If you’re talking to a man about rape and he thinks it’s not a big deal, there’s some chance he’ll actually rape you.
I realise you did not say this applied to Robin, but just in case anyone reading was confused and mistakenly thought it was implicit, we should make clear that Robin does not think rape is ‘not a big deal’. Firstly, opposition to rape is almost universal in the west, especially among the highly educated; as such our prior should be extremely strong that he does think rape is bad. In addition to this, and despite his opposition to unnecessary disclaimers, Robin has made clear his opposition to rape on many occasions. Here are some quotations that I found easily on the first page of google and by following the links in the article EA Munich linked:
I was not at all minimizing the harm of rape when I used rape as a reference to ask if other harms might be even bigger. Just as people who accuse others of being like Hitler do not usually intend to praise Hitler, people who compare other harms to rape usually intend to emphasize how big are those other harms, not how small is rape.
of course I’m against rape, and it is easy to see or ask.
Separately, while I don’t know what the base rate for a hypothetical person who supposedly doesn’t take rape sufficiently seriously will rape someone at an EA event as a result (I suspect it is very low), I think we would be relatively safe here as it would presumably be a zoom meeting anyway due to German Immigration Restrictions.
Yes, I’m not saying that Robin Hanson is a criminal, and it’s good to point out that he’s not pro-rape. Thanks for that.
I was thinking about what it would look like for the whole EA community to generally try to avoid upsetting people who have been traumatized by rape, and comparing that to if the EA community tried to avoid upsetting people who have been traumatized by trolley accidents, which was a suggestion above.
My intuition about the base rate of people who have experienced sexual assault and how often sexual assault happens at EA events is probably different from yours which may explain our different approaches to this topic.
I realise you did not say this applied to Robin, but just in case anyone reading was confused and mistakenly thought it was implicit, we should make clear that Robin does not think rape is ‘not a big deal’. Firstly, opposition to rape is almost universal in the west, especially among the highly educated; as such our prior should be extremely strong that he does think rape is bad. In addition to this, and despite his opposition to unnecessary disclaimers, Robin has made clear his opposition to rape on many occasions. Here are some quotations that I found easily on the first page of google and by following the links in the article EA Munich linked:
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/11/hanson-loves-moose-caca.html
https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/990762713876922368?lang=en
https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/991069965263491072
https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/1042739542242074630
and from personal communication:
Separately, while I don’t know what the base rate for a hypothetical person who supposedly doesn’t take rape sufficiently seriously will rape someone at an EA event as a result (I suspect it is very low), I think we would be relatively safe here as it would presumably be a zoom meeting anyway due to German Immigration Restrictions.
Yes, I’m not saying that Robin Hanson is a criminal, and it’s good to point out that he’s not pro-rape. Thanks for that.
I was thinking about what it would look like for the whole EA community to generally try to avoid upsetting people who have been traumatized by rape, and comparing that to if the EA community tried to avoid upsetting people who have been traumatized by trolley accidents, which was a suggestion above.
My intuition about the base rate of people who have experienced sexual assault and how often sexual assault happens at EA events is probably different from yours which may explain our different approaches to this topic.
How often does sexual assault and/or rape happen at EA events, in your opinion? Are we talking 1 in 10 events, 1 in 100, 1 in 1000?