I appreciate you taking time, I know this subject isn’t easy for you. It isn’t easy for me either.
I’m really confused by your response. If I ran events, I think hearing baselines would be a thing that would be really important to me. How much people tended to pay, how often they recommended it to friends, what the typical gender balance was and yes, if it was raised, what comparable rates of sexual harassment were.
You know a lot about event organising. What am I missing here? Why would you not want that information? Surely the first step to solving a problem is to understand how bad it is? If EA’s rates of sexual harassment are much higher than universities, their approaches will likely work. If they aren’t, they likely wont. It seems relevant to me.
Again, you penultimate paragraph confuses me. These are easy an uncontroversial questions (answers from perplexity):
80-90% of people eat meat, though it’s perhaps 50-70% in EA
Middle income donations are 1%-3%, EAs it’s higher, though probably lower than 10%
And to continue:
I understand it’s not exactly the same thing, but it’s disheartening to see the baseline framing applied seemingly only here.
What do you mean only here? Here is practically the only place it’s not applied. We apply baselines almost everywhere.
I am genuinely confused. To me, this isn’t some carvout for sexual harassment, it’s trying to treat discussion of sexual harsassment like I treat everything else. How do we compare to other things? How much impact does our effort have in this area compared to others? How would we know if we improved?
Let me explain. The steel man of your point is: to understand a problem, you need to understand its magnitude. Yes, agree. Again, as per my edit, I was being glib. Let me be more precise.
I’ll take my events example. I do want to understand base rates. I want all data, data is great! Let’s pretend at most events, 10% of attendees are harassed. At my event, I find out it’s 40%. Or, in a different example, it’s 0.2%. Both of these are important and significant differences. Now, the base rate becomes quite important to understand and investigate.
Let’s say, I find out that at my event, it’s 8%. This is more comparable to the case presented in your post. My boss wants me to write an internal document about harassment at events. The first paragraph may include a base rate, for grounding. The internal document will not be titled “our events are not worse than baseline!” and the vast majority of the document will not focus on making this case. Because, what’s the point? It would be a waste of my manager’s time. I’ll write about what problems I suspect are occurring at our events (hopefully I have a good model of this, or can investigate), and I’ll talk about potential interventions we might be able to take, if any.
To the second point, you have indeed misunderstood. I’ve never seen a post that says, “The average donation per person within EA per year is so much higher than middle income donations generally! And yet, we still keep trying to encourage giving in the EA community. Are we understanding the scope of the giving problem? Are we somehow implying EAs aren’t already way better than baseline?” And I’ve never seen a post that says, “woah, people are always debating about veganism and whatnot but, EAs are way lower than the base rate anyways, so why are we not explicitly acknowledging that when we try and suggest people should consider veganism? Or offsetting?” My point was never that these numbers can’t be found. My point was that, we do not set our moral standards on baselines. We ask people in this community to care about suffering and to be morally ambitious. Why can’t we ask that of sexual harassment, as well.
Now perhaps you will object that these articles don’t have much discussion of baselines. To me it’s implicit in them that EA has a higher baseline interest in small donations and veganism than typical communities. If not, why would these articles be written?
As an aside, did you ever learn what comparable rates of harassment were at events similar to those you ran? How did they compare?
I’ve noticed a pattern of a particular rhetorical move you tend to use, whereby you sidestep engaging meaningfully with people’s points and instead continue to ask pointed questions. With these questions, it’s relatively clear that you have one answer you agree with and expect back. If you don’t get that answer, you tend to simply continue posing further questions, sidestepping other points, and pushing in the direction of a specific answer. If this method eventually produces an answer you’re looking for, or something close, I then see: “great, now that we’ve established [narrow thing of x] to be true through my questioning, we can conclude [original claim I’ve been trying to prove all along].” Sometimes, I’ve noticed you’ll do this even if the person hasn’t exactly agreed with narrow thing of x. I think this is unproductive and poor epistemics.
Your reply raises about 5 points. I responded to the ones I choose to. It seems unlikely I’m going to be able to engage with all of them. Is there one that you would particularly like me to engage with?
But to talk a little more, yeah it’s hard to argue this stuff well. To me it feels like a pretty anodyne point. People make claims (which I’ve listed) and they seem different to the data. In response we have ~30 comments, mainly critical. Many contain long blocks of text that it would be hard to respond to in full. Yeah I expect to do a mediocre job here.
And as for us, Frances, we don’t really get on. So I guess I’m discussing this pretty defensively. With respect, I think you are too. I think if I were better I’d find a way around that, but I do think this is importnat to us, so I think it’s worth discussing well even if not perfectly. If you have suggestions, I’m happy to take them.
Nathan, I genuinely think this is more emotional for you than it is for me. Yes, sexual harassment is a personal topic for me, but it’s also one I’ve thought about a lot on an intellectual level. And further, I have no emotional commitment to the question of whether EA is better, the same, or worse. I’ve previously written that I guess it’s probably about the same as comparable communities.
It is definitely true we have had several interpersonal interactions over the years and we don’t get on, but the epistemic feedback that I wrote, I meant sincerely and without prejudice. It has several agree votes. I recommend you try reading it again and really consider it, if you’d like to. As a nudge, my feedback was not “you didn’t respond to each one of my points.” Of course, you also don’t have to read it! I’m sure I am more glib and frustrated in my tone when I talk with you, so I don’t mean to suggest that our personal frustrations don’t come through at all on my end. And as others have pointed out, if the original post contained a better analysis and a more genuinely curious tone, I think this whole post would’ve gone over differently. I genuinely think I could write a post: “how do rates of sexual harassment in EA compare to other communities?” and it would be very well written and it would probably go over great, I’m sure I’d get some pushback but I wouldn’t mind. But I mean it sincerely when I say, I don’t find this question particularly important so this isn’t something I would personally bother writing. I’m sure someone else could also do a great job, or CH could write this very well, but it’s a matter of finding someone who can write these kinds of things well, has the motivation, and the time for it.
I find it hard to engage with the full sweep of your messages. The choice for me feels like its between long slightly bitter responses and ungaged surface-level ones. I tried to avoid that by picking specific points last time, but you’re right that I didn’t really engage. I may not be capable of doing so. But let me see if this works.
On “people aren’t saying EA is uniquely bad, they’re invested” if that were the central thing, I’d expect critical comments here to open with “yes, you’re probably right about the comparable-communities point, but I think you’re missing the deeper thing.” Almost none do. (Some straightforwardly disagree, which is a different thing) Most spend their words on what I got wrong, and only when pressed do they acknowledge agreeing with the empirical claim. To me it feels like the piece has struck a nerve. Does mere investment explain why this post provokes that response?
On “I think this whole post would’ve gone over differently” — I spent about ten hours on it. I could spend another ten and I don’t think it would change the response. The methodological criticisms raised so far would lift the numbers by less than 10x on my read, which is still inside the bounds of the estimate. When I’ve pushed back on those criticisms, people have given way or stopped responding. I don’t think they are the crux.
As for if you could write a post that would be more accepted. Of course you could. I’m not debating that. But I don’t think it implies much either. We are different people, with different histories from different EA sub communities and I am mediocre at reading social cues.
You’re right that I’m defensive. I am. Part of why is that this comment section feels deeply defensive to me—unwilling to give an inch on the central claim, unwilling to back up criticisms when challenged, willing to imply things about motives. To me, most of these comments feel defensive, including my own.
But I would like us to move to a bette mode of communication. I have at times been defensive and unengaged. Here is a new attempt to engage more fully.
I appreciate this and I think it’s good to just be able to say “I find it hard to engage with your messages,” so in that spirit I will try to keep this one short, I know I tend to write a lot:
first point: reasonable. I held that theory loosely. I wasn’t under the impression that this belief was widespread, but I think it’s very possible that more people think EA is worse than comparable communities than I expect. As a separate point, I also do think this piece has struck a nerve for some and I hear you on that point.
not sure about second point, I think the hypothesis that your methodology is not the main crux is reasonable
thanks for engaging more fully. It’s your post and I don’t want to make your comment section feel super overwhelming, so I’ll just commit to not commenting on this post further.
Meh, you can comment further if you wish. I am choosing to engage here and it’s not that costly to me. This has felt like a pretty positive interaction at least at the end.
I appreciate your points. And to your first point I agree that people care about this a lot and feel invested in it. I can empathise with a desire to reduce sexual harassment, I mean, don’t most of us want to feel safe and comfortable?
In my epistemic norms if someone makes 5 points, I’ll respond to whichever one I choose, if they make one point, i’ll respond to that. Perhaps we have different norms.
If you have specific criticisms I’m happy to respond to them.
Hi,
I appreciate you taking time, I know this subject isn’t easy for you. It isn’t easy for me either.
I’m really confused by your response. If I ran events, I think hearing baselines would be a thing that would be really important to me. How much people tended to pay, how often they recommended it to friends, what the typical gender balance was and yes, if it was raised, what comparable rates of sexual harassment were.
You know a lot about event organising. What am I missing here? Why would you not want that information? Surely the first step to solving a problem is to understand how bad it is? If EA’s rates of sexual harassment are much higher than universities, their approaches will likely work. If they aren’t, they likely wont. It seems relevant to me.
Again, you penultimate paragraph confuses me. These are easy an uncontroversial questions (answers from perplexity):
80-90% of people eat meat, though it’s perhaps 50-70% in EA
Middle income donations are 1%-3%, EAs it’s higher, though probably lower than 10%
And to continue:
What do you mean only here? Here is practically the only place it’s not applied. We apply baselines almost everywhere.
I am genuinely confused. To me, this isn’t some carvout for sexual harassment, it’s trying to treat discussion of sexual harsassment like I treat everything else. How do we compare to other things? How much impact does our effort have in this area compared to others? How would we know if we improved?
Let me explain. The steel man of your point is: to understand a problem, you need to understand its magnitude. Yes, agree. Again, as per my edit, I was being glib. Let me be more precise.
I’ll take my events example. I do want to understand base rates. I want all data, data is great! Let’s pretend at most events, 10% of attendees are harassed. At my event, I find out it’s 40%. Or, in a different example, it’s 0.2%. Both of these are important and significant differences. Now, the base rate becomes quite important to understand and investigate.
Let’s say, I find out that at my event, it’s 8%. This is more comparable to the case presented in your post. My boss wants me to write an internal document about harassment at events. The first paragraph may include a base rate, for grounding. The internal document will not be titled “our events are not worse than baseline!” and the vast majority of the document will not focus on making this case. Because, what’s the point? It would be a waste of my manager’s time. I’ll write about what problems I suspect are occurring at our events (hopefully I have a good model of this, or can investigate), and I’ll talk about potential interventions we might be able to take, if any.
To the second point, you have indeed misunderstood. I’ve never seen a post that says, “The average donation per person within EA per year is so much higher than middle income donations generally! And yet, we still keep trying to encourage giving in the EA community. Are we understanding the scope of the giving problem? Are we somehow implying EAs aren’t already way better than baseline?” And I’ve never seen a post that says, “woah, people are always debating about veganism and whatnot but, EAs are way lower than the base rate anyways, so why are we not explicitly acknowledging that when we try and suggest people should consider veganism? Or offsetting?” My point was never that these numbers can’t be found. My point was that, we do not set our moral standards on baselines. We ask people in this community to care about suffering and to be morally ambitious. Why can’t we ask that of sexual harassment, as well.
I think there are posts which question the marginal decision on donations and veganism.
@AppliedDivinityStudies writes a red team against the impact of small donations
@Elizabeth wrote a post suggesting EA veganism was a bad norm which if I remember caused a huge argument at the time.
Now perhaps you will object that these articles don’t have much discussion of baselines. To me it’s implicit in them that EA has a higher baseline interest in small donations and veganism than typical communities. If not, why would these articles be written?
As an aside, did you ever learn what comparable rates of harassment were at events similar to those you ran? How did they compare?
I’ve noticed a pattern of a particular rhetorical move you tend to use, whereby you sidestep engaging meaningfully with people’s points and instead continue to ask pointed questions. With these questions, it’s relatively clear that you have one answer you agree with and expect back. If you don’t get that answer, you tend to simply continue posing further questions, sidestepping other points, and pushing in the direction of a specific answer. If this method eventually produces an answer you’re looking for, or something close, I then see: “great, now that we’ve established [narrow thing of x] to be true through my questioning, we can conclude [original claim I’ve been trying to prove all along].” Sometimes, I’ve noticed you’ll do this even if the person hasn’t exactly agreed with narrow thing of x. I think this is unproductive and poor epistemics.
Your reply raises about 5 points. I responded to the ones I choose to. It seems unlikely I’m going to be able to engage with all of them. Is there one that you would particularly like me to engage with?
But to talk a little more, yeah it’s hard to argue this stuff well. To me it feels like a pretty anodyne point. People make claims (which I’ve listed) and they seem different to the data. In response we have ~30 comments, mainly critical. Many contain long blocks of text that it would be hard to respond to in full. Yeah I expect to do a mediocre job here.
And as for us, Frances, we don’t really get on. So I guess I’m discussing this pretty defensively. With respect, I think you are too. I think if I were better I’d find a way around that, but I do think this is importnat to us, so I think it’s worth discussing well even if not perfectly. If you have suggestions, I’m happy to take them.
Nathan, I genuinely think this is more emotional for you than it is for me. Yes, sexual harassment is a personal topic for me, but it’s also one I’ve thought about a lot on an intellectual level. And further, I have no emotional commitment to the question of whether EA is better, the same, or worse. I’ve previously written that I guess it’s probably about the same as comparable communities.
It is definitely true we have had several interpersonal interactions over the years and we don’t get on, but the epistemic feedback that I wrote, I meant sincerely and without prejudice. It has several agree votes. I recommend you try reading it again and really consider it, if you’d like to. As a nudge, my feedback was not “you didn’t respond to each one of my points.” Of course, you also don’t have to read it! I’m sure I am more glib and frustrated in my tone when I talk with you, so I don’t mean to suggest that our personal frustrations don’t come through at all on my end. And as others have pointed out, if the original post contained a better analysis and a more genuinely curious tone, I think this whole post would’ve gone over differently. I genuinely think I could write a post: “how do rates of sexual harassment in EA compare to other communities?” and it would be very well written and it would probably go over great, I’m sure I’d get some pushback but I wouldn’t mind. But I mean it sincerely when I say, I don’t find this question particularly important so this isn’t something I would personally bother writing. I’m sure someone else could also do a great job, or CH could write this very well, but it’s a matter of finding someone who can write these kinds of things well, has the motivation, and the time for it.
I find it hard to engage with the full sweep of your messages. The choice for me feels like its between long slightly bitter responses and ungaged surface-level ones. I tried to avoid that by picking specific points last time, but you’re right that I didn’t really engage. I may not be capable of doing so. But let me see if this works.
On “people aren’t saying EA is uniquely bad, they’re invested” if that were the central thing, I’d expect critical comments here to open with “yes, you’re probably right about the comparable-communities point, but I think you’re missing the deeper thing.” Almost none do. (Some straightforwardly disagree, which is a different thing) Most spend their words on what I got wrong, and only when pressed do they acknowledge agreeing with the empirical claim. To me it feels like the piece has struck a nerve. Does mere investment explain why this post provokes that response?
On “I think this whole post would’ve gone over differently” — I spent about ten hours on it. I could spend another ten and I don’t think it would change the response. The methodological criticisms raised so far would lift the numbers by less than 10x on my read, which is still inside the bounds of the estimate. When I’ve pushed back on those criticisms, people have given way or stopped responding. I don’t think they are the crux.
As for if you could write a post that would be more accepted. Of course you could. I’m not debating that. But I don’t think it implies much either. We are different people, with different histories from different EA sub communities and I am mediocre at reading social cues.
You’re right that I’m defensive. I am. Part of why is that this comment section feels deeply defensive to me—unwilling to give an inch on the central claim, unwilling to back up criticisms when challenged, willing to imply things about motives. To me, most of these comments feel defensive, including my own.
But I would like us to move to a bette mode of communication. I have at times been defensive and unengaged. Here is a new attempt to engage more fully.
I appreciate this and I think it’s good to just be able to say “I find it hard to engage with your messages,” so in that spirit I will try to keep this one short, I know I tend to write a lot:
first point: reasonable. I held that theory loosely. I wasn’t under the impression that this belief was widespread, but I think it’s very possible that more people think EA is worse than comparable communities than I expect. As a separate point, I also do think this piece has struck a nerve for some and I hear you on that point.
not sure about second point, I think the hypothesis that your methodology is not the main crux is reasonable
thanks for engaging more fully. It’s your post and I don’t want to make your comment section feel super overwhelming, so I’ll just commit to not commenting on this post further.
Meh, you can comment further if you wish. I am choosing to engage here and it’s not that costly to me. This has felt like a pretty positive interaction at least at the end.
I appreciate your points. And to your first point I agree that people care about this a lot and feel invested in it. I can empathise with a desire to reduce sexual harassment, I mean, don’t most of us want to feel safe and comfortable?
Thanks for your time.
This is how I feel as well, well said.
In my epistemic norms if someone makes 5 points, I’ll respond to whichever one I choose, if they make one point, i’ll respond to that. Perhaps we have different norms.
If you have specific criticisms I’m happy to respond to them.