I think youâre reading some of them right, and many of them wrong, because you seem to continue to be equating âEAâs performance on this issue makes me sadâ and âEAâs performance on this issue is worse than peersâ. Some people believe both for sure! But you keep including people saying the first thing as if theyâre saying the second. âCurrently about half of the comments disagreeing here seem to espouse the view that the community is bad.ââagain not distinguishing between âbadâ and âworseâ.
Honestly my guess would be that most people donât have a clear considered belief on the comparison. They see bad behaviour and they object. Itâs not obvious to me why they would feel the need for a belief on the comparison. Whatever it is, the bad behaviour is still objectionable.
I hear you as pushing in a direction of âmaybe we canât do anything about it, because no-one around us has succeeded in doing betterâ. And, well, maybe! But I think this is a weak heuristic as compared with thinking directly about whether we should have stronger codes of conduct at EA conferences, or whether we need to develop more training resources or other support for orgs that are too small to have a proper HR function, or what stopped CEA from acting on what seems like clear evidence of inappropriate behaviour.
Can we stick on whether I am reading them right? Which of the three comments that I quoted do you think doesnât imply that this community is unusually bad here?
Only 3 months ago we had a writeup detailing a shockingly terrible response to sexual harrassment by one of the most prominent EA orgs out there. The response is far worse than anything Iâve ever seen at any organisation Iâve ever been in. This indicates to me that the environment is nowhere the high standards that should be aimed for.
Regardless of the actual base rates, the question that matters the most is whether there is room for improvement, and I think itâs blindingly obvious that the answer is yes.
You donât think âshockingly terribleâ and âfar worse than anything Iâve ever seen at any organisation Iâve ever been inâ imply that EA is worse?
Seems there is a pretty clear comparison between the handling of an incident and how other communities would have handled it.
I agree they are saying that there is âroom for improvementâ and they seek not to discuss base rates. But I think there is implicitly a view that EA is unusually, unacceptably bad here.
âshockingly terribleâ, no, thatâs still not a comparison.
âfar worse than anything Iâve ever seen at any organisation Iâve ever been inââthis one is a comparison! (In my defence I hadnât seen titotalâs comment when I made mine.)
But here it doesnât make a lot of sense to me to respond to that comparison with âwhereâs your evidence?â or âwhat about Durham?â. Itâs clear where the comparison is coming from, and itâs clear that itâs not about base rates, itâs about one specific org and a specific thing they did, and itâs specific about what standard theyâre held to. Are you saying that itâs the wrong standard?
So you now seem to agree that all comments I pointed at do in fact imply that EA is unusually bad in at least some way.
Now if I could find 10 or 20 such comments, and only 2 or 3 that push back, would you agree there is a general vibe that we imply that EA is unusally bad, even if thatâs not what we literally believe?
I think that one comment mint have a specific meaning. But if there are 10 or 20 then maybe there is a general view which informs them. In this case, that general view is that EA is in some way unusually bad (or perhaps, to shift slightly, that itâs fine to say this, even if we donât believe it).
I think youâre reading some of them right, and many of them wrong, because you seem to continue to be equating âEAâs performance on this issue makes me sadâ and âEAâs performance on this issue is worse than peersâ. Some people believe both for sure! But you keep including people saying the first thing as if theyâre saying the second. âCurrently about half of the comments disagreeing here seem to espouse the view that the community is bad.ââagain not distinguishing between âbadâ and âworseâ.
Honestly my guess would be that most people donât have a clear considered belief on the comparison. They see bad behaviour and they object. Itâs not obvious to me why they would feel the need for a belief on the comparison. Whatever it is, the bad behaviour is still objectionable.
I hear you as pushing in a direction of âmaybe we canât do anything about it, because no-one around us has succeeded in doing betterâ. And, well, maybe! But I think this is a weak heuristic as compared with thinking directly about whether we should have stronger codes of conduct at EA conferences, or whether we need to develop more training resources or other support for orgs that are too small to have a proper HR function, or what stopped CEA from acting on what seems like clear evidence of inappropriate behaviour.
Can we stick on whether I am reading them right? Which of the three comments that I quoted do you think doesnât imply that this community is unusually bad here?
I think the third one most clearly. Doesnât suggest that other communities successfully take sexual harassment seriously, to my eyes.
You donât think âshockingly terribleâ and âfar worse than anything Iâve ever seen at any organisation Iâve ever been inâ imply that EA is worse?
Seems there is a pretty clear comparison between the handling of an incident and how other communities would have handled it.
I agree they are saying that there is âroom for improvementâ and they seek not to discuss base rates. But I think there is implicitly a view that EA is unusually, unacceptably bad here.
âshockingly terribleâ, no, thatâs still not a comparison.
âfar worse than anything Iâve ever seen at any organisation Iâve ever been inââthis one is a comparison! (In my defence I hadnât seen titotalâs comment when I made mine.)
But here it doesnât make a lot of sense to me to respond to that comparison with âwhereâs your evidence?â or âwhat about Durham?â. Itâs clear where the comparison is coming from, and itâs clear that itâs not about base rates, itâs about one specific org and a specific thing they did, and itâs specific about what standard theyâre held to. Are you saying that itâs the wrong standard?
So you now seem to agree that all comments I pointed at do in fact imply that EA is unusually bad in at least some way.
Now if I could find 10 or 20 such comments, and only 2 or 3 that push back, would you agree there is a general vibe that we imply that EA is unusally bad, even if thatâs not what we literally believe?
I think that one comment mint have a specific meaning. But if there are 10 or 20 then maybe there is a general view which informs them. In this case, that general view is that EA is in some way unusually bad (or perhaps, to shift slightly, that itâs fine to say this, even if we donât believe it).