This is more than a mere “nugget of truth”. It’s majority truth , with some context missing. (I don’t think your added context adds much, given that Owen was polyamorous and self-admittedly attracted to the woman. Also, he could have pushed the org to pay for a hotel room but didn’t)
As for the larger picture, this anecdote was used to prove the point that there was “sexual misconduct” in EA. This absolutely fits that description.
As for the wider point, the article title implies that there is a “toxic culture of sexual harrassment and abuse” in EA. (It only explicitly claims that “these women” say that, but in general it sides with the idea that this is true).
The victim in this case (who again, was 100% honest in her account) claims that there are “systemic issues” in EA. Owen himself claims that the culture of EA contributed to his sexual misconduct. We also now know that a third party in EA (the org hiring) failed to see the problems in her situation, and was not willing to pay for a hotel room to avoid it.
Does this prove, on it’s own, that EA has a “toxic culture”? Certainly not on it’s own. But it is evidence in it’s favor, and this is only one anecdote. You can disagree with the conclusion if you want (I don’t think it’s entirely fair), but no part of this was “lying” or dishonesty.
Owen himself claims that the culture of EA contributed to his sexual misconduct.
Regardless of my own views about which are the largest cultural problems in EA, what’s your prior that people who do wrongdoing are accurate in their public assessment of factors that diminish their moral responsibility and/or make themselves look better? Your italicized bolding implies that you think this is an unusually reliable source of truth, whereas I pretty straightforwardly think it’s unusually bad evidence.
“As for the wider point, the article title implies that there is a ‘toxic culture of sexual harrassment and abuse’ in EA.”
But this is the part I don’t agree with and I think the journalist could have found that the alarm-ringing they chose to go with was easily downgradable in many senses.
You can even tell from the title that put salaciousness before accuracy and in implication, which I consider a bad-faith move:
Title: “Effective Altruism has Sexual Harassment Problem, Women Say”
Better title: “Some Women Say Effective Altruism has Neglected a Toxic Culture Toward Women”
I realize the person who wrote the title is likely not the journalist, but surely you can see how their actual piece prioritizes the scandalous first narrative while putting the second (a truth many more can get behind) on the backburner? It’s messed up tbh. [I realize this is normal in journalism but that’s why many people find it to be a messed-up field til proven otherwise, and “normal practice” does not mean “okay practice” or “epistemically honest practice”]
And I think all groups have a toxic culture and “systemic issues” around gendered experience. I don’t think EA has more of either than the world or tech at large. I actually I think it has way less of them.
[Edit: I also think that saying that the wife not being present doesn’t mean much because of poly shows a fundamental misunderstanding of poly and how primary poly relationships tend to function. If you want to throw it out as a useless factoid, I recommend you throw it out cuz you don’t expect wives to stand up for other women to their husbands or something? (obviously that has it’s own problems). But not because you think established people in poly relationships would uniquely allow bad behavior they notice or something. Sigh.]
And I think all groups have a toxic culture and “systemic issues” around gendered experience. I don’t think EA has more of either than the world or tech at large. I actually I think it has way less of them.
Okay, so you think that EA does have a toxic culture around women, you just don’t think it’s worse than tech at large. (as a sidenote, what mostly matters is whether there is room for improvement, which I think is undeniable at this point). Your perspective is included in the article with the quotes from Julia Wise: “it’s hard to gauge how common such issues are within EA compared to broader society”.
But the women they are interviewing disagree with that. They think it’s “particularly acute”, and are presenting evidence in favor of that proposition. Do you think they should have refrained from stating their honest opinion? That the reporter should not have reported their honest opinion?
I also think the language could have been downgraded somewhat, but this is way below the level of “lying bad-actor”.
I think it’s better than tech at large or basically anywhere else I’ve found. [Edit: Nobody just writes a Time piece about a community that needs the same level of improvement as other places. Come on.. the world knows this and let’s not pretend otherwise. The world therefore should not be happy and shrug its shoulders and allow its attention to be collectively wasted in such a way? Readers should be able to trust that if something is published in Time that it is important and actually noteworthy. To publish something non-noteworthy in there is inherently espistemic dishonesty. So no, that “improvement is needed” is not the only thing that matters when it comes to the question of whether the journalist was dishonest, mal-intentioned, etc]
And I think an investigative journalist absolutely could have found more claims to the actual contrary, yeah, and actually should have before blasting a narrative on a nation-wide scale. I see them as basically paying lip service to neutrality by quoting Julia there (if they were truly neutral, they could have just said that themselves, as I see similar qualifying sentiments in Kelsey Piper’s journalism). And paying lip service to neutrality allows them to avoid accusations that they didn’t show both sides (like severely overweighting one side is so much better?). It also allows them to dodge any claims from normies and colleagues that they aren’t following journalistic integrity. But the bare-minimum journalistic integrity doesn’t hold a candle to unqualified, every-man integrity, and I think that’s closer to what the journalist’s presentation lacked.
Nobody just writes a Time piece about a community that needs the same level of improvement as other places
Time has no way of determining if the rate is higher in EA than in other places. Sexual harassment is hidden by nature, and EA is a niche group. Are you expecting them to conduct a survey or something? That’s our job.
The only way of determining the rate of sexual harassment is to raise awareness of the cases that you do know about, so that others feel safe to speak out. I for one am incredibly glad that these cases have come to light. I do not think the world would be a better place if this honest woman had remained silent.
I realized I neglected your question above about how I feel about the women. Sorry about that:
Actually I am very glad the women came forwardand even glad they tried a new method than the CH team (those who had reported already but weren’t happy with the outcome). And I respect them for doing so. [My impression is that women were and are still bouncing off EA because of mismatch in professional and cultural expectations so this needed addressing. And I believe it is important for anyone who suspects they might view something awry with our culture to try to raise alarm bells so it can be fixed.]
I am much less happy that the method chosen was to speak to Time. Is any EA happy about this reality specifically? Are the women? I think other methods, like posting anonymous incident reports on the Forum or something with actual usable details (which still no woman has done),could have led to faster resolution, including outcomes like OCB stepping down from the board and prompting a period of reflection where he and other men figure out why he/they’d been so slow to improve and notice perspectives of women before (in other words, both tangible and intangible systemic improvements).
BUT I simultaneously do not blame the women or hold it against them or think they acted immorally or dishonestly or something by speaking to TIME. My respect for them stands.
Firstly I imagine that most if not all were sought out by the journalist for their takes, and responding to and and trusting journalists is very normal thing to do. I claim it’s a risky move to talk to journalists without further caveats [but I don’t expect anyone else to believe this and I myself would not have even have held back from talking to journalists up til say a year ago. In other words, I have an inkling they did as I would have done just a couple years ago if a journalist asked me for my perspective. If a Time journalist reaches out to a normal conscientious person, they are going to assume it is an important reason and do their part.]
It also makes total sense that the women would be worried about SA and toxicity-to-women in EA because, from the POV of experiencing it, and feeling anxiety that something has gone awry, they can’t really tell if the experiences that made them uncomfortable are a sign of something bigger or if they had a bad dice roll. Actually from the POV of experiencing worse in EA than elsewhere, without knowing anyone else’s experiences, it should update the women that there is a significant problem in EA.
Also, in any of the cases where there were misunderstandings, I get it and don’t think this is itself a reason that we should expect people to be quiet about their discomfort. Where someone is feeling uncomfortable, they may also be new, so it’s understandable that they would struggle to tell who is vs isn’t a self-described EA, or EA vs rationalist, or EA-adjacent vs EA-central, or coincidental invite vs actual ingroup, or anomaly vs norm, or awkwardness vs sexually or selfishly-motivated etc. It falls on the journalist to put together the right narrative, much more than the women.
Of course it’s possible that one or more of the women were intentionally scandal-promoting in their own telling, but that would not be the majority of women and anyway the buck is supposed to stop at the journalist (they are supposed to be able to find bad actors pushing a self-interested narrative), so I am not even entertaining the possibility in this moment. I don’t think it meaningfully changes the conclusions about the journalist.
Sorry to always write so much but I just don’t have any simple one-line opinions about anything about this situation.
I agree that surveys are the community’s job. And that option has been considered since the November SA post (I know cuz I talked to Catherine about it) and is now moving forward. Tbh I chalk it up to bad timing that concerns about gendered experiences in EA weren’t handled immediately with such a survey back in November. That would have been really in character for the community before then. But the major post about SA came right after the FTX crisis, and the community had just lost a lot of slack to start new projects. Everyone’s workload at CEA grew, and I doubt they could even do much hiring due to concerns about financial investigations. It seems to me that a truth-intentioned (and skilled) journalist could have shown how EA was struggling right then and portrayed things in a nuanced and better light (again like Kelsey did here in a response to that very Time piece). Normally it’s correct to assume incompetence rather than mal-intent/ulterior motives, but we have to assume a Time Magazine journalist is about as skilled as they come, so I think not-well-intentioned, or not-well-enough-intentioned when it comes to prioritizing truth over scandal, holds water.
Regardless of surveys, some of these incidents were easily-noted to be (accidental on the part of the women I assume) red herrings when it came to the claim that EA (not rationality, not bay area group houses, not tech, but EA) has an acute sexual harassment problem or toxicity problem, and it is the role of the truth-focused journalist to figure out which is which. Just read these details which have since come out about the Time incidents. I think all those details would have been trivially easy for a truth-focused journalist to figure out, if they had made it known to Julia or Catherine that they wanted them. And I think they should have wanted them before blasting something on the national stage.
Of course, the problem from a journalist’s perspective with getting more details and a more nuanced view is that they can make the piece no longer important-seeming enough to be worthy of Time Magazine. And then all your investigation will have to go on the chopping block and never be seen really. So incentives align for them to blow things out of proportion, both intentionally and self-servingly/unconsciously. [I’d even guess there is a selection effect that journalists who get enough clout to work at Time are adapted to do this].
So yes it seems like the journalist jumped on this with little to no good faith assumptions or curiosity as to other hypotheses for how a narrative could come to them which might look real but actually be false. And that’s the very generous way of putting it that I don’t necessarily put as high odds on as a simpler narrative about outright dishonesty and willful ignorance.
I think I can’t keep responding to this thread but you should feel free to write a response if you like. If you want some further perspective on what I think about journalists vs the women, you might grok it from this post reflecting on different levels of comms or this comment thread (including the responses, but starting there). Have a good one.
I’m happy to leave it here too. I hope I did not get too argumentative in this conversation, I respect your opinion and I appreciate that you are willing to write a lot of detail on it, especially considering the heated topic matter.
As my last word, I’ll just point out that the some of the women did try going through EA channels like the community team and making posts on this forum, but were unhappy with the results, feeling ignored and belittled. Whereas it seems like the article has caused at least some positive change.
If we want to discourage future articles from coming out, we need to ensure that the people coming forward are treated with the kindness and respect they deserve, and that their reports and concerns are taken seriously.
This is more than a mere “nugget of truth”. It’s majority truth , with some context missing. (I don’t think your added context adds much, given that Owen was polyamorous and self-admittedly attracted to the woman. Also, he could have pushed the org to pay for a hotel room but didn’t)
As for the larger picture, this anecdote was used to prove the point that there was “sexual misconduct” in EA. This absolutely fits that description.
As for the wider point, the article title implies that there is a “toxic culture of sexual harrassment and abuse” in EA. (It only explicitly claims that “these women” say that, but in general it sides with the idea that this is true).
The victim in this case (who again, was 100% honest in her account) claims that there are “systemic issues” in EA. Owen himself claims that the culture of EA contributed to his sexual misconduct. We also now know that a third party in EA (the org hiring) failed to see the problems in her situation, and was not willing to pay for a hotel room to avoid it.
Does this prove, on it’s own, that EA has a “toxic culture”? Certainly not on it’s own. But it is evidence in it’s favor, and this is only one anecdote. You can disagree with the conclusion if you want (I don’t think it’s entirely fair), but no part of this was “lying” or dishonesty.
Regardless of my own views about which are the largest cultural problems in EA, what’s your prior that people who do wrongdoing are accurate in their public assessment of factors that diminish their moral responsibility and/or make themselves look better? Your italicized bolding implies that you think this is an unusually reliable source of truth, whereas I pretty straightforwardly think it’s unusually bad evidence.
“As for the wider point, the article title implies that there is a ‘toxic culture of sexual harrassment and abuse’ in EA.”
But this is the part I don’t agree with and I think the journalist could have found that the alarm-ringing they chose to go with was easily downgradable in many senses.
You can even tell from the title that put salaciousness before accuracy and in implication, which I consider a bad-faith move:
Title: “Effective Altruism has Sexual Harassment Problem, Women Say”
Better title: “Some Women Say Effective Altruism has Neglected a Toxic Culture Toward Women”
I realize the person who wrote the title is likely not the journalist, but surely you can see how their actual piece prioritizes the scandalous first narrative while putting the second (a truth many more can get behind) on the backburner? It’s messed up tbh. [I realize this is normal in journalism but that’s why many people find it to be a messed-up field til proven otherwise, and “normal practice” does not mean “okay practice” or “epistemically honest practice”]
And I think all groups have a toxic culture and “systemic issues” around gendered experience. I don’t think EA has more of either than the world or tech at large. I actually I think it has way less of them.
[Edit: I also think that saying that the wife not being present doesn’t mean much because of poly shows a fundamental misunderstanding of poly and how primary poly relationships tend to function. If you want to throw it out as a useless factoid, I recommend you throw it out cuz you don’t expect wives to stand up for other women to their husbands or something? (obviously that has it’s own problems). But not because you think established people in poly relationships would uniquely allow bad behavior they notice or something. Sigh.]
Okay, so you think that EA does have a toxic culture around women, you just don’t think it’s worse than tech at large. (as a sidenote, what mostly matters is whether there is room for improvement, which I think is undeniable at this point). Your perspective is included in the article with the quotes from Julia Wise: “it’s hard to gauge how common such issues are within EA compared to broader society”.
But the women they are interviewing disagree with that. They think it’s “particularly acute”, and are presenting evidence in favor of that proposition. Do you think they should have refrained from stating their honest opinion? That the reporter should not have reported their honest opinion?
I also think the language could have been downgraded somewhat, but this is way below the level of “lying bad-actor”.
I think it’s better than tech at large or basically anywhere else I’ve found. [Edit: Nobody just writes a Time piece about a community that needs the same level of improvement as other places. Come on.. the world knows this and let’s not pretend otherwise. The world therefore should not be happy and shrug its shoulders and allow its attention to be collectively wasted in such a way? Readers should be able to trust that if something is published in Time that it is important and actually noteworthy. To publish something non-noteworthy in there is inherently espistemic dishonesty. So no, that “improvement is needed” is not the only thing that matters when it comes to the question of whether the journalist was dishonest, mal-intentioned, etc]
And I think an investigative journalist absolutely could have found more claims to the actual contrary, yeah, and actually should have before blasting a narrative on a nation-wide scale. I see them as basically paying lip service to neutrality by quoting Julia there (if they were truly neutral, they could have just said that themselves, as I see similar qualifying sentiments in Kelsey Piper’s journalism). And paying lip service to neutrality allows them to avoid accusations that they didn’t show both sides (like severely overweighting one side is so much better?). It also allows them to dodge any claims from normies and colleagues that they aren’t following journalistic integrity. But the bare-minimum journalistic integrity doesn’t hold a candle to unqualified, every-man integrity, and I think that’s closer to what the journalist’s presentation lacked.
Time has no way of determining if the rate is higher in EA than in other places. Sexual harassment is hidden by nature, and EA is a niche group. Are you expecting them to conduct a survey or something? That’s our job.
The only way of determining the rate of sexual harassment is to raise awareness of the cases that you do know about, so that others feel safe to speak out. I for one am incredibly glad that these cases have come to light. I do not think the world would be a better place if this honest woman had remained silent.
I realized I neglected your question above about how I feel about the women. Sorry about that:
Actually I am very glad the women came forward and even glad they tried a new method than the CH team (those who had reported already but weren’t happy with the outcome). And I respect them for doing so. [My impression is that women were and are still bouncing off EA because of mismatch in professional and cultural expectations so this needed addressing. And I believe it is important for anyone who suspects they might view something awry with our culture to try to raise alarm bells so it can be fixed.]
I am much less happy that the method chosen was to speak to Time. Is any EA happy about this reality specifically? Are the women? I think other methods, like posting anonymous incident reports on the Forum or something with actual usable details (which still no woman has done), could have led to faster resolution, including outcomes like OCB stepping down from the board and prompting a period of reflection where he and other men figure out why he/they’d been so slow to improve and notice perspectives of women before (in other words, both tangible and intangible systemic improvements).
BUT I simultaneously do not blame the women or hold it against them or think they acted immorally or dishonestly or something by speaking to TIME. My respect for them stands.
Firstly I imagine that most if not all were sought out by the journalist for their takes, and responding to and and trusting journalists is very normal thing to do. I claim it’s a risky move to talk to journalists without further caveats [but I don’t expect anyone else to believe this and I myself would not have even have held back from talking to journalists up til say a year ago. In other words, I have an inkling they did as I would have done just a couple years ago if a journalist asked me for my perspective. If a Time journalist reaches out to a normal conscientious person, they are going to assume it is an important reason and do their part.]
It also makes total sense that the women would be worried about SA and toxicity-to-women in EA because, from the POV of experiencing it, and feeling anxiety that something has gone awry, they can’t really tell if the experiences that made them uncomfortable are a sign of something bigger or if they had a bad dice roll. Actually from the POV of experiencing worse in EA than elsewhere, without knowing anyone else’s experiences, it should update the women that there is a significant problem in EA.
Also, in any of the cases where there were misunderstandings, I get it and don’t think this is itself a reason that we should expect people to be quiet about their discomfort. Where someone is feeling uncomfortable, they may also be new, so it’s understandable that they would struggle to tell who is vs isn’t a self-described EA, or EA vs rationalist, or EA-adjacent vs EA-central, or coincidental invite vs actual ingroup, or anomaly vs norm, or awkwardness vs sexually or selfishly-motivated etc. It falls on the journalist to put together the right narrative, much more than the women.
Of course it’s possible that one or more of the women were intentionally scandal-promoting in their own telling, but that would not be the majority of women and anyway the buck is supposed to stop at the journalist (they are supposed to be able to find bad actors pushing a self-interested narrative), so I am not even entertaining the possibility in this moment. I don’t think it meaningfully changes the conclusions about the journalist.
Sorry to always write so much but I just don’t have any simple one-line opinions about anything about this situation.
I agree that surveys are the community’s job. And that option has been considered since the November SA post (I know cuz I talked to Catherine about it) and is now moving forward. Tbh I chalk it up to bad timing that concerns about gendered experiences in EA weren’t handled immediately with such a survey back in November. That would have been really in character for the community before then. But the major post about SA came right after the FTX crisis, and the community had just lost a lot of slack to start new projects. Everyone’s workload at CEA grew, and I doubt they could even do much hiring due to concerns about financial investigations. It seems to me that a truth-intentioned (and skilled) journalist could have shown how EA was struggling right then and portrayed things in a nuanced and better light (again like Kelsey did here in a response to that very Time piece). Normally it’s correct to assume incompetence rather than mal-intent/ulterior motives, but we have to assume a Time Magazine journalist is about as skilled as they come, so I think not-well-intentioned, or not-well-enough-intentioned when it comes to prioritizing truth over scandal, holds water.
Regardless of surveys, some of these incidents were easily-noted to be (accidental on the part of the women I assume) red herrings when it came to the claim that EA (not rationality, not bay area group houses, not tech, but EA) has an acute sexual harassment problem or toxicity problem, and it is the role of the truth-focused journalist to figure out which is which. Just read these details which have since come out about the Time incidents. I think all those details would have been trivially easy for a truth-focused journalist to figure out, if they had made it known to Julia or Catherine that they wanted them. And I think they should have wanted them before blasting something on the national stage.
Of course, the problem from a journalist’s perspective with getting more details and a more nuanced view is that they can make the piece no longer important-seeming enough to be worthy of Time Magazine. And then all your investigation will have to go on the chopping block and never be seen really. So incentives align for them to blow things out of proportion, both intentionally and self-servingly/unconsciously. [I’d even guess there is a selection effect that journalists who get enough clout to work at Time are adapted to do this].
So yes it seems like the journalist jumped on this with little to no good faith assumptions or curiosity as to other hypotheses for how a narrative could come to them which might look real but actually be false. And that’s the very generous way of putting it that I don’t necessarily put as high odds on as a simpler narrative about outright dishonesty and willful ignorance.
I think I can’t keep responding to this thread but you should feel free to write a response if you like.
If you want some further perspective on what I think about journalists vs the women, you might grok it from this post reflecting on different levels of comms or this comment thread (including the responses, but starting there). Have a good one.
I’m happy to leave it here too. I hope I did not get too argumentative in this conversation, I respect your opinion and I appreciate that you are willing to write a lot of detail on it, especially considering the heated topic matter.
As my last word, I’ll just point out that the some of the women did try going through EA channels like the community team and making posts on this forum, but were unhappy with the results, feeling ignored and belittled. Whereas it seems like the article has caused at least some positive change.
If we want to discourage future articles from coming out, we need to ensure that the people coming forward are treated with the kindness and respect they deserve, and that their reports and concerns are taken seriously.