Nine months later, I wanted to provide a brief update, in service of letting people make informed decisions about how to interact with me, and in service of helping people to understand the patterns that can cause harm.
Professional updates
I previously said I was pausing some professional activities, such as starting new mentor relationships or organizing events, and actually paused a larger class (e.g. posting on the forum; attending professional events I’m invited to). I’m now cautiously resuming some of these activities. In some cases (like posting things online) this is just a decision in my court, though I’ll continue to seek advice. In other cases there will be decisions for others to make about how to interface with me[1] (e.g. whether to have me at events) — in such cases I’d like to cooperate with the relevant parties to help them reach whatever decisions they’d most endorse. I’m making this change after working in-depth with a therapist, integrating more feedback, asking advice from wiser folks, and reflecting to better understand what I did wrong, how it was problematic, and how to act appropriately going forwards.
If anyone has any bad experiences interacting with me in the future, I want to say — please share that with somebody if you feel comfortable doing so. I’d love it if you could share with me (and I don’t think I’ve ever thought badly of someone for giving me blunt feedback), but I understand if it would be easier to share with someone else. I know that my colleagues (broadly understood) won’t want to support patterns where I’m doing harm.
Advice to people in similar situations
Based on my original statement, a few people expressed to me confusion about what had gone wrong. I want to be clear that I wasn’t just unlucky here: my actions would have been ill-judged even absent any power differential, and were decidedly inappropriate when there was one. In particular, I sought increased intimacy — heavily grounded in misguided emotional angst[2] — in ways that were inattentive to romantic communication norms, and sometimes lost touch with what the other person wanted. In case this might reach anyone in a similar position to where I was (and thereby help to avert the pattern playing out again), here is the advice I’d want to give to my past self:
You need to get over yourself. Emotionally, the question of whether you’re bad for feeling attracted to people is crushing. It happens that it’s a misguided question, and not one that other people would be interested in. I recommend — if you can access it — just not feeling bad about it. But you’re allowed to be misguided on things. What’s not OK is casting other people as your judge (a role that shouldn’t exist!) without their permission.
What’s worse is trying to involve the people you feel attracted to in determining whether you’re bad. This is a recipe for harm — both because they should never have to engage with you on that question, but also because its reductive nature doesn’t leave room for their own feelings, and you’re at risk both of not noticing their experience, and even of asking them to be complicit in masking their experience to provide reassurances on your nonsense question. People who have less structural power are at greater risk of not feeling comfortable being direct — you’re not being respectful by “taking them at their word” and assuming they’ll say the important things, because it doesn’t really give them room to choose how to engage. Moreover, (1) if you have professional interactions with someone where shame inhibits your ability to think/talk directly about the meta of the relationship, this could make things go wrong, and (2) if you ever hurt someone who regards you in some way as a mentor, that would be a betrayal of their trust.
Instead, think things through in private, or with help. Principally, process your feelings; when it’s no longer painful to think about, if you still feel moved to act, think through how any action may be received. (It’s not bad to think about these things! it’s actually laudable to do so. Naïvety is not a shield. Your sex aversion won’t always stop others from seeing things as about sex.) Journal about it. Talk to friends. Get a therapist.
(If you’re reading this and you feel like this might in some way be talking to you, feel free to reach out — I could say a bit more, but am also just very happy to listen to anyone who finds it difficult to talk about this.)
Personal updates
Having spent time working through my angst I now think I know how to seek romantic connection in healthy ways. However, I also now identify as monogamous — I still think polyamory has a philosophical appeal, but it’s apparent to me that I don’t really want more romance in my life; and it’s now apparent that feeling attraction while monogamous need not involve wronging people. Going forwards I won’t bring these topics up in conversation. Also having taken feedback from folks I’ll avoid some behaviours I wasn’t tracking as potentially problematic (notably, taking meetings in hotel rooms when it was more convenient).[3]
I’m conscious that in some cases people might be uncomfortable interacting with me because of my past actions. Navigating this is tricky. I’m quite uncomfortable with the idea that people who don’t want to might feel compelled to interact with me, but I don’t think I can promise never to be present in any spaces where this might occur. I will say that I would like it if people felt affordance to withdraw or to ask me to withdraw. (I can’t imagine holding this against someone, and if I find the experience difficult that’s between me and my therapist.)
I’m sorry again to everyone. I care deeply about giving people interacting with me good experiences, and strive to be one of the people who proactively contributes to a healthy culture with robust safeguards against harm. I fell well short of that standard. I’ll work hard to do consistently better on this in the future — I never get to know exactly what my remaining blindspots are, but I’m hopeful that I’ve now understood enough to give the problematic behaviour a wide berth — and I welcome others helping to hold me accountable in this.
And in some cases that might take some time; e.g. CEA had said that they wouldn’t talk to me about the issues in-depth or consider having me at their events until the external investigation EV commissioned was complete — which seemed very reasonable. When I shared a draft of this comment with EV they let me know that the investigation has now concluded; I don’t yet know what its recommendations are or how they plan to respond. I thought I’d go ahead and post now because it seems epistemically cleaner for me to just share things without a question of those being influenced by where EV land. Of course I plan to cooperate with whatever they end up asking of me, and could end up making further policy updates if there’s further useful feedback.
I’ve been confused about whether/how to mention this because I don’t think that motivations excuse actions. But it’s central enough to what went wrong that I expect things to make less sense — and be less useful for helping to avert similar patterns — if I omit it.
These are serious policy updates — I’m thinking about things pretty differently now, and will act in ways that should steer well clear of what was problematic. They’re not ironclad commitments, because there are clear exceptions (e.g. I don’t want to stop talking to my wife or therapist) and I don’t want to lock something in when I’m not sure I’ve understood all of the cases where it would be a bad idea.
Thanks for the public update. Some readers might also be interested in what actions and decisions EV and the Community Health team have been taking around this.
Over the last 9 months Owen has not been allowed to attend EV-run events and in-person spaces (like EA Global and EV run offices). EV exec is currently deciding how EV will interact with Owen going forward, and are planning to publish that in the future. They have sought external advice and advice from our team.
We are in communication with Owen about professional updates on his end so we can check in about safeguards where relevant. We have given him some advice aimed to prevent possible future harm.
People actively considering the choice of whether to work with Owen based on the balance of information available are welcome to reach out to us for input as part of their decision making process. Feel free to reach out to me (catherine@centreforeffectivealtruism.org) if you are in this position.
Quite useful to get these updates. Though i think it would have been good as a quick take that was linked to here—I’ve only just accidentally come across this now, and even though I saw you posting on the forum again recently, didn’t think to check back here. I would imagine this is true of most people who are likely to interact with you going forward
Thanks for the feedback, I didn’t really consider a quick take, and find it plausible it would have been the best option.
I think EV may post a related update in the not-too-distant future, so at this point I’ll plan to wait and then post a link to this update on that (so as not to pull people’s attention onto the topic twice when once will do). Or if it looks like that’s not going to happen I’ll take some other step to make sure it’s visible. Does that seem sufficient?
Hi all,
Nine months later, I wanted to provide a brief update, in service of letting people make informed decisions about how to interact with me, and in service of helping people to understand the patterns that can cause harm.
Professional updates
I previously said I was pausing some professional activities, such as starting new mentor relationships or organizing events, and actually paused a larger class (e.g. posting on the forum; attending professional events I’m invited to). I’m now cautiously resuming some of these activities. In some cases (like posting things online) this is just a decision in my court, though I’ll continue to seek advice. In other cases there will be decisions for others to make about how to interface with me[1] (e.g. whether to have me at events) — in such cases I’d like to cooperate with the relevant parties to help them reach whatever decisions they’d most endorse. I’m making this change after working in-depth with a therapist, integrating more feedback, asking advice from wiser folks, and reflecting to better understand what I did wrong, how it was problematic, and how to act appropriately going forwards.
If anyone has any bad experiences interacting with me in the future, I want to say — please share that with somebody if you feel comfortable doing so. I’d love it if you could share with me (and I don’t think I’ve ever thought badly of someone for giving me blunt feedback), but I understand if it would be easier to share with someone else. I know that my colleagues (broadly understood) won’t want to support patterns where I’m doing harm.
Advice to people in similar situations
Based on my original statement, a few people expressed to me confusion about what had gone wrong. I want to be clear that I wasn’t just unlucky here: my actions would have been ill-judged even absent any power differential, and were decidedly inappropriate when there was one. In particular, I sought increased intimacy — heavily grounded in misguided emotional angst[2] — in ways that were inattentive to romantic communication norms, and sometimes lost touch with what the other person wanted. In case this might reach anyone in a similar position to where I was (and thereby help to avert the pattern playing out again), here is the advice I’d want to give to my past self:
(If you’re reading this and you feel like this might in some way be talking to you, feel free to reach out — I could say a bit more, but am also just very happy to listen to anyone who finds it difficult to talk about this.)
Personal updates
Having spent time working through my angst I now think I know how to seek romantic connection in healthy ways. However, I also now identify as monogamous — I still think polyamory has a philosophical appeal, but it’s apparent to me that I don’t really want more romance in my life; and it’s now apparent that feeling attraction while monogamous need not involve wronging people. Going forwards I won’t bring these topics up in conversation. Also having taken feedback from folks I’ll avoid some behaviours I wasn’t tracking as potentially problematic (notably, taking meetings in hotel rooms when it was more convenient).[3]
I’m conscious that in some cases people might be uncomfortable interacting with me because of my past actions. Navigating this is tricky. I’m quite uncomfortable with the idea that people who don’t want to might feel compelled to interact with me, but I don’t think I can promise never to be present in any spaces where this might occur. I will say that I would like it if people felt affordance to withdraw or to ask me to withdraw. (I can’t imagine holding this against someone, and if I find the experience difficult that’s between me and my therapist.)
I’m sorry again to everyone. I care deeply about giving people interacting with me good experiences, and strive to be one of the people who proactively contributes to a healthy culture with robust safeguards against harm. I fell well short of that standard. I’ll work hard to do consistently better on this in the future — I never get to know exactly what my remaining blindspots are, but I’m hopeful that I’ve now understood enough to give the problematic behaviour a wide berth — and I welcome others helping to hold me accountable in this.
And in some cases that might take some time; e.g. CEA had said that they wouldn’t talk to me about the issues in-depth or consider having me at their events until the external investigation EV commissioned was complete — which seemed very reasonable. When I shared a draft of this comment with EV they let me know that the investigation has now concluded; I don’t yet know what its recommendations are or how they plan to respond. I thought I’d go ahead and post now because it seems epistemically cleaner for me to just share things without a question of those being influenced by where EV land. Of course I plan to cooperate with whatever they end up asking of me, and could end up making further policy updates if there’s further useful feedback.
I’ve been confused about whether/how to mention this because I don’t think that motivations excuse actions. But it’s central enough to what went wrong that I expect things to make less sense — and be less useful for helping to avert similar patterns — if I omit it.
These are serious policy updates — I’m thinking about things pretty differently now, and will act in ways that should steer well clear of what was problematic. They’re not ironclad commitments, because there are clear exceptions (e.g. I don’t want to stop talking to my wife or therapist) and I don’t want to lock something in when I’m not sure I’ve understood all of the cases where it would be a bad idea.
Thanks for the public update. Some readers might also be interested in what actions and decisions EV and the Community Health team have been taking around this.
Over the last 9 months Owen has not been allowed to attend EV-run events and in-person spaces (like EA Global and EV run offices). EV exec is currently deciding how EV will interact with Owen going forward, and are planning to publish that in the future. They have sought external advice and advice from our team.
We are in communication with Owen about professional updates on his end so we can check in about safeguards where relevant. We have given him some advice aimed to prevent possible future harm.
People actively considering the choice of whether to work with Owen based on the balance of information available are welcome to reach out to us for input as part of their decision making process. Feel free to reach out to me (catherine@centreforeffectivealtruism.org) if you are in this position.
Quite useful to get these updates. Though i think it would have been good as a quick take that was linked to here—I’ve only just accidentally come across this now, and even though I saw you posting on the forum again recently, didn’t think to check back here. I would imagine this is true of most people who are likely to interact with you going forward
Thanks for the feedback, I didn’t really consider a quick take, and find it plausible it would have been the best option.
I think EV may post a related update in the not-too-distant future, so at this point I’ll plan to wait and then post a link to this update on that (so as not to pull people’s attention onto the topic twice when once will do). Or if it looks like that’s not going to happen I’ll take some other step to make sure it’s visible. Does that seem sufficient?
Seems good