Hey can I just check a thing? Do people really think that someone asking other people out [Edit: okay thinking this is all he did has problems, because it requires taking his apology at face value despite how serious CEA took the claims] means that they should never be allowed to return to impactful work and request (and receive) funding? So treat this comment as a poll
Case details: (and agreevote directions below those)
[EDIT: Apologies, I wrote this hastily and it might be that he never did as much as I first implied, but then others feel he might have done worse. I recommend you make your own conclusions about Jacy by (1) reading pseudonym’s comment below this one and (2) visiting Jacy’s apology yourself:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8XdAvioKZjAnzbogf/apology ]
The rest has been edited:]
I don’t know that much about the case but IIRC Jacy was apologizing for asking some women out on dates, clumsily. He did this online on FB messenger. I think before that apology he [was alleged to have done some inappropriate things] in the animal advocacy community somehow related to him, but had sworn to not do so again (a promise it looks like he probably kept). Anyway, he was apologizing for clumsy online flirting toward people who were not attached to the animal advocacy movement. There were no complaints from people who had worked for or with him. Jacy’s accusers stayed anonymous so he couldn’t address the complaints well, but he did apologize and take ownership to the best of his abilities and state that he would take time away to reflect and would be more considerate in future. IIRC he was never (publicly or maybe not at all?) alleged to have done sexual assault or even something most would consider harassment (which legally has a demeaning or disprespectful element, although come to think of it repeated asking out might be harassment) but more clumsy (perhaps overbearing?) flirting that (fairly!) women wanted addressed. It was 3 years after his apology for this repeated behavior that he got funding. The actual behaviors (not the apology) themselves were 3 years or older as well (one was even 7 years before the apology, so 10 years before he got 2022 funding).
So what do you guys think? Was 3 years long enough to mandate a period of reflection and pause of financial support? Answer via:
agreevote my comment to signal that you think after 3 years (given what he did and that he has had no issue since) (1) that it was okay that he be given funding for a competitive grant application or (2) that it would be okay that he be otherwise employed in animal welfare with EA dollars
Or:
disagreevote my comment to signal that you think he should not get EA funding again, period, or that 3 years later was much too soon for what he did
I’d be very interested if there is any woman who had one of those troubling incidents with Jacy who could chime in and say what she thinks about him getting funding 3 years after his apology.
I acknowledge that perhaps this question is also related to how much funding overhang there is (like I’d not like to see promising young women passed over for funding in favor of him) but back in 2022 I think there was more funding. For now please agreevote this question as though it is just a question of whether he should get funding ever at all, in some world where there is plenty of funding to go around.
[Edit: For posterity, I’ll note that this poll was at −7 (5 votes) when I edited it. There is some margin of error I can figure out later based on that and how responses here change.]
I may chime back about the object level question around the case soon, but I do want to flag in the interim that this comment that suggests “Jacy had asked some women out on dates” is likely to be a misleading interpretation of the actual events. See also this thread, and this comment.
My view is that whether someone receives funding depends on the kind of work they are doing, as well as the level of risk they present to the community. On replaceability—he is pivoting to AI safety work. Would you say his difficult-to-replace nature in the animal space, to whatever extent this is true, translates to his AI safety work? His latest post was about establishing “a network of DM research collaborators and advisors”. Is he difficult to replace in this context also?
I think it’s fine for him to independently do research, but whether he should be associated with the EA community, receive EA funding for his work, or be in a position where he can be exposed to more victims (recruiting researchers) is less clear to me and depends on the details of what happened.
There has been no additional communication from CEA or Jacy acknowledging what actually happened, or why we can trust that Jacy has taken accountability for his actions, and is no longer a risk to members of this community, apart from the passage of time. Until then, I will point out the tension here that Jacy is someone who is barred from CEA events, but encouraged by 80,000 hours as a place to work at and is able to recruit from EAs without EAs having this knowledge, and will continue to raise this as a consideration so people can make better-informed decisions about potential risks in associating or working with Jacy.
Because of this lack of clarity, and because his organization’s current plan does seem to involve exposure to new potential victims, I’ve disagree-voted. But I don’t have a way of disagree-voting as 1 vote (it automatically gives 2), so take that into consideration also.
It was 2 years after his apology for this repeated troubling behavior that he got funding.
I will note that if you know about events that have happened 2 years prior to the SFF funding in 2022, this suggests there were incidents in 2020, which is after CEA’s ban in 2019. If this is what you mean, this should update you negatively about whether Jacy has taken sufficient steps to make positive changes in this regard.
A few notes: (epistemic status: thinking out loud)
Replaceability of his Digital Minds entrepreneurship: I’ll note that I think it is always hard to replace someone who will act as founder of something. Getting something off the ground (going from zero to one) is something very few people are willing, interested, or think of to do. Good entrepreneurs are a scarce breed, or, at least they are when you want more projects and have a funding overhang (we still do for stuff like this). And whenever you narrow it down to any domain, they become even scarcer, and I think if you narrow it down in to a domain that is new (like digital minds research), they become even scarcer than that.
If there were job listings for founders for ideas which are already exciting to funders, the zero to one problem could be easier solved eg “Funding has been secured for forming a network of digital mind research collaborators and advisors. Seeking suitable founder, apply here.” Maybe Jacy and a dozen other people would apply and then we would know just how replaceable he is. But there are not and no one is doing this (this requires its own entrepreneur). Also there are certain implications of this I’d find very disrespectful to the people who had the key idea in the first place.. it’s a bit dehumanizing like everyone is just a cog in the machine.
My view is that whether someone receives funding depends on the kind of work they are doing, as well as the level of risk they present to the community.
I think I’ll note that usually grantmakers are going to measure this. And maybe we should trust them to, idk, if they are EA anyway, at least until further details are given. Like I think it’s fine to ask for details but not fine to assume that the grantmakers made an egregious or community-harming decision (Now I think I have to obligate drop this thing although it’s a tangent and I realize it complicates things and goes against my above poll intent).
We still don’t know enough: I agree this is weird. If I were him, given the intense community backlash, I’d have next done a detailed writeup of everything I’d done with clarification of every relevant detail and what was going on in my mind at the time, then said I’d step back and would be receiving voluntary therapy, treatment, and/or social skills coaching until further notice, depending on what the writeup indicated. But expecting a pre-Gen-Z man to even think of doing this is like, a big ask. No insult to such men but society does not exactly set most of us up to think of that kind of solution, let alone pre-zoomer men. Also I think expecting a lot of details when the complainants remained anonymous might be an impossible ask (thought I think he could probably give more). I also wonder if having a norm where people are forced to bare open every embarrassing incident is good for EA morale… If they are akin to embarrassing incidents it would be better if he showed full details to the Community Health Team and they did a summary for potential grantmakers, employers etc of Jacy when requested (actually this has likely already been done, but I doubt that SFF looked at it in the case of the recent grant because they aren’t exactly community-related in that way. Would be interesting and worth knowing if they did though and why they’d have decided to move forward anyway if they did). I’ll also note that Jacy has already pushed back a lot on the expulsion from Brown for sexual misconduct and his insistence and other details give good reason to doubt the school made the right decision. And either way, if he did do something egregious, that was ~10 years ago from now (I think) which puts it outside of the statute of limitations and I think we should take our cue from that societal norm. He was punished (possibly quite overpunished) via expulsion and it is not our job to do so further. I would like to focus on rehabilitation and recent cases. It might be that without names Jacy can never address the cases to onlooker satisfaction, but perhaps proof of rehabilitation and actions taken to learn would help, and I don’t really know why he didn’t at least come back and talk about that.
CEA Events: I’m not sure that CEA would still hold their ban 3 years later, or if they haven’t gotten around to lifting it, would be good if they’d comment if it ever seems relevant to know. I also remember [edit: IIRC but it looks like I likely didn’t] reading that CEA felt that the Brown incident kind of tipped them to be more concerned, but if you are very unsure what to think about the brown incident, you might not want to decide as CEA did which was a risk-reduction standpoint rather than a serving justice (either clearing someone’s name or convicting them) standpoint. Relatedly I’ll note, attending EA events (a prime place for asking people out) might have a higher bar of entry for Jacy than getting funding. Events are prime places to interface with women (bigger con for Jacy attending) and they are not that important for people settled into doing their direct work already (smaller pro for Jacy attending). Events are helpful, sure, but they aren’t going to be key to effectiveness for someone like Jacy. If CEA evaluated the risk as low but still just don’t want him at events because there aren’t enough pros to take any risks, that’s their right and pretty reasonable. But using funding to do important work, granted by a fund which has a high bar for effectiveness is, by definition, just simply “important”. The pros and cons scale here is going to tip way differently if he is a minimal risk.
Conjecture on exposure to “victims”:
whether he should… be in a position where he can be exposed to more victims (recruiting researchers) is less clear to me
It isn’t clear he ever did anything toward any woman he worked with?
Troubling men can do troubling things to women anywhere [so I’m just not so sure this holds as a qualifier]. I note that it might even actually be better to have him in EA where people are primed to call him on things and he knows he is treading on thin ice. I know this sentence will gross people out but I’m just saying that EA women are not worth more than other EA women. Sure I don’t want him in the community if there is a notable risk[edit: and I acknowledge that it isn’t EA’s job to take him on], but if we could establish that risk is pretty low, then it is seems reasonable to also infer that it would be better for women overall to have him in the community. [All I’m trying to do here is point out that EAs arent necessarily exposing men “to more victims” by working with them or funding them. Unless the counterfactual is that they are going to jail, men are going to get other jobs and work with women so it seems illfitting to bring up that he will be exposed to more women as a morally-relevant or ction-relevant point. If he is that much of a risk he should be in jail or under house arrest or something? At the very least he should have a formal charge so when people do a background check on him it comes up? If we have a problem that notable with him we are just passing him on as a missing stair to the rest of the world.]
I kind of think the terminology “victims” might be a bit strong here for recent cases. Maybe “accusers” or “complainants” is better if speaking from women’s perspective, and “targets” better if speaking from Jacy’s perspective? I say this as a woman that I find the term a bit disrespectful here or something, to both those women and to people who have experienced worse sexual misconduct… I can definitely imagine situations where I report someone doing some stuff like Jacy did, repeatedly asking out or something related to that, which might indeed be harassment. But I would not ever call myself a victim in regards to that sort of thing and I would not presume to call other women victims about it. And I think saying Jacy might “victimize” women who come across him, implies that people should expect or be fearful of worse treatment than we have sound (publicized?) reason to expect.
Also there are certain implications of this I’d find very disrespectful to the people who had the key idea in the first place.
Sorry, are you referring to Jacy here? what key idea did he come up with?
He was punished (possibly quite overpunished) via expulsion and it is not our job to do so further.
Agree that it is not CEA’s job to punish Jacy for his actions at Brown, but this was largely not what happened.
perhaps proof of rehabilitation and actions taken to learn would help, and I don’t really know why he didn’t at least come back and talk about that.
I agree, and lack of this after 3 years should be a reason to update against its existence or the extent Jacy actually cares about this.
Conjecture on exposure to “victims”
It isn’t clear he ever did anything toward any woman he worked with?
One quick question-do you think if sexual harassment allegations are true, is the EA community more or less at risk if Jacy is an independent researcher with no interaction to other EA researchers, or if he’s actively trying to form a research network, or if he takes a community building role?
Troubling men can do troubling things to women anywhere. It might actually be better to have him in EA where people are primed to call him on things and he knows he is treading on thin ice. I know this sentence will gross people out but I’m just saying that EA women are not worth more than other EA women.
I think in that set of claims, the one doing the most work is “establish that risk is pretty low”, which in Jacy’s case, is an open question. To respond to the other parts-EA women are not cannon fodder for non-EA women. The community health team’s job is to protect the EA community and should not be based on the extent adjacent communities are adequately managing the situation. The EA community does not exist primarily to internalize the negative externalities of society, and members of the EA community should not be expected to sacrifice themselves like this.
I can definitely imagine situations where I report someone doing some stuff like Jacy did, repeatedly asking out or something related to that
Do you have nonpublic info on Jacy? Can you be more clear on the kinds of situations you are imagining? How many of these do you think would result in a ban from CEA events? I guess my view here is that in most situations that would lead to a ban from CEA events, the word “victim” is probably appropriate. I think again this points to the issues around lack of clarity here, as some may be indexing the level of severity based on other things that CEA have banned people for, which are much worse than “Jacy had asked some women out on dates”, while you are basing this off other information or taking Jacy’s apology at face value etc, which doesn’t seem super well justified.
I mean, if we are talking about entrepreneurship replacability, that if it was his idea to form a network of digital mind research collaborators and advisors, and he wanted to lead it and was capable of doing so, it could be seen as disrespectful to push him off the idea of the project and find someone to replace him on an essentially-identical project.
Agree that it is not CEA’s job to punish Jacy for his actions at Brown, but this was largely not what happened.
Okay fair, I’m updating that I am misremembering reading what I thought I did, but if I ever find what I’m thinking of I’ll add it.
I agree, and lack of this after 3 years should be a reason to update against its existence or the extent Jacy actually cares about this.
Fair. I mean I kind of wonder if he expected people to get over it (which if it really was minor, he probably would expect), and was recently blindsided by the response to his March post. Maybe we will see a writeup soon (but probably not, you are right)
One quick question-do you think if sexual harassment allegations are true, is the EA community more or less at risk if Jacy is an independent researcher with no interaction to other EA researchers, or if he’s actively trying to form a research network, or if he takes a community building role?
I guess I consider it the wrong question? Like obviously the answer is the former has less risk to the EA community, but I don’t think minimizing risk is the only thing that matters? The degree of risk is the most important thing? Above a certain threshold of risk I would just want to do the most impactful one. We don’t know the risk.
I think in that set of claims, the one doing the most work by far is “establish that risk is pretty low”, which in Jacy’s case, is an open question.
I agree, and I did specifically include that clause for that reason FWIW. I will go back and italicize it to make it clear. I believe that I really did consider this also negates the rest of that paragraph such as thinking of EA woman as cannon fodder etc.
Do you have nonpublic info on Jacy? Can you be more clear on the kinds of situations you are imagining? How many of these do you think would result in a bn from CEA events? I guess my view here is that by most situations that warrant a ban from CEA events I think the word “victim” is appropriate.
No. I can say that relevant thing I was imagining (among other scenarios) was something like repeated asking out after saying no (which is technically harassment) or making sexual or attraction-based comments (also harassment depending on badness of comment and whether the context and relationship implies it is disrespectful or degrading) and a response from CEA something like “he clearly has a tendency to make women uncomfortable and this seems net negative for the events, so why honestly even allow him to come and possibly make another mistake, even if he is learning? Let’s just ban him and be done with it.”. However I acknowledge this is unfounded and these are just some possibilities among other worse possibilities.
I think again this points to the issues around lack of clarity here, as some may be indexing the level of severity based on other things that CEA have banned people for, which are much worse than “Jacy had asked some women out on dates”, while you are basing this off other information or taking Jacy’s apology at face value etc, which doesn’t seem super well justified.
I completely agree with you. And yeah I think that’s a good point, that my taking the apology at face value is not “super well justified”. I actually wasn’t exactly trying to defend Jacy in particular. But trying to begin some discussion which might be relevant to determining if there is a punishment-over-rehabilitation framework in this community and where that line should be drawn. I can’t say anything about Jacy’s case in particular, and I also don’t claim that CEA made a mistake about him or operated under any problematic framework when making their decision about him. To me it does feel really weird though, that if it was so bad, that CEA didn’t make it more public so we could all better trust to steer clear or something. That does seem like it would become a missing stair concern, which actually maybe is what happened with him getting funding, idk. Anyway something bad does seem to be going on here (like maybe an overzealous reaction years later, or, I’m thinking more likely after this and another conversation, a non-transparent-enough culture which might lead to missing stairs. In fact either could be present in EA culture even if not in Jacy’s case). And whatever it may be, I am starting to worry it will catch up with EA and at least some of its members eventually, in unpleasant ways (in some sense this whole thread is one of those ways).
I am now thinking that the root thing, the meta-thing upstreamof us discussing whether Jacy’s funding was okay or not, is more worth addressing than actually answering the question “how and where did Jacy get funding and was it okay knowing what we know”.
Sorry I should have written 3 years. I think I was rounding down due to lack of clarity on months but clarifying months makes it look like it should have been 3 years or even slightly over 3 years. Sorry about that
I agree with you, Ivy. I think it’s deeply unfortunate that some paint Jacy with the same brush as predators like Michael Vassar. Is it wrong to ask someone out on Facebook Messenger? I don’t mean to diminish how unsolicited romantic advances can make people uncomfortable, but it seems difficult to draw a coherent line between Jacy’s actions and any time anyone asks anyone else out.
Jacy’s public/influential role complicates his actions, but Jacy’s frank apology and years-long lack of recidivism speak to the good faith of his effort to re-earn the community’s trust. I don’t think it’s wrong for Jacy to receive funding from the community today.
Do you have details of his college expulsion and accusations? I honestly couldn’t find them. After going through the whole discussion of his apology I could only find his own letter about it from 10 years prior saying it was an incorrect expulsion and also someone linked some other cases of Brown doing a poor job on sexual misconduct cases: IIRC other courts deemed that the brown committee mishandled cases of students accused of sexual misconduct. It appears in one case (not necessarily Jacy’s but I’ve seen this happen myself elsewhere, so I’d actually bet more likely than not that if it was allowed to happen one time it happened in Jacy’s case too) that the students had banded together and written letters of unsubstantiated rumors to the Brown committee (eg, assuming what they’d heard in the gossip mill to be true and then trying to make sure the committee “knew” the unsubstantiated rumors, perhaps stating them as fact not even relaying how they had heard it), and then the Brown committee actually did use the letters as evidence in the University tribunal. The actual US court said that Brown, in doing this, went against due process. To reiterate, that was another Brown case not Jacy’s, but I’d like to hear what actually happened in Jacy’scase if we were to count an offense from 10 years ago (which I now think CEA also mostly did not).
I’m really not trying to defend Jacy here. Actually after reading more and someone even DMed to have a conversation, I do expect he did worse than mentioned in his apology but that any victim won’t go public so those of us on the outside will never know for sure. But I’d also like to exhibit why I didn’t much discuss the college expulsion, and I still won’t jump the gun that, whatever he did, it necessarily deserved expulsion because it looks like Brown at that time may have been both incredibly bad at handling such cases and incredibly rife with rumor mill.
Plus it was still 10 years ago, and as I said elsewhere he has been punished (possibly overpunished) for that. I know that punishment might not assuage concerns of safety (I’ve been repeatedly surprised that questions of rehabilitation and self improvement have been so missing from the discussion of him, like no one seems to care that he also sent apologies directly to the women and also no one has wondered if there is a way he could make it up to the community via self-improvement efforts, although I don’t think he has focused on this), but to me safety is the important thing. I guess I’m still unsure what safety level to put Jacy at in my mind today even if I’m becoming more sure he did some troubling things left out of his apology in his past.
In pushing back on bringing up the college thing, I see myself not as defending Jacy, but as pushing back on an instinct to trust decisions of others, which might lead us into unwarranted disgust reactions and type-casting, which, to me, gets in the way of figuring out what matters about his presence, which, to me, is how safe he is to have around today (10 years after the expulsion).
I know that some people don’t find his work the most worth doing/granting to, but some people do, and if it is worth doing, his actual safety would be worth figuring out and making transparent.
(That said, as I conclude here, I’m now more interested in what is going on upstream, as to why this is so hard to figure out)
[Additional Reflection: I wish potential granters or collaborators of Jacy would speak to the women (maybe CEA would put them in contact?), and see what they think. While I don’t think their perspectives should be “the be all end all”, I find myself really wishing I could defer to their thoughts today about concrete actions like grantmaking given the passage of time. There are cases in my own life regarding men who I’ve had complaints about, where I would continue to have concerns about safety and I’d want others to act as though he is still a risk (forever or for some very long amount of time). But there are also other cases, from my own experience as a victim, where depending on the person’s evident growth, I might say, “I think it’s been long enough and it’s probably okay now”.
If I were a potential collaborator with Jacy I’d personally be very reluctant to assume that victims and people in the know feel the former or the latter, which in my case would mean I’d dig deeperwith the EA Community Health Team. I’d also feel frustrated and concerned if I couldn’t find out more, and probably not grant but feel there was some informational injustice occurring. I hope that CEAs processes allow for thorough understanding by well-meaning parties who need the info, and even potential requests to be put in contact with the victims respectfully. If SFF did not go looking for opportunities to thoroughly check things, I do find that troubling/risky/bad of SFF.
But if systems are not in place for that, I’m not sure we can expect potential collaborative actors such as SFF to just trust nontransparent decisions for the rest of time. It will depend on the case as to exactly how long, but after some amount of time without more complaints we should expect the scales for actors who would otherwise collaborate with past-accused to sort of tip against trusting the old nontransparent decision. They will at some point put much higher probability that it is not relevant to decisions they are faced with today. There will also, simultaneously, begin a period of time where people who view the old decision with different credences get upset at those whose scales tipped toward disregarding the old decision sooner than their own scales lead them too. This means there will be division and some predictable social unrest, until enough time has passed that basically everyone is ready to make peace with/disregard the nontransparent case (which may take 50 years idk). This is a bug of the world which will occur within communities of good people, because communities of good people still put different credences on things. It is not fully- mitigated by people trying to be “better” so it has to be fixed on a system level.
Since I started this topic of checking in about Jacy, I’m becoming more sure that Jacy did some serious things, but I’m also becoming less sure we can judge actors like SFF for attempting to collaborate anyway in cases of non-transparency. Jeff K just wrote a good and short piece about this a couple days ago. I see 4 possible cases here:
“The Community Health Team does not have adequate systems for potential collaborators to doublecheck if actors like Jacy are okay to collaborate with today.”
If this is true it implies that systems should be put in place around crosschecking, because with time we should expect people’s will to keep ostracizing to degrade, and this might otherwise mean too-soon reintroduction of the accused.
IMO this should include asking victims, at time of reporting, if people who might need the info can contact them and noting this.
I think it would also include ethically informing victims that without coming forward publically OR offering corroboration in private, that after some time has passed their claims may be discounted, not fully-discounted, despite the CH team’s best efforts. I would want to be informed of this “bug of social reality” when reporting so I can be informed going in of what might happen and make the decision I think is best.
“The CH Team does have systems for ensuring those who need to crosscheck info and plans can do so, but this isn’t well-enough-known, such that SFF didn’t use it because they didn’t realize they could.”
This would imply more publication of this option is needed
This should include mandating that “crosschecking is an option for potential collaborators in need” be attached to any public apology made after a CH Team investigation, like Jacy’s apology.
“The CH Team does have adequate systems for ensuring those who need to crosscheck info and plans can do so, and SFF knew they could use CH Team systems for doublechecking Jacy’s safety, but SFF didn’t use it because [they didn’t think it was worth it or want to or something like that.]”
This would reflect very badly on SFF management and they should be reprimanded and coached to do better, at a minimum (even if SFF is not technically EA if they are making decisions that put EAs at risk, PR-wise and safety-wise, we should try to prompt them to do better).
“The CH Team does have adequate systems for ensuring those who need the info and plans can do so, and SFF did so and determined that Jacy was safe to work with”
If this is the case, I would want to see it noted in SFF’s grant report and a few details.
I’m pretty sure multiple of these possibilities can be ruled out by the people in the know, or even random people who do a little digging, but I’m burned out on it for now.
First, I want to broadly agree that distant information is less valuable, and no one should be judged by their college behavior forever. I learned about the Brown accusation (with some additional information, that I lack permission to pass on, and also don’t know the source well enough to pass it on) in 2016 and did nothing beyond talking to the person and passing it on to Julia*, specifically because I didn’t want a few bad choices while young to haunt someone forever.
[*It’s been a while, I can’t remember whether I told Julia or encouraged the other person to do so, but she got told one way or another]
The reason I think the college accusations are relevant is that, while I tentatively agree he shouldn’t face more consequences for the college accusations, they definitely speak to Ariel’s claim there’s been no recidivism, and in general they shift my probability distribution over what he was apologizing for.
I don’t necessarily think these concerns should have prevented the grant, or that SFF has an obligation to explain to me why they gave the grant. I wouldn’t have made that grant, for lots of reasons, but that’s fine, and I generally think the EA community acts too entitled around private grantmakers.
But I do think that confidently asserting that the only thing Jacy did was “ask some people out over FB messenger” is likely inaccurate, and it is important to track that. It might be accurate to say “the only thing he has been publicly accused of is asking people out” or “the only thing he has admitted to is asking people out” or “No one has provided any proof he did anything beyond ask people out”, but none of those are the same as “the only thing he did is ask people out”.
Or there could have been new information I missed, which is why I phrased it as a question.
I’m leaving a lot of your comment unresponded to because I think you’re refuting the claim that the college accusations mean Jacy shouldn’t have gotten the SFF grant, and I agree with that and never meant to imply otherwise. I just want to separately track what Jacy actually did, and what has been publicly acknowledged. Rereading the thread now I see why it didn’t come across that way; I’m pretty sure I read Ariel’s comment in the front page feed without realizing it was a response to something else.
I think that most of your comment is reasonable, so I’m only going to respond to the second-to-last paragraph. Because that is the bit that critiques my comment, my response is going to sound defensive. But I agree with everything else, and I also think what went on with my original comment leads back into what I see as the actual crux, so it’s worth me saying what’s on my mind:
But I do think that confidently asserting that the only thing Jacy did was “ask some people out over FB messenger” is likely inaccurate, and it is important to track that. It might be accurate to say “the only thing he has been publicly accused of is asking people out” or “the only thing he has admitted to is asking people out” or “No one has provided any proof he did anything beyond ask people out”, but none of those are the same as “the only thing he did is ask people out”.
I have long ago edited the original comment where I wrote that. I didn’t change that particular wording because I wrote the original on mobile (which I deeply regretted and am now incredibly averse to) so I didn’t have fancy strikethrough edit features, even when I tried on PC (I didn’t realize it worked like that). Without strikethrough ability, I thought it would be epistemically dishonest to just edit that sentence. Instead I promptly, right after that sentence, told people to make their conclusions elsewhere in a way that I feel clearly tells readers to take that part with a grain of salt. All in all I edited that comment ~5 times. I don’t have the spoons to re-edit again given I think it’s fine.
More importantly, the transparency of info is obviously a problem if someone like me who usually tries to be pretty airtight on EA Forum things had to edit so much going back and forth from “here’s a thing” to “maybe he did worse” to “maybe he did less” to “maybe he did worse” again. That’s not okay. And now I feel like I’m getting punished for trying to do what no other outsider of the case was willing to try to do (that I saw)… figure out the ground truth [and what it means for EA behavior] publicly.
Honestly trying to figure out what happened regarding Jacy was a heckin nightmare with people coming out of left field about it after each correction I tried to make, including over DM (again not publicly), and giving multiple comments to comb through on multiple other posts and with their own attached threads. It’s good people chimed in sharing the existence of different pieces of discussion/info that I’d guess hardly any single person knew every single bit of, but damn, I have to be honest that I’m now really frustrated about what a nightmare it was. I was trying to do a public service and it was a huge waste of time with little to glean for certain. [And some of the more interesting bits are not public and I feel very, very weird about that, even saying that I now know of (know of, not know for certain) stuff others don’t and can’t find out about (I can’t even doublecheck myself).]
Was that always the expected outcome just lurking underneath the surface? If so then why would people judge SFF? I’m no longer surprised SFF just granted tbh. They saved themselves the time I wasted. I no longer expect any single person to get it right and I see that as a problem worth talking about becausethat will lead to either (1) actually-abusive people getting involvement sooner which is a safety risk, or (2) appearing-abusive-but-actually-non-abusive people getting involvement sooner which is a PR-risk and comfort risk.
I apologize for fucking up. I am now frustrated at myself for even trying. But if people other than me care about my messed up original comment they need to look at the systems because other people will fuck up as I did. It just won’t be public til after the decision is made, if ever. And you won’t get to correct them as they make their fumbles along the way.
I’m sorry. it sounds like you’ve taken a lot of flak for that comment, and having had that same experience I know it’s miserable. FWIW I was never responding to or criticizing your comment, only Ariel’s. Probably I saw it in the front page feed without checking the larger context. Or I only skimmed your comment and didn’t notice he was repeating a claim.
Plausibly I’m culpable for not noticing it was a repeated claim rather than original. Maybe the way comments are displayed on the front page with minimal context contributed.
It’s all I’m aware of, to the extent of my knowledge. I’m unfamiliar with the accusations against him in college, and could retract my above comment if given sufficient evidence.
Hey can I just check a thing? Do people really think that someone asking other people out [Edit: okay thinking this is all he did has problems, because it requires taking his apology at face value despite how serious CEA took the claims] means that they should never be allowed to return to impactful work and request (and receive) funding? So treat this comment as a poll
Case details: (and agreevote directions below those)
[EDIT: Apologies, I wrote this hastily and it might be that he never did as much as I first implied, but then others feel he might have done worse. I recommend you make your own conclusions about Jacy by (1) reading pseudonym’s comment below this one and (2) visiting Jacy’s apology yourself: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8XdAvioKZjAnzbogf/apology ]
The rest has been edited:]
I don’t know that much about the case but IIRC Jacy was apologizing for asking some women out on dates, clumsily. He did this online on FB messenger. I think before that apology he [was alleged to have done some inappropriate things] in the animal advocacy community somehow related to him, but had sworn to not do so again (a promise it looks like he probably kept). Anyway, he was apologizing for clumsy online flirting toward people who were not attached to the animal advocacy movement. There were no complaints from people who had worked for or with him. Jacy’s accusers stayed anonymous so he couldn’t address the complaints well, but he did apologize and take ownership to the best of his abilities and state that he would take time away to reflect and would be more considerate in future. IIRC he was never (publicly or maybe not at all?) alleged to have done sexual assault or even something most would consider harassment (which legally has a demeaning or disprespectful element, although come to think of it repeated asking out might be harassment) but more clumsy (perhaps overbearing?) flirting that (fairly!) women wanted addressed. It was 3 years after his apology for this repeated behavior that he got funding. The actual behaviors (not the apology) themselves were 3 years or older as well (one was even 7 years before the apology, so 10 years before he got 2022 funding).
So what do you guys think? Was 3 years long enough to mandate a period of reflection and pause of financial support? Answer via:
agreevote my comment to signal that you think after 3 years (given what he did and that he has had no issue since) (1) that it was okay that he be given funding for a competitive grant application or (2) that it would be okay that he be otherwise employed in animal welfare with EA dollars
Or:
disagreevote my comment to signal that you think he should not get EA funding again, period, or that 3 years later was much too soon for what he did
I’d be very interested if there is any woman who had one of those troubling incidents with Jacy who could chime in and say what she thinks about him getting funding 3 years after his apology.
I acknowledge that perhaps this question is also related to how much funding overhang there is (like I’d not like to see promising young women passed over for funding in favor of him) but back in 2022 I think there was more funding. For now please agreevote this question as though it is just a question of whether he should get funding ever at all, in some world where there is plenty of funding to go around.
[Edit: For posterity, I’ll note that this poll was at −7 (5 votes) when I edited it. There is some margin of error I can figure out later based on that and how responses here change.]
I may chime back about the object level question around the case soon, but I do want to flag in the interim that this comment that suggests “Jacy had asked some women out on dates” is likely to be a misleading interpretation of the actual events. See also this thread, and this comment.
My view is that whether someone receives funding depends on the kind of work they are doing, as well as the level of risk they present to the community. On replaceability—he is pivoting to AI safety work. Would you say his difficult-to-replace nature in the animal space, to whatever extent this is true, translates to his AI safety work? His latest post was about establishing “a network of DM research collaborators and advisors”. Is he difficult to replace in this context also?
I think it’s fine for him to independently do research, but whether he should be associated with the EA community, receive EA funding for his work, or be in a position where he can be exposed to more victims (recruiting researchers) is less clear to me and depends on the details of what happened.
There has been no additional communication from CEA or Jacy acknowledging what actually happened, or why we can trust that Jacy has taken accountability for his actions, and is no longer a risk to members of this community, apart from the passage of time. Until then, I will point out the tension here that Jacy is someone who is barred from CEA events, but encouraged by 80,000 hours as a place to work at and is able to recruit from EAs without EAs having this knowledge, and will continue to raise this as a consideration so people can make better-informed decisions about potential risks in associating or working with Jacy.
Because of this lack of clarity, and because his organization’s current plan does seem to involve exposure to new potential victims, I’ve disagree-voted. But I don’t have a way of disagree-voting as 1 vote (it automatically gives 2), so take that into consideration also.
I will note that if you know about events that have happened 2 years prior to the SFF funding in 2022, this suggests there were incidents in 2020, which is after CEA’s ban in 2019. If this is what you mean, this should update you negatively about whether Jacy has taken sufficient steps to make positive changes in this regard.
A few notes: (epistemic status: thinking out loud)
Replaceability of his Digital Minds entrepreneurship: I’ll note that I think it is always hard to replace someone who will act as founder of something. Getting something off the ground (going from zero to one) is something very few people are willing, interested, or think of to do. Good entrepreneurs are a scarce breed, or, at least they are when you want more projects and have a funding overhang (we still do for stuff like this). And whenever you narrow it down to any domain, they become even scarcer, and I think if you narrow it down in to a domain that is new (like digital minds research), they become even scarcer than that.
If there were job listings for founders for ideas which are already exciting to funders, the zero to one problem could be easier solved eg “Funding has been secured for forming a network of digital mind research collaborators and advisors. Seeking suitable founder, apply here.” Maybe Jacy and a dozen other people would apply and then we would know just how replaceable he is. But there are not and no one is doing this (this requires its own entrepreneur). Also there are certain implications of this I’d find very disrespectful to the people who had the key idea in the first place.. it’s a bit dehumanizing like everyone is just a cog in the machine.
I think I’ll note that usually grantmakers are going to measure this. And maybe we should trust them to, idk, if they are EA anyway, at least until further details are given. Like I think it’s fine to ask for details but not fine to assume that the grantmakers made an egregious or community-harming decision (Now I think I have to obligate drop this thing although it’s a tangent and I realize it complicates things and goes against my above poll intent).
We still don’t know enough: I agree this is weird. If I were him, given the intense community backlash, I’d have next done a detailed writeup of everything I’d done with clarification of every relevant detail and what was going on in my mind at the time, then said I’d step back and would be receiving voluntary therapy, treatment, and/or social skills coaching until further notice, depending on what the writeup indicated. But expecting a pre-Gen-Z man to even think of doing this is like, a big ask. No insult to such men but society does not exactly set most of us up to think of that kind of solution, let alone pre-zoomer men. Also I think expecting a lot of details when the complainants remained anonymous might be an impossible ask (thought I think he could probably give more). I also wonder if having a norm where people are forced to bare open every embarrassing incident is good for EA morale… If they are akin to embarrassing incidents it would be better if he showed full details to the Community Health Team and they did a summary for potential grantmakers, employers etc of Jacy when requested (actually this has likely already been done, but I doubt that SFF looked at it in the case of the recent grant because they aren’t exactly community-related in that way. Would be interesting and worth knowing if they did though and why they’d have decided to move forward anyway if they did). I’ll also note that Jacy has already pushed back a lot on the expulsion from Brown for sexual misconduct and his insistence and other details give good reason to doubt the school made the right decision. And either way, if he did do something egregious, that was ~10 years ago from now (I think) which puts it outside of the statute of limitations and I think we should take our cue from that societal norm. He was punished (possibly quite overpunished) via expulsion and it is not our job to do so further. I would like to focus on rehabilitation and recent cases. It might be that without names Jacy can never address the cases to onlooker satisfaction, but perhaps proof of rehabilitation and actions taken to learn would help, and I don’t really know why he didn’t at least come back and talk about that.
CEA Events: I’m not sure that CEA would still hold their ban 3 years later, or if they haven’t gotten around to lifting it, would be good if they’d comment if it ever seems relevant to know. I also remember [edit: IIRC but it looks like I likely didn’t] reading that CEA felt that the Brown incident kind of tipped them to be more concerned, but if you are very unsure what to think about the brown incident, you might not want to decide as CEA did which was a risk-reduction standpoint rather than a serving justice (either clearing someone’s name or convicting them) standpoint. Relatedly I’ll note, attending EA events (a prime place for asking people out) might have a higher bar of entry for Jacy than getting funding. Events are prime places to interface with women (bigger con for Jacy attending) and they are not that important for people settled into doing their direct work already (smaller pro for Jacy attending). Events are helpful, sure, but they aren’t going to be key to effectiveness for someone like Jacy. If CEA evaluated the risk as low but still just don’t want him at events because there aren’t enough pros to take any risks, that’s their right and pretty reasonable. But using funding to do important work, granted by a fund which has a high bar for effectiveness is, by definition, just simply “important”. The pros and cons scale here is going to tip way differently if he is a minimal risk.
Conjecture on exposure to “victims”:
It isn’t clear he ever did anything toward any woman he worked with?
Troubling men can do troubling things to women anywhere [so I’m just not so sure this holds as a qualifier]. I note that it might even actually be better to have him in EA where people are primed to call him on things and he knows he is treading on thin ice. I know this sentence will gross people out but I’m just saying that EA women are not worth more than other EA women. Sure I don’t want him in the community if there is a notable risk [edit: and I acknowledge that it isn’t EA’s job to take him on], but if we could establish that risk is pretty low, then it is seems reasonable to also infer that it would be better for women overall to have him in the community. [All I’m trying to do here is point out that EAs arent necessarily exposing men “to more victims” by working with them or funding them. Unless the counterfactual is that they are going to jail, men are going to get other jobs and work with women so it seems illfitting to bring up that he will be exposed to more women as a morally-relevant or ction-relevant point. If he is that much of a risk he should be in jail or under house arrest or something? At the very least he should have a formal charge so when people do a background check on him it comes up? If we have a problem that notable with him we are just passing him on as a missing stair to the rest of the world.]
I kind of think the terminology “victims” might be a bit strong here for recent cases. Maybe “accusers” or “complainants” is better if speaking from women’s perspective, and “targets” better if speaking from Jacy’s perspective? I say this as a woman that I find the term a bit disrespectful here or something, to both those women and to people who have experienced worse sexual misconduct… I can definitely imagine situations where I report someone doing some stuff like Jacy did, repeatedly asking out or something related to that, which might indeed be harassment. But I would not ever call myself a victim in regards to that sort of thing and I would not presume to call other women victims about it. And I think saying Jacy might “victimize” women who come across him, implies that people should expect or be fearful of worse treatment than we have sound (publicized?) reason to expect.
Sorry, are you referring to Jacy here? what key idea did he come up with?
Agree that it is not CEA’s job to punish Jacy for his actions at Brown, but this was largely not what happened.
I agree, and lack of this after 3 years should be a reason to update against its existence or the extent Jacy actually cares about this.
One quick question-do you think if sexual harassment allegations are true, is the EA community more or less at risk if Jacy is an independent researcher with no interaction to other EA researchers, or if he’s actively trying to form a research network, or if he takes a community building role?
I think in that set of claims, the one doing the most work is “establish that risk is pretty low”, which in Jacy’s case, is an open question. To respond to the other parts-EA women are not cannon fodder for non-EA women. The community health team’s job is to protect the EA community and should not be based on the extent adjacent communities are adequately managing the situation. The EA community does not exist primarily to internalize the negative externalities of society, and members of the EA community should not be expected to sacrifice themselves like this.
Do you have nonpublic info on Jacy? Can you be more clear on the kinds of situations you are imagining? How many of these do you think would result in a ban from CEA events? I guess my view here is that in most situations that would lead to a ban from CEA events, the word “victim” is probably appropriate. I think again this points to the issues around lack of clarity here, as some may be indexing the level of severity based on other things that CEA have banned people for, which are much worse than “Jacy had asked some women out on dates”, while you are basing this off other information or taking Jacy’s apology at face value etc, which doesn’t seem super well justified.
I mean, if we are talking about entrepreneurship replacability, that if it was his idea to form a network of digital mind research collaborators and advisors, and he wanted to lead it and was capable of doing so, it could be seen as disrespectful to push him off the idea of the project and find someone to replace him on an essentially-identical project.
Okay fair, I’m updating that I am misremembering reading what I thought I did, but if I ever find what I’m thinking of I’ll add it.
Fair. I mean I kind of wonder if he expected people to get over it (which if it really was minor, he probably would expect), and was recently blindsided by the response to his March post. Maybe we will see a writeup soon (but probably not, you are right)
I guess I consider it the wrong question? Like obviously the answer is the former has less risk to the EA community, but I don’t think minimizing risk is the only thing that matters? The degree of risk is the most important thing? Above a certain threshold of risk I would just want to do the most impactful one. We don’t know the risk.
I agree, and I did specifically include that clause for that reason FWIW. I will go back and italicize it to make it clear. I believe that I really did consider this also negates the rest of that paragraph such as thinking of EA woman as cannon fodder etc.
No. I can say that relevant thing I was imagining (among other scenarios) was something like repeated asking out after saying no (which is technically harassment) or making sexual or attraction-based comments (also harassment depending on badness of comment and whether the context and relationship implies it is disrespectful or degrading) and a response from CEA something like “he clearly has a tendency to make women uncomfortable and this seems net negative for the events, so why honestly even allow him to come and possibly make another mistake, even if he is learning? Let’s just ban him and be done with it.”. However I acknowledge this is unfounded and these are just some possibilities among other worse possibilities.
I completely agree with you. And yeah I think that’s a good point, that my taking the apology at face value is not “super well justified”. I actually wasn’t exactly trying to defend Jacy in particular. But trying to begin some discussion which might be relevant to determining if there is a punishment-over-rehabilitation framework in this community and where that line should be drawn. I can’t say anything about Jacy’s case in particular, and I also don’t claim that CEA made a mistake about him or operated under any problematic framework when making their decision about him. To me it does feel really weird though, that if it was so bad, that CEA didn’t make it more public so we could all better trust to steer clear or something. That does seem like it would become a missing stair concern, which actually maybe is what happened with him getting funding, idk. Anyway something bad does seem to be going on here (like maybe an overzealous reaction years later, or, I’m thinking more likely after this and another conversation, a non-transparent-enough culture which might lead to missing stairs. In fact either could be present in EA culture even if not in Jacy’s case). And whatever it may be, I am starting to worry it will catch up with EA and at least some of its members eventually, in unpleasant ways (in some sense this whole thread is one of those ways).
I am now thinking that the root thing, the meta-thing upstream of us discussing whether Jacy’s funding was okay or not, is more worth addressing than actually answering the question “how and where did Jacy get funding and was it okay knowing what we know”.
Good points about AI, I just deleted the animal section
Sorry I should have written 3 years. I think I was rounding down due to lack of clarity on months but clarifying months makes it look like it should have been 3 years or even slightly over 3 years. Sorry about that
I agree with you, Ivy. I think it’s deeply unfortunate that some paint Jacy with the same brush as predators like Michael Vassar. Is it wrong to ask someone out on Facebook Messenger? I don’t mean to diminish how unsolicited romantic advances can make people uncomfortable, but it seems difficult to draw a coherent line between Jacy’s actions and any time anyone asks anyone else out.
Jacy’s public/influential role complicates his actions, but Jacy’s frank apology and years-long lack of recidivism speak to the good faith of his effort to re-earn the community’s trust. I don’t think it’s wrong for Jacy to receive funding from the community today.
Is that what happened? It’s never been made public, and the accusations against him in college were much more serious.
Do you have details of his college expulsion and accusations? I honestly couldn’t find them. After going through the whole discussion of his apology I could only find his own letter about it from 10 years prior saying it was an incorrect expulsion and also someone linked some other cases of Brown doing a poor job on sexual misconduct cases: IIRC other courts deemed that the brown committee mishandled cases of students accused of sexual misconduct. It appears in one case (not necessarily Jacy’s but I’ve seen this happen myself elsewhere, so I’d actually bet more likely than not that if it was allowed to happen one time it happened in Jacy’s case too) that the students had banded together and written letters of unsubstantiated rumors to the Brown committee (eg, assuming what they’d heard in the gossip mill to be true and then trying to make sure the committee “knew” the unsubstantiated rumors, perhaps stating them as fact not even relaying how they had heard it), and then the Brown committee actually did use the letters as evidence in the University tribunal. The actual US court said that Brown, in doing this, went against due process. To reiterate, that was another Brown case not Jacy’s, but I’d like to hear what actually happened in Jacy’s case if we were to count an offense from 10 years ago (which I now think CEA also mostly did not).
I’m really not trying to defend Jacy here. Actually after reading more and someone even DMed to have a conversation, I do expect he did worse than mentioned in his apology but that any victim won’t go public so those of us on the outside will never know for sure. But I’d also like to exhibit why I didn’t much discuss the college expulsion, and I still won’t jump the gun that, whatever he did, it necessarily deserved expulsion because it looks like Brown at that time may have been both incredibly bad at handling such cases and incredibly rife with rumor mill.
Plus it was still 10 years ago, and as I said elsewhere he has been punished (possibly overpunished) for that. I know that punishment might not assuage concerns of safety (I’ve been repeatedly surprised that questions of rehabilitation and self improvement have been so missing from the discussion of him, like no one seems to care that he also sent apologies directly to the women and also no one has wondered if there is a way he could make it up to the community via self-improvement efforts, although I don’t think he has focused on this), but to me safety is the important thing. I guess I’m still unsure what safety level to put Jacy at in my mind today even if I’m becoming more sure he did some troubling things left out of his apology in his past.
In pushing back on bringing up the college thing, I see myself not as defending Jacy, but as pushing back on an instinct to trust decisions of others, which might lead us into unwarranted disgust reactions and type-casting, which, to me, gets in the way of figuring out what matters about his presence, which, to me, is how safe he is to have around today (10 years after the expulsion).
I know that some people don’t find his work the most worth doing/granting to, but some people do, and if it is worth doing, his actual safety would be worth figuring out and making transparent.
(That said, as I conclude here, I’m now more interested in what is going on upstream, as to why this is so hard to figure out)
[Additional Reflection: I wish potential granters or collaborators of Jacy would speak to the women (maybe CEA would put them in contact?), and see what they think. While I don’t think their perspectives should be “the be all end all”, I find myself really wishing I could defer to their thoughts today about concrete actions like grantmaking given the passage of time. There are cases in my own life regarding men who I’ve had complaints about, where I would continue to have concerns about safety and I’d want others to act as though he is still a risk (forever or for some very long amount of time). But there are also other cases, from my own experience as a victim, where depending on the person’s evident growth, I might say, “I think it’s been long enough and it’s probably okay now”.
If I were a potential collaborator with Jacy I’d personally be very reluctant to assume that victims and people in the know feel the former or the latter, which in my case would mean I’d dig deeper with the EA Community Health Team. I’d also feel frustrated and concerned if I couldn’t find out more, and probably not grant but feel there was some informational injustice occurring. I hope that CEAs processes allow for thorough understanding by well-meaning parties who need the info, and even potential requests to be put in contact with the victims respectfully. If SFF did not go looking for opportunities to thoroughly check things, I do find that troubling/risky/bad of SFF.
But if systems are not in place for that, I’m not sure we can expect potential collaborative actors such as SFF to just trust nontransparent decisions for the rest of time. It will depend on the case as to exactly how long, but after some amount of time without more complaints we should expect the scales for actors who would otherwise collaborate with past-accused to sort of tip against trusting the old nontransparent decision. They will at some point put much higher probability that it is not relevant to decisions they are faced with today. There will also, simultaneously, begin a period of time where people who view the old decision with different credences get upset at those whose scales tipped toward disregarding the old decision sooner than their own scales lead them too. This means there will be division and some predictable social unrest, until enough time has passed that basically everyone is ready to make peace with/disregard the nontransparent case (which may take 50 years idk). This is a bug of the world which will occur within communities of good people, because communities of good people still put different credences on things. It is not fully- mitigated by people trying to be “better” so it has to be fixed on a system level.
Since I started this topic of checking in about Jacy, I’m becoming more sure that Jacy did some serious things, but I’m also becoming less sure we can judge actors like SFF for attempting to collaborate anyway in cases of non-transparency. Jeff K just wrote a good and short piece about this a couple days ago. I see 4 possible cases here:
“The Community Health Team does not have adequate systems for potential collaborators to doublecheck if actors like Jacy are okay to collaborate with today.”
If this is true it implies that systems should be put in place around crosschecking, because with time we should expect people’s will to keep ostracizing to degrade, and this might otherwise mean too-soon reintroduction of the accused.
IMO this should include asking victims, at time of reporting, if people who might need the info can contact them and noting this.
I think it would also include ethically informing victims that without coming forward publically OR offering corroboration in private, that after some time has passed their claims may be discounted, not fully-discounted, despite the CH team’s best efforts. I would want to be informed of this “bug of social reality” when reporting so I can be informed going in of what might happen and make the decision I think is best.
“The CH Team does have systems for ensuring those who need to crosscheck info and plans can do so, but this isn’t well-enough-known, such that SFF didn’t use it because they didn’t realize they could.”
This would imply more publication of this option is needed
This should include mandating that “crosschecking is an option for potential collaborators in need” be attached to any public apology made after a CH Team investigation, like Jacy’s apology.
“The CH Team does have adequate systems for ensuring those who need to crosscheck info and plans can do so, and SFF knew they could use CH Team systems for doublechecking Jacy’s safety, but SFF didn’t use it because [they didn’t think it was worth it or want to or something like that.]”
This would reflect very badly on SFF management and they should be reprimanded and coached to do better, at a minimum (even if SFF is not technically EA if they are making decisions that put EAs at risk, PR-wise and safety-wise, we should try to prompt them to do better).
“The CH Team does have adequate systems for ensuring those who need the info and plans can do so, and SFF did so and determined that Jacy was safe to work with”
If this is the case, I would want to see it noted in SFF’s grant report and a few details.
I’m pretty sure multiple of these possibilities can be ruled out by the people in the know, or even random people who do a little digging, but I’m burned out on it for now.
First, I want to broadly agree that distant information is less valuable, and no one should be judged by their college behavior forever. I learned about the Brown accusation (with some additional information, that I lack permission to pass on, and also don’t know the source well enough to pass it on) in 2016 and did nothing beyond talking to the person and passing it on to Julia*, specifically because I didn’t want a few bad choices while young to haunt someone forever.
[*It’s been a while, I can’t remember whether I told Julia or encouraged the other person to do so, but she got told one way or another]
The reason I think the college accusations are relevant is that, while I tentatively agree he shouldn’t face more consequences for the college accusations, they definitely speak to Ariel’s claim there’s been no recidivism, and in general they shift my probability distribution over what he was apologizing for.
I don’t necessarily think these concerns should have prevented the grant, or that SFF has an obligation to explain to me why they gave the grant. I wouldn’t have made that grant, for lots of reasons, but that’s fine, and I generally think the EA community acts too entitled around private grantmakers.
But I do think that confidently asserting that the only thing Jacy did was “ask some people out over FB messenger” is likely inaccurate, and it is important to track that. It might be accurate to say “the only thing he has been publicly accused of is asking people out” or “the only thing he has admitted to is asking people out” or “No one has provided any proof he did anything beyond ask people out”, but none of those are the same as “the only thing he did is ask people out”.
Or there could have been new information I missed, which is why I phrased it as a question.
I’m leaving a lot of your comment unresponded to because I think you’re refuting the claim that the college accusations mean Jacy shouldn’t have gotten the SFF grant, and I agree with that and never meant to imply otherwise. I just want to separately track what Jacy actually did, and what has been publicly acknowledged. Rereading the thread now I see why it didn’t come across that way; I’m pretty sure I read Ariel’s comment in the front page feed without realizing it was a response to something else.
I think that most of your comment is reasonable, so I’m only going to respond to the second-to-last paragraph. Because that is the bit that critiques my comment, my response is going to sound defensive. But I agree with everything else, and I also think what went on with my original comment leads back into what I see as the actual crux, so it’s worth me saying what’s on my mind:
I have long ago edited the original comment where I wrote that. I didn’t change that particular wording because I wrote the original on mobile (which I deeply regretted and am now incredibly averse to) so I didn’t have fancy strikethrough edit features, even when I tried on PC (I didn’t realize it worked like that). Without strikethrough ability, I thought it would be epistemically dishonest to just edit that sentence. Instead I promptly, right after that sentence, told people to make their conclusions elsewhere in a way that I feel clearly tells readers to take that part with a grain of salt. All in all I edited that comment ~5 times. I don’t have the spoons to re-edit again given I think it’s fine.
More importantly, the transparency of info is obviously a problem if someone like me who usually tries to be pretty airtight on EA Forum things had to edit so much going back and forth from “here’s a thing” to “maybe he did worse” to “maybe he did less” to “maybe he did worse” again. That’s not okay. And now I feel like I’m getting punished for trying to do what no other outsider of the case was willing to try to do (that I saw)… figure out the ground truth [and what it means for EA behavior] publicly.
Honestly trying to figure out what happened regarding Jacy was a heckin nightmare with people coming out of left field about it after each correction I tried to make, including over DM (again not publicly), and giving multiple comments to comb through on multiple other posts and with their own attached threads. It’s good people chimed in sharing the existence of different pieces of discussion/info that I’d guess hardly any single person knew every single bit of, but damn, I have to be honest that I’m now really frustrated about what a nightmare it was. I was trying to do a public service and it was a huge waste of time with little to glean for certain. [And some of the more interesting bits are not public and I feel very, very weird about that, even saying that I now know of (know of, not know for certain) stuff others don’t and can’t find out about (I can’t even doublecheck myself).]
Was that always the expected outcome just lurking underneath the surface? If so then why would people judge SFF? I’m no longer surprised SFF just granted tbh. They saved themselves the time I wasted. I no longer expect any single person to get it right and I see that as a problem worth talking about because that will lead to either (1) actually-abusive people getting involvement sooner which is a safety risk, or (2) appearing-abusive-but-actually-non-abusive people getting involvement sooner which is a PR-risk and comfort risk.
I apologize for fucking up. I am now frustrated at myself for even trying. But if people other than me care about my messed up original comment they need to look at the systems because other people will fuck up as I did. It just won’t be public til after the decision is made, if ever. And you won’t get to correct them as they make their fumbles along the way.
I’m sorry. it sounds like you’ve taken a lot of flak for that comment, and having had that same experience I know it’s miserable. FWIW I was never responding to or criticizing your comment, only Ariel’s. Probably I saw it in the front page feed without checking the larger context. Or I only skimmed your comment and didn’t notice he was repeating a claim.
Plausibly I’m culpable for not noticing it was a repeated claim rather than original. Maybe the way comments are displayed on the front page with minimal context contributed.
It’s all I’m aware of, to the extent of my knowledge. I’m unfamiliar with the accusations against him in college, and could retract my above comment if given sufficient evidence.