Sadly I fear stories like this are lost on the devoted EA crowd here. We’re likely to see another round of rationalizing, distancing, downvoting, and flooding the forum with posts to drown out the stories of power being abused at the hands of tech industry elites at the expense of young idealistic women. I fully expect this comment to be downvoted to oblivion, if it is even approved. But I would love to see a real reckoning from this community about its chummy relationship with the powerful (abusers and exploiters of labor), and the cultish single-minded fixation on technological “solutions” at the expense of any sense of camaraderie and sympathy for the vulnerable and downtrodden. Not everything is a problem that you can solve on a whiteboard. Most issues require being a human being in the real world that we have right now.
I don’t think stories like this are lost on devoted EAs. But I think that many of us have heard of them many times before and you are going to see less and less handwringing the more the same stories get posted as proof of worse and worse systemic problems. For example I personally was outspoken about the Brent Dill case mentioned above back in 2018, at the time, even though I was new in the community. You could say I was incensed. I even had a meeting with the leader of CFAR at the time (which actually was good of them tbh). Anyway, witnessing that whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth and I definitely kept caring enough that I steered clear of the rationality community (not EA community, they are different!) for years. But as shocked as I was when that came out (as many were), that doesn’t mean I think that it is right to bring that incident up for the rest of time, (if 5 years later is fine, why not 8? Why not 10 years later?), as proof that EA or even the rationality community has a certain problem today.
Like yes, for sure, there was a problem there. For sure there are problems in little bubbles elsewhere, well I’d bet so anyway, because that’s just life right now until society becomes a bit “better” about women. But like, the EA community is huge and diverse and many of us who care about this are frankly tired and are starting to not even be sure that we want to feed a narrative that seems to run away with itself into false, generalized directions? Even if we would like to talk about it...? A lot of us who care are starting to learn that it seems like there isn’t a way to talk about this that doesn’t lead to people hijacking the conversation to shame all EAs, including those of us who care..? And like, it’s totally reasonable if those us who care don’t want to play into generalization of ourselves or the movement we care about, a movement which contains our friends whom we also know don’t deserve to be generalized in this way?
In general I think most EAs are totally cool with people making reports etc, I’d certainly encourage it. 100%. I’ve done so myself multiple times over the 5 years I’ve been in EA, whenever there was something that happened at an actual EA or rat space. I think it is important that things be brought to attention and logged and tracked somehow, and retributive action be taken if necessary. I just wish in these articles and discussions that there were timestamps and more details attached and such so we knew what we actually had to be worried about? Once you look at the timestamps and other details in relation to the hugeness of the EA community you can’t help but notice how much it looks like either cherrypicking OR beating a dead horse and frankly a little sideeyeing of and flatout ignoring journalists (not the women’s primary reports themselves though!) is starting to look very, very fair. For EAs who care enough to want details and stuff, there just isn’t a lot to say especially if you have heard the vague story before?
There are plenty of EAs who want any problems handled, but who also aren’t going to voluntarily put on a badge of shame. But like, some people, possibly you are one of them, seem to want the whole community to put on a badge of shame? It’s like… if people don’t see enough handwringing they think EAs as a group don’t care about women? But EA is 1⁄3 women? Anyway, (constant) shows of handwringing (like again and again in response to stories you have already heard) are not actually what you should care about? You should care about hard numbers and detailed incident reports and what is being done? People making their care evident to you and other lurkers is simply not going to be the priority? Like sorry you can’t see that many of us in EA give a damn, but I think you must not be looking and it isn’t our priority to shove our care in your face at every single turn (sometimes, sure, but not all the time forever) as the most evident thing we do. It is not the lurking self-appointed judges who matter. It is the actual experiences of women etc. You wouldn’t expect to see constant updates from any company that is trying really hard to handle gender-related issues, it has other goals too. So like, maybe don’t expect constant updates from EA either, and chill out on trying to drag EAs?
I hope you can take this comment in full stride. On reflection you can likely realize how it appears you’d want to put EAs in a box. It’s not fair given how diverse the EA community is and how many of us were already thinking about these problems and were way before the Time piece? For all the pushing you and other users like you have done these past few months I think you earned a little push*back*
The EA community engages quite a lot with its critics, more than the average movement. Of course reactions will differ in a community of ~10k active members, but the most upvoted posts & reactions I read are usually very empathetic and caring.
Also this post is about the Rationality community, and I think it’d be better to keep the discussion about that and not mix in EA community issues here (there are enough other posts about the EA community).
Point taken about the frontpage placement, although my comment mostly intended to point at a lost opportunity for meaningful engagement, self-reflection, and stepping outside the internal logic of groupthink, rationalizing, and defensiveness (which are the phenomena I have observed on previous posts of this nature) – not just the house metric of clicks.
My worry is that the EA mentality is capable of absorbing information publicly revealing increasingly puerile forms of abuse and using the high-level thinking so important to the valorization of the ideology as a tool to obfuscate the real, problematic power dynamics within the ranks of its movement. The article does explicitly address this.
This seems to be one of the most major pieces yet about EA for a mass audience, so I’m hoping it’s taken with a sense of gravity and thoughtfulness. I see no one else has commented, unfortunately. The account I’m replying to has now made accusations of journalistic dishonesty and bias, though, about which I’m interested to hear more.
I have made no such comment about marginalized groups, so I’m not sure what the warning was for.
Yes, my guess is that ParetoPrinciple was adorably kind in that they didn’t realize that EugenicsAdjacent was actually just making an extremely rude dig at EAs. Frankly it is unacceptable to come onto a free forum made available for the benefit of all and maintained through the sweat off the brows of wellmeaning EAs, and use one of the features (username) to shit on insult and typecast this large, diverse, wellmeaning community in such an empistemically sneaky way (because usernames aren’t even a topic of conversation, the dig was hard to address. It’s basically In my mind it is akin to anti-EA grafitti now being permanently hosted on the EA Forum). Absolutely unconscionable and monstrously illmannered. Again, I claim it is unthinkably rude, and I hope to set precedent that we should not stand for it. Can’t believe someone like that I’m also aghast that someone likely doing that would presume to write as though they have the upper hand in judging civilized behavior, and I encourage them to think more carefully about their own behavior before trying to take the moral high ground.
This comment was reported as needlessly unkind and assuming bad faith, which goes against forum norms, and on a second read I agree.
Accusing someone of “shitting on” the community, producing “anti-EA graffiti”, and being “unconscionable and monstrously ill-mannered” is a lot, especially based on a username that might have been intended as sarcastic rather than offensive.
Especially in particularly sensitive threads, please aim for a much higher standard before accusing someone of bad faith (including in this other comment).
I’m not questioning this decision on a whole regarding Ivy’s comment, and accept that this is a sensitive thread so stricter norms will apply, but I think the original user’s name—“Eugenics-Adjacent”, should at least raise some eyebrows.
I find it unlikely that it would be a coincidence that they happened to choose a name which plays on the “I’m not an EA, I’m EA-adjacent” trope, and the “Eugenics” seems to relate to the Bostrom letter. Taken together, “Eugenics-Adjacent” seems easily interpretable as a shot at the entire EA movement for being exactly this.
The OP also posted the first comment on this thread iirc, and set the tone off by saying:
...stories like this are lost on the devoted EA crowd here. We’re likely to see another round of rationalizing, distancing, downvoting, and flooding the forum with posts to drown out the stories of power being abused
Which includes a direct accusation the EAs will ‘flood the forum’ with posts after controversial issues like this intentionally in order to bury this issue.
Tl;dr: Not commenting on the whole of Ivy’s comment being unkind/assuming bad faith, but I think one can also be sceptical of the original poster’s motives
I agree with @Lorenzo Buonanno that people in EA culture should think I addressed it pretty poorly. I think that myself now, and knew that it was far from ideal at the time.
My explanation here (not excuse) is that I don’t always have the energy to call things out in the best way. In those cases it’s often best to stay quiet but not always. In this case I honestly did not expect anyone would do the calling out instead? Yet I messed up egregiously. I just find it so incredibly draining to face the fact that people disrespect EA that much and that casually. It really breaks me tbh thinking it’s that far gone, unjustly I’d say, so I fight against that reality. Sometimes I do think “it is so pointless, we will never stem the flow of incorrect misleading criticism” even if I don’t really think that, I feel that. So anger is what helped me get over that feeling to write a clapback I thought was worth trying.
I wish I could trust that others would also call out bad behavior and make it clear that EAs deserve respect as much as anyone. But I think what I expect more from EAs is ignoring disrespect, explaining it, steelmanning it, or politely requesting for better (which like, we are talking about a proven-rude person here so they can just brush that right off their shoulders?).
I am very sorry for writing it as harshly worded as I did though. This was a particularly egregious fuckup of mine and I want to do better. FWIW I considered deleting the comment yesterday but kinda thought that would be epistemically dishonest or something, as I didn’t want to retract the whole thing, but again I didnt have the energy to fix it. Now I will try to fix it with liberal strikethroughs
One of the comments Ivy was responding to there began “I am encouraging you to try to exercise your empathetic muscles and understand...”
And the comment thread we are in by someone who named this burner account of theirs “Eugenics-Adjacent” began “Sadly I fear stories like this are lost on the devoted EA crowd here...”
I agree that posts on the EA forum should be kind and assume good faith.
To be clear, I would not have commented on the other comment by itself. Still, I do think there’s a general pattern on the forum where some threads by default tend to spiral out by commenters gradually modeling each other as more and more adversarial, unless we make a significant active effort in assuming good faith and being kind[1], and I think that thread might have become an example of that.
I agree that there’s an important difference between calling someone disingenuous and mentioning that a comment reads to you as disingenuous, but I still think that discussing things on the object level (like you mostly do in the rest of the comment) is kinder and helps to prevent such spirals.
Sadly I fear stories like this are lost on the devoted EA crowd here. We’re likely to see another round of rationalizing, distancing, downvoting, and flooding the forum with posts to drown out the stories of power being abused at the hands of tech industry elites at the expense of young idealistic women. I fully expect this comment to be downvoted to oblivion, if it is even approved. But I would love to see a real reckoning from this community about its chummy relationship with the powerful (abusers and exploiters of labor), and the cultish single-minded fixation on technological “solutions” at the expense of any sense of camaraderie and sympathy for the vulnerable and downtrodden. Not everything is a problem that you can solve on a whiteboard. Most issues require being a human being in the real world that we have right now.
I don’t think stories like this are lost on devoted EAs. But I think that many of us have heard of them many times before and you are going to see less and less handwringing the more the same stories get posted as proof of worse and worse systemic problems. For example I personally was outspoken about the Brent Dill case mentioned above back in 2018, at the time, even though I was new in the community. You could say I was incensed. I even had a meeting with the leader of CFAR at the time (which actually was good of them tbh). Anyway, witnessing that whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth and I definitely kept caring enough that I steered clear of the rationality community (not EA community, they are different!) for years. But as shocked as I was when that came out (as many were), that doesn’t mean I think that it is right to bring that incident up for the rest of time, (if 5 years later is fine, why not 8? Why not 10 years later?), as proof that EA or even the rationality community has a certain problem today.
Like yes, for sure, there was a problem there. For sure there are problems in little bubbles elsewhere, well I’d bet so anyway, because that’s just life right now until society becomes a bit “better” about women. But like, the EA community is huge and diverse and many of us who care about this are frankly tired and are starting to not even be sure that we want to feed a narrative that seems to run away with itself into false, generalized directions? Even if we would like to talk about it...? A lot of us who care are starting to learn that it seems like there isn’t a way to talk about this that doesn’t lead to people hijacking the conversation to shame all EAs, including those of us who care..? And like, it’s totally reasonable if those us who care don’t want to play into generalization of ourselves or the movement we care about, a movement which contains our friends whom we also know don’t deserve to be generalized in this way?
In general I think most EAs are totally cool with people making reports etc, I’d certainly encourage it. 100%. I’ve done so myself multiple times over the 5 years I’ve been in EA, whenever there was something that happened at an actual EA or rat space. I think it is important that things be brought to attention and logged and tracked somehow, and retributive action be taken if necessary. I just wish in these articles and discussions that there were timestamps and more details attached and such so we knew what we actually had to be worried about? Once you look at the timestamps and other details in relation to the hugeness of the EA community you can’t help but notice how much it looks like either cherrypicking OR beating a dead horse and frankly a little sideeyeing of and flatout ignoring journalists (not the women’s primary reports themselves though!) is starting to look very, very fair. For EAs who care enough to want details and stuff, there just isn’t a lot to say especially if you have heard the vague story before?
There are plenty of EAs who want any problems handled, but who also aren’t going to voluntarily put on a badge of shame. But like, some people, possibly you are one of them, seem to want the whole community to put on a badge of shame? It’s like… if people don’t see enough handwringing they think EAs as a group don’t care about women? But EA is 1⁄3 women? Anyway, (constant) shows of handwringing (like again and again in response to stories you have already heard) are not actually what you should care about? You should care about hard numbers and detailed incident reports and what is being done? People making their care evident to you and other lurkers is simply not going to be the priority? Like sorry you can’t see that many of us in EA give a damn, but I think you must not be looking and it isn’t our priority to shove our care in your face at every single turn (sometimes, sure, but not all the time forever) as the most evident thing we do. It is not the lurking self-appointed judges who matter. It is the actual experiences of women etc. You wouldn’t expect to see constant updates from any company that is trying really hard to handle gender-related issues, it has other goals too. So like, maybe don’t expect constant updates from EA either, and chill out on trying to drag EAs?
I hope you can take this comment in full stride. On reflection you can likely realize how it appears you’d want to put EAs in a box. It’s not fair given how diverse the EA community is and how many of us were already thinking about these problems and were way before the Time piece? For all the pushing you and other users like you have done these past few months I think you earned a little push*back*
I feel like you’re being unfair here.
The EA community engages quite a lot with its critics, more than the average movement. Of course reactions will differ in a community of ~10k active members, but the most upvoted posts & reactions I read are usually very empathetic and caring.
Also this post is about the Rationality community, and I think it’d be better to keep the discussion about that and not mix in EA community issues here (there are enough other posts about the EA community).
Point taken about the frontpage placement, although my comment mostly intended to point at a lost opportunity for meaningful engagement, self-reflection, and stepping outside the internal logic of groupthink, rationalizing, and defensiveness (which are the phenomena I have observed on previous posts of this nature) – not just the house metric of clicks.
My worry is that the EA mentality is capable of absorbing information publicly revealing increasingly puerile forms of abuse and using the high-level thinking so important to the valorization of the ideology as a tool to obfuscate the real, problematic power dynamics within the ranks of its movement. The article does explicitly address this.
This seems to be one of the most major pieces yet about EA for a mass audience, so I’m hoping it’s taken with a sense of gravity and thoughtfulness. I see no one else has commented, unfortunately. The account I’m replying to has now made accusations of journalistic dishonesty and bias, though, about which I’m interested to hear more.
I have made no such comment about marginalized groups, so I’m not sure what the warning was for.
I guess it was because your username is “eugenics-adjacent” though I guess that is sarcastic.
Yes, my guess is that ParetoPrinciple was adorably kind in that they didn’t realize that EugenicsAdjacent was actually just making an extremely rude dig at EAs. Frankly it is unacceptable to come onto a free forum made available for the benefit of all and maintained through the sweat off the brows of wellmeaning EAs, and use one of the features (username) to
shit oninsult and typecast this large, diverse, wellmeaning community in such an empistemically sneaky way (because usernames aren’t even a topic of conversation, the dig was hard to address.It’s basicallyIn my mind it is akin to anti-EA grafitti now being permanently hosted on the EA Forum).Absolutely unconscionable and monstrously illmannered.Again, I claim it is unthinkably rude, and I hope to set precedent that we should not stand for it.Can’t believe someone like thatI’m also aghast that someone likely doing that would presume to write as though they have the upper hand in judging civilized behavior, and I encourage them to think more carefully about their own behavior before trying to take the moral high ground.Hi Ivy,
This comment was reported as needlessly unkind and assuming bad faith, which goes against forum norms, and on a second read I agree.
Accusing someone of “shitting on” the community, producing “anti-EA graffiti”, and being “unconscionable and monstrously ill-mannered” is a lot, especially based on a username that might have been intended as sarcastic rather than offensive.
Especially in particularly sensitive threads, please aim for a much higher standard before accusing someone of bad faith (including in this other comment).
I’m not questioning this decision on a whole regarding Ivy’s comment, and accept that this is a sensitive thread so stricter norms will apply, but I think the original user’s name—“Eugenics-Adjacent”, should at least raise some eyebrows.
I find it unlikely that it would be a coincidence that they happened to choose a name which plays on the “I’m not an EA, I’m EA-adjacent” trope, and the “Eugenics” seems to relate to the Bostrom letter. Taken together, “Eugenics-Adjacent” seems easily interpretable as a shot at the entire EA movement for being exactly this.
The OP also posted the first comment on this thread iirc, and set the tone off by saying:
Which includes a direct accusation the EAs will ‘flood the forum’ with posts after controversial issues like this intentionally in order to bury this issue.
Tl;dr: Not commenting on the whole of Ivy’s comment being unkind/assuming bad faith, but I think one can also be sceptical of the original poster’s motives
Thank you for noting this.
I agree with @Lorenzo Buonanno that people in EA culture should think I addressed it pretty poorly. I think that myself now, and knew that it was far from ideal at the time.
My explanation here (not excuse) is that I don’t always have the energy to call things out in the best way. In those cases it’s often best to stay quiet but not always. In this case I honestly did not expect anyone would do the calling out instead? Yet I messed up egregiously. I just find it so incredibly draining to face the fact that people disrespect EA that much and that casually. It really breaks me tbh thinking it’s that far gone, unjustly I’d say, so I fight against that reality. Sometimes I do think “it is so pointless, we will never stem the flow of incorrect misleading criticism” even if I don’t really think that, I feel that. So anger is what helped me get over that feeling to write a clapback I thought was worth trying.
I wish I could trust that others would also call out bad behavior and make it clear that EAs deserve respect as much as anyone. But I think what I expect more from EAs is ignoring disrespect, explaining it, steelmanning it, or politely requesting for better (which like, we are talking about a proven-rude person here so they can just brush that right off their shoulders?).
I am very sorry for writing it as harshly worded as I did though. This was a particularly egregious fuckup of mine and I want to do better. FWIW I considered deleting the comment yesterday but kinda thought that would be epistemically dishonest or something, as I didn’t want to retract the whole thing, but again I didnt have the energy to fix it. Now I will try to fix it with liberal
strikethroughsOne of the comments Ivy was responding to there began “I am encouraging you to try to exercise your empathetic muscles and understand...”
And the comment thread we are in by someone who named this burner account of theirs “Eugenics-Adjacent” began “Sadly I fear stories like this are lost on the devoted EA crowd here...”
I agree that posts on the EA forum should be kind and assume good faith.
Okay fair about this comment.
I want to push back on your linking the other comment though. I said FYI that their comment was reading to me a certain way.… isn’t that forum norms?
To be clear, I would not have commented on the other comment by itself. Still, I do think there’s a general pattern on the forum where some threads by default tend to spiral out by commenters gradually modeling each other as more and more adversarial, unless we make a significant active effort in assuming good faith and being kind[1], and I think that thread might have become an example of that.
I agree that there’s an important difference between calling someone disingenuous and mentioning that a comment reads to you as disingenuous, but I still think that discussing things on the object level (like you mostly do in the rest of the comment) is kinder and helps to prevent such spirals.
Someone wrote somewhere that discussion norms are ectotherms: need to constantly receive energy to survive, I’ve found it a helpful metaphor.
Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah you are right, and the ectotherm thing is a good analogy.