I appreciate you sharing your perspective, and I can see this has been difficult for you. However, I find your framing troubling for several reasons:
I don’t feel like your apology fully acknowledges wrongdoing. You say you’re sorry people were upset, but you frame your behaviour as part of an unavoidable “tradeoff” between different communication styles rather than as something you should work to change. This shifts from “I’m really sorry and will change” to “I’m sorry you’re sad, but I endorse my actions and may continue them.”
Most men navigate these situations without repeated issues. The fact that you’ve had multiple incidents over years, culminating in a ban, suggests this isn’t about inherent incompatibility between “clumsy men and sensitive women.” Many men—including those who are neurodivergent, from different cultural backgrounds, or naturally flirtatious—manage to participate in EA without repeatedly making others uncomfortable. Some aren’t flirty at all and still form meaningful relationships.
Cultural differences can be navigated. While I understand different cultures have different norms around touch, people regularly adapt their behaviour when they learn it’s making others uncomfortable. You mention being “as careful as you could be,” but if that still resulted in complaints, it might be worth exploring different strategies rather than framing it as an unsolvable incompatibility.
The social utilitarian framing feels concerning. You seem to weigh your enjoyment of physical touch and flirtation against others’ discomfort as if they’re comparable goods. Most people (even those within EA) might find this approach to interpersonal ethics troubling—it treats others’ boundaries as negotiable based on your personal cost-benefit analysis.
I understand you’ve experienced real loss here—friendships, community, and reputation. But I don’t think the “tradeoff” you describe is inevitable—it’s about finding ways to express yourself that don’t consistently cross others’ boundaries.
You attribute a sense to me: “I’m sorry you’re sad, but I endorse my actions and may continue them.”
This piece is about how I’ve largely stopped attending EA events. I don’t intend to continue these actions. Also I explicitly do not endorse many of these actions “I would take it back if I could.”
Perhaps you mean that it seems like I intend to continue being social and occasionally touching my friends on the arm or making slightly flirty jokes outside of the EA community. I am more careful these days, but yes I do. Is this your issue?
You say “Many men—including those who are neurodivergent, from different cultural backgrounds, or naturally flirtatious—manage to participate in EA without repeatedly making others uncomfortable.”
Yes, this is true. Do you think that the piece doesn’t acknowledge this? eg here:
”I’ve always been told I don’t have a great grasp of personal space. In some sense I don’t know what your experience of it is. How do you know how close to stand? Can you feel, somewhere, that someone is crowding you? Can you sense when they move back? I can start to notice some of that, but only if I’m really paying attention. And mostly I am not.”
My point is that I can both care about people and hurt them and so seek to remove myself from the situation? Is your point that I don’t actually care? Or that there is some obvious low risk path I can take short of removing myself? I think I’m missing the implication here? What do you think the obvious next step is?
you frame your behaviour as part of an unavoidable “tradeoff” between different communication styles rather than as something you should work to change
This seems inconsistent with the post—they give a list of various ways they tried to work to change it in the “Evidence of caring” section. This seemed like a pretty central part of the post to me and I’m confused by how you missed it (unless your comment was LLM written, which I would consider poor form—you do have 5 em-dashes after all)
He didn’t succeed at changing their behavior, but (assuming they made a sincere effort) I consider that more about ability than intent. I’m not trying to minimise this: the impact on others remains serious regardless of intent, and I think asking him to leave community spaces to minimize harm to others is reasonable. But I think this is still an important difference, especially when passing moral judgement on him.
My impression from the post is that he intends to continue not going to EA events, even after the ban. If true, this actually seems like a pretty good strategy for minimizing future harm done within the EA community, and better than him rejoining events and trying harder to fix his behavior.
On the outside view, I predict that if someone tries to fix a problem with their behavior and self describes as “as careful as I could be” but fails to avoid future incidents, then no matter how hard they try/what approach they adopt, their next attempt has a decent chance to fail. So from a harm minimisation perspective, removing themselves from situations where they could cause harm seems better. Suggesting that he just try harder without additional specifics, seems like it will increase the expected number of women harmed, which I consider irresponsible advice. The top priority is harm minimisation, not about getting him to accept personal responsibility.
This doesn’t address the risk of causing harm in their other social contexts, but that feels harder to judge without more information. I think the EA community has a uniquely strong mix of social and professional contexts that can be particularly hard to navigate well, especially EAGs. I can totally believe there are people whose behaviour causes harm in EA circles who are fine elsewhere.
@Toby Tremlett🔹 This content seems to be AI written, and also (relatedly?) to be misunderstanding the post. Are there any plans to implement a policy on LLMs, like the one on LessWrong?
Thanks May. Regarding this specific comment—I think it adds value, and mod action isn’t needed. But the mods have been discussing an LLM policy, and this is a valuable bump! We’ve been getting more substantially AI comments recently, and we’ve rate-limited and spoken with the individuals. But in my view, we definitely need a more scalable solution, and clearer norms on this. Stay tuned.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s AI written. But even if it is, it’s fine with me. It makes information dense points, that one might agree or disagree with.
I appreciate the thoughts from the comments below, but I don’t think I misunderstood the core issues. SpeedyOtter does say he continues being “touchy” and “flirty” outside EA—he’s just (mostly) stopped attending EA events. My concern is that he’s not saying “I’ve recognised this behaviour is harmful and stopped,” but rather “I’ve moved it to other communities.”
I did read the “Evidence of caring” section, and I can see he feels genuine sadness about the situation. However, planning to continue behaviours that repeatedly make others uncomfortable, even after seeing the harm they cause, seems concerning to me. And throughout I still felt there was a general framing of boundary issues as an inevitable trade-off between different social styles, e.g. with the comment “but also, sometimes things go really well”. This comment gave me the vibe of “yes I sometimes hurt people, but sometimes my behaviour goes well, and some amount of this trade-off is acceptable”, which in theory is correct, but many men have healthy relationships with women without sometimes hurting them as collateral damage.
I acknowledge that he says he tried to stop flirting/touching but complaints continued. This raises questions: either there’s a significant gap in understanding what constitutes appropriate behaviour, or there were other problematic behaviours not being addressed. And my guess is that part of what’s needed isn’t just behavioural tweaks, but a fundamental shift away from viewing others’ discomfort as acceptable collateral damage for personal expression.
(And to clarify, I did use LLMs to help draft this and its parent comment, but I don’t see that as problematic, and I have consistently used em-dashes for years, so I wouldn’t take that as a signal of anything.)
I asked a couple of questions in reply to your message. I don’t think this can really be a dialogue if you respond to your own questions rather than mine.
I appreciate you sharing your perspective, and I can see this has been difficult for you. However, I find your framing troubling for several reasons:
I don’t feel like your apology fully acknowledges wrongdoing. You say you’re sorry people were upset, but you frame your behaviour as part of an unavoidable “tradeoff” between different communication styles rather than as something you should work to change. This shifts from “I’m really sorry and will change” to “I’m sorry you’re sad, but I endorse my actions and may continue them.”
Most men navigate these situations without repeated issues. The fact that you’ve had multiple incidents over years, culminating in a ban, suggests this isn’t about inherent incompatibility between “clumsy men and sensitive women.” Many men—including those who are neurodivergent, from different cultural backgrounds, or naturally flirtatious—manage to participate in EA without repeatedly making others uncomfortable. Some aren’t flirty at all and still form meaningful relationships.
Cultural differences can be navigated. While I understand different cultures have different norms around touch, people regularly adapt their behaviour when they learn it’s making others uncomfortable. You mention being “as careful as you could be,” but if that still resulted in complaints, it might be worth exploring different strategies rather than framing it as an unsolvable incompatibility.
The social utilitarian framing feels concerning. You seem to weigh your enjoyment of physical touch and flirtation against others’ discomfort as if they’re comparable goods. Most people (even those within EA) might find this approach to interpersonal ethics troubling—it treats others’ boundaries as negotiable based on your personal cost-benefit analysis.
I understand you’ve experienced real loss here—friendships, community, and reputation. But I don’t think the “tradeoff” you describe is inevitable—it’s about finding ways to express yourself that don’t consistently cross others’ boundaries.
I am confused by this.
You attribute a sense to me: “I’m sorry you’re sad, but I endorse my actions and may continue them.”
This piece is about how I’ve largely stopped attending EA events. I don’t intend to continue these actions. Also I explicitly do not endorse many of these actions “I would take it back if I could.”
Perhaps you mean that it seems like I intend to continue being social and occasionally touching my friends on the arm or making slightly flirty jokes outside of the EA community. I am more careful these days, but yes I do. Is this your issue?
You say “Many men—including those who are neurodivergent, from different cultural backgrounds, or naturally flirtatious—manage to participate in EA without repeatedly making others uncomfortable.”
Yes, this is true. Do you think that the piece doesn’t acknowledge this? eg here:
”I’ve always been told I don’t have a great grasp of personal space. In some sense I don’t know what your experience of it is. How do you know how close to stand? Can you feel, somewhere, that someone is crowding you? Can you sense when they move back? I can start to notice some of that, but only if I’m really paying attention. And mostly I am not.”
My point is that I can both care about people and hurt them and so seek to remove myself from the situation? Is your point that I don’t actually care? Or that there is some obvious low risk path I can take short of removing myself? I think I’m missing the implication here? What do you think the obvious next step is?
This seems inconsistent with the post—they give a list of various ways they tried to work to change it in the “Evidence of caring” section. This seemed like a pretty central part of the post to me and I’m confused by how you missed it (unless your comment was LLM written, which I would consider poor form—you do have 5 em-dashes after all)
He didn’t succeed at changing their behavior, but (assuming they made a sincere effort) I consider that more about ability than intent. I’m not trying to minimise this: the impact on others remains serious regardless of intent, and I think asking him to leave community spaces to minimize harm to others is reasonable. But I think this is still an important difference, especially when passing moral judgement on him.
My impression from the post is that he intends to continue not going to EA events, even after the ban. If true, this actually seems like a pretty good strategy for minimizing future harm done within the EA community, and better than him rejoining events and trying harder to fix his behavior.
On the outside view, I predict that if someone tries to fix a problem with their behavior and self describes as “as careful as I could be” but fails to avoid future incidents, then no matter how hard they try/what approach they adopt, their next attempt has a decent chance to fail. So from a harm minimisation perspective, removing themselves from situations where they could cause harm seems better. Suggesting that he just try harder without additional specifics, seems like it will increase the expected number of women harmed, which I consider irresponsible advice. The top priority is harm minimisation, not about getting him to accept personal responsibility.
This doesn’t address the risk of causing harm in their other social contexts, but that feels harder to judge without more information. I think the EA community has a uniquely strong mix of social and professional contexts that can be particularly hard to navigate well, especially EAGs. I can totally believe there are people whose behaviour causes harm in EA circles who are fine elsewhere.
@Toby Tremlett🔹 This content seems to be AI written, and also (relatedly?) to be misunderstanding the post. Are there any plans to implement a policy on LLMs, like the one on LessWrong?
(Edit: referring to Eli Nathan’s comment)
Thanks May. Regarding this specific comment—I think it adds value, and mod action isn’t needed. But the mods have been discussing an LLM policy, and this is a valuable bump! We’ve been getting more substantially AI comments recently, and we’ve rate-limited and spoken with the individuals. But in my view, we definitely need a more scalable solution, and clearer norms on this. Stay tuned.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s AI written. But even if it is, it’s fine with me. It makes information dense points, that one might agree or disagree with.
I agree it seems to be misunderstanding the post.
I appreciate the thoughts from the comments below, but I don’t think I misunderstood the core issues. SpeedyOtter does say he continues being “touchy” and “flirty” outside EA—he’s just (mostly) stopped attending EA events. My concern is that he’s not saying “I’ve recognised this behaviour is harmful and stopped,” but rather “I’ve moved it to other communities.”
I did read the “Evidence of caring” section, and I can see he feels genuine sadness about the situation. However, planning to continue behaviours that repeatedly make others uncomfortable, even after seeing the harm they cause, seems concerning to me. And throughout I still felt there was a general framing of boundary issues as an inevitable trade-off between different social styles, e.g. with the comment “but also, sometimes things go really well”. This comment gave me the vibe of “yes I sometimes hurt people, but sometimes my behaviour goes well, and some amount of this trade-off is acceptable”, which in theory is correct, but many men have healthy relationships with women without sometimes hurting them as collateral damage.
I acknowledge that he says he tried to stop flirting/touching but complaints continued. This raises questions: either there’s a significant gap in understanding what constitutes appropriate behaviour, or there were other problematic behaviours not being addressed. And my guess is that part of what’s needed isn’t just behavioural tweaks, but a fundamental shift away from viewing others’ discomfort as acceptable collateral damage for personal expression.
(And to clarify, I did use LLMs to help draft this and its parent comment, but I don’t see that as problematic, and I have consistently used em-dashes for years, so I wouldn’t take that as a signal of anything.)
I asked a couple of questions in reply to your message. I don’t think this can really be a dialogue if you respond to your own questions rather than mine.