Agreed. I wrote one of the linked comments and donāt have reason to believe EA is worse than other areas.
thereās something strange about a community that advocates for reducing suffering and encourages moral ambition retreating into āwell, whatās the baseline?ā when sexual harassment comes up.
Agreed. āLetās take all efficient moves to improve this bad situationā would be a nice response to hear, rather than ācan you prove itās worse than other places though?ā. If Nathanās argument is āthere arenāt efficient moves left to take, weāve entered diminishing returnsā (as gestured at by āweigh the tradeoffsā), I think he should directly make that argument instead.
ETA: Here is my full comment that Nathan quoted. If anyone has a social-economics rebuttal, Iād be interested in hearing it. Whether or not EA is doing better than other communities, the dynamic I pointed out is bad:
Iāve repeatedly encountered the harmful notion that it is easy for victims to speak up; that they are immediately rallied behind, celebrated, and believed. This is not true. I was not rallied behind. I had to put in an unspeakable amount of effort for more than a year, and eventually invoke outside legal counsel, to see what I consider basic recognition.
Iāve heard this from female friends, Iāve read about this (e.g. in the TIME article), and I myself paid social costs in sharing a different kind of negative experience. Victims often pay significant social costs to talk about their experiences.
Community norms should not impose costs on sharing such information. Iām sorry you had to pay these costs, Frances. Thank you for speaking out. Hopefully this post decreases the cost in these communities. In fact, such important information should be socially subsidized, not taxed (since e.g. speaking out often requires reliving trauma, which is unpleasant; and most of the benefit is external).
If I might engage you sort of conflicty, what do you think of the other comments on this post. Like many of them seem to be saying that actually EA probably is worse or that my sums are bad?
And isnāt there some value in pinning down some sense of where we are?
To me this feels a bit like whack a mole. A big chunk of people are arguing (and then never responding afterwards) that my sums are bad. Another chunk are saying āsure you might be right but shouldnāt we do betterā and another chunk are saying that I am not really arguing the thing I claim to be arguing.
Canāt you see how all of this taxes me making the point? Can you see how it seems to me that everyone wants to make a different point about why itās bad but no one wants to disagree with each other? Isnāt that strange?
My theory there is a large shape that most of you donāt wish to turn your focus on and that in this post I am forcing your attention to it, so you all know deep down that it must be bad and that you must disagree. And of course you donāt need to disagree with each other because the real disagreement is that I am forcing your attention to it. And that doesnāt sound very healthy or very EA.
I would take a top level comment saying that on the substance I am right but that you disagree with the framing or for you to disagree with some other comments as evidence against this theory.
Agreed. I wrote one of the linked comments and donāt have reason to believe EA is worse than other areas.
Agreed. āLetās take all efficient moves to improve this bad situationā would be a nice response to hear, rather than ācan you prove itās worse than other places though?ā. If Nathanās argument is āthere arenāt efficient moves left to take, weāve entered diminishing returnsā (as gestured at by āweigh the tradeoffsā), I think he should directly make that argument instead.
ETA: Here is my full comment that Nathan quoted. If anyone has a social-economics rebuttal, Iād be interested in hearing it. Whether or not EA is doing better than other communities, the dynamic I pointed out is bad:
If I might engage you sort of conflicty, what do you think of the other comments on this post. Like many of them seem to be saying that actually EA probably is worse or that my sums are bad?
And isnāt there some value in pinning down some sense of where we are?
To me this feels a bit like whack a mole. A big chunk of people are arguing (and then never responding afterwards) that my sums are bad. Another chunk are saying āsure you might be right but shouldnāt we do betterā and another chunk are saying that I am not really arguing the thing I claim to be arguing.
Canāt you see how all of this taxes me making the point? Can you see how it seems to me that everyone wants to make a different point about why itās bad but no one wants to disagree with each other? Isnāt that strange?
My theory there is a large shape that most of you donāt wish to turn your focus on and that in this post I am forcing your attention to it, so you all know deep down that it must be bad and that you must disagree. And of course you donāt need to disagree with each other because the real disagreement is that I am forcing your attention to it. And that doesnāt sound very healthy or very EA.
I would take a top level comment saying that on the substance I am right but that you disagree with the framing or for you to disagree with some other comments as evidence against this theory.