of a certain group, framing the issue as relevant to membership in that group without any evidence whatsoever is unfair to say the least. This is especially true for something like sexual pressure, which monogamous people have been engaging in far and wide since the dawn of time. In any case, it is a really tired trope to paint anyone who does not fall very neatly in line with conventional ideas of relationship structures as a sexual predator.
It’s also frankly quite hypocritical in that OP seems to be the one not respecting others “mono/poly” choice.
None of this is to say that OPs experiences are not real or that they are not a problem. Of course they are! But that does not make this a fair or productive post and it would have been much better received if OP didn’t make it about something irrelevant.
This is the comment that made me feel very unsafe and take down the post.
What I said:
1. you can find many unhappy women in poly relationships
2. many poly men are sexual predators
You reframed my sentences to your convenience to claim that I said :
proceeds to suggest that women in poly relationships are unhappy and that poly men are uniquely likely to be sexual predators
the rest of your post bases on that assumption. Many != all, that is an important distinction. I am qualifying my sentences with “some of these men”, “many men” in various places but you’ve ignored that. I am not anonymous, so your calling me bigoted seems retaliatory, personal and unwarranted. The reason I didn’t take specific names but used many was because I don’t want to get into more issues, but usually the definition of many is more than one. I have not stopped a poly person from being poly so what do you mean by “not respecting others mono/poly choices”? Who did I coerce?
@lizka, @julia_wise, take note, I cannot presume your forum permits retaliation, name calling and personal attacks.
I didn’t call you bigoted, I called your post bigoted and I stand by it. If my comment about your post made you feel “very unsafe,” then I do not wish to argue about the matter and risk coming off as even more of a threat to you, as that could not be further from my intention. I wish you the best.
This comment feels important, like something I’ve been considering trying to spin into a full post. Finding a frame has been hard, because it feels like I’m trying to translate what’s (unfortunately) a distinctively non-EA culture norm into reasoning that EAs will take more seriously.
One thought that I do want to share though is that I don’t think seeing this as something that needs to be weighed against good epistemics feels quite right. I think our prizing good epistemics should mean being able to reason clearly and adjust our reactions to tone/emotional tenor from people who (very understandably!) are speaking from a place of trauma and deep hurt.
The best frame I have so far for a post is reminding people about Julia Galef’s straw-Vulcan argument and arguing what it implies for conversations on (understandably) incredibly emotionally heavy topics, and in tough times more generally. Roughly rehashing the argument because I can’t find a good link on it: Spock frequently makes assumptions that humans will be perfectly rational creatures under all circumstances, and when this leads him astray essentially shrugs and responds “it’s not my fault that I did not predict their actions correctly, they were being irrational!”. Galef’s point of course, is that this is horrible rationality: the failure to reason about how emotions might effect people and adjust accordingly means your epistemics are severely impoverished.
Setting aside the Klingon style rationality argument, there also feels like there should be a argument along the lines of how (to me, incredibly!) obvious it should be that tone like this demands sympathy and willingness to take on the burden of being accommodating from people serious about thinking of themselves as invested in altruism as a value. I’m still figuring out how to express this crisply (and to be clear, without bitterness) so that it will resonate.
If you have thoughts on what the best frame would be here, would love to hear any thoughts you have or discuss more.
Edited to take out something unkind. Trying to practice what I preach here.
I think this isn’t central to your point, but I wanted to push the “straw Vulcan” point a bit further. It’s not just that it’s rational to try to understand other people’s emotional behaviour, it’s that even your own emotional responses are frequently rational and that being attuned and responsive and reactive to your emotions is an important epistemic tool. When people hurt you it is rational to be angry, or sad; it is not rational to be ruled by these emotions, but ignoring them entirely is just as bad. Your emotions are a part of your sensory / observational experience of the world, just as much as your vision or your hearing are, and if you don’t acknowledge their role in your understanding, I think you will make worse predictions about what will happen.
I don’t think your criticisms were because the post was emotional, and I don’t think the criticism of the allusion to Caroline benefiting from this culture was a criticism of tone. They were criticisms of the content / claims / ideas / attitudes in the post, and I think it was important to make them.
I do think it’s fair to be concerned that these criticisms are getting more attention than the rest of what is said in the post. The issues Keerthana raises are serious and it would be wrong to ignore them entirely because of some objectionable aspects of the post, especially ones that don’t seem super central to the message. But just because an emotional post is being criticised, doesn’t mean it’s being criticised for its emotion, and doesn’t mean emotional posts are unwelcome here.
The reaction to this post (and my comments) exemplifies a dynamic I’ve seen before on the Forum, where people’s posts are disregarded, criticized, downvoted etc because they are emotional, impressionistic, openly angered or outraged, emphatic… etc, and praised for being detached, dry, measured, caveat-ed… We should care about epistemics, but I think sometimes readers of the Forum are not charitable enough to people who communicate in different ways to them.
Maybe because those caveats are really important, if you want to actually improve things and not just cause chaos.
Like, there’s a failure mode that’s really common where there’s anger at a problem, and that anger fuels solutions that wouldn’t actually solve the problem, then try to implement it and get surprised at how much the policy is failing, never considering that caveats and measures always mattered, and they’re just too angry to notice the problems with their solution.
It’s a good thing that EA rejects the notion in practice on social media, that controversy and anger = good. They aren’t that good in practice.
I agree that controversy and anger aren’t good per se, but people can be broadly right and also angry. Sometimes anger is pretty appropriate, even though critical distance and wisdom is also appropriate. I think people have over-updated from ‘I shouldn’t take people seriously just because they are emotional/angry’ to ‘if people are emotional/angry, I shouldn’t take them seriously’.
I also suspect that people care more about how anger is expressed, than the presence of it. E.g., Will McAskill and Rob Wiblin, in their recent statements on FTX, expressed anger -Will said ‘I am outraged’ and Rob said ‘I am fucking appalled’. But their statements were generally well-received, I suspect because though they stated they were angry, their tone was nonetheless detached.
Motte: powerful men who wield control over EA money shouldn’t use that power for sexual gain. Baileys, as I see them: EAs shouldn’t get into relationships with one another, we should implement strict rules to enforce this, women who are “redpilled” have basically been brainwashed by polyamorous EAs, EAs sleeping together somehow contributed to the FTX debacle(?).
Your point about Title IX seems especially strange—as I understand it Title IX has led to universities dealing with sexual misconduct claims internally, the opposite of your proposal to have the police deal with them (which I totally agree with).
conflicts of interest in grant allocation, work place appointments should be avoided
men should be made more conscientious about hitting on women at EA events, also vice versa. this means honoring ’no’s, avoiding coercion, respecting a person’s choice of poly/mono, etc
any EA event organizer using that venue to hit on women should be removed from organizing EA events again, without question
retaliation for sexual rejection, both social and professional, needs to be addressed.
more women should be encouraged to seek the cops, instead of keeping arbitrating it within the community where bias and power differentials can creep in
Apologise for the confusion. There’s no policy at present, so the ethos represented by Title IX are a start, especially when victims are reluctant to go to cops or if behavior is harassment but not strictly a crime. That said, cops should be involved wherever possible because EA has no expertise in arbitrating SA.
conflicts of interest in grant allocation, work place appointments should be avoided
Worth flagging: Since there are more men than women in EA, I would expect a greater fraction of EA women than EA men to be in relationships with other EAs. (And trying to think of examples off the top of my head supports that theory.) If this is right, the policy “don’t appoint people for jobs where they will have conflicts of interest” would systematically disadvantage women.
(By contrast, considering who you’re already in a work-relationship with when choosing who to date wouldn’t have a systematic effect like that.)
My inclination here would be to (as much as possible) avoid having partners make grant/job-appointment decisions about their partners. But that if someone seems to be the best for a job/grant (from the perspective of people who aren’t their partner), to not deny them that just because it would put them in a position closer to their partner.
(It’s possible that this is in line with what you meant.)
This all seems very sensible and reasonable. But at the time of writing this comment, your post still makes all of the ‘bailey’ claims I mentioned, which rather proves the point that you’re using a central reasonable claim to justify a bunch of related but unreasonable/poorly-evidenced ones. I suspect this muddled thinking is why you’re getting downvoted.
any EA event organizer using that venue to hit on women should be removed from organizing EA events again, without question
I have seen advice on Twitter—from a woman—that a good way for a man to find a girlfriend is to become an event organiser (implied but not stated in the tweet: you should then hit on women at the event, because why waste the potentially short-lived opportunity?). So that’s what I take to be one view from a woman in favour. I guess two, really, because she wasn’t actually the woman who benefited from this behaviour, in terms of finding a partner that she liked—her friend was.
Against that I have seen this post, and a tweet thread by another woman—who is not in EA—complaining that this happened to her at a tech meetup and in hindsight, she thought it had been inappropriate. Although it took her months to decide to speak up about this—it’s unclear to me whether it took her a long time to change her view that the behaviour was OK, or whether it took a long time for her to pluck up the courage to talk about it on Twitter. Perhaps it was the former and her views were influenced by talking to a radical feminist about her experiences.
(To be perfectly clear, I haven’t engaged in this behaviour myself—indeed initially I was actually hostile to the idea as a dating strategy, as it seemed extremely superficial for a woman to like a man merely because he was an event organiser, but I was subsequently persuaded against this view. By a woman.)
So that’s two, or maybe three, women for, versus two, maybe three, women against—I haven’t yet seen any evidence of a consensus among women that this behaviour is bad, and I haven’t heard any actual arguments for why this behaviour is bad, either. Could you provide any?
So first up, I don’t think ‘good way for a man to find a girlfriend is to become an event organiser’ implies ‘you should then hit on women at the event’. It could just be ‘it’s a good way to meet people and make friends, and the more people you meet, the more likely you are to find a partner’.
I kind of want to taboo ‘hit on’ because clearly whether it’s bad depends on what exactly you mean. The lack of consensus might come from different understandings of the phrase! (but it also might come from women having different preferences and experiences—shocker!)
Still, here are some types of ‘hitting on’ that might be bad:
-person A is making obviously flirty and/or overtly sexual comments to person B, maybe touching them or leaning in close, etc. Person B extricates themself from the conversation politely and doesn’t reciprocate the flirtiness (beyond friendliness). Person A continually seeks out B at events and keeps behaving this way, even though B always leaves the conversation at the first opportunity. This is bad because it means Person B has to spend the whole event running away from A rather than just enjoying themself.
-it’s a professional event (eg, EAG) and A and B have set up a 1-on-1. A asks B, apropos of nothing, if they’re single. A is clearly not really interested in talking about professional matters (EA women on twitter have said this happened to them). This is bad because it’s a waste of B’s time—B could have schedule a meeting with someone who actually wanted to talk about work stuff!
-Person A asks B out. B says ‘sorry, I have a partner’. A argues that monogamy is irrational and emotionally immature. This is bad because it’s manipulative and crosses people’s boundaries.
I disagree with point 3. As written, I think the author is suggesting that EA organisers should report any sexual misconduct to the police. I strongly disagree—I think EA organisers should offer to help report to police, but the choice should always be up to the person who had the bad experience. No one who’s had an experience of sexual harassment or assault should be forced to talk to police about it.
strong agree—if we insisted on reporting any misconduct we heard about to the police, it may even prevent people from coming forward, because they (often quite reasonably) may believe that the legal process will hurt them more than it helps
I’m incredibly sorry about the negative experiences you and your friends have had. I think it would be beneficial to provide more detail about the “Lesswrong style Jedi mind tricks” if you feel comfortable. My guess (as a woman who has many rationalist male friends) is that a good number of men who don’t want to be predatory are are trying to figure out if they’ve unknowingly done something that could be making women uncomfortable. I think they would benefit from specifics here, so that they can avoid doing similar things in the future.
I haven’t had any rationalist-style issues specifically. But, I’ll list some specific behaviors that have been best at making me feel comfortable when asked out /hit on in ea:
People being extremely clear about consent about touching. Asking about things before they happen and, before asking, making it a point to say that they genuinely want you to say no if your answer is no.
Anyone who has a position of authority over me/recommending me for funding telling me the extent to which they would immediately be transparent to funders/teammates in the case that we did date. I think this is a part of informed consent around dating that’s often overlooked. Also making it directly clear that this will not affect my funding/opportunities. The other person saying this without me having to ask is very important and makes me feel much less overwhelmed by any power dynamic.
Other than that fact that Caroline E. and others like Constance W. are women and in the inner circle (living in the same penthouse) and probably entered into these relationships, can you describe how this is related to the issues at FTX or misconduct or issues that occurred?
If SBF was monogamous and married, would the current events be prevented, and how?
Hey everyone, the moderators want to point out that this topic is heated for several reasons:
Lots of relevant information comes from people’s personal experiences, which will vary a lot.
Harassment and power dynamics are often emotionally loaded and can be difficult to discuss objectively.
Polyamory is something that a lot of the world stigmatizes, so some people will be defensive (whether merited or not), and some will be subconsciously biased against it. This makes it hard to discuss without assuming that some people are hostile.
So we want to ask everyone to be especially understanding and generous when discussing topics this sensitive (and really appreciate some of the thoughtful replies in the comments). And as a reminder, harassment is unacceptable. One resource that exists for this is the Community Health Team at CEA. As they point out, you can get in touch with them. If you ever experience harassment of any kind on the Forum, please reach out to the moderation team.
I wish to take down this post from EA forum based on the comments received. The version exists on my website and on Twitter. I am not seeing an option for it from my control panel. Could you do it for me?
Hi Keerthana—I’m sorry you feel the comments on this have pushed you to want to take this post down. I have previously taken down a long comment I made on something related to women’s health, that was heavily down voted (I suspect by a concerted few—based on other patterns I’ve seen on the Forum). I felt awful about this (because it felt like I was being lynched for expressing a completely reasonable and wide held opinion). But I still know what I said to be fair and a very necessary contribution to the conversation. Anyway, if you want to talk, please reach out to me. I appreciated reading your work and I thank you for putting it out there. Don’t feel silenced by a few.
We might be talking to journalists. There are other women too who have left AI safety, EA due to problems I mentioned above and they’re not on the forum because they left the community. I definitely would love to hear from you even if you do not want to speak publicly about this. I am @keerthanpg on twitter :)
If you select “move to draft” that should make it invisible to everyone but you, I think.
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry to be losing the post—I thought it was a valuable contribution. I know being in the center of these kinds of conversations can be pretty overwhelming though, especially on an emotional topic where a lot of people pretty strongly disagree with you.
I am not willing to be attacked like this. I heard the word ‘bigot’ thrown around. Trying to change the minds of EA is a lost cause. Sexual harassment does not discriminate but the comments make it seem that only well articulate, debate sophisticated victims deserve to be heard here. So I’ll let the community carry on and remove myself, I am not here to debate and win because my time is valuable.
Thank you, that works. But I also want to download all the comments/discussion because I may need it in the future. Would you know how I can do that before deleting? I only see an “archive” button, I wish to have a copy of it on my local separate from the server where the site is hosted.
The bad behavior described here has absolutely nothing to do with polyamory. A person who practices polyamory has every bit as much of an interest in not being sexually pressured as one who does not practice polyamory. A person who purports to practice polyamory is no more or less likely to engage in sexual pressure than one who doesn’t. I honestly don’t see how “respecting someone’s mono/poly choice” has any relevance—just because someone is poly doesn’t mean they want in on a particular polycule and just because someone is mono doesn’t mean they want anything to do with a particular single/monogamous person. How about just “respecting ‘I’m not interested’”
Some, though not all, men in EA subscribe to an ask culture philosophy which endorses asking for things, including dates, even when the answer is probably no. This almost definitely contributes to the problems Keerthana points out. A small number of guys endorsing this philosophy can make multiple women feel uncomfortable.
I think this is bad. Some people point out that the alternative, guess culture, is more difficult for people who struggle to read social cues. But if there’s a trade-off between making this community safe and comfortable for women and making it easier for guys to find dates, then, sorry, there’s only one reasonable choice.
Keerthana’s formal suggestions are worthy of consideration. I also think there’s a cultural element, created and enforced through social norms, that will only change when EAs, especially EA men, choose to notice and push back on questionable behaviour from our acquaintances, colleagues, and friends.
Asking and guessing aren’t the only options here: double-opt in methods like reciprocity.io can let mutually-interested people discover their shared preference in a way that works well for both people who struggle to read social cues and people who don’t want to receive unsolicited clear expressions of interest.
Frankly, your experience resonates with me, but your suggested solutions don’t seem like the only way to me and seem like they would come with many downsides. I have experienced unpleasant dynamics around poly-heavy EA hubs and had a bad trial experience with polyamory myself (leading to a resounding return to monogamy). I think sexual competitiveness mixed with professional competition in the Bay is toxic, and I think the never-ending series of sexual conquests for high status people is a pretty huge distraction from work.
But I wouldn’t take away anyone’s freedom to be part of it. I think that enough open talk about experiences like yours could help lead to a voluntary shift.
I’m a monogamous man with very little connection to any in-person EA community—I attended EAGxBoston last year, had a great time, and that’s it. So hearing these anecdotes about the in-person scene is quite disturbing to me.
I have no beef with polyamory. I’m a big fan of EA. And I utterly disagree with your characterization of EA as “altruism stripped of empathy and morality.”
But what you are describing is an incredibly toxic power dynamic. It does sound predatory. Mixing institutional authority, money, drugs, and sex sounds like a recipe for disaster. We’ve already had this sh*t going on at the Monastic Academy. If it’s pervasive in the EA and LW communities more broadly, then that’s terrible for the people on whom this unwanted attention is inflicted. An absolute scandal factory. I’m quite prepared to believe it’s going on.
Add this to the list of things an EA risk management and whistleblowing organization needs to focus on.
Thank you for sharing your experiences here. I know it isn’t easy to talk about. I would encourage people in the comments to reflect on how they approach people who are opening up about difficult experiences like this. We should want people to feel comfortable voicing these concerns, not argue when the person explicitly said this is not an argument, just my own experience. Invalidating someone is a bad look for the community and will make it less likely for others to voice similar concerns which could lead to serious issues.
This likely isn’t the entirety of it, but concepts from polyamory thought leadership have at times been used to initiate and steer private interactions into dynamics that have been perceived as abusive. Some of it (outside of EA) is described here: https://polyamory-metoo.com/
I really agree that people (not just women) having negative experiences like this (not just in EA) is something that everyone needs to take more action on—and many of the action points in this post seem important. But I never know how to react emotionally to posts that imply this as a problem of all EA circles, I feel really strongly a need to stand up for and support of all the people I have met and experiences I have had over the last 8 years that have made me feel safe, respected, welcomed, intelligent, confident, capable. Some EA circles are genuinely wonderful places to be, and if I were given the choice between the room of EAs and the room of any other men, I would hands down take the EA room every time.
I have a question related to this. If I (a man) meet someone at an EA meetup and I find myself interested in exploring the possibility of a romantic relationship, in an ideal world what would you like me to do?
Sometimes at social events I meet a woman that I feel attracted to. Generally speaking, if I feel that we have some rapport I’d tell her that I think she is pretty cool and ask her if she would be interested in going on a date. Sometimes it isn’t so clear cut as “want to go on a date with me?”, and we exchange contact info and chit-chat through some medium while I try to parse if she is open to a romantic relationship and while I try to parse to what extent I am interested in her.
I’m not sure what the appropriate actions I should take as a response to “women are getting hit on too much.” It doesn’t seem realistic to proclaim that if you meet a person you are interested in through EA you simply are not allowed to pursue any relationship with that person. Is this simply an issue of people getting hit on in a clunky/awkward/uncomfortable way? Is this an issue of a man asking a women out, the women declining, and the man being pushy about about instead of gracefully accepting the “no”?
I feel weird that I am using an anonymous account, but I think that even asking a question about this topic would have negative repercussions for me.
Some of these men control funding for projects and enjoy high status in EA communities and that means there are real downsides to refusing their sexual advances and pressure to say yes, especially if your career is in an EA cause area or is funded by them.
People abusing their power within EA to get unrelated things, commonly but not necessarily limited to relationships, is a serious issue and not something we should accept. Julia Wise’s (disclosure: spouse) Power dynamics between people in EA post has good discussion of how this can happen and steps individuals can take to reduce risks.
I don’t know what formal conflict of interest policies EA organizations have, and didn’t find any in quick searching. I think it would be good for these to be public and easily found so that in cases where someone’s actions are against their employer’s policies it’s easier to tell. Even without that, though, if someone is using their position for unrelated personal gain, that seems worth bringing to the CEA Community Health team or their employer.
Suggestion: EA execs in positions of power should sign a conflict of interest disclosure memo on a regular basis (annual or semi-annual). This in effect can help signify that EA as a community is emphasizing the need of unbiased work delivered and any other than work relationship should be avoided at all cost.
Thank you for posting this. I haven’t been in any of these EA circles myself, so do not have any experience with these issue. The more widespread this is, the more important this conversation is. But even if it only happens in one or two EA circles, it is still important.
I’m sorry to hear that this has been your experience with the NYC and SF EA circles.
I’m sorry to read about your personal experiences.
I didn’t know about the suicide in 2018, this is terrible ☹
I’m very concerned about the reports that misogyny is so common. I’m quite new to EA and I live in a small city without an EA circle.
affected EA circles – Next steps by men
Complaints included in this post are a call for men on these circles to react. There must be a deep reflection individually and collectively by all men.
Am I paying attention to what my female colleagues report? Am I sure I’m behaving appropriately? What can I do to make my group and my community more welcoming to women? Do I suspect of any inappropriate behavior by any male colleague? Am I telling him that it is not acceptable?
Code of conduct
I’m fully onboard with the need for a code of conduct. Your suggestions make sense to me.
Abuse of power
This is a sensitive and important topic. I’m not sure how this can be incorporated in the code of conduct or what other measures can be taken but given the situations you report it must be addressed by the community.
Thank you for sharing this experience. The casual objectification of women is no small deal. Sorry you had to experience all this toxicity, and hope you find resolution in some way.
Your proposals seem to make a lot of sense.
As somewhat of an outsider (someone who hasn’t had the chance to participate to meetups), I see terms being thrown around as though they are a natural shared language of the community. Terms such as “SMV” (no idea what that is though I ended up looking it up), hypergamy… Even a reference to a “redpill”, always an onimous sign… Not to mention a casual reference to psychedelics making it seem as though I am reading about some 1960s hippie commune—I suppose that is to be expected given the movement’s relative youth, turning it into a substitute university of sorts with all that goes with it.
Being perhaps already too old—sigh—to be either worried or seduced by this (though it would no doubt be a fun story to write about), I do question if this is the right vibe for a movement like EA if this subculture is representative of what is going on. (Maybe it isn’t in which case my point would be much less relevant)
Of course some of that going on is inevitable. However, just like our hippy parents eventually found out, boundaries exist for a reason. You don’t want to be working, living, sleeping, partying and taking drugs with the exact same group of people for too long, especially if your work involves real responsibility. Humans being humans, this cocktail tends to lead to such things as power abuses, sexual harrassment, accusations of couch casting etc. Women usually end up being the first victim of such excesses.
Now I’m a big admirer of the 60s counterculture on net, but it was a protest culture. EA is not a protest movement. Rightly or wrongly, it seemed to me that one of the things EA could help to bring along was a new generation of morally sensitive leaders who collaborate across countries and sectors, building new positive institutions on the ashes of a decaying order. A “refounding” or a “reconstruction” similar to what occurred post WW2. Achieving this requires a degree of seriousness, an unrepetantly serious, dare I say boring acceptance of the burdens of adulthood. No need to live like a monk—but it seems to me that a norm of mixing everything in a big cocktail is giving more arguments to skeptics who have more than plenty to choose from these days.
Remember that it is very hard to post something like this. We will get only one person (like the author) telling us that there is a problem, for every many people who feel the problem.
Our response, including how welcoming we are to such things, will affect how many (if any) people will speak up about topics like this in the future, if/when they come up.
Strong downvoted. There is a way to discuss these issues. This is not it. It wraps up policy proposals with observables in a way I think will really pollute the epistemic environment, and hinder any good solutions.
It’s a pretty typical failure mode to police reports of harm on their form or tone instead of engaging with the subject matter. A more successful community manages to process reports without defensiveness. The author made their point clear, thus they are contributing more towards seeing the issue addressed than anyone who wants it downvoted.
Weak disagree vote. I don’t think they made their point clearly, and I think the community would come up with better solutions to the underlying problem if the post proposing we come up with those solutions separated its observations from policy proposals more. I anticipate such a post would have come out in the counterfactual where this post didn’t occur, so this post is net-negative for solving the problem its attempting to point to.
I also don’t know how much OP wants to see the problem fixed compared to myself or others. They made a post about the problem, but the post was not set up to allow for solutions other than those they previously had in mind. So I anticipate they care more about advancing their preferred policy positions than solving actual problems.
I disagree—it’s more likely that this area sees serious work the more reports are made. If you are concerned about it, too, you could add your own, without telling others to be quiet and risking that the problem is overlooked or not grasped in its full extent.
The author said enough in their post and comments to resolve any confusion: they want to see this problem addressed. Your assumption that they don’t care about solving problems when they spent effort on pointing out this problem is unreasonably uncharitable.
I disagree—it’s more likely that this area sees serious work the more reports are made. If you are concerned about it, too, you could add your own, without telling others to be quiet and risking that the problem is overlooked or not grasped in its full extent.
I would not have much to add, so I don’t think I’m going to make a post. I also don’t think I told anyone to be quiet about the issues they’re facing. I did tell the OP that I strong downvoted their post because I thought it was destructive to epistemics around this issue.
You make a good point that more discussion is often favorable to figuring out the root of problems. I just think in this case that consideration is outweighed the soldier mindset framing used by OP when trying to discuss the problem.
The author said enough in their post and comments to resolve any confusion: they want to see this problem addressed. Your assumption that they don’t care about solving problems when they spent effort on pointing out this problem is unreasonably uncharitable.
~~I didn’t say they don’t care about solving problems. I said I’m uncertain about their goals, which I think is justified for reasons I gave in the paragraph where I said I was uncertain about their goals. ~~ Just looked back. This is wrong. I did make this claim, and you’re right. I should be more uncertain. I do still think I’m more uncertain of their motives than you are though.
Agree would be good to separate these issues from the FTX situation, but I think the issues in the post sound important. I don’t get involved in “EA circles” outside of reading this forum occasionally, but it sounds like something worth discussing for those that do.
Weak agree vote. I anticipate a far better post would have come out in the counterfactual where this post didn’t occur, so this post is net-negative for solving the problem its attempting to point to.
I also don’t know how important the problem is. The post definitely makes it sound important, but OP also doesn’t seem to be very truth-seeking, so I don’t know how much exaggeration has gone into the object-level claims they make.
I think it’s likely that the most important reason was that she was a smart, talented trader with experience working at Jane Street (where SBF had also worked).
Yep I agree, that is likely the most important reason. I wanted to add more discussion to it because the insinuation that a person got a position with sex, just because they have compatible genitals, seems ludicrous to me. If any, I’ve seen men being less likely to hire talented women if they want to have sex with them, and women in tech code intentionally aromantic (hoodie, sneakers, etc) to avoid that pitfall.
[Epistemic status: I’ve done a lot of thinking about these issues previously; I am a female mathematician who has spent several years running mentorship/support groups for women in my academic departments and has also spent a few years in various EA circles.]
I wholeheartedly agree that EA needs to improve with respect to professional/personal life mixing, and that these fuzzy boundaries are especially bad for women. I would love to see more consciousness and effort by EA organizations toward fixing these and related issues. In particular I agree with the following:
> Not having stricter boundaries for work/sex/social in mission focused organizations brings about inefficiency and nepotism [...]. It puts EA at risk of alienating women / others due to reasons that have nothing to do with ideological differences.
However, I can’t endorse the post as written, because there’s a lot of claims made which I think are wrong or misleading. Like: Sure, there are poly women who’d be happier being monogamous, but there are also poly men who’d be happier being monogamous, and my own subjective impression is that these are about equally common. Also, “EA/rationalism and redpill fit like yin and yang” does not characterize my experiences within the EA movement at all. I’m sure there are EAs who are creeps that subscribe to horrible beliefs about gender, but the vast majority of EAs I know are not like that at all. In a similar vein, regarding the claim “many men, often competing with each other, will persuade you to join polyamory using LessWrong style jedi mindtricks while they stand to benefit from the erosion of your boundaries”—I completely agree that this is absolutely awful if/when it happens, but I also think this is a lot less common than this post makes it sound.
Overall, the post seems to do a mixture of pointing out legitimate problems and making angry overarching accusations that I don’t think are true. I believe this post comes from a place of hurt, and I am sincerely sorry that you’ve had such negative experiences. I really do want the EA community to improve at this, and I want the people who’ve given you such bad experiences to be appropriately dealt with so that they don’t harass others in future. However, I don’t think this post as written will help much, because the overarching accusations are likely to turn people off from taking the rest of the post seriously.
[ETA: Wanted to add that the supportiveness and collaborative brainstorming suggested in the thread above by Megan, Keerthana, and Rockwell totally do seem helpful and productive to me, and I am excited to see this happening.]
[Second ETA: This comment was written in response to an earlier version of this post. Since then the author has made several edits which make what I’ve said here somewhat irrelevant.]
Availability bias informed by personal experience affects our perception of rate of incidence a lot. So I added this stat.
“Edit: I have personally experienced this more than three times in less than one year of attending EA events and that is far too many times.”
I have two other female friends I talk to who are not ready to speak up yet who were involved longer and report higher numbers.
Also, the post is not optimized for analytical/argumentative quality. My only goal is to speak my mind, my authentic experience and bring awareness that this happened to me and others I know. I would like to see these issues fixed but I am not overly invested in it yet, because there are also lots of interesting things to do in the world.
Yep, you are totally right about availability bias and I don’t mean to downplay at all your experience—that’s awful and I’d be delighted to see more efforts by EA groups to prevent this sort of thing.
And yeah, if you don’t feel like optimizing for argumentative quality that’s valid and my comment isn’t worth minding in that case! Not your job to fix these issues, and thank you for taking the time to bring awareness.
:)
Experienced what 3 times in a year? Being asked out multiple times by the same person? Not having your no respected? Asked to join a polycule? I don’t get what the grievances are tbh
When you say that the author’s experience is uncommon, what evidence do you draw on? Having been an event organizer to whom some women feel safe reporting, I have heard a few reports of similar nature. That said, even one case is one too many.
To some experiences, anger is an appropriate and healthy response. When you say that this post “comes from a place of hurt”, it sounds as if you’re positioning that as a reason to criticize it. I’m worried that this raises an unreasonable standard for reports of harm. By the nature of the matter, victims have feelings about what they experienced. They should not be expected to present comprehensive analysis or perfect solutions because that’s not a job they willingly signed up for. If they have enough activation energy to report harm even though it is a charged topic for them or they fear backlash, it behooves us to honor their reports. A judgment whether to endorse or not endorse a report puts every reader in the position of judge, jury, and executioner, which I don’t think is the most helpful from a long-term view towards community health. Emotional charges can be taken at face value—as an indicator that this topic has hurt feelings, not more and not less.
Edit: grammar
Yes, I agree with what you’ve written here. “This comes from a place of hurt” was actually meant as hedging/softening; “because you have had bad experiences it makes sense for your post to be angry and emotionally charged and it should not be held to the same epistemic standards as a typical EA Forum post on a less personal issue.” Sorry that wasn’t clear.
My response was based on my impressions from several years being a woman in EA circles, which are that these issues absolutely do exist and affect an unfortunately high number of women to various extents, and also that some of what’s described in this post is atypically severe. (Obviously, none of this should ever happen, to any degree of severity, and I really want to see EA get better at preventing it!) Originally, I wasn’t clear on the fact that the post was written as a personal report of harm experienced, and that its descriptions of the severity were not intended as universal claims about what is typical. The author has now made a number of edits which make the scope/intent of the post much clearer, thereby obviating much of my comment. I agree that the idea of “endorsing” someone’s report of their own experience is not useful for the reasons you describe, and on further reflection I do want to be more careful in future to respond to reports of harm in ways that don’t disincentivize reporting—that is the last thing I want to do!
I object to how closely you link polyamory with shitty behaviour. At one point you say this you are not criticizing polyamory, but you repeatedly bring it up when talking about stuff like the overlap of work and social life, or men being predatory at EA meetups.
I think men being predatory and subscribing to ‘redpill’ ideologies is terrible and we shouldn’t condone it in the community.
I feel more complicated about the overlap between social life and work life, but I take your general point that this could (and maybe does in fact) lead to conflicts of interest and exploitation.
But neither of these is strongly related to polyamory, polycules etc. I worry that you are contributing to harmful stereotypes about polyamory.
I agree with the take that there’s nothing inherently wrong in polyamory. I think what the author is highlighting is the practice of excusing shitty behavior under the guise of polyamory (the “Jedi mind tricks” they’re referring to). Impressionable people are convinced to override their intuitions about what a healthy and respectful intimate relationship looks like by people with more power that claim to have more advanced thinking about sex and pair bonding.
It’s not the author’s fault that polyamory is being co-opted this way, they’re merely the canary in the coal mine. There are further explorations outside of EA on how concepts of polyamory have been used for abuse, for example here: https://www.polyfor.us/articles/more-than-two-metoo-response
I agree with your sentiment that cultural power dynamics and bad behavior around work/life intermingling and polyamory should be disentangled.
I think the crux of OP’s argument is that she feels like poly EA men are more responsible for this cultural issue since she feels like they are more likely to make sexual advances and extend invitations that make her feel uncomfortable.
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 crime has been committed), we encourage people to report the crime to the police.
In the future I’d also be happy to talk with community members about the codes of conducts and other processes that CEA and the wider EA community has in place, and listen to their suggestions.
Additional thoughts as Catherine’s colleague:
Larger events or groups are more likely to have a code of conduct — for example the code of conduct at CEA events makes clear that unwanted sexual attention does not belong at these events. Our conferences also have at least one community contact person available on site to help with any personal or interpersonal problems that come up. We encourage anyone experiencing uncomfortable treatment at one of these conferences to let us know so we can address it.
Smaller EA events and groups are less likely to have these formal systems. Whether there are formal systems or not, culture is shaped largely through more informal interactions, the vibe set by organizers, etc. For group organizers, we encourage reading these community health resources. And we hope everyone in EA spaces will think about how each of us shapes the culture.
It’s true that in past years I was the main person working on these kinds of cultural things, but at this point the community health team has (thankfully!) grown. The CEA groups team and events team also think about these issues, and want to support events and groups (whether run by CEA or not) as healthy spaces.
As Catherine said, we’re happy to talk more about ideas that community members have about shaping the culture and ideas you have for preventing and addressing problems.
As a somewhat separate point: fwiw, I’m a woman and I’ve not experienced this general toxicity in EA myself. Obviously I am not challenging your experience—there are lots of EA sub-communities and it makes sense that some could be awful, others fine. But it’s worth adding this nuance, I think (e.g., from what I’ve heard, Bay Area EA circles are particularly incestuous wrt work/life overlap stuff).
To add another data point, I have witnessed some of what has been described in here and worse. The only thing I’ve never seen is a woman getting a position while sexually involved with a man, except for monogamous couples like Bill & Melinda Gates. The opposite seems much more often the case in poly-circles, where talented women are unfairly excluded from career opportunities because male decision-makers in the orgs don’t want to get in trouble.
Could you clarify what this means in this context?
For sure. Your experience does not need to negate that of mine and my friends. :)
Yes, it seems difficult and also important to say:
-you and your friends have had multiple bad experiences
-the EA community should work to become safer and better
-women reading this post shouldn’t feel worried to attend an EA event; lots of women in EA haven’t had these same experiences (especially women living in different cities or countries from you)
Kirsten, how many incidents of harassment would need to be reported to warrant your worry? How many is too many that it is no longer worth risking your safety?
You’re defeating the point of my post. Women need to be on the look out when engaging with EA if they don’t want to be exploited, at least in SF and NYC. Among them:
Not be drinking or using psychedelics without a trusted girlfriend to look after you and make sure you get home ok
Avoiding putting yourself in a position of dependence on a bad male actor
Cutting off friendships with bad male actors, and letting your girlfriends in EA know what’s up
For a community that is so alarmist for 5 or 1 or 0.1 percentage of X-risk from AI, giving a wide berth for sexual harassment is utterly hypocritical. Kathleen Forth’s suicide is not enough. The anonymous reports I linked is not enough. My own narration is not enough. You can make an evaluation of your own safety and risk tolerance ( assuming your gender here based on your post but feel free to correct me), but please let other women decide for themselves how much risk is acceptable and what dynamic is worth engaging with.
I feel a little conflicted, because on the one hand I want to respect and make space for you reporting your own experience. On the other hand, you are actually making concrete suggestions that I don’t agree with—suggestions that would make my life, as a woman in EA, worse. So I don’t know how to respond.
For context about me, I do know of several instances of sexual harassment in EA, some of which were handled better than others. I also know of instances of sexual harassment at my former university, and my former church, and my workplace.
The casual assumption that people make that obviously the only reason Caroline could have become CEO was because she was sleeping with SBF is annoying when I see it on Twitter or some toxic subreddit. Here I expect better. Plenty of people at FTX and Alameda were equally young and equally inexperienced. The CTO (a similarly important role at a tech company) of FTX, Gary Wang, was 29. Sam Trabucco, the previous Alameda co-CEO, seems to be about the same. I have seen no reason to think that Caroline was particularly unusual in her age or experience relative to others at FTX and Alameda.
Hi keller_scholl, I am not making this claim
or this
Hope that helps resolve your confusion. I have no special information beyond what CoinDesk / Business Insider is reporting.
Thank you for responding. I read “Some of these men control funding for projects and enjoy high status in EA communities and that means there are real downsides to refusing their sexual advances and pressure to say yes, especially if your career is in an EA cause area or is funded by them. There are also upsides, as reported by CoinDesk on Caroline Ellison.” I have seen a number of people pass around https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/10/bankman-frieds-cabal-of-roommates-in-the-bahamas-ran-his-crypto-empire-and-dated-other-employees-have-lots-of-questions/. I have seen a number of assertions that Caroline received the job because of a sexual/romantic relationship with SBF. I haven’t seen anyone assert any other “upsides” that make sense in specific relation to Caroline Ellison. Would you mind clarifying what upsides you were referring to if not the CEO position?
[2022-11-13: Edit to include more of the context of the quote]
Whether the fact Caroline slept with SBF was instrumental to her becoming CEO of Alameda is not really the point—this kind of nepotistic, incestuous work environment is not healthy. It also doesn’t detract from the long list of very serious problems the OP mentioned? Why take such a confrontational attitude to someone who is reaching out for support?
I think it’s bad to confidently assert, without real evidence, that a woman slept her way to the top of a company. Do you think it’s fine?
Honestly, I think you are just making a category error. This isn’t a philosophy article, it’s someone sharing their personal experiences of sexual harassment. I just don’t think it’s helpful or to the point to act like this, and frankly, I don’t understand it on a human level.
Did Caroline sleep with SBF? Yes. From what I understand—which isn’t a whole lot—she did so both before and during her time at Alameda. Might that have benefitted her? Very probably, though no, we’ll never know for certain because we don’t have a counterfactual timeline.
I’ll note in passing that you are not representing the OP’s original statement accurately, which for someone who is such a stickler for exact, verifiable truth claims, is surprising.
The claims in the OP are odious, but having loyal and pliable lieutenants is common for powerful, ambitious people, because it’s useful.
They don’t have to be women and it’s not clear why being in a sexual relationship would be useful for this purpose (it’s probably the opposite).
What exactly are you trying to say?
>”Having loyal and pliable lieutenants is common for powerful, ambitious people”
And therefore it’s okay for those powerful, ambitious people to curry sexual favour in the workplace, create an environment where women feel pressured to have sex to protect or further their career, and where sexual intrigue, pursuit and—potentially—abuse becomes normal?
Because when male authority figures sleep with female colleagues, it introduces all of those dynamics into the workplace, regardless of whether it did or didn’t advance the careers of the women they slept with.
I’m saying that it’s unclear how the collapse of FTX, the role of the poly relationships, predatory male sexual behavior, or the culpability of EA culture are linked, despite being welded together into one set of claims in this post. Also, it seems like Caroline E probably had a lot of agency and power (but I’m happy to learn otherwise).
The underlying issue that is motivating this is that there’s many issues and throwing this into this high temperature environment will burn them.
I have a lot of anecdotes that could be useful. To the degree it’s actually true (and writing here is useful; and completely ignoring the values/interests of EA) I’m with you and the OP in stopping this abuse, some aspects of which seems plausible and real to me.
I won’t participate if it turns into a very low quality overreaction or leads to something that consumes a lot of time in EA and doesn’t help women.
Well, FTX was filled with EA staff, and FTX’s inner circle was nepotistic and incestous. Nepotistic and incestuous workplaces are bad, and the OP is saying that she has experienced much the same in dealing with EA. I don’t really see what’s complicated about that?
How is this your priority in responding to this long list of personal experiences, which have no doubt distressed the OP, and pose enormous questions for the movement?
This community’s lack of basic decency and kindness—sacrificed to a sterile and callous ideal of rationality—is one of the many reasons why I disassociated from it a long time ago.
I don’t think you will be successful like this, I’m sorry.
I’m also sorry to hear this has been your experience and as both a woman and the director of EA NYC, I am always here to discuss cultural issues and possible recourse, as is our dedicated EA NYC community health coordinator, Megan Nelson: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSerQKtoQULEjuGGqTaKPoqj-WwCZJqKKri_pi0fdQ-Ag5xANQ/viewform We both think about these topics a lot and are working to steer the community in an increasingly healthy and safe direction.
I’m piggybacking on Rocky’s comment. Keerthana, I’m so sorry to hear that you had this experience in the EA NYC community (and beyond), and I’m grateful to you for talking about it.
As Rocky said, this is the kind of issue that we are thinking about and trying to address. If anyone reading this would like to discuss concerns about EA NYC community health and culture, please feel free to reach out using the (anonymous) form above or to email me at megan@effectivealtruism.nyc.
Hi Rocky, if you’re looking to improve on the situation (I read you’re an EA director), I’m down to help and have some ideas. EA has a lot of good core ideas, and can be a better force with processes and structures supporting inclusion.
I feel kind of complicated about my previous comments on this post. I do still stand by what I said. But I feel kind of bad that my comments have got more karma than the post itself, because I do think that we should worry about toxicity towards women in the community, and many of the things Keerthana describes are really bad and on balance, I think I’m happy she wrote this post.
The reaction to this post (and my comments) exemplifies a dynamic I’ve seen before on the Forum, where people’s posts are disregarded, criticized, downvoted etc because they are emotional, impressionistic, openly angered or outraged, emphatic… etc, and praised for being detached, dry, measured, caveat-ed… We should care about epistemics, but I think sometimes readers of the Forum are not charitable enough to people who communicate in different ways to them.
I think this a really important point about the dynamic of criticism toward emotionally raw posts. I see the reactions to this post as illustrative of the very problem that the OP is describing about using LessWrong jedi mindtricks to ignore boundaries and frankly to rationalize harrassment. In this case, a member of the community has shared their personal experiences and reactions to toxic behavior, and a significant number of people seem to be responding with criticisms of the intellectual merit of the post, as if the post were a logic exercise and not a situation which is uncomfortable and threatening for real people.
I don’t mean to imply that we as a community should never engage in a more detached dialogue about the causes and possible solutions to the sexual harassment and misogyny described. However, I feel really uncomfortable when I read comments saying that expressing anger is useless or that the author should have done more to describe different possible interpretations of their experience or ways in which their experience may not be representative of everyone’s. I wish I could believe that this forum is a place where I could describe my own experiences without fearing that people will treat feelings of sadness or anger as some kind of prompt for a rationalist debate.
On that note, inspired by Keerthana’s bravery in sharing, I will mention my own experiences as a woman in EA. I am not a well-known member of the community or a frequent forum poster, but I am using an alternate account because of what I described in the paragraph above. I have experienced quite a bit of casual misogyny in interactions in EA spaces. I have walked away from a handful of conversations at EA events feeling that people have dismissed my ideas, mansplained topics about which I am knowledgable, or aggressively interrupted and silenced others. I sometimes read forum posts that make concerns about gender-based violence or community health feel like a footnote. I am thankful that this describes a minority of my experiences, but unfortunately it’s enough to make me wary when participating in EA events.
I completely agree that OP raises totally legitimate points that are worthy of being taken seriously.
However, I am grateful for you initial comment and really disagree that the issue here is being emotional and impressionistic. The problem with the post is that it is bigoted. OP makes a central issue of people not respecting one’s “poly/mono” choice and then proceeds to suggest that women in poly relationships are unhappy and that poly men are uniquely likely to be sexual predators. This is all framed as a matter of OP’s experience, and I have no reason to doubt the truthfulness of it all. But that doesn’t excuse framing the issue as a matter of one’s choice to be poly or not. Imagine if this framing was done for any other group. Even if you have legitimate negative experiences with members of a certain group, framing the issue as relevant to membership in that group without any evidence whatsoever is unfair to say the least. This is especially true for something like sexual pressure, which monogamous people have been engaging in far and wide since the dawn of time. In any case, it is a really tired trope to paint anyone who does not fall very neatly in line with conventional ideas of relationship structures as a sexual predator.
It’s also frankly quite hypocritical in that OP seems to be the one not respecting others “mono/poly” choice.
None of this is to say that OPs experiences are not real or that they are not a problem. Of course they are! But that does not make this a fair or productive post and it would have been much better received if OP didn’t make it about something irrelevant.
This is the comment that made me feel very unsafe and take down the post.
What I said:
1. you can find many unhappy women in poly relationships
2. many poly men are sexual predators
You reframed my sentences to your convenience to claim that I said :
the rest of your post bases on that assumption. Many != all, that is an important distinction. I am qualifying my sentences with “some of these men”, “many men” in various places but you’ve ignored that. I am not anonymous, so your calling me bigoted seems retaliatory, personal and unwarranted. The reason I didn’t take specific names but used many was because I don’t want to get into more issues, but usually the definition of many is more than one. I have not stopped a poly person from being poly so what do you mean by “not respecting others mono/poly choices”? Who did I coerce?
@lizka, @julia_wise, take note, I cannot presume your forum permits retaliation, name calling and personal attacks.
I didn’t call you bigoted, I called your post bigoted and I stand by it. If my comment about your post made you feel “very unsafe,” then I do not wish to argue about the matter and risk coming off as even more of a threat to you, as that could not be further from my intention. I wish you the best.
This comment feels important, like something I’ve been considering trying to spin into a full post. Finding a frame has been hard, because it feels like I’m trying to translate what’s (unfortunately) a distinctively non-EA culture norm into reasoning that EAs will take more seriously.
One thought that I do want to share though is that I don’t think seeing this as something that needs to be weighed against good epistemics feels quite right. I think our prizing good epistemics should mean being able to reason clearly and adjust our reactions to tone/emotional tenor from people who (very understandably!) are speaking from a place of trauma and deep hurt.
The best frame I have so far for a post is reminding people about Julia Galef’s straw-Vulcan argument and arguing what it implies for conversations on (understandably) incredibly emotionally heavy topics, and in tough times more generally. Roughly rehashing the argument because I can’t find a good link on it: Spock frequently makes assumptions that humans will be perfectly rational creatures under all circumstances, and when this leads him astray essentially shrugs and responds “it’s not my fault that I did not predict their actions correctly, they were being irrational!”. Galef’s point of course, is that this is horrible rationality: the failure to reason about how emotions might effect people and adjust accordingly means your epistemics are severely impoverished.
Setting aside the Klingon style rationality argument, there also feels like there should be a argument along the lines of how (to me, incredibly!) obvious it should be that tone like this demands sympathy and willingness to take on the burden of being accommodating from people serious about thinking of themselves as invested in altruism as a value. I’m still figuring out how to express this crisply (and to be clear, without bitterness) so that it will resonate.
If you have thoughts on what the best frame would be here, would love to hear any thoughts you have or discuss more.
Edited to take out something unkind. Trying to practice what I preach here.
I think this isn’t central to your point, but I wanted to push the “straw Vulcan” point a bit further. It’s not just that it’s rational to try to understand other people’s emotional behaviour, it’s that even your own emotional responses are frequently rational and that being attuned and responsive and reactive to your emotions is an important epistemic tool. When people hurt you it is rational to be angry, or sad; it is not rational to be ruled by these emotions, but ignoring them entirely is just as bad. Your emotions are a part of your sensory / observational experience of the world, just as much as your vision or your hearing are, and if you don’t acknowledge their role in your understanding, I think you will make worse predictions about what will happen.
I don’t think your criticisms were because the post was emotional, and I don’t think the criticism of the allusion to Caroline benefiting from this culture was a criticism of tone. They were criticisms of the content / claims / ideas / attitudes in the post, and I think it was important to make them.
I do think it’s fair to be concerned that these criticisms are getting more attention than the rest of what is said in the post. The issues Keerthana raises are serious and it would be wrong to ignore them entirely because of some objectionable aspects of the post, especially ones that don’t seem super central to the message. But just because an emotional post is being criticised, doesn’t mean it’s being criticised for its emotion, and doesn’t mean emotional posts are unwelcome here.
Maybe because those caveats are really important, if you want to actually improve things and not just cause chaos.
Like, there’s a failure mode that’s really common where there’s anger at a problem, and that anger fuels solutions that wouldn’t actually solve the problem, then try to implement it and get surprised at how much the policy is failing, never considering that caveats and measures always mattered, and they’re just too angry to notice the problems with their solution.
It’s a good thing that EA rejects the notion in practice on social media, that controversy and anger = good. They aren’t that good in practice.
I agree that controversy and anger aren’t good per se, but people can be broadly right and also angry. Sometimes anger is pretty appropriate, even though critical distance and wisdom is also appropriate. I think people have over-updated from ‘I shouldn’t take people seriously just because they are emotional/angry’ to ‘if people are emotional/angry, I shouldn’t take them seriously’.
I also suspect that people care more about how anger is expressed, than the presence of it. E.g., Will McAskill and Rob Wiblin, in their recent statements on FTX, expressed anger -Will said ‘I am outraged’ and Rob said ‘I am fucking appalled’. But their statements were generally well-received, I suspect because though they stated they were angry, their tone was nonetheless detached.
(I’m sorry your experience has been so bad.)
It feels like there’s a motte and bailey here.
Motte: powerful men who wield control over EA money shouldn’t use that power for sexual gain. Baileys, as I see them: EAs shouldn’t get into relationships with one another, we should implement strict rules to enforce this, women who are “redpilled” have basically been brainwashed by polyamorous EAs, EAs sleeping together somehow contributed to the FTX debacle(?).
Your point about Title IX seems especially strange—as I understand it Title IX has led to universities dealing with sexual misconduct claims internally, the opposite of your proposal to have the police deal with them (which I totally agree with).
Baileys are overstated imo. If I may:
conflicts of interest in grant allocation, work place appointments should be avoided
men should be made more conscientious about hitting on women at EA events, also vice versa. this means honoring ’no’s, avoiding coercion, respecting a person’s choice of poly/mono, etc
any EA event organizer using that venue to hit on women should be removed from organizing EA events again, without question
retaliation for sexual rejection, both social and professional, needs to be addressed.
more women should be encouraged to seek the cops, instead of keeping arbitrating it within the community where bias and power differentials can creep in
Apologise for the confusion. There’s no policy at present, so the ethos represented by Title IX are a start, especially when victims are reluctant to go to cops or if behavior is harassment but not strictly a crime. That said, cops should be involved wherever possible because EA has no expertise in arbitrating SA.
Updated the post to clarify
Worth flagging: Since there are more men than women in EA, I would expect a greater fraction of EA women than EA men to be in relationships with other EAs. (And trying to think of examples off the top of my head supports that theory.) If this is right, the policy “don’t appoint people for jobs where they will have conflicts of interest” would systematically disadvantage women.
(By contrast, considering who you’re already in a work-relationship with when choosing who to date wouldn’t have a systematic effect like that.)
My inclination here would be to (as much as possible) avoid having partners make grant/job-appointment decisions about their partners. But that if someone seems to be the best for a job/grant (from the perspective of people who aren’t their partner), to not deny them that just because it would put them in a position closer to their partner.
(It’s possible that this is in line with what you meant.)
This all seems very sensible and reasonable. But at the time of writing this comment, your post still makes all of the ‘bailey’ claims I mentioned, which rather proves the point that you’re using a central reasonable claim to justify a bunch of related but unreasonable/poorly-evidenced ones. I suspect this muddled thinking is why you’re getting downvoted.
I have seen advice on Twitter—from a woman—that a good way for a man to find a girlfriend is to become an event organiser (implied but not stated in the tweet: you should then hit on women at the event, because why waste the potentially short-lived opportunity?). So that’s what I take to be one view from a woman in favour. I guess two, really, because she wasn’t actually the woman who benefited from this behaviour, in terms of finding a partner that she liked—her friend was.
Against that I have seen this post, and a tweet thread by another woman—who is not in EA—complaining that this happened to her at a tech meetup and in hindsight, she thought it had been inappropriate. Although it took her months to decide to speak up about this—it’s unclear to me whether it took her a long time to change her view that the behaviour was OK, or whether it took a long time for her to pluck up the courage to talk about it on Twitter. Perhaps it was the former and her views were influenced by talking to a radical feminist about her experiences.
(To be perfectly clear, I haven’t engaged in this behaviour myself—indeed initially I was actually hostile to the idea as a dating strategy, as it seemed extremely superficial for a woman to like a man merely because he was an event organiser, but I was subsequently persuaded against this view. By a woman.)
So that’s two, or maybe three, women for, versus two, maybe three, women against—I haven’t yet seen any evidence of a consensus among women that this behaviour is bad, and I haven’t heard any actual arguments for why this behaviour is bad, either. Could you provide any?
So first up, I don’t think ‘good way for a man to find a girlfriend is to become an event organiser’ implies ‘you should then hit on women at the event’. It could just be ‘it’s a good way to meet people and make friends, and the more people you meet, the more likely you are to find a partner’.
I kind of want to taboo ‘hit on’ because clearly whether it’s bad depends on what exactly you mean. The lack of consensus might come from different understandings of the phrase! (but it also might come from women having different preferences and experiences—shocker!)
Still, here are some types of ‘hitting on’ that might be bad:
-person A is making obviously flirty and/or overtly sexual comments to person B, maybe touching them or leaning in close, etc. Person B extricates themself from the conversation politely and doesn’t reciprocate the flirtiness (beyond friendliness). Person A continually seeks out B at events and keeps behaving this way, even though B always leaves the conversation at the first opportunity.
This is bad because it means Person B has to spend the whole event running away from A rather than just enjoying themself.
-it’s a professional event (eg, EAG) and A and B have set up a 1-on-1. A asks B, apropos of nothing, if they’re single. A is clearly not really interested in talking about professional matters (EA women on twitter have said this happened to them).
This is bad because it’s a waste of B’s time—B could have schedule a meeting with someone who actually wanted to talk about work stuff!
-Person A asks B out. B says ‘sorry, I have a partner’. A argues that monogamy is irrational and emotionally immature.
This is bad because it’s manipulative and crosses people’s boundaries.
I disagree with point 3. As written, I think the author is suggesting that EA organisers should report any sexual misconduct to the police. I strongly disagree—I think EA organisers should offer to help report to police, but the choice should always be up to the person who had the bad experience. No one who’s had an experience of sexual harassment or assault should be forced to talk to police about it.
strong agree—if we insisted on reporting any misconduct we heard about to the police, it may even prevent people from coming forward, because they (often quite reasonably) may believe that the legal process will hurt them more than it helps
I’m incredibly sorry about the negative experiences you and your friends have had. I think it would be beneficial to provide more detail about the “Lesswrong style Jedi mind tricks” if you feel comfortable. My guess (as a woman who has many rationalist male friends) is that a good number of men who don’t want to be predatory are are trying to figure out if they’ve unknowingly done something that could be making women uncomfortable. I think they would benefit from specifics here, so that they can avoid doing similar things in the future.
I haven’t had any rationalist-style issues specifically. But, I’ll list some specific behaviors that have been best at making me feel comfortable when asked out /hit on in ea:
People being extremely clear about consent about touching. Asking about things before they happen and, before asking, making it a point to say that they genuinely want you to say no if your answer is no.
Anyone who has a position of authority over me/recommending me for funding telling me the extent to which they would immediately be transparent to funders/teammates in the case that we did date. I think this is a part of informed consent around dating that’s often overlooked. Also making it directly clear that this will not affect my funding/opportunities. The other person saying this without me having to ask is very important and makes me feel much less overwhelmed by any power dynamic.
Other than that fact that Caroline E. and others like Constance W. are women and in the inner circle (living in the same penthouse) and probably entered into these relationships, can you describe how this is related to the issues at FTX or misconduct or issues that occurred?
If SBF was monogamous and married, would the current events be prevented, and how?
Hey everyone, the moderators want to point out that this topic is heated for several reasons:
Lots of relevant information comes from people’s personal experiences, which will vary a lot.
Harassment and power dynamics are often emotionally loaded and can be difficult to discuss objectively.
Polyamory is something that a lot of the world stigmatizes, so some people will be defensive (whether merited or not), and some will be subconsciously biased against it. This makes it hard to discuss without assuming that some people are hostile.
So we want to ask everyone to be especially understanding and generous when discussing topics this sensitive (and really appreciate some of the thoughtful replies in the comments).
And as a reminder, harassment is unacceptable. One resource that exists for this is the Community Health Team at CEA. As they point out, you can get in touch with them. If you ever experience harassment of any kind on the Forum, please reach out to the moderation team.
Hi Lizka,
I wish to take down this post from EA forum based on the comments received. The version exists on my website and on Twitter. I am not seeing an option for it from my control panel. Could you do it for me?
Hi Keerthana—I’m sorry you feel the comments on this have pushed you to want to take this post down. I have previously taken down a long comment I made on something related to women’s health, that was heavily down voted (I suspect by a concerted few—based on other patterns I’ve seen on the Forum). I felt awful about this (because it felt like I was being lynched for expressing a completely reasonable and wide held opinion). But I still know what I said to be fair and a very necessary contribution to the conversation. Anyway, if you want to talk, please reach out to me. I appreciated reading your work and I thank you for putting it out there. Don’t feel silenced by a few.
We might be talking to journalists. There are other women too who have left AI safety, EA due to problems I mentioned above and they’re not on the forum because they left the community. I definitely would love to hear from you even if you do not want to speak publicly about this. I am @keerthanpg on twitter :)
If you select “move to draft” that should make it invisible to everyone but you, I think.
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry to be losing the post—I thought it was a valuable contribution. I know being in the center of these kinds of conversations can be pretty overwhelming though, especially on an emotional topic where a lot of people pretty strongly disagree with you.
I am not willing to be attacked like this. I heard the word ‘bigot’ thrown around. Trying to change the minds of EA is a lost cause. Sexual harassment does not discriminate but the comments make it seem that only well articulate, debate sophisticated victims deserve to be heard here. So I’ll let the community carry on and remove myself, I am not here to debate and win because my time is valuable.
Hi Keerthana,
I’m moving your post to drafts — which makes it invisible to everyone but you (and admins, if they ever need to check your account for some reason).
You can (still) fully delete it by selecting the three dots in the top-right corner under the title, and selecting “delete.”
I’m sorry that you feel that you need to do this!
Thank you, that works. But I also want to download all the comments/discussion because I may need it in the future. Would you know how I can do that before deleting? I only see an “archive” button, I wish to have a copy of it on my local separate from the server where the site is hosted.
You can screenshot the post or print the page (just like you can do with any page); there’s no direct way to download everything.
Just had to click through all comments to expand them but it worked perfectly, thank you.
The bad behavior described here has absolutely nothing to do with polyamory. A person who practices polyamory has every bit as much of an interest in not being sexually pressured as one who does not practice polyamory. A person who purports to practice polyamory is no more or less likely to engage in sexual pressure than one who doesn’t. I honestly don’t see how “respecting someone’s mono/poly choice” has any relevance—just because someone is poly doesn’t mean they want in on a particular polycule and just because someone is mono doesn’t mean they want anything to do with a particular single/monogamous person. How about just “respecting ‘I’m not interested’”
Some, though not all, men in EA subscribe to an ask culture philosophy which endorses asking for things, including dates, even when the answer is probably no. This almost definitely contributes to the problems Keerthana points out. A small number of guys endorsing this philosophy can make multiple women feel uncomfortable.
I think this is bad. Some people point out that the alternative, guess culture, is more difficult for people who struggle to read social cues. But if there’s a trade-off between making this community safe and comfortable for women and making it easier for guys to find dates, then, sorry, there’s only one reasonable choice.
Keerthana’s formal suggestions are worthy of consideration. I also think there’s a cultural element, created and enforced through social norms, that will only change when EAs, especially EA men, choose to notice and push back on questionable behaviour from our acquaintances, colleagues, and friends.
Asking and guessing aren’t the only options here: double-opt in methods like reciprocity.io can let mutually-interested people discover their shared preference in a way that works well for both people who struggle to read social cues and people who don’t want to receive unsolicited clear expressions of interest.
Frankly, your experience resonates with me, but your suggested solutions don’t seem like the only way to me and seem like they would come with many downsides. I have experienced unpleasant dynamics around poly-heavy EA hubs and had a bad trial experience with polyamory myself (leading to a resounding return to monogamy). I think sexual competitiveness mixed with professional competition in the Bay is toxic, and I think the never-ending series of sexual conquests for high status people is a pretty huge distraction from work.
But I wouldn’t take away anyone’s freedom to be part of it. I think that enough open talk about experiences like yours could help lead to a voluntary shift.
I’m a monogamous man with very little connection to any in-person EA community—I attended EAGxBoston last year, had a great time, and that’s it. So hearing these anecdotes about the in-person scene is quite disturbing to me.
I have no beef with polyamory. I’m a big fan of EA. And I utterly disagree with your characterization of EA as “altruism stripped of empathy and morality.”
But what you are describing is an incredibly toxic power dynamic. It does sound predatory. Mixing institutional authority, money, drugs, and sex sounds like a recipe for disaster. We’ve already had this sh*t going on at the Monastic Academy. If it’s pervasive in the EA and LW communities more broadly, then that’s terrible for the people on whom this unwanted attention is inflicted. An absolute scandal factory. I’m quite prepared to believe it’s going on.
Add this to the list of things an EA risk management and whistleblowing organization needs to focus on.
Hi Keerthana
Thank you for sharing your experiences here. I know it isn’t easy to talk about. I would encourage people in the comments to reflect on how they approach people who are opening up about difficult experiences like this. We should want people to feel comfortable voicing these concerns, not argue when the person explicitly said this is not an argument, just my own experience. Invalidating someone is a bad look for the community and will make it less likely for others to voice similar concerns which could lead to serious issues.
What are LessWrong style jedi mindtricks?
This likely isn’t the entirety of it, but concepts from polyamory thought leadership have at times been used to initiate and steer private interactions into dynamics that have been perceived as abusive. Some of it (outside of EA) is described here: https://polyamory-metoo.com/
I really agree that people (not just women) having negative experiences like this (not just in EA) is something that everyone needs to take more action on—and many of the action points in this post seem important. But I never know how to react emotionally to posts that imply this as a problem of all EA circles, I feel really strongly a need to stand up for and support of all the people I have met and experiences I have had over the last 8 years that have made me feel safe, respected, welcomed, intelligent, confident, capable. Some EA circles are genuinely wonderful places to be, and if I were given the choice between the room of EAs and the room of any other men, I would hands down take the EA room every time.
I have a question related to this. If I (a man) meet someone at an EA meetup and I find myself interested in exploring the possibility of a romantic relationship, in an ideal world what would you like me to do?
Sometimes at social events I meet a woman that I feel attracted to. Generally speaking, if I feel that we have some rapport I’d tell her that I think she is pretty cool and ask her if she would be interested in going on a date. Sometimes it isn’t so clear cut as “want to go on a date with me?”, and we exchange contact info and chit-chat through some medium while I try to parse if she is open to a romantic relationship and while I try to parse to what extent I am interested in her.
I’m not sure what the appropriate actions I should take as a response to “women are getting hit on too much.” It doesn’t seem realistic to proclaim that if you meet a person you are interested in through EA you simply are not allowed to pursue any relationship with that person. Is this simply an issue of people getting hit on in a clunky/awkward/uncomfortable way? Is this an issue of a man asking a women out, the women declining, and the man being pushy about about instead of gracefully accepting the “no”?
I feel weird that I am using an anonymous account, but I think that even asking a question about this topic would have negative repercussions for me.
People abusing their power within EA to get unrelated things, commonly but not necessarily limited to relationships, is a serious issue and not something we should accept. Julia Wise’s (disclosure: spouse) Power dynamics between people in EA post has good discussion of how this can happen and steps individuals can take to reduce risks.
I don’t know what formal conflict of interest policies EA organizations have, and didn’t find any in quick searching. I think it would be good for these to be public and easily found so that in cases where someone’s actions are against their employer’s policies it’s easier to tell. Even without that, though, if someone is using their position for unrelated personal gain, that seems worth bringing to the CEA Community Health team or their employer.
Suggestion: EA execs in positions of power should sign a conflict of interest disclosure memo on a regular basis (annual or semi-annual). This in effect can help signify that EA as a community is emphasizing the need of unbiased work delivered and any other than work relationship should be avoided at all cost.
Thank you for posting this. I haven’t been in any of these EA circles myself, so do not have any experience with these issue. The more widespread this is, the more important this conversation is. But even if it only happens in one or two EA circles, it is still important.
I’m sorry to hear that this has been your experience with the NYC and SF EA circles.
I’m sorry to read about your personal experiences.
I didn’t know about the suicide in 2018, this is terrible ☹
I’m very concerned about the reports that misogyny is so common. I’m quite new to EA and I live in a small city without an EA circle.
affected EA circles – Next steps by men
Complaints included in this post are a call for men on these circles to react. There must be a deep reflection individually and collectively by all men.
Am I paying attention to what my female colleagues report? Am I sure I’m behaving appropriately? What can I do to make my group and my community more welcoming to women? Do I suspect of any inappropriate behavior by any male colleague? Am I telling him that it is not acceptable?
Code of conduct
I’m fully onboard with the need for a code of conduct. Your suggestions make sense to me.
Abuse of power
This is a sensitive and important topic. I’m not sure how this can be incorporated in the code of conduct or what other measures can be taken but given the situations you report it must be addressed by the community.
This is outrageous and I’m sorry you experienced it. Why on earth are people downvoting the post?
If only EA had a formal democratic structure through which it could address problems like this :/
Thank you for sharing this experience. The casual objectification of women is no small deal. Sorry you had to experience all this toxicity, and hope you find resolution in some way.
Your proposals seem to make a lot of sense.
As somewhat of an outsider (someone who hasn’t had the chance to participate to meetups), I see terms being thrown around as though they are a natural shared language of the community. Terms such as “SMV” (no idea what that is though I ended up looking it up), hypergamy… Even a reference to a “redpill”, always an onimous sign… Not to mention a casual reference to psychedelics making it seem as though I am reading about some 1960s hippie commune—I suppose that is to be expected given the movement’s relative youth, turning it into a substitute university of sorts with all that goes with it.
Being perhaps already too old—sigh—to be either worried or seduced by this (though it would no doubt be a fun story to write about), I do question if this is the right vibe for a movement like EA if this subculture is representative of what is going on. (Maybe it isn’t in which case my point would be much less relevant)
Of course some of that going on is inevitable. However, just like our hippy parents eventually found out, boundaries exist for a reason. You don’t want to be working, living, sleeping, partying and taking drugs with the exact same group of people for too long, especially if your work involves real responsibility. Humans being humans, this cocktail tends to lead to such things as power abuses, sexual harrassment, accusations of couch casting etc. Women usually end up being the first victim of such excesses.
Now I’m a big admirer of the 60s counterculture on net, but it was a protest culture. EA is not a protest movement. Rightly or wrongly, it seemed to me that one of the things EA could help to bring along was a new generation of morally sensitive leaders who collaborate across countries and sectors, building new positive institutions on the ashes of a decaying order. A “refounding” or a “reconstruction” similar to what occurred post WW2. Achieving this requires a degree of seriousness, an unrepetantly serious, dare I say boring acceptance of the burdens of adulthood. No need to live like a monk—but it seems to me that a norm of mixing everything in a big cocktail is giving more arguments to skeptics who have more than plenty to choose from these days.
thanks for this post.
People replying:
Remember that it is very hard to post something like this. We will get only one person (like the author) telling us that there is a problem, for every many people who feel the problem.
Our response, including how welcoming we are to such things, will affect how many (if any) people will speak up about topics like this in the future, if/when they come up.
Strong downvoted. There is a way to discuss these issues. This is not it. It wraps up policy proposals with observables in a way I think will really pollute the epistemic environment, and hinder any good solutions.
It’s a pretty typical failure mode to police reports of harm on their form or tone instead of engaging with the subject matter. A more successful community manages to process reports without defensiveness. The author made their point clear, thus they are contributing more towards seeing the issue addressed than anyone who wants it downvoted.
Weak disagree vote. I don’t think they made their point clearly, and I think the community would come up with better solutions to the underlying problem if the post proposing we come up with those solutions separated its observations from policy proposals more. I anticipate such a post would have come out in the counterfactual where this post didn’t occur, so this post is net-negative for solving the problem its attempting to point to.
I also don’t know how much OP wants to see the problem fixed compared to myself or others. They made a post about the problem, but the post was not set up to allow for solutions other than those they previously had in mind. So I anticipate they care more about advancing their preferred policy positions than solving actual problems.
I disagree—it’s more likely that this area sees serious work the more reports are made. If you are concerned about it, too, you could add your own, without telling others to be quiet and risking that the problem is overlooked or not grasped in its full extent.
The author said enough in their post and comments to resolve any confusion: they want to see this problem addressed. Your assumption that they don’t care about solving problems when they spent effort on pointing out this problem is unreasonably uncharitable.
I would not have much to add, so I don’t think I’m going to make a post. I also don’t think I told anyone to be quiet about the issues they’re facing. I did tell the OP that I strong downvoted their post because I thought it was destructive to epistemics around this issue.
You make a good point that more discussion is often favorable to figuring out the root of problems. I just think in this case that consideration is outweighed the soldier mindset framing used by OP when trying to discuss the problem.
~~I didn’t say they don’t care about solving problems. I said I’m uncertain about their goals, which I think is justified for reasons I gave in the paragraph where I said I was uncertain about their goals. ~~ Just looked back. This is wrong. I did make this claim, and you’re right. I should be more uncertain. I do still think I’m more uncertain of their motives than you are though.
Comment chain here has been retracted because I dislike the quality of the discussion I caused.
Agree would be good to separate these issues from the FTX situation, but I think the issues in the post sound important. I don’t get involved in “EA circles” outside of reading this forum occasionally, but it sounds like something worth discussing for those that do.
Weak agree vote. I anticipate a far better post would have come out in the counterfactual where this post didn’t occur, so this post is net-negative for solving the problem its attempting to point to.
I also don’t know how important the problem is. The post definitely makes it sound important, but OP also doesn’t seem to be very truth-seeking, so I don’t know how much exaggeration has gone into the object-level claims they make.
This may be a spicy take, but maybe Caroline Ellison’s position at Alameda Research had more to do with her family ties than with her gender? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33575995
I think it’s likely that the most important reason was that she was a smart, talented trader with experience working at Jane Street (where SBF had also worked).
Yep I agree, that is likely the most important reason. I wanted to add more discussion to it because the insinuation that a person got a position with sex, just because they have compatible genitals, seems ludicrous to me. If any, I’ve seen men being less likely to hire talented women if they want to have sex with them, and women in tech code intentionally aromantic (hoodie, sneakers, etc) to avoid that pitfall.