Rockwell—these norms might sound fair, reasonable, and helpful, at first glance.
But they show, IMHO, a strong latent sex-negativity, drug-negativity, and cohousing-negativity that is the diametrical opposite of EA’s traditional subculture—at least until recent years, when ‘safetyism’ seems to have become prioritized over fun, collegiality, and alternative lifestyles.
Take the issue of ‘power differentials’, for example. Some people are really attracted to people who are more powerful, higher status, higher prestige, more influential, more famous, wealthier, and/or older. (There is a LOT of psychological research on these kinds of status-seeking mate preferences, which are very common across cultures.) Such people might prefer to ‘date coworkers’, especially when there is a power differential. This is especially true for the significant proportion of people involved in ‘power exchange’ relationships (e.g. the BDSM subculture, including Dom/sub relationships). (This is salient to me because I teach Human Sexuality courses at college, and I do research on anti-BDSM and anti-polyamory stigma and prejudice).
So, prohibiting ‘power-differential dating’ sounds extra ‘safe’ at first glance. But it would marginalize and stigmatize everybody who’s already in a ‘power-differential’ relationship, or who wants to be—especially among people who take their EA identity seriously, and who would prefer to date other EAs. (Also, of course, stigmatizing ‘power-differential dating’ often boils down to ageism, and the stigmatization of relationships that involve ‘age gaps’.)
Likewise with the notion that EAs should never promote drug use among coworkers, including legal drugs, and alcohol. Let’s be honest here. The expansion of many of our ‘moral circles’ involved psychedelic experiences that allowed us to think about animal sentience, AI, long-termism, and future people in new ways. For those of us with Aspergers (like me) or other autism-spectrum traits, psychoactive drugs such as MDMA helped us develop empathy, compassion, and capacities for social perspective-taking and connection. For those of us with social awkwardness and introversion, light recreational drugs such as alcohol, cannabis, or modafinil can be crucial in loosening up enough to make friends and network at parties and social events. If EA strongly discourages substance use in all EA-adjacent social events, cohousing communities, and friendship circles, then we may be socially handicapping everyone who isn’t neurotypical extrovert.… and we may be keeping our moral circles from growing.
So, in short, I think for any proposed changes to EA subculture norms, we should think very carefully about how these new norms might affect the full range and diversity of people involved in EA, given their actual preferences, experiences, and relationships.
And we should think about whether the new norms are contrary to the traditions of the EA subculture as it’s developed over the last dozen years. In my view, EA is a wonderful subculture, full of fascinating and principled people, with unique perspectives and priorities, and I think this has been due, in no small measure, to the relatively sex-positive, drug-positive, and cohousing-positive features of ‘Trad EA’ culture.
While I am all for anonymous voting, I am confused by −44. Feels like this is a reasonable take that many people disagree with, rather than an unacceptable/timewasting one that should be nuked into the ground.
I’ve noticed that every time I post something critical of coddling culture or runaway safetyism or the way that woke politics is undermining EA culture, I get seriously downvoted. I don’t get downvoted like that when I post about AI safety, parenting as an EA, teaching EA classes, or any other topic.
So I suspect there are a lot of political biases at work here.
Oof, there’s a lot to unpack here, but I’ll keep it short: All of these subculture norms are also present on university campuses. I would think—and hope—that that wouldn’t lead you to endorsing professor-student relationships or psychedelic use during faculty meetings. You can have your BDSM and your LSD and your separate, professional workplace.
With these norms, power differential relationships could still occur across organisations.
Also there’s an important distinction between “not actively promoting drug use amongst your employees” vs “strongly discouraging your employees from using drugs recreationally when they go to social events”.
I too get extremely annoyed by some anti-power-differential rhetoric that I see on the forum a lot and I think that any attempt to police that through norms or other means is an unacceptable violation of privacy. I agree this post has some elements of that or at least is not clear about the motivations.
However, I think many of the specific things proposed here are on the basis of conflicts of interest rather than power differentials. I see no issue dating co-workers including ones more/less senior than you but I think there is a real problem dating someone in your chain of command because then there are conflicts of interest at play. For this reason I have no issue if one partner finds another with their own money but it seems unethical to dating grantees if you are awarding grants on behalf of another person/organization without disclosing the relationship.
Would you agree that such conflict of interest is a legitimate concern rather than an element of safety culture?
I generally agree that clear, specific conflicts of interest are a bigger problem for relationships that mix professional and sexual roles, than vague ‘power differentials’ (which could include virtually any differences between partners in their wealth, status, prestige, fame, age, influence, intelligence, citation count, job seniority, etc.)
Rockwell—these norms might sound fair, reasonable, and helpful, at first glance.
But they show, IMHO, a strong latent sex-negativity, drug-negativity, and cohousing-negativity that is the diametrical opposite of EA’s traditional subculture—at least until recent years, when ‘safetyism’ seems to have become prioritized over fun, collegiality, and alternative lifestyles.
Take the issue of ‘power differentials’, for example. Some people are really attracted to people who are more powerful, higher status, higher prestige, more influential, more famous, wealthier, and/or older. (There is a LOT of psychological research on these kinds of status-seeking mate preferences, which are very common across cultures.) Such people might prefer to ‘date coworkers’, especially when there is a power differential. This is especially true for the significant proportion of people involved in ‘power exchange’ relationships (e.g. the BDSM subculture, including Dom/sub relationships). (This is salient to me because I teach Human Sexuality courses at college, and I do research on anti-BDSM and anti-polyamory stigma and prejudice).
So, prohibiting ‘power-differential dating’ sounds extra ‘safe’ at first glance. But it would marginalize and stigmatize everybody who’s already in a ‘power-differential’ relationship, or who wants to be—especially among people who take their EA identity seriously, and who would prefer to date other EAs. (Also, of course, stigmatizing ‘power-differential dating’ often boils down to ageism, and the stigmatization of relationships that involve ‘age gaps’.)
Likewise with the notion that EAs should never promote drug use among coworkers, including legal drugs, and alcohol. Let’s be honest here. The expansion of many of our ‘moral circles’ involved psychedelic experiences that allowed us to think about animal sentience, AI, long-termism, and future people in new ways. For those of us with Aspergers (like me) or other autism-spectrum traits, psychoactive drugs such as MDMA helped us develop empathy, compassion, and capacities for social perspective-taking and connection. For those of us with social awkwardness and introversion, light recreational drugs such as alcohol, cannabis, or modafinil can be crucial in loosening up enough to make friends and network at parties and social events. If EA strongly discourages substance use in all EA-adjacent social events, cohousing communities, and friendship circles, then we may be socially handicapping everyone who isn’t neurotypical extrovert.… and we may be keeping our moral circles from growing.
So, in short, I think for any proposed changes to EA subculture norms, we should think very carefully about how these new norms might affect the full range and diversity of people involved in EA, given their actual preferences, experiences, and relationships.
And we should think about whether the new norms are contrary to the traditions of the EA subculture as it’s developed over the last dozen years. In my view, EA is a wonderful subculture, full of fascinating and principled people, with unique perspectives and priorities, and I think this has been due, in no small measure, to the relatively sex-positive, drug-positive, and cohousing-positive features of ‘Trad EA’ culture.
While I am all for anonymous voting, I am confused by −44. Feels like this is a reasonable take that many people disagree with, rather than an unacceptable/timewasting one that should be nuked into the ground.
I don’t see it as a reasonable take. I see it as a dangerous one.
What exactly is ‘dangerous’ about expressing concern that Rockwell’s post comes across as sex-negative, drug-negative, and cohousing-negative?
Is open discussion of a community’s social norms ‘dangerous’?
Nathan—thanks for your support here.
I’ve noticed that every time I post something critical of coddling culture or runaway safetyism or the way that woke politics is undermining EA culture, I get seriously downvoted. I don’t get downvoted like that when I post about AI safety, parenting as an EA, teaching EA classes, or any other topic.
So I suspect there are a lot of political biases at work here.
Yeah, I feel something like this, though I like that people feel happy to express it.
I guess I want to try and pull it out and actually have the discussion.
Oof, there’s a lot to unpack here, but I’ll keep it short: All of these subculture norms are also present on university campuses. I would think—and hope—that that wouldn’t lead you to endorsing professor-student relationships or psychedelic use during faculty meetings. You can have your BDSM and your LSD and your separate, professional workplace.
With these norms, power differential relationships could still occur across organisations.
Also there’s an important distinction between “not actively promoting drug use amongst your employees” vs “strongly discouraging your employees from using drugs recreationally when they go to social events”.
I too get extremely annoyed by some anti-power-differential rhetoric that I see on the forum a lot and I think that any attempt to police that through norms or other means is an unacceptable violation of privacy. I agree this post has some elements of that or at least is not clear about the motivations.
However, I think many of the specific things proposed here are on the basis of conflicts of interest rather than power differentials. I see no issue dating co-workers including ones more/less senior than you but I think there is a real problem dating someone in your chain of command because then there are conflicts of interest at play. For this reason I have no issue if one partner finds another with their own money but it seems unethical to dating grantees if you are awarding grants on behalf of another person/organization without disclosing the relationship.
Would you agree that such conflict of interest is a legitimate concern rather than an element of safety culture?
I generally agree that clear, specific conflicts of interest are a bigger problem for relationships that mix professional and sexual roles, than vague ‘power differentials’ (which could include virtually any differences between partners in their wealth, status, prestige, fame, age, influence, intelligence, citation count, job seniority, etc.)