I don’t understand what’s going on here. Sometimes someone is a bit rude and causes a tiny bit of interpersonal harm. Sometimes someone smells bad. Sometimes someone has a slightly bad temper. Of course I care about being able to benefit from the contributions of those people, many great scientists and thinkers in history had problems of this type.
How is it possible to “never land on the side of preserving the perpetrator’s contributions” without specifying the severity of the things going on? Of course there will be many levels of severity where you have to make difficult tradeoffs here, this seems so obvious that I don’t understand what is going on in this thread.
I think the heuristic I mentioned is designed for sexual assault, and I wouldn’t expect it to be the right move for less severe values of interpersonal harm.
Realizing now that I did the very thing that annoys me about these discussions: make statements tuned for severe and obvious cases that have implications about less severe or obvious cases, but not being clear about it, leaving the reader to wonder if they ought to round up the less obvious cases into a more obvious case. Sorry about that.
In context, I definitely read this as about median/modal allegations of harm that are reported to the CEA CH team. I expect them to be substantially more severe than the examples you listed.
The modal thing that gets reported to community health is something like “This person did a thing that made me / my friend kind of uncomfortable, and I’d like you to notice if other people report more problems from them.”
Huh, I actually think a lot of relatively minor pieces of harm get reported to the CEA CH team, where probably nobody involved would want the other party to just be completely excluded from the community, or give no care to their ability to continue contributing.
A lot of the things I talk to the CH team about are things like “this person seemed kind of salesy when I interfaced with them, and I would want someone to keep track of whether other people feel the same, and maybe watch out for some bigger pattern”.
I’m trying to get a model of what you’re saying here:
A lot of the things I talk to the CH team about are things like “this person seemed kind of salesy when I interfaced with them, and I would want someone to keep track of whether other people feel the same, and maybe watch out for some bigger pattern”.
Is the CH team (terrible initials BTW) initiating contact with you, about this low urgency, low danger work? Or are you initiating contact with them?
In either case, it’s not clear what this is saying or how it’s negative or positive.
For example, in a Bayesian model sort of sense, I don’t see how this gives information on the CH team being ineffective or effective, or the EA community being bad or good.
(To be honest, IMO keeping track of these small things seems very favorable. It seems consistent with the CH team being involved in the community. This seems like it gives depth/competence/context when there is a much more major issue. It is also seems like a class of nuanced, quiet, conscientious work that has long term benefits for everyone, but is less visible, compared to other ways of doing this work, like big splashy announcements (as negative examples think dysfunction of institutions in The Wire)).
What I’m trying to get at is that you are one of the most respected people and have good insights, so if you have a model of how things should improve, or EA institutions are low wattage or high wattage, on the CH team or otherwise, it would be good to hear.
Is the CH team (terrible initials BTW) initiating contact with you, about this low urgency, low danger work? Or are you initiating contact with them?
I have some recurring meetings with Nicole (though we sure have been skipping a lot of them in recent months) where I tend to bring these things up.
In either case, it’s not clear what this is saying or how it’s negative or positive.
Sorry, I am just responding to Linch’s statement that the median/modal piece of harm that gets reported to the CH team is probably quite severe (whereas I think the majority are pretty minor, and one of the primary jobs of the CH team is to figure out how to aggregate lots of weak points of evidence that might point to some kind of large distributed harm).
(To be honest, IMO keeping track of these small things seems very favorable. It seems consistent with the CH team being involved in the community. This seems like it gives depth/competence/context when there is a much more major issue. It is also seems like a class of nuanced, quiet, conscientious work that has long term benefits for everyone, but is less visible, compared to other ways of doing this work, like big splashy announcements (as negative examples think dysfunction of institutions in The Wire)).
Yep, this seems right to me. I am glad the CH team is filling this function. I think there are better ways of going about it than they historically have, and I have some criticisms, but I am overall happy that an institution like this exists (and indeed think that something nearby that could have aggregated more evidence on Sam’s dishonesty could have maybe done something about the FTX situation).
I don’t understand what’s going on here. Sometimes someone is a bit rude and causes a tiny bit of interpersonal harm. Sometimes someone smells bad. Sometimes someone has a slightly bad temper. Of course I care about being able to benefit from the contributions of those people, many great scientists and thinkers in history had problems of this type.
How is it possible to “never land on the side of preserving the perpetrator’s contributions” without specifying the severity of the things going on? Of course there will be many levels of severity where you have to make difficult tradeoffs here, this seems so obvious that I don’t understand what is going on in this thread.
I think the heuristic I mentioned is designed for sexual assault, and I wouldn’t expect it to be the right move for less severe values of interpersonal harm.
Realizing now that I did the very thing that annoys me about these discussions: make statements tuned for severe and obvious cases that have implications about less severe or obvious cases, but not being clear about it, leaving the reader to wonder if they ought to round up the less obvious cases into a more obvious case. Sorry about that.
In context, I definitely read this as about median/modal allegations of harm that are reported to the CEA CH team. I expect them to be substantially more severe than the examples you listed.
The modal thing that gets reported to community health is something like “This person did a thing that made me / my friend kind of uncomfortable, and I’d like you to notice if other people report more problems from them.”
Thanks, this is helpful!
Huh, I actually think a lot of relatively minor pieces of harm get reported to the CEA CH team, where probably nobody involved would want the other party to just be completely excluded from the community, or give no care to their ability to continue contributing.
A lot of the things I talk to the CH team about are things like “this person seemed kind of salesy when I interfaced with them, and I would want someone to keep track of whether other people feel the same, and maybe watch out for some bigger pattern”.
I’m trying to get a model of what you’re saying here:
Is the CH team (terrible initials BTW) initiating contact with you, about this low urgency, low danger work? Or are you initiating contact with them?
In either case, it’s not clear what this is saying or how it’s negative or positive.
For example, in a Bayesian model sort of sense, I don’t see how this gives information on the CH team being ineffective or effective, or the EA community being bad or good.
(To be honest, IMO keeping track of these small things seems very favorable. It seems consistent with the CH team being involved in the community. This seems like it gives depth/competence/context when there is a much more major issue. It is also seems like a class of nuanced, quiet, conscientious work that has long term benefits for everyone, but is less visible, compared to other ways of doing this work, like big splashy announcements (as negative examples think dysfunction of institutions in The Wire)).
What I’m trying to get at is that you are one of the most respected people and have good insights, so if you have a model of how things should improve, or EA institutions are low wattage or high wattage, on the CH team or otherwise, it would be good to hear.
I have some recurring meetings with Nicole (though we sure have been skipping a lot of them in recent months) where I tend to bring these things up.
Sorry, I am just responding to Linch’s statement that the median/modal piece of harm that gets reported to the CH team is probably quite severe (whereas I think the majority are pretty minor, and one of the primary jobs of the CH team is to figure out how to aggregate lots of weak points of evidence that might point to some kind of large distributed harm).
Yep, this seems right to me. I am glad the CH team is filling this function. I think there are better ways of going about it than they historically have, and I have some criticisms, but I am overall happy that an institution like this exists (and indeed think that something nearby that could have aggregated more evidence on Sam’s dishonesty could have maybe done something about the FTX situation).