While I understand that people generally like Owen, I believe we need to ensure that we are not overlooking the substance of his message and giving him an overly favorable response.
Owen’s impropriety may be extensive. Just because one event was over 5 years ago, does not mean that the other >=3 events were (and if they were, one expects he would tell us). Relatedly, if it indeed was the most severe mistake of this nature, there may have been more severe mistakes of somewhat different kinds. There may yet be further events that haven’t yet been reported to, or disclosed by Owen, and indeed, on the outside view, most events would not be suchly reported.
What makes things worse is the kind of career Owen has pursued over the last 5+ years.Owen’s work centered on: i) advising orgs and funders, ii) hiring junior researchers, and iii) hosting workshops, often residential, and with junior researchers. If as Owen says, you know as of 2021-22 that you have deficiencies in dealing with power dynamics, and there have been a series of multiple events like this, then why are you still playing the roles described in (i-iii)? His medium term career trajectory, even relative to other EAs, is in the top 20% of pathways that would make these kinds of mistakes happen more, rather than less, often.
The fact that there has never been precisely the same mistake made twice should give little comfort, while the admission that mitigating these problems has gone “more slowly” than it should is worrying. Problems with sexual harassment usually have a lot to do with personality, so it should not be surprising that this behaviour has been hard to change with therapy.
Owen’s altered duties are somewhat underwhelming. His departure from the EV UK board is acknowledged as a temporary one, and while new mentoring connections are currently on hold, existing mentorship will carry on. The planning of events is currently suspended, but participation in them is permissible. Moreover, it is framed as a question of “when” he will resume these responsibilities, rather than “if”.
Owen attempts to insert himself into the conversation regarding governance measures. However, the act of a board member providing their opinions to the community health team could potentially disrupt efforts to uncover the truth of what occurred.
So I don’t believe that the apology was very reassuring. But what concerns me more is that from skimming the forum, one may think that forum readers are taking Owen’s side here. I think two things are going on. Firstly, few seem willing to speak against Owen due to his still considerable power in the EA community (that he indicates he intends to cling onto), so there is an imbalance in the comments. Secondly, people like Owen and his writing, and face cognitive dissonance in contemplating that he might be a bad guy, so there is an imbalance in the votes (e.g. between this post and the one from the EVF board). Understandable though this may be, it could have a chilling effect on those who have their own cases of sexual assault to report. I realise that we are a community who prize ourselves on thinking about the big issues, and striving to do the most good. But here I worry about our ability to handle the basics. For me, it’s a matter of decency—we should make righteous whistleblowers feel comfortable, rather than backing powerful members of own tribe.
I want to make a small comment on your phrase “it could have a chilling effect on those who have their own cases of sexual assault to report.” Owen has not committed sexual assault, but sexual harassment. If this imperfect wording was an isolated incident, I wouldn’t have said anything, but in every sexual misconduct comment thread I’ve followed on the forum, people have said sexual assault when they mean sexual harassment, and/or rape when they mean sexual assault. I was a victim of sexual abuse both growing up and as an adult, so I’m aware that there are big differences between the three, and feel it would be helpful to be mindful of our wording.
As someone with a fairly upvoted comment expressing a different perspective than yours, I want to mention that personally I had never heard of Owen until this post except for the disturbing description in the Time article, and that personally I have no interest in advancing my career based on any of my political opinions, so his power is irrelevant to me. While I appreciate that the last section of your comment came from a place of wanting to be supportive towards early career people like me, I think it oversimplifies the issues and found it a bit condescending. I’m trying to encourage women in my position to speak up more because we have important things to say.
I think it’s likely that the difference in the replies to this post and the replies to the official statement by EV UK are from people not reading the link in the EV UK post, and so not getting the full context of the statement.
Edit: Also, if I was trying to impress Owen, wouldn’t I be agreeing with his current perspective instead of arguing that he had over-updated?
Seconding that it’s a bit condescending to imply that people who are not digging into Owen might just “like Owen” or “face cognitive dissonance”
I also find the concept in the last sentence that commentors might look like they are “backing” powerful community members, to be gross. It’s not a zero-sum situation. This might not be exactly what Hattie meant by “backing” but I think others night feel vindicated that that’s a good way to look at it. But Owen and the woman herself collaborated on the piece so I’d be surprised to find that anyone involved thinks of this situation as like...winner v loser going forward.
I agree with (edit: many parts of) this comment and I’ve made a mental note to stay extra vigilant in this regard and go out of my way to consider that I might be biased in Owen’s favor (I tend to really like people who seem unusually introspective and open about their exact motivations, potential flaws, etc).
Also, I want to emphasize that while I made comments here that tried to shift the balance more in one direction, I wouldn’t necessarily describe and condense this as”taking Owen’s side.” (I feel like the only comment that “took Owen’s side” without any caveats has more than 120 disagreement karma, which is a pretty clear statement.) And I want to say somewhere that this incident was a negative update for me not just in a social-implications sense (pattern of having made people uncomfortable in asymmetric power dynamics). It also affected my impression of the strength of Owen’s orientation and ability to overcome “self-serving traps.” Especially for the longtermist project where we can’t help but rely on the best judgment of a few expert researchers (because there aren’t really any short-and-unambiguously-relevant/helpful feedback loops we can check instead), having people with strong orientations of this sort feels essential. If I learn about someone spending a lot of attention on sex or romance in contexts where EA impact is at stake, it updates me negatively about their potential to steer us towards actual impact.
There may yet be further events that haven’t yet been reported to, or disclosed by Owen, and indeed, on the outside view, most events would not be suchly reported.
I want to highlight this. The more general thing to flag is that this is only Cotton-Barratt’s side of the story, albeit apparently checked by several people. The prior is that at least some of this presentation to be slanted in his favor, subconsciously or otherwise.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to take either the facts or (especially) the framing of this story at face value without entertaining at least significant doubts, and I’m surprised at the number of commentators who appear to be doing this.
I realized you’ve made a good point, and don’t feel as confident about my takes as I used to because of this. People may not have been comfortable being honest when they gave Owen feedback on this post because of the similar power dynamics at play that seem to have made them unwilling to be honest in the first place. Although the policies about sexual misconduct of “Big EA” seem to have evolved substantially since then, so I hope it wouldn’t have been quite as bad.
I agree with that. But also, I don’t think you necessarily need a model of bias or malfeasance by anybody else. If I was reading a statement/apology by someone who has zero power remaining in this community, I still would have significant doubts about its accuracy.
The statement about pausing some exercises of soft power is rather indefinite:
For right now, I am also pausing other activities which may give me power:
Starting any new mentor relationships;
Recommending funding for anything or connecting people with funders;
Organizing events (in the immediate, I’ve stepped back from any decision-making for the Summit on Existential Security).
Again I’ll make decisions about when to resume these in consultation with my therapist.
There’s no timeframe on that (could it be a month?). There’s no meaningful external accountability or oversight of the decision to unpause (only “consultation” with a therapist who is bound by confidentiality).
Much better would be: I will not conduct these activities for a minimum of A months, and will not conduct them unless and until [pick one: B and C leaders / a independent therapist psychologist or other professional chosen by EVF / a community consultation on the Forum / someone other than Owen himself or his therapist] agrees it is appropriate for me to resume.
As a friend pointed out, relying on Owen’s own judgment regarding whether or when to restart mentorship, event organizing, and funding recommendations seems a really bad idea given that the problematic cases happened in the first place due to errors in Owen’s judgment. I think it should go without saying that these decisions should be made by a separate body.
(I don’t think these two types of judgments are perfectly correlated, but they seem somewhat correlated. Also I don’t mean to take a stance on whether/how Owen should be involved in the future; I think it’s good to consider the full range of options.)
Of course, funders and event organizers can collectively decide how long Owen’s pause from influence in those areas last. I’m wondering if it would be healthy for them to declare him essentially persona non grata for a period of time and until conditions were met. That would mean his recommendations made after last week would go unread, his attempts at connection would be ignored, and no one would ask him to organize events until the appointed time had passed and conditions had been met.
No one needs to justify their disagreevotes, but I’d be curious if anyone had another idea besides “Owen decides for himself how long the pause needs to be” and “funders/organizers who give him his soft power decide.”
There isn’t an EA Supreme Court to decide these questions.
Personally, I think it’s useful if this decision is made by people who competently investigate the case and gather all the information, not by people acting primarily based on public information like this post. Even though I know Owen well, I personally find it hard to say how likely Owen is to make mistakes again; it seems plausible to me that he can learn from his mistakes and continue to be highly involved in the community without causing any further issues, and it also seems possible that he would continue to make similar mistakes. It seems to me that the main way to find out would be by seeking out conversations and investigating.
I personally think the community health team (after implementing some improvements) would be suitable for deciding his future involvement. Even though they didn’t deal with this particular case well, I think overall their track record seems strong, and I think they can learn from this case. They have a lot more relevant context than external investigators.
Sure, you could add non-disqualified CH staff to the “pick one” I described upthread on who could clear his return. My point was that if Owen doesn’t propose an acceptable return-to-influence plan, it is ultimately the responsibility of those who give him that power to satisfy themselves that returning it is warranted.
I feel most confused why the therapist is important here. The therapist recs might be a necessary condition but clearly not sufficient. Therapist are not trained in this (it might be that his therapist is an expert in dealing with such situations, but then I expect he would have mentioned this).
While I understand that people generally like Owen, I believe we need to ensure that we are not overlooking the substance of his message and giving him an overly favorable response.
Owen’s impropriety may be extensive. Just because one event was over 5 years ago, does not mean that the other >=3 events were (and if they were, one expects he would tell us). Relatedly, if it indeed was the most severe mistake of this nature, there may have been more severe mistakes of somewhat different kinds. There may yet be further events that haven’t yet been reported to, or disclosed by Owen, and indeed, on the outside view, most events would not be suchly reported.
What makes things worse is the kind of career Owen has pursued over the last 5+ years. Owen’s work centered on: i) advising orgs and funders, ii) hiring junior researchers, and iii) hosting workshops, often residential, and with junior researchers. If as Owen says, you know as of 2021-22 that you have deficiencies in dealing with power dynamics, and there have been a series of multiple events like this, then why are you still playing the roles described in (i-iii)? His medium term career trajectory, even relative to other EAs, is in the top 20% of pathways that would make these kinds of mistakes happen more, rather than less, often.
The fact that there has never been precisely the same mistake made twice should give little comfort, while the admission that mitigating these problems has gone “more slowly” than it should is worrying. Problems with sexual harassment usually have a lot to do with personality, so it should not be surprising that this behaviour has been hard to change with therapy.
Owen’s altered duties are somewhat underwhelming. His departure from the EV UK board is acknowledged as a temporary one, and while new mentoring connections are currently on hold, existing mentorship will carry on. The planning of events is currently suspended, but participation in them is permissible. Moreover, it is framed as a question of “when” he will resume these responsibilities, rather than “if”.
Owen attempts to insert himself into the conversation regarding governance measures. However, the act of a board member providing their opinions to the community health team could potentially disrupt efforts to uncover the truth of what occurred.
So I don’t believe that the apology was very reassuring. But what concerns me more is that from skimming the forum, one may think that forum readers are taking Owen’s side here. I think two things are going on. Firstly, few seem willing to speak against Owen due to his still considerable power in the EA community (that he indicates he intends to cling onto), so there is an imbalance in the comments. Secondly, people like Owen and his writing, and face cognitive dissonance in contemplating that he might be a bad guy, so there is an imbalance in the votes (e.g. between this post and the one from the EVF board). Understandable though this may be, it could have a chilling effect on those who have their own cases of sexual assault to report. I realise that we are a community who prize ourselves on thinking about the big issues, and striving to do the most good. But here I worry about our ability to handle the basics. For me, it’s a matter of decency—we should make righteous whistleblowers feel comfortable, rather than backing powerful members of own tribe.
I want to make a small comment on your phrase “it could have a chilling effect on those who have their own cases of sexual assault to report.” Owen has not committed sexual assault, but sexual harassment. If this imperfect wording was an isolated incident, I wouldn’t have said anything, but in every sexual misconduct comment thread I’ve followed on the forum, people have said sexual assault when they mean sexual harassment, and/or rape when they mean sexual assault. I was a victim of sexual abuse both growing up and as an adult, so I’m aware that there are big differences between the three, and feel it would be helpful to be mindful of our wording.
As someone with a fairly upvoted comment expressing a different perspective than yours, I want to mention that personally I had never heard of Owen until this post except for the disturbing description in the Time article, and that personally I have no interest in advancing my career based on any of my political opinions, so his power is irrelevant to me. While I appreciate that the last section of your comment came from a place of wanting to be supportive towards early career people like me, I think it oversimplifies the issues and found it a bit condescending. I’m trying to encourage women in my position to speak up more because we have important things to say.
I think it’s likely that the difference in the replies to this post and the replies to the official statement by EV UK are from people not reading the link in the EV UK post, and so not getting the full context of the statement.
Edit: Also, if I was trying to impress Owen, wouldn’t I be agreeing with his current perspective instead of arguing that he had over-updated?
Seconding that it’s a bit condescending to imply that people who are not digging into Owen might just “like Owen” or “face cognitive dissonance”
I also find the concept in the last sentence that commentors might look like they are “backing” powerful community members, to be gross. It’s not a zero-sum situation. This might not be exactly what Hattie meant by “backing” but I think others night feel vindicated that that’s a good way to look at it. But Owen and the woman herself collaborated on the piece so I’d be surprised to find that anyone involved thinks of this situation as like...winner v loser going forward.
I agree with (edit: many parts of) this comment and I’ve made a mental note to stay extra vigilant in this regard and go out of my way to consider that I might be biased in Owen’s favor (I tend to really like people who seem unusually introspective and open about their exact motivations, potential flaws, etc).
Also, I want to emphasize that while I made comments here that tried to shift the balance more in one direction, I wouldn’t necessarily describe and condense this as”taking Owen’s side.” (I feel like the only comment that “took Owen’s side” without any caveats has more than 120 disagreement karma, which is a pretty clear statement.) And I want to say somewhere that this incident was a negative update for me not just in a social-implications sense (pattern of having made people uncomfortable in asymmetric power dynamics). It also affected my impression of the strength of Owen’s orientation and ability to overcome “self-serving traps.” Especially for the longtermist project where we can’t help but rely on the best judgment of a few expert researchers (because there aren’t really any short-and-unambiguously-relevant/helpful feedback loops we can check instead), having people with strong orientations of this sort feels essential. If I learn about someone spending a lot of attention on sex or romance in contexts where EA impact is at stake, it updates me negatively about their potential to steer us towards actual impact.
I want to highlight this. The more general thing to flag is that this is only Cotton-Barratt’s side of the story, albeit apparently checked by several people. The prior is that at least some of this presentation to be slanted in his favor, subconsciously or otherwise.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to take either the facts or (especially) the framing of this story at face value without entertaining at least significant doubts, and I’m surprised at the number of commentators who appear to be doing this.
I realized you’ve made a good point, and don’t feel as confident about my takes as I used to because of this. People may not have been comfortable being honest when they gave Owen feedback on this post because of the similar power dynamics at play that seem to have made them unwilling to be honest in the first place. Although the policies about sexual misconduct of “Big EA” seem to have evolved substantially since then, so I hope it wouldn’t have been quite as bad.
I agree with that. But also, I don’t think you necessarily need a model of bias or malfeasance by anybody else. If I was reading a statement/apology by someone who has zero power remaining in this community, I still would have significant doubts about its accuracy.
The statement about pausing some exercises of soft power is rather indefinite:
There’s no timeframe on that (could it be a month?). There’s no meaningful external accountability or oversight of the decision to unpause (only “consultation” with a therapist who is bound by confidentiality).
Much better would be: I will not conduct these activities for a minimum of A months, and will not conduct them unless and until [pick one: B and C leaders / a independentchosen by EVF / a community consultation on the Forum / someone other than Owen himself or his therapist] agrees it is appropriate for me to resume.
therapistpsychologist or other professional(edited to: psychologist or other professional)
As a friend pointed out, relying on Owen’s own judgment regarding whether or when to restart mentorship, event organizing, and funding recommendations seems a really bad idea given that the problematic cases happened in the first place due to errors in Owen’s judgment. I think it should go without saying that these decisions should be made by a separate body.
(I don’t think these two types of judgments are perfectly correlated, but they seem somewhat correlated. Also I don’t mean to take a stance on whether/how Owen should be involved in the future; I think it’s good to consider the full range of options.)
Of course, funders and event organizers can collectively decide how long Owen’s pause from influence in those areas last. I’m wondering if it would be healthy for them to declare him essentially persona non grata for a period of time and until conditions were met. That would mean his recommendations made after last week would go unread, his attempts at connection would be ignored, and no one would ask him to organize events until the appointed time had passed and conditions had been met.
No one needs to justify their disagreevotes, but I’d be curious if anyone had another idea besides “Owen decides for himself how long the pause needs to be” and “funders/organizers who give him his soft power decide.”
There isn’t an EA Supreme Court to decide these questions.
Personally, I think it’s useful if this decision is made by people who competently investigate the case and gather all the information, not by people acting primarily based on public information like this post. Even though I know Owen well, I personally find it hard to say how likely Owen is to make mistakes again; it seems plausible to me that he can learn from his mistakes and continue to be highly involved in the community without causing any further issues, and it also seems possible that he would continue to make similar mistakes. It seems to me that the main way to find out would be by seeking out conversations and investigating.
I personally think the community health team (after implementing some improvements) would be suitable for deciding his future involvement. Even though they didn’t deal with this particular case well, I think overall their track record seems strong, and I think they can learn from this case. They have a lot more relevant context than external investigators.
Sure, you could add non-disqualified CH staff to the “pick one” I described upthread on who could clear his return. My point was that if Owen doesn’t propose an acceptable return-to-influence plan, it is ultimately the responsibility of those who give him that power to satisfy themselves that returning it is warranted.
I feel most confused why the therapist is important here. The therapist recs might be a necessary condition but clearly not sufficient. Therapist are not trained in this (it might be that his therapist is an expert in dealing with such situations, but then I expect he would have mentioned this).
Edited my comment to: psychologist or other professional chosen by EVF. Thanks!
At least in the US, some mental health professionals have relevant training in assessment, generally those are doctoral-level psychologists.