To build on Greg’s example, I think in normal circumstances, if eg a school was linked with a summer camp for high schoolers, and the summer camp made the errors outlined in the post linked to, then the school would correctly sever ties with the summer camp.
The mistakes made seem to me to be outrageously bad—they put teenagers in the custody of someone they had lots of evidence was an unethical sociopath, and they even let him ask a minor to go to Burning Man with him, and after that still didn’t ban him from their events (!). Although apparently little harm was done, this seems to me to have been very lucky, and if the minor had agreed (which CFAR apparently would not have prevented) this most likely would have ended extremely badly. If the minor had agreed and it had ended extremely badly, would you think that should disqualify them from running future events? If yes, why should the good fortune of the minor turning down the invitation make any difference to how we treat CFAR?
From accounts I heard later (I was not at the camp, but did hear a lot about it from folks who were), I’m basically certain CFAR would have interfered with the minor going even if the minor had agreed. Multiple CFAR staff members stepped in to attempt to prevent the minor from going (as mentioned in e.g. https://www.rationality.org/resources/updates/2019/cfars-mistakes-regarding-brent, and as I also remember from closer to time) much fuss was correctly made at the time, etc. I agree that many bad mistakes were made, then and previously and afterwards, however.
Also, after we eventually understood what the deal had been with Brent, we gave up running programs for minors. We continue to run programs for adults. My feeling is that adults should indeed not expect that we are vetting a particularly careful or safe environment particularly reliably, but that this is often not the crux for whether an adult wishes to attend a CFAR workshop.
To build on Greg’s example, I think in normal circumstances, if eg a school was linked with a summer camp for high schoolers, and the summer camp made the errors outlined in the post linked to, then the school would correctly sever ties with the summer camp.
The mistakes made seem to me to be outrageously bad—they put teenagers in the custody of someone they had lots of evidence was an unethical sociopath, and they even let him ask a minor to go to Burning Man with him, and after that still didn’t ban him from their events (!). Although apparently little harm was done, this seems to me to have been very lucky, and if the minor had agreed (which CFAR apparently would not have prevented) this most likely would have ended extremely badly. If the minor had agreed and it had ended extremely badly, would you think that should disqualify them from running future events? If yes, why should the good fortune of the minor turning down the invitation make any difference to how we treat CFAR?
From accounts I heard later (I was not at the camp, but did hear a lot about it from folks who were), I’m basically certain CFAR would have interfered with the minor going even if the minor had agreed. Multiple CFAR staff members stepped in to attempt to prevent the minor from going (as mentioned in e.g. https://www.rationality.org/resources/updates/2019/cfars-mistakes-regarding-brent, and as I also remember from closer to time) much fuss was correctly made at the time, etc. I agree that many bad mistakes were made, then and previously and afterwards, however.
Also, after we eventually understood what the deal had been with Brent, we gave up running programs for minors. We continue to run programs for adults. My feeling is that adults should indeed not expect that we are vetting a particularly careful or safe environment particularly reliably, but that this is often not the crux for whether an adult wishes to attend a CFAR workshop.