I want to echo the thoughts of others here and say that I am so grateful you have the strength to share this post, deeply saddened at the pain and suffering that you and others have been subject to, and scared and angry that this is connected to a community I am a part of. If you do write those further posts in this sequence, I will certainly read them. And thank you for sharing the resources/links too—“The Right to Sex” has been a candidate for my next book, and this might have clinched it.
The fact that someone like ‘Ratrick’ can seem to have such influence in the AI Safety community is terrifying, like this quote: “Ratrick read books on “punitive dog training “ in order to control and “condition” his female colleagues at NeurIPS” made me audibly say “what the fuck”[1] - I won’t try to find out who it is, but it certainly seems that many people who read this post will know who this person is, and I hope those who do know this person can name & shame, or otherwise challenge their influence and perhaps bring some justice (only if doing so would not harm other victims, or put others in potential danger of course).
From my persepctive, another reason that this is so upsetting is that my interactions with EA have basically been unanimously positive—of course that doesn’t mean they don’t happen, and as a man not in The Bay my life experience and story are very different from yours! But it makes me feel like there’s a ‘shadow-side’ of EA that I don’t know about or can’t see, where people are abused and harmed, and I can’t do anything to actually help those who are hurt.
Finally, while these incidents are not limited to one location, it does seem to be concentrated in The Bay. There’s not much I can say here apart from to echo what Matthias said when the original article came out and hope that the Bay Scene gets its shit together. The more I hear about The Bay from the Forum, personal anecdotes, and Twitter discourse,[2] the less it looks like a place or a culture I want to identify with.
Yeah, I am mainly really sad that my experience in EA/EA-adjacent communities was through the distorted lense of these redpilled AI and AI safety researchers. But I hope to engage with the more productive part (and seemingly majority!) of the EA community going forward!
I want to echo the thoughts of others here and say that I am so grateful you have the strength to share this post, deeply saddened at the pain and suffering that you and others have been subject to, and scared and angry that this is connected to a community I am a part of. If you do write those further posts in this sequence, I will certainly read them. And thank you for sharing the resources/links too—“The Right to Sex” has been a candidate for my next book, and this might have clinched it.
The fact that someone like ‘Ratrick’ can seem to have such influence in the AI Safety community is terrifying, like this quote: “Ratrick read books on “punitive dog training “ in order to control and “condition” his female colleagues at NeurIPS” made me audibly say “what the fuck”[1] - I won’t try to find out who it is, but it certainly seems that many people who read this post will know who this person is, and I hope those who do know this person can name & shame, or otherwise challenge their influence and perhaps bring some justice (only if doing so would not harm other victims, or put others in potential danger of course).
From my persepctive, another reason that this is so upsetting is that my interactions with EA have basically been unanimously positive—of course that doesn’t mean they don’t happen, and as a man not in The Bay my life experience and story are very different from yours! But it makes me feel like there’s a ‘shadow-side’ of EA that I don’t know about or can’t see, where people are abused and harmed, and I can’t do anything to actually help those who are hurt.
Finally, while these incidents are not limited to one location, it does seem to be concentrated in The Bay. There’s not much I can say here apart from to echo what Matthias said when the original article came out and hope that the Bay Scene gets its shit together. The more I hear about The Bay from the Forum, personal anecdotes, and Twitter discourse,[2] the less it looks like a place or a culture I want to identify with.
Though my WTF counter was definitely higher than 1 reading this article
I know this isn’t representative, but it does capture many prominent people in that scene, especially posting from anon or pseudo-anon accounts
Yeah, I am mainly really sad that my experience in EA/EA-adjacent communities was through the distorted lense of these redpilled AI and AI safety researchers. But I hope to engage with the more productive part (and seemingly majority!) of the EA community going forward!