I agree with you, Ivy. I think itās 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 donāt mean to diminish how unsolicited romantic advances can make people uncomfortable, but it seems difficult to draw a coherent line between Jacyās actions and any time anyone asks anyone else out.
Jacyās public/āinfluential role complicates his actions, but Jacyās frank apology and years-long lack of recidivism speak to the good faith of his effort to re-earn the communityās trust. I donāt think itās wrong for Jacy to receive funding from the community today.
Do you have details of his college expulsion and accusations? I honestly couldnāt 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 Jacyās but Iāve seen this happen myself elsewhere, so Iād actually bet more likely than not that if it was allowed to happen one time it happened in Jacyās case too) that the students had banded together and written letters of unsubstantiated rumors to the Brown committee (eg, assuming what theyād heard in the gossip mill to be true and then trying to make sure the committee āknewā 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 Jacyās, but Iād like to hear what actually happened in Jacyāscase if we were to count an offense from 10 years ago (which I now think CEA also mostly did not).
Iām 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 wonāt go public so those of us on the outside will never know for sure. But Iād also like to exhibit why I didnāt much discuss the college expulsion, and I still wonāt 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 (Iāve 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 donāt think he has focused on this), but to me safety is the important thing. I guess Iām still unsure what safety level to put Jacy at in my mind today even if Iām 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 donāt find his work the most worth doing/āgranting 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, Iām 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 donāt think their perspectives should be āthe be all end allā, 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 Iāve had complaints about, where I would continue to have concerns about safety and Iād 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 personās evident growth, I might say, āI think itās been long enough and itās probably okay nowā.
If I were a potential collaborator with Jacy Iād 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 Iād dig deeperwith the EA Community Health Team. Iād also feel frustrated and concerned if I couldnāt 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/ārisky/ābad of SFF.
But if systems are not in place for that, Iām 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/ādisregard 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 ābetterā so it has to be fixed on a system level.
Since I started this topic of checking in about Jacy, Iām becoming more sure that Jacy did some serious things, but Iām 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:
āThe Community Health Team does not have adequate systems for potential collaborators to doublecheck if actors like Jacy are okay to collaborate with today.ā
If this is true it implies that systems should be put in place around crosschecking, because with time we should expect peopleās 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 teamās best efforts. I would want to be informed of this ābug of social realityā when reporting so I can be informed going in of what might happen and make the decision I think is best.
āThe CH Team does have systems for ensuring those who need to crosscheck info and plans can do so, but this isnāt well-enough-known, such that SFF didnāt use it because they didnāt realize they could.ā
This would imply more publication of this option is needed
This should include mandating that ācrosschecking is an option for potential collaborators in needā be attached to any public apology made after a CH Team investigation, like Jacyās apology.
āThe 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 Jacyās safety, but SFF didnāt use it because [they didnāt think it was worth it or want to or something like that.]ā
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).
āThe 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 withā
If this is the case, I would want to see it noted in SFFās grant report and a few details.
Iām 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 Iām 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 donāt 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 didnāt want a few bad choices while young to haunt someone forever.
[*Itās been a while, I canāt 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 shouldnāt face more consequences for the college accusations, they definitely speak to Arielās claim thereās been no recidivism, and in general they shift my probability distribution over what he was apologizing for.
I donāt 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 wouldnāt have made that grant, for lots of reasons, but thatās 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 āask some people out over FB messengerā is likely inaccurate, and it is important to track that. It might be accurate to say āthe only thing he has been publicly accused of is asking people outā or āthe only thing he has admitted to is asking people outā or āNo one has provided any proof he did anything beyond ask people outā, but none of those are the same as āthe only thing he did is ask people outā.
Or there could have been new information I missed, which is why I phrased it as a question.
Iām leaving a lot of your comment unresponded to because I think youāre refuting the claim that the college accusations mean Jacy shouldnāt 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 didnāt come across that way; Iām pretty sure I read Arielās 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 Iām 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 itās worth me saying whatās on my mind:
But I do think that confidently asserting that the only thing Jacy did was āask some people out over FB messengerā is likely inaccurate, and it is important to track that. It might be accurate to say āthe only thing he has been publicly accused of is asking people outā or āthe only thing he has admitted to is asking people outā or āNo one has provided any proof he did anything beyond ask people outā, but none of those are the same as āthe only thing he did is ask people outā.
I have long ago edited the original comment where I wrote that. I didnāt change that particular wording because I wrote the original on mobile (which I deeply regretted and am now incredibly averse to) so I didnāt have fancy strikethrough edit features, even when I tried on PC (I didnāt 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 donāt have the spoons to re-edit again given I think itās 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 āhereās a thingā to āmaybe he did worseā to āmaybe he did lessā to āmaybe he did worseā again. Thatās not okay. And now I feel like Iām getting punished for trying to do what no other outsider of the case was willing to try to do (that I saw)ā¦ 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. Itās good people chimed in sharing the existence of different pieces of discussion/āinfo that Iād guess hardly any single person knew every single bit of, but damn, I have to be honest that Iām 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 donāt and canāt find out about (I canāt even doublecheck myself).]
Was that always the expected outcome just lurking underneath the surface? If so then why would people judge SFF? Iām 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 wonāt be public til after the decision is made, if ever. And you wonāt get to correct them as they make their fumbles along the way.
Iām sorry. it sounds like youāve taken a lot of flak for that comment, and having had that same experience I know itās miserable. FWIW I was never responding to or criticizing your comment, only Arielās. Probably I saw it in the front page feed without checking the larger context. Or I only skimmed your comment and didnāt notice he was repeating a claim.
Plausibly Iām 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.
Itās all Iām aware of, to the extent of my knowledge. Iām unfamiliar with the accusations against him in college, and could retract my above comment if given sufficient evidence.
I agree with you, Ivy. I think itās 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 donāt mean to diminish how unsolicited romantic advances can make people uncomfortable, but it seems difficult to draw a coherent line between Jacyās actions and any time anyone asks anyone else out.
Jacyās public/āinfluential role complicates his actions, but Jacyās frank apology and years-long lack of recidivism speak to the good faith of his effort to re-earn the communityās trust. I donāt think itās wrong for Jacy to receive funding from the community today.
Is that what happened? Itās 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 couldnāt 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 Jacyās but Iāve seen this happen myself elsewhere, so Iād actually bet more likely than not that if it was allowed to happen one time it happened in Jacyās case too) that the students had banded together and written letters of unsubstantiated rumors to the Brown committee (eg, assuming what theyād heard in the gossip mill to be true and then trying to make sure the committee āknewā 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 Jacyās, but Iād like to hear what actually happened in Jacyās case if we were to count an offense from 10 years ago (which I now think CEA also mostly did not).
Iām 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 wonāt go public so those of us on the outside will never know for sure. But Iād also like to exhibit why I didnāt much discuss the college expulsion, and I still wonāt 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 (Iāve 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 donāt think he has focused on this), but to me safety is the important thing. I guess Iām still unsure what safety level to put Jacy at in my mind today even if Iām 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 donāt find his work the most worth doing/āgranting 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, Iām 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 donāt think their perspectives should be āthe be all end allā, 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 Iāve had complaints about, where I would continue to have concerns about safety and Iād 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 personās evident growth, I might say, āI think itās been long enough and itās probably okay nowā.
If I were a potential collaborator with Jacy Iād 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 Iād dig deeper with the EA Community Health Team. Iād also feel frustrated and concerned if I couldnāt 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/ārisky/ābad of SFF.
But if systems are not in place for that, Iām 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/ādisregard 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 ābetterā so it has to be fixed on a system level.
Since I started this topic of checking in about Jacy, Iām becoming more sure that Jacy did some serious things, but Iām 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:
āThe Community Health Team does not have adequate systems for potential collaborators to doublecheck if actors like Jacy are okay to collaborate with today.ā
If this is true it implies that systems should be put in place around crosschecking, because with time we should expect peopleās 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 teamās best efforts. I would want to be informed of this ābug of social realityā when reporting so I can be informed going in of what might happen and make the decision I think is best.
āThe CH Team does have systems for ensuring those who need to crosscheck info and plans can do so, but this isnāt well-enough-known, such that SFF didnāt use it because they didnāt realize they could.ā
This would imply more publication of this option is needed
This should include mandating that ācrosschecking is an option for potential collaborators in needā be attached to any public apology made after a CH Team investigation, like Jacyās apology.
āThe 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 Jacyās safety, but SFF didnāt use it because [they didnāt think it was worth it or want to or something like that.]ā
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).
āThe 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 withā
If this is the case, I would want to see it noted in SFFās grant report and a few details.
Iām 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 Iām 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 donāt 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 didnāt want a few bad choices while young to haunt someone forever.
[*Itās been a while, I canāt 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 shouldnāt face more consequences for the college accusations, they definitely speak to Arielās claim thereās been no recidivism, and in general they shift my probability distribution over what he was apologizing for.
I donāt 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 wouldnāt have made that grant, for lots of reasons, but thatās 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 āask some people out over FB messengerā is likely inaccurate, and it is important to track that. It might be accurate to say āthe only thing he has been publicly accused of is asking people outā or āthe only thing he has admitted to is asking people outā or āNo one has provided any proof he did anything beyond ask people outā, but none of those are the same as āthe only thing he did is ask people outā.
Or there could have been new information I missed, which is why I phrased it as a question.
Iām leaving a lot of your comment unresponded to because I think youāre refuting the claim that the college accusations mean Jacy shouldnāt 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 didnāt come across that way; Iām pretty sure I read Arielās 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 Iām 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 itās worth me saying whatās on my mind:
I have long ago edited the original comment where I wrote that. I didnāt change that particular wording because I wrote the original on mobile (which I deeply regretted and am now incredibly averse to) so I didnāt have fancy strikethrough edit features, even when I tried on PC (I didnāt 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 donāt have the spoons to re-edit again given I think itās 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 āhereās a thingā to āmaybe he did worseā to āmaybe he did lessā to āmaybe he did worseā again. Thatās not okay. And now I feel like Iām getting punished for trying to do what no other outsider of the case was willing to try to do (that I saw)ā¦ 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. Itās good people chimed in sharing the existence of different pieces of discussion/āinfo that Iād guess hardly any single person knew every single bit of, but damn, I have to be honest that Iām 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 donāt and canāt find out about (I canāt even doublecheck myself).]
Was that always the expected outcome just lurking underneath the surface? If so then why would people judge SFF? Iām 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 wonāt be public til after the decision is made, if ever. And you wonāt get to correct them as they make their fumbles along the way.
Iām sorry. it sounds like youāve taken a lot of flak for that comment, and having had that same experience I know itās miserable. FWIW I was never responding to or criticizing your comment, only Arielās. Probably I saw it in the front page feed without checking the larger context. Or I only skimmed your comment and didnāt notice he was repeating a claim.
Plausibly Iām 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.
Itās all Iām aware of, to the extent of my knowledge. Iām unfamiliar with the accusations against him in college, and could retract my above comment if given sufficient evidence.