I honestly can’t comment on how rationalists feel about it and what they have to learn. But I don’t think non-rat EAs necessarily have to do “so much more soul searching”[edit: than we are already doing] about this. After all this entire piece is basically about the rationality community.
Oh awesome! That’s a huge relief that this specific person has likely already been dealt with. It’s a shame they didn’t mention that in this article either.
It is a shame – and I would guess a very deliberate one.
I’ve been a user on LessWrong for a long time and these events have resurfaced several times that I remember already, always instigated by something like this article, and many people discovering the evidence and allegations about them jumps to the conclusion that ‘the community’ needs to do some “soul searching” about it all.
And this recurring dynamic is extra frustrating and heated because the ‘community members’, including people that are purely/mostly just users of the site, aren’t even the same group of people each time. Older users try to point out the history and new users sort themselves into warring groups, e.g. ‘this community/site is awful/terrible/toxic/”rape culture”’ or ‘WTF, I had nothing to do with this!?’.
Having observed several different kinds of ‘communities’ try to handle this stuff, rationality/LessWrong and EA groups are – far and away – much better at actually effectively addressing it than anyone else.
People should almost certainly remain vigilant against bad behavior – as I’m sure they are – but they should also be proud of doing as good of a job as they have, especially given how hard of a job it is.
It’s definitely important! It’s also important to note that this person has likely already been banned from CEA events for 5 years and some other EA spaces: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JCyX29F77Jak5gbwq/ea-sexual-harassment-and-abuse?commentId=jKJ4kLq8e6RZtTe2P
I honestly can’t comment on how rationalists feel about it and what they have to learn. But I don’t think non-rat EAs necessarily have to do “so much more soul searching”[edit: than we are already doing] about this. After all this entire piece is basically about the rationality community.
Oh awesome! That’s a huge relief that this specific person has likely already been dealt with. It’s a shame they didn’t mention that in this article either.
Mentioning that in the article would have defeated the purpose of writing it, for the person who wrote it.
It is a shame – and I would guess a very deliberate one.
I’ve been a user on LessWrong for a long time and these events have resurfaced several times that I remember already, always instigated by something like this article, and many people discovering the evidence and allegations about them jumps to the conclusion that ‘the community’ needs to do some “soul searching” about it all.
And this recurring dynamic is extra frustrating and heated because the ‘community members’, including people that are purely/mostly just users of the site, aren’t even the same group of people each time. Older users try to point out the history and new users sort themselves into warring groups, e.g. ‘this community/site is awful/terrible/toxic/”rape culture”’ or ‘WTF, I had nothing to do with this!?’.
Having observed several different kinds of ‘communities’ try to handle this stuff, rationality/LessWrong and EA groups are – far and away – much better at actually effectively addressing it than anyone else.
People should almost certainly remain vigilant against bad behavior – as I’m sure they are – but they should also be proud of doing as good of a job as they have, especially given how hard of a job it is.