What should I tell them? “I promise this is not an issue in our local community”?
I’ve been extremely excited to prepare this event. I would get to teach Denmark’s brightest high schoolers about hierarchies of evidence, help them conduct their own cost-effectiveness analyses, and hopefully inspire a new generation to take action to make the world a better place.
Now I have to worry about whether it would be more appropriate to send the organizers a heads up informing them about the article and give them a chance to reconsider working with us.
I frankly feel unequipped to deal with something like this.
You’re venting, but I’ll try to answer helpfully. The right thing to say is surely:
Sexual assault is very bad.
If anyone is aware of any specific incident, they should contact the CEA team or their local law enforcement.
We try to prevent it, and expel those who commit it (including some of the people in this story).
It occurs in every community.
There is little reason to think the EA community in general is much more or less problematic here than other movements (unless you think polyamory and drugs are risk factors).
It is impossible for any large decentralized movement to reduce the rate to zero.
One of the major examples in the story is about someone who basically noone regards as an EA (and does not call himself an EA).
You shouldn’t take journalists with an agenda to push at face value, especially as they tend to highlight the most extreme and unrepresentative examples.
The EA movement has a bunch of critics who are willing to use dishonest means to attack it because it threatens their moral superiority.
This sounds like a lot to deal with. But at the end of the day, this is basically a common issue that has occurred for most movements. For an extreme example, rape accusations against their leaders didn’t stop both Republican and Democrat parties repeatedly uniting behind and getting the accused men elected President.
There is little reason to think the EA community in general is much more or less problematic here than other movements (unless you think polyamory and drugs are risk factors).
There are other risk factors, though. Drug use definitely. I don’t think polyamory is a risk factor, but a relative lack of committed relationships in EA definitely is one (makes for more propositioning in general).
As well as being younger-skewed and male-skewed—that increases risk.
Encouraging a lot of people to start their own projects and get funded directly by someone in the community, as opposed to working at a larger org, increases risk.
Group housing and sharing accommodation, while not inherently bad, definitely increases risk.
In general, the intense mixing of personal and professional boundaries is an even more important risk factor, especially in combination with the other factors.
A lot of these factors are less present in other communities.
(To be clear, a lot of these risks also can have offsetting benefits.)
I don’t think polyamory is a risk factor, but a relative lack of committed relationships in EA definitely is one (makes for more propositioning in general).
This seems like a very strange view? Polyamory allows for more propositioning in general because even people in committed relationships can proposition people.
I guess I mean to say “I don’t think polyamory is a risk factor, but more open / single relationship status in EA definitely is one”. Like if you have a polyamory relationship set that you’re happy with and it’s closed and you don’t proposition anyone to add, that would have the same level of security as a married non-poly couple.
Probably worth tabooing ‘poly’ here. As far as I can tell, basically every critic of poly is referring to relationships that are at open to new participants, and every defender of poly wants to defend those relationships also.
If you want you can come up with a new definition:
open_poly: a person in a relationship with someone else who is still open to more relationships.
The debate then becomes whether it is fine to be open_poly, or if there are significant costs and hence open_poly people should cease to be open. I think basically every critic of poly would be satisfied if the existing relationships continued but ceased accepting new members.
And based on your comment it seems like you basically think that open_poly does bring significant incremental risk vs a counterfactual of non-open.
What I’m getting at is the risk factor comes from open anything, regardless of whether it is poly or mono. Agree that tabooing is helpful here.
(Though to be clear I’m obviously not suggesting people stop trying to find romantic partners. Just like I’m not asking people to stop being male or young. Risk factors are risk factors even if they’re out of our control or have clear benefits.)
This is absolutely not how I’m going to go about dealing with it.
If I were on their side and somebody at any point responded to my concerns with a trivializing reminder that rape and abuse, in fact, happens in every community, I would nope out immediately.
I appreciate that this comment is trying to be helpful, but I feel a responsibility to point out that this is outright harmful advice.
EDIT: Sorry, I phrased myself with unnecessary meanness. To be clear the reason this, in my opinion, is poor advice is not because the arguments themselves are wrong. The reason is that what matters in good communication is to signal an understanding of the counterpart’s concerns, and even if these arguments are right they send the wrong signal.
Either you believe these problems are much more common in the EA community than other communities and this poses a risk to the kids or you don’t.
If you do believe we are much worse than average, and this would put the kids at risk, asking how you should do movement building to highschoolers is probably the wrong question. You just shouldn’t do that movement building.
Probably however you don’t believe that the EA movement is much worse than average, (because there is basically no evidence for this), and don’t believe that your community building would actually put the kids in any significant danger. If this is the case, this is the crux of the matter. It’s important to acknowledge their concerns and show you’re not being dismissive, both as a matter of politeness and honesty and as a rhetorical matter. That was the purpose of the first bullet points. But you also need to explain the actual reason for your view. They are intelligent people capable of making their own decisions in light of the evidence, and they deserve the right to evaluate the facts and come to their own conclusions. Relative frequency estimates aren’t ‘trivializing’, they are the most important fact for their decision making.
You’re venting, but I’ll try to answer helpfully. The right thing to say is surely:
Sexual assault is very bad.
If anyone is aware of any specific incident, they should contact the CEA team or their local law enforcement.
We try to prevent it, and expel those who commit it (including some of the people in this story).
It occurs in every community.
There is little reason to think the EA community in general is much more or less problematic here than other movements (unless you think polyamory and drugs are risk factors).
It is impossible for any large decentralized movement to reduce the rate to zero.
One of the major examples in the story is about someone who basically noone regards as an EA (and does not call himself an EA).
You shouldn’t take journalists with an agenda to push at face value, especially as they tend to highlight the most extreme and unrepresentative examples.
The EA movement has a bunch of critics who are willing to use dishonest means to attack it because it threatens their moral superiority.
This sounds like a lot to deal with. But at the end of the day, this is basically a common issue that has occurred for most movements. For an extreme example, rape accusations against their leaders didn’t stop both Republican and Democrat parties repeatedly uniting behind and getting the accused men elected President.
There are other risk factors, though. Drug use definitely. I don’t think polyamory is a risk factor, but a relative lack of committed relationships in EA definitely is one (makes for more propositioning in general).
As well as being younger-skewed and male-skewed—that increases risk.
Encouraging a lot of people to start their own projects and get funded directly by someone in the community, as opposed to working at a larger org, increases risk.
Group housing and sharing accommodation, while not inherently bad, definitely increases risk.
In general, the intense mixing of personal and professional boundaries is an even more important risk factor, especially in combination with the other factors.
A lot of these factors are less present in other communities.
(To be clear, a lot of these risks also can have offsetting benefits.)
This seems like a very strange view? Polyamory allows for more propositioning in general because even people in committed relationships can proposition people.
I guess I mean to say “I don’t think polyamory is a risk factor, but more open / single relationship status in EA definitely is one”. Like if you have a polyamory relationship set that you’re happy with and it’s closed and you don’t proposition anyone to add, that would have the same level of security as a married non-poly couple.
Probably worth tabooing ‘poly’ here. As far as I can tell, basically every critic of poly is referring to relationships that are at open to new participants, and every defender of poly wants to defend those relationships also.
If you want you can come up with a new definition:
open_poly: a person in a relationship with someone else who is still open to more relationships.
The debate then becomes whether it is fine to be open_poly, or if there are significant costs and hence open_poly people should cease to be open. I think basically every critic of poly would be satisfied if the existing relationships continued but ceased accepting new members.
And based on your comment it seems like you basically think that open_poly does bring significant incremental risk vs a counterfactual of non-open.
What I’m getting at is the risk factor comes from open anything, regardless of whether it is poly or mono. Agree that tabooing is helpful here.
(Though to be clear I’m obviously not suggesting people stop trying to find romantic partners. Just like I’m not asking people to stop being male or young. Risk factors are risk factors even if they’re out of our control or have clear benefits.)
This is absolutely not how I’m going to go about dealing with it.
If I were on their side and somebody at any point responded to my concerns with a trivializing reminder that rape and abuse, in fact, happens in every community, I would nope out immediately.
I appreciate that this comment is trying to be helpful, but I feel a responsibility to point out that this is outright harmful advice.
EDIT: Sorry, I phrased myself with unnecessary meanness. To be clear the reason this, in my opinion, is poor advice is not because the arguments themselves are wrong. The reason is that what matters in good communication is to signal an understanding of the counterpart’s concerns, and even if these arguments are right they send the wrong signal.
Either you believe these problems are much more common in the EA community than other communities and this poses a risk to the kids or you don’t.
If you do believe we are much worse than average, and this would put the kids at risk, asking how you should do movement building to highschoolers is probably the wrong question. You just shouldn’t do that movement building.
Probably however you don’t believe that the EA movement is much worse than average, (because there is basically no evidence for this), and don’t believe that your community building would actually put the kids in any significant danger. If this is the case, this is the crux of the matter. It’s important to acknowledge their concerns and show you’re not being dismissive, both as a matter of politeness and honesty and as a rhetorical matter. That was the purpose of the first bullet points. But you also need to explain the actual reason for your view. They are intelligent people capable of making their own decisions in light of the evidence, and they deserve the right to evaluate the facts and come to their own conclusions. Relative frequency estimates aren’t ‘trivializing’, they are the most important fact for their decision making.
I think you are right and I overreacted.
No worries comrade, glad to help.