I dunno, I’ve noticed myself feeling the same recently and it feels pretty rational to me.
As in I used to feel relatively comfortable sharing/complaining about anything that made me feel uncomfortable in EA, but now when I try to imagine myself doing so I’m like, “Haha there’s no way in hell I’m ever reporting anything to Community Health now and I know I have to be pretty damn careful and selective these days if I want to tell any friends.”
I think ‘disproportionate reactions disincentivise openness’ is a really underappreciated phenomenon in a lot of areas—thanks for highlighting it here.
To be fair, I think these kind of over-reactions are happening in lots of places. I think it’s particularly pronounced in social/political movements though because they attract a lot of people who are very passionate about social justice. And like, in a way I really admire that, and I think that energy can be very valuable when targeted at the most serious forms of human/nonhuman rights abuses.
But like, if the bar for resignation is the harmful actions Owen’s committed.....almost everyone in the world should resign?
(I realise I may have lost literally everyone reading this comment with that last sentence. I’ve only just noticed the extent to which I disagree with the community here and I’m pretty shocked myself, so I should flag that I’m feeling particularly skeptical of my inside view. Maybe best not to debate this in public though as I imagine a lot of details/examples could be triggering for a lot of us.)
Ubuntu, thanks for writing it even if it’s hard, I’m sending you massive hugs. I disagree with a community to a huge extent and that’s why I’ve created a burner account to do it. I think a lot of people are scared of speaking up now, because we have a very vocal, and pretty aggressive group. A group-think consensus is not something we agree with, and there’s a strong rhetoric of you-are-a-bad-person-if-you-think-differently-than-us. In a long-term, however, I’m not willing to trade personal integrity for being a part of a group, because I think the values EA exhibits right now are harmful. So it may happen that I’ll leave the community, as stated in the post above.
I don’t think you disagree with the community. You disagree with a smallish number of people who are active on the forums, and who on average are younger and more newly entered the community.
‘the community’ as a whole does not have an opinion of this, but due to fear of being seen as defending bad behavior, I think there is a strong tendency to self censor on only one side of this discussion. At the very least I know I self censor.
“I know it’s irrational...”
I dunno, I’ve noticed myself feeling the same recently and it feels pretty rational to me.
As in I used to feel relatively comfortable sharing/complaining about anything that made me feel uncomfortable in EA, but now when I try to imagine myself doing so I’m like, “Haha there’s no way in hell I’m ever reporting anything to Community Health now and I know I have to be pretty damn careful and selective these days if I want to tell any friends.”
I think ‘disproportionate reactions disincentivise openness’ is a really underappreciated phenomenon in a lot of areas—thanks for highlighting it here.
(I’m also a woman, for the record.)
To be fair, I think these kind of over-reactions are happening in lots of places. I think it’s particularly pronounced in social/political movements though because they attract a lot of people who are very passionate about social justice. And like, in a way I really admire that, and I think that energy can be very valuable when targeted at the most serious forms of human/nonhuman rights abuses.
But like, if the bar for resignation is the harmful actions Owen’s committed.....almost everyone in the world should resign?
(I realise I may have lost literally everyone reading this comment with that last sentence. I’ve only just noticed the extent to which I disagree with the community here and I’m pretty shocked myself, so I should flag that I’m feeling particularly skeptical of my inside view. Maybe best not to debate this in public though as I imagine a lot of details/examples could be triggering for a lot of us.)
Ubuntu, thanks for writing it even if it’s hard, I’m sending you massive hugs.
I disagree with a community to a huge extent and that’s why I’ve created a burner account to do it. I think a lot of people are scared of speaking up now, because we have a very vocal, and pretty aggressive group. A group-think consensus is not something we agree with, and there’s a strong rhetoric of you-are-a-bad-person-if-you-think-differently-than-us.
In a long-term, however, I’m not willing to trade personal integrity for being a part of a group, because I think the values EA exhibits right now are harmful. So it may happen that I’ll leave the community, as stated in the post above.
I don’t think you disagree with the community. You disagree with a smallish number of people who are active on the forums, and who on average are younger and more newly entered the community.
‘the community’ as a whole does not have an opinion of this, but due to fear of being seen as defending bad behavior, I think there is a strong tendency to self censor on only one side of this discussion. At the very least I know I self censor.