I found lots and lots of comments, but to me it is so obvious that these people implicitly believe this that I struggle to argue the point. What about the comments on this article?
Thanks for questioning the common narrative even though it’s awkward!
I’m pretty skeptical that we should conclude from this data that EA isn’t unusually bad.
What we can do is look at the responses to the incidents that do get raised, and the experiences of victims, and judge whether or not they live up to the standards we want to see in a group that takes sexual harrasment seriously. I do not think the grades are very good on this front.
Currently about half of the comments disagreeing here seem to espouse the view that the community is bad. I expect those comments to be upvoted and agreed with. Am I reading them wrong? Do you think they are unrepresentative of the forum community at large?
I think you’re reading some of them right, and many of them wrong, because you seem to continue to be equating “EA’s performance on this issue makes me sad” and “EA’s performance on this issue is worse than peers”. Some people believe both for sure! But you keep including people saying the first thing as if they’re saying the second. “Currently about half of the comments disagreeing here seem to espouse the view that the community is bad.”—again not distinguishing between “bad” and “worse”.
Honestly my guess would be that most people don’t have a clear considered belief on the comparison. They see bad behaviour and they object. It’s 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 “maybe we can’t do anything about it, because no-one around us has succeeded in doing better”. 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 doesn’t 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 I’ve ever seen at any organisation I’ve 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 it’s blindingly obvious that the answer is yes.
You don’t think “shockingly terrible” and “far worse than anything I’ve ever seen at any organisation I’ve ever been in” 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 “room for improvement” and they seek not to discuss base rates. But I think there is implicitly a view that EA is unusually, unacceptably bad here.
“shockingly terrible”, no, that’s still not a comparison.
“far worse than anything I’ve ever seen at any organisation I’ve ever been in”—this one is a comparison! (In my defence I hadn’t seen titotal’s comment when I made mine.)
But here it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to respond to that comparison with “where’s your evidence?” or “what about Durham?”. It’s clear where the comparison is coming from, and it’s clear that it’s not about base rates, it’s about one specific org and a specific thing they did, and it’s specific about what standard they’re held to. Are you saying that it’s 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 that’s 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 it’s fine to say this, even if we don’t believe it).
You quote me in this reply and so to clarify, I do think you’re misunderstanding my comment. I don’t know whether or not EA is uniquely bad. I can speak to my personal experience on this but as I say in the comment, I think there are lots of reasons as to why determining this is really difficult. My comment was intended to point out the issues I have with the approach in the post, not to make a positive case for EA being bad.
Basically, “we shouldn’t conclude from this data that X isn’t Y” isn’t a claim for “X is Y.”
You’re right that strictly, “skeptical we should conclude ¬P” isn’t the same as asserting P. But I do think it carries implicit signal: people who push back on a conclusion of ¬P often aren’t ambivalent on the point. If you’d written “I don’t think we can conclude either way”, I’d have agreed with you. That is one of the points of my piece
So I do think your phrasing is evidence of something, even if not a positive claim. And that “something” is the discourse pattern I am pointing at.
Hey,
I found lots and lots of comments, but to me it is so obvious that these people implicitly believe this that I struggle to argue the point. What about the comments on this article?
Currently about half of the comments disagreeing here seem to espouse the view that the community is bad. I expect those comments to be upvoted and agreed with. Am I reading them wrong? Do you think they are unrepresentative of the forum community at large?
I might get on to your second point in a bit.
I think you’re reading some of them right, and many of them wrong, because you seem to continue to be equating “EA’s performance on this issue makes me sad” and “EA’s performance on this issue is worse than peers”. Some people believe both for sure! But you keep including people saying the first thing as if they’re saying the second. “Currently about half of the comments disagreeing here seem to espouse the view that the community is bad.”—again not distinguishing between “bad” and “worse”.
Honestly my guess would be that most people don’t have a clear considered belief on the comparison. They see bad behaviour and they object. It’s 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 “maybe we can’t do anything about it, because no-one around us has succeeded in doing better”. 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 doesn’t imply that this community is unusually bad here?
I think the third one most clearly. Doesn’t suggest that other communities successfully take sexual harassment seriously, to my eyes.
You don’t think “shockingly terrible” and “far worse than anything I’ve ever seen at any organisation I’ve ever been in” 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 “room for improvement” and they seek not to discuss base rates. But I think there is implicitly a view that EA is unusually, unacceptably bad here.
“shockingly terrible”, no, that’s still not a comparison.
“far worse than anything I’ve ever seen at any organisation I’ve ever been in”—this one is a comparison! (In my defence I hadn’t seen titotal’s comment when I made mine.)
But here it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to respond to that comparison with “where’s your evidence?” or “what about Durham?”. It’s clear where the comparison is coming from, and it’s clear that it’s not about base rates, it’s about one specific org and a specific thing they did, and it’s specific about what standard they’re held to. Are you saying that it’s 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 that’s 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 it’s fine to say this, even if we don’t believe it).
You quote me in this reply and so to clarify, I do think you’re misunderstanding my comment. I don’t know whether or not EA is uniquely bad. I can speak to my personal experience on this but as I say in the comment, I think there are lots of reasons as to why determining this is really difficult. My comment was intended to point out the issues I have with the approach in the post, not to make a positive case for EA being bad.
Basically, “we shouldn’t conclude from this data that X isn’t Y” isn’t a claim for “X is Y.”
You’re right that strictly, “skeptical we should conclude ¬P” isn’t the same as asserting P. But I do think it carries implicit signal: people who push back on a conclusion of ¬P often aren’t ambivalent on the point. If you’d written “I don’t think we can conclude either way”, I’d have agreed with you. That is one of the points of my piece
So I do think your phrasing is evidence of something, even if not a positive claim. And that “something” is the discourse pattern I am pointing at.