My impression was that due to multiple accusations of sexual harassment, Jacy Reese Anthis was stepping back from the community. When and why did this stop?
He was evicted from Brown University in 2012 for sexual harassment (as discussed here).
And he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment (as discussed here).
He also lied on his website about being a founder of effective altruism.
Several people have asked me recently whether Jacy is allowed to post on the Forum. He was never banned from the Forum, although CEA told him he would not be allowed in certain CEA-supported events and spaces.
Three years ago, CEA thought a lot about how to cut ties with a person while not totally losing the positive impact they can have. Our take was that it’s still good to be able to read and benefit from someone’s research, even if not interacting with them in other ways.
Someone’s presence on the Forum or in most community spaces doesn’t mean they’ve been particularly vetted.
This kind of situation is especially difficult when the full information can’t be public. I’ve heard both from people worried that EA spaces are too unwilling to ban people who make the culture worse, and from people worried that EA spaces are too willing to ban people without good enough reasons or evidence. These are both important concerns.
Is there more information you can share without risking the anonymity of the complainants or victims? E.g.,
How many complainants/witnesses were there?
How many separate concerning instances were there?
Did all of the complaints concern behaviour through text/messaging (or calls), or were some in person, too?
Was the issue that he made inappropriate initial advances, or that he continued to make advances after the individuals showed no interest in the initial advance? Both? Or something else?
I can understand why people want more info. Jacy and I agreed three years ago what each of us would say publicly about this, and I think it would be difficult and not particularly helpful to revisit the specifics now.
If anyone is making a decision where more info would be helpful, for example you’re deciding whether to have him at an event or you’re running a community space and want to think about good policies in general, please feel free to contact me and I’ll do what I can to help you make a good decision.
For convenience, this is CEA’s statement from three years ago:
We approached Jacy about our concerns about his behavior after receiving reports from several parties about concerns over several time periods, and we discussed this public statement with him. We have not been able to discuss details of most of these concerns in order to protect the confidentiality of the people who raised them, but we find the reports credible and concerning. It’s very important to CEA that EA be a community where people are treated with fairness and respect. If you’ve experienced problems in the EA community, we want to help. Julia Wise serves as a contact person for the community, and you can always bring concerns to her confidentially.
By my reading, the information about the reports contained in this is:
CEA received reports from several parties about concerns over Jacy’s behavior over several time periods
CEA found the reports ‘credible and concerning’
CEA cannot discuss details of most of these concerns because the people who raised them want to protect their confidentiality
It also implies that Jacy did not treat people with fairness and respect in the reported incidents
‘It’s very important to CEA that EA be a community where people are treated with fairness and respect’ - why say this unless it’s applicable to this case?
Julia also said in a comment at the time that the reports were from members of the animal advocacy and EA communities, and CEA decided to approach Jacy primarily because of these rather than the Brown case:
The accusation of sexual misconduct at Brown is one of the things that worried us at CEA. But we approached Jacy primarily out of concern about other more recent reports from members of the animal advocacy and EA communities.
Thanks for engaging in this discussion Julia. I’m writing replies that are a bit harsh, but I recognize that I’m likely missing some information about these things, which may even be public and I just don’t know where to look for it yet.
Jacy and I agreed three years ago what each of us would say publicly about this, and I think it would be difficult and not particularly helpful to revisit the specifics now.
However, this sounds… not good, as if the decision on current action is based on Jacy’s interests and on honoring a deal with him. I could think of a few possible good reasons for more information to be bad, e.g. that the victims prefer nothing more is said, or that it would harm CEA’s ability to act in future cases. But readers can only speculate on what the real reason is and whether they agree with it.
Both here and regarding what I asked in my other comment, the reasoning is very opaque. This is a problem, because it means there’s no way to scrutinize the decisions, or to know what to expect from the current situation. This is not only important for community organizers, but also for ordinary members of the community.
For example, it’s not clear to me if CEA has relevant written-out policies regarding this, and what they are. Or who can check if they’re followed, and how.
I have a general objection to this, but I want to avoid getting entirely off topic. So I’ll just say, this seems to me to only shift the problem further away from the people affected.
In addition to what Michael asked in his comment, could you please elaborate on this:
Three years ago, CEA thought a lot about how to cut ties with a person while not totally losing the positive impact they can have. Our take was that it’s still good to be able to read and benefit from someone’s research, even if not interacting with them in other ways.
For example, does being able to read their research have to mean giving them a stage that will help them get a higher status in the community? How did you balance the possible positive impact of that person with the negative impact that having him around might have on his victims (or their work, or on whether their even then choose to leave the forum themselves)?
I downvoted this comment. While I think this discussion is important to have, I do not think that a post about longtermism should be turned into a referendum on Jacy’s conduct. I think it would be better to have this discussion on a separate post or the open thread.
We don’t have any centralized or formal way of kicking people out of EA. Instead, the closest we have, in cases where someone has done things that are especially egregious, is making sure that everyone who interacts with them is aware. Summarizing the situation in the comments here, on Jacy’s first EA forum post in 3 years (Apology, 2019-03), accomplishes that much more than posting in the open thread.
This is a threaded discussion, so other aspects of the post are still open to anyone interested. Personally, I don’t think Jacy should be in the EA movement and won’t be engaging in any of the threads below.
But what about the impact on the topic itself? Having the discussion heavily directed to a largely irrelevant topic, and affecting its down/upvoting situation, doesn’t do the original topic justice. And this topic could potentially be very important for the long-term future.
I think that’s a strong reason for people other than Jacy to work on this topic.
Watching the dynamic here I suspect this might likely be true. But I would still like to point out that there should be a norm about how these situations should be handled. This likely won’t be the last EA forum post that goes this way.
To be honest I am deeply disappointed and very worried that this post has gone this way. I admit that I might be feeling so because I am very sympathetic to the key views described in this post. But I think one might be able to imagine how they feel if certain monumental posts that are crucial to the causes/worldviews they care dearly about, went this way.
Having the discussion heavily directed to a largely irrelevant topic
I think this topic is more relevant than the original one. Ideas, however important to the long-term future, can surface more than once. The stability of the community is also important for the long-term future, but it’s probably easier to break it than to bury an idea.
affecting its down/upvoting situation
I haven’t voted on the post either way despite agreeing that the writer should probably not be here. I don’t know about anyone else, but I suspect the average person here is even less prone than me to downvote for reasons unrelated to content.
I think this topic is more relevant than the original one.
Relevant with respect to what? For me, the most sensible standard to use here seems to be “whether it is relevant to the original topic of the post (the thesis being brought up, or its antithesis)”. Yes, the topic of personal behavior is relevant to EA’s stability and therefore how much good we can do, or even the long-term future. But considering that there are other ways of letting people know what is being communicated here, such as starting a new post, I don’t think we should use this criterion of relevance.
Ideas, however important to the long-term future, can surface more than once.
That’s true, logically speaking. But that’s also logically true for EA/EA-like communities. In other words, it’s always “possible” that if this EA breaks, there “could be” another similar one that will be formed again. But I am guessing not many people would like to take the bet based on the “come again argument”. Then what is our reason for being willing to take a similar bet with this potentially important—I believe crucial—topic (or just any topic)?
And again, the fact that there are other ways to bring up the topic of personal behavior makes it even less reasonable to use this argument as a justification here. In other words, there seem to be way better alternatives to “reduce X-risk to EA” than commenting patterns like it’s happening here, that might risk “forcing a topic away from the surface”.
And we cannot say that if something “can surface more than once”, then we should expect it to also “surface before it is too late”, or “surface with the same influence”. Timing matters, and so do the “comment sections” of all historical discussions on a topic.
There are also some even more “down-to-earth” issues, such as the future writers on this topic experiencing difficulties of many sorts. For example, seeing this post went this way, should the writer of a next similar post (TBH, I have long thought of writing a similar post to this) just pretend that this post doesn’t exist? This seems to be bad intellectual practice. But if they do cite this post, readers will see the comment section here, and one might worry that readers will be affected. More specifically, what if Jacy got this post exactly spot on? Should people who hold exactly the same view just pretend this post doesn’t exist and post almost exactly the same thing?
I haven’t voted on the post either way despite agreeing that the writer should probably not be here.
I am glad you tried to be fair to the topic. But just like to point out that “not voting either way” isn’t absolute proof that you haven’t been affected—you could have voted positively if not for the extra discussion.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I suspect the average person here is even less prone than me to downvote for reasons unrelated to content.
I have to say I am much more pessimistic than you on this. I think it’s psychologically quite natural that with such comments in the comment section, one might find it hard to concentrate through such a long piece, especially if one takes a stance against the writers’ behavior.
I am mindful of the fact that I am contributing to what I am suspecting to be bad practice here, so I am not going to comment on this direction further than this.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I think you raised good points and I’ll only comment on some of them.
Mainly, I think raising the issue somewhere else wouldn’t be nearly as effective, both in terms of directly engaging Jacy and of making his readers aware.
I am glad you tried to be fair to the topic. But just like to point out that “not voting either way” isn’t absolute proof that you haven’t been affected—you could have voted positively if not for the extra discussion.
I noticed the post much before John made his comment. I didn’t read it thoroughly or vote then,
so I haven’t changed my decision—but yes, I guess I’d be very reluctant to upvote now. So my analysis of myself wasn’t entirely right.
I am mindful of the fact that I am contributing to what I am suspecting to be bad practice here, so I am not going to comment on this direction further than this.
Hmm. Should I have not replied then? … I considered it, but eventually decided some parts of the reply were important enough.
I think it is a good place to have the discussion. Apparently someone has been the subject of numerous sexual harassment allegations throughout his life is turning up at EA events again. This is very concerning.
But wouldn’t a new post on this topic serve the same purpose of expressing and discussing this concern, without having the effects of affecting this topic?
This topic is extremely difficult to discuss publicly in a productive way. First, a lot of information isn’t available to everyone — and can’t be made available — so there’s a lot of guesswork involved. Second, there are a number of reasons to be very careful; we want community spaces to be safe for everyone, and we want to make sure that issues with safety can be brought up, but we also require a high level of civility on this Forum.
We ask you to keep this in mind if you decide to contribute to this thread. If you’re not sure that you will contribute something useful, you might want to refrain from engaging. Also, please note that you can get in touch with the Community Health team at CEA if you’d like to bring up a specific concern in a less public way.
I recommend a mediator be hired to work with Jacy and whichever stakeholders are relevant (speaking broadly). This will be more productive than a he-said she-said forum discussion that is very emotionally toxic for many bystanders.
It seems to me that “having a safe community” is something that’s relevant to the entire community.
I don’t think long, toxic argument threads are necessary as a decision seems to have been made 3 years ago. The only question is what’s changed. So I’m hoping we see some comment from CEA staff on the matter.
I imagine Jacy turning up to EA events is more toxic for the women that Jacy has harasssed and for the women he might harass in the future. There is no indication that he has learned his lesson. He is totally incapable of taking moral responsibility for anything.
This is not he-said she-said. I have only stated known facts so far and I am surprised to see people dispute them. The guy has been kicked out of university for sexual misconduct and banned from EA events for sexual misconduct. He should not be welcome in the community.
I’m confused that you seem to claim strong evidence on the basis on a variety of things that seem like weak evidence to me. While I am sure details should not be provided, can you clarify whether you have non-public information about what happened post 2016 that contradicts what Kelly and Jacy have said publicly about it?
As everyone here knows, there has been an influx of people into EA and the forum in the last couple years, and it seems probable that most of the people here (including me) wouldn’t have known about this if not for this reminder.
Jacy Reese claims that the allegations discussed in the Forum post centre on ‘clumsy online flirting’. We don’t really know what the allegations are, but CEA :
Severed ties with the Sentience Institute
Stopped being their fiscal sponsor
Banned Jacy from all of their events
Made him write an apology post
We have zero reason to believe Jacy about the substance of the allegations, given his documented history of lying and incentives to lie in the case.
I don’t think (or, you have not convinced me that) it’s appropriate to use CEA’s actions as strong evidence against Jacy. There are many obvious pragmatic justifications to do so that are only slightly related to the factual basis of the allegations—I.e., even if the allegations are unsubstantiated, the safest option for a large organization like CEA would be to cut ties with him regardless. Furthermore, saying someone has “incentives to lie” about their own defense also feels inappropriate (with some exceptions/caveats), since that basically applies to almost every situation where someone has been accused.
The main thing that you mentioned which seems relevant is his “documented history of lying,” which (I say this in a neutral rather than accusatory way) I haven’t yet seen documentation of.
Ultimately, these accusations are concerning, but I’m also quite concerned of the idea of throwing around seemingly dubious arguments in service of vilifying someone.
It is bizarre to say that the aforementioned evidence is not strong evidence against Jacy. He was thrown out of university for sexual misconduct. CEA then completely disassociated itself from him because of sexual misconduct several years later. Multiple people at multiple different times in his life have accused him of sexual misconduct.
I think we are agreed that he has incentives to lie. He has also shown that he is a liar.
If you’re referring to the same point about his claim to be a cofounder, I did just see that. However, unless I see some additional and/or more-egregious quotes from Jacy, I have a fairly negative evaluation of your accusation. Perhaps his claim was a bit exaggerative combined with being easily misinterpreted, but it seems he has walked it back.
Ultimately, this really does not qualify in my mind as “a history of lying.”
You could also read the entirety of the research he produced for ACE, which it would be fair to describe as ‘comprised entirely of bullshit’.
To stress, it is completely ludicrous for him to claim that he is a co-founder of effective altruism, unless he interpreted the claim to be true of like Sasha Cooper or Pablo Stafforini. They would never say that they are founders of effective altruism because it is not true and they are not sociopaths (like Jacy is).
Some comments in this thread are uncivil and break Forum norms. The moderation team is asking John Halstead to refrain from adding more to this thread.
In most cases where I am actually familiar with the facts CEA has behaved very poorly. They have both been way too harsh on good actors and failed to take sufficient action against bad actors (ex Kathy Forth). They did handle some very obvious cases reasonably though (Diego). I don’t claim I would do a way better job but I don’t trust CEA to make these judgments.
1 - CEA says that the complaints relate to inappropriate behaviour in the sexual realm which they found ‘credible and concerning’ and which he pretends to apologise for in the apology post, presumably to avoid a legal battle
1 - CEA says that the complaints relate to inappropriate behaviour in the sexual realm which they found ‘credible and concerning’ and which he pretends to apologise for in the apology post, presumably to avoid a legal battle
I still don’t see where ‘he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’ as you’ve claimed.
The post is called ‘apology’ apology usually means you are admitting to wrongdoing. In this case, the wrongdoing was relating to sexual conduct. What do you think it was an apology for?
Then I think it’d be more accurate if you write ‘he admitted to several instances of what I consider to be sexual harassment’.
At the moment, your claim that ‘he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’ seems very misleading. You haven’t provided evidence that supports the claim that he confessed to committing such crimes.
EDIT: I’m approaching this issue with much less lived experience than some of the other commenters here. There appear to be more individuals than just John who are confident in the allegations, so perhaps ‘what [John considers] to be sexual harassment’ is not enough, and instead ‘what [X, Y and so on...] consider to be sexual harassment’ is better. (From what I can tell, the apology post also features some comments that push back on that confidence, to varying extents, and it may be worth mentioning that too. I’m not following this issue extensively and I don’t know if there have been any updates since that post.) I still think John’s comment, as it stands, (‘he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’) is misleading and harmful to community norms. I think people should point out bad epistemics despite possible social pressures to do otherwise.
Then I think it’d be more accurate if you write ‘he admitted to several instances of what I consider to be sexual harassment’.
I’m slightly confused about this. Do you believe that Jacy did commit several instance of sexual harassment but he just hasn’t admitted it? Or you don’t believe Jacy has committed sexual harassment at all?
If the latter: These instances aren’t what John considers sexual harassment, it’s what several women (over 5 at least from my reading of the Apology post) consider to be sexual harassment. If this reasonably large number of women didn’t think it was sexual harassment, they wouldn’t have complained to CEA or others within the community. Therefore I think we can be somewhat confident that Jacy has made sexual advances that a non-negligible number of women consider to be sexual harassment. Subsequently, as John stated, he made an apology post saying sorry for these instances of sexual harassment (of course he would never put it like that, but just because you don’t specifically say “sorry for sexual harassment” it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen). Basically, we have several independent pieces of evidence of Jacy being involved in sexual harassment (reports from 5+ women, being distanced from CEA, being expelled from Brown university) with the only piece of evidence pointing against this being Jacy’s own comments, which is of course biased. Given this, I think a claim that Jacy hasn’t been involved in sexual harassment seems wrong.
If the former: I think this is quite pedantic and it’s irrelevant whether Jacy admits to the bad behaviour, if we have enough evidence to be confident it happened.
Honestly, I’m new—I only just became aware of all this. I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself.
But what I do know is that John’s initial claim that Jacy ‘admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’ seemed misleading, and I decided to point that out because there was a lack of people who did so, which seems harmful to community norms.
Note: Some of the replies below conflate the more stringent notion of ‘judgment’ that I’m referring to, with a less stringent notion of ‘update’. The evidence should certainly update us, but there is a higher bar for judgments.
First, thanks for being honest and saying you’re not particularly well-informed on this, that definitely helped me approach your comment with less judgement. I’ve also seen that you edited your initial comment so thanks for that.
I do however still have some concerns about the comments you made. I agree that the claim “Jacy admitted several instances of sexual harassment” isn’t very easily verifiable (e.g. the discussion on what the “apology” is for). However, I think that this is largely irrelevant and begins a semantic discussion that is totally missing the original point, and generally missing the forest for the trees.
The main point John was making is that Jacy has been accused and punished (maybe not the right word?) for several instances of sexual harassment over his career. In my opinion it is almost totally irrelevant whether Jacy himself admits this, as I (and I think many others) think there is very reasonable evidence to believe these instances of sexual harassment happened. Launching into a semantics discussion about whether Jacy admitted it seems to detract from the key point in unhelpful ways, although I agree that John’s comment might have been better if he had totally excluded the line “Jacy admitted several instances of sexual harassment”. Again, I agree there are some epistemic benefits to calling out statements that don’t seem correct, but I think there are also some large downsides to the way you did this in this instance. [edited last sentence for clarity].
The reason why I’m frustrated by your comments, specifically:
Then I think it’d be more accurate if you write ‘he admitted to several instances of what I consider to be sexual harassment’.
is that it brings about an element of questioning of exactly how much Jacy’s acts constituted ‘sexual harassment’. Women are often accused of making things up, exaggerating claims or otherwise reporting “locker room banter” or “harmless jokes” as sexual harassment, and I felt your comments were adding to this. This feels particularly worrying within the EA movement, which is already only 29% female, as it could show women that EA spaces are not safe for women due to lack of care around sexual harassment issues.
For context, I feel personally strongly about this as I’ve heard from several close women friends of mine who have attended EA events or otherwise met male EAs who have been misogynistic towards them, in ways that have deterred them from becoming more involved in EA. In short, I think EA spaces are already challenging for women to feel comfortable in, without us making comments that seem to trivialise issues of sexual harassment.
I think the fact that you also said “I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself.” adds to this. I don’t think it requires a huge amount of effort to update towards ‘Jacy very likely committed instances of sexual harassment’ based on several independent reports of sexual harassment, expulsion from university, his apology, etc. To not update towards this after even a short consideration again implies to me that you’re doubting whether true sexual harassment even occurred (e.g. ignoring reports from several (over 5?) women for comments by 1 man) which would add to the notion of EA spaces not being safe for women.
Sorry for the slight rant but these are issues that my friends have been affected by within EA spaces, and something I feel strongly about.
Thank you for being more charitable after reading my comment, and for your effort in a detailed response.
Again, I agree there are some epistemic benefits to calling out statements that don’t seem correct, but I think there are also some large downsides to this in this case.
I think I still prefer to challenge a claim that quite blatantly (but probably unintentionally) misleads people into thinking that someone confessed to committing a crime, a claim placed in the highest upvoted comment on a post receiving a lot of attention. I think we should be suspicious of thinking ‘let bad arguments persist because criticizing them would be bad’.
I lean towards disagreeing with your claim that it’s net negative overall to point out that inaccuracy but caveat that I’m not certain of how confident I should be in that position.
One reason I think there are positives is that there are indeed cases in which allegations don’t hold up, and innocent people get hurt (note I’m not saying that this necessarily applies to this case, and from what I can tell it seems to constitute a low percentage of cases). It makes sense to consider the interests of those accused but innocent, in addition to the interests of sexual harassment victims and potential victims.
I think ensuring we aren’t overzealous requires us to uphold certain norms, even when it’s challenging to do so socially. For context, I’m not in the Anglosphere at the moment—but I do see some trends there involving strong emotions and accompanying criticisms that do worry me, and I don’t think this community should be overly concerned with potential criticism so as to not speak up to uphold those norms.
I had to make several comments following up on the misleading statement because John didn’t deliver on the statement, nor take note and rephrase his writing to be less misleading. Unfortunately, he still hasn’t done so.
is that it brings about an element of questioning
On how I’ve phrased a possible rephrasing (and the updated possible rephrasing in the edited part of the comment) of John’s statement, to reduce the misleadingness, I wasn’t as aware as you were of your concerns and didn’t know it has risks of making people feel questioned/not taken seriously when I wrote that. Your concerns make sense and I’ll keep them in mind. But I also haven’t made up my mind on the extent to which it’s important to be mindful of how I should present what I consider truthful statements (i.e. we are the ones deciding on what to make of the available evidence—so we are in fact the ones who ‘consider’ whether it constitutes sexual harassment) - in order to reduce the risk of such feelings.
I think the fact that you also said “I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself.” adds to this… To not update towards this after even a short consideration...
I think we have different understandings of the term ‘judgment’ here. In this quite serious context (which sometimes involves the law), I take ‘judgment’ to mean much more (as in ‘pass judgment’) than updating beliefs. I didn’t say that the evidence didn’t update my views (actually I think it’ll be absurd if it didn’t), nor did I imply that the views of one accused ‘deserves equal or greater weight’ than the testimony of multiple accusers (as Khorton wrote). That multiple people have made complaints should indeed update us towards thinking that sexual harassment happened.
But again, I take ‘judgment’ to mean much more than ‘updating’. When I said that “I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself”, I meant there wasn’t enough time to make a solid conclusion about these especially troubling allegations (edit: time isn’t the only thing you need—it also depends on whether there’s sufficient information to analyze). This might not be the approach some people take, but there are huge personal costs at stake for the parties involved, and I don’t want to condemn anyone so quickly. Also, realize that I wrote that “I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself” within one day of learning of the allegations. I think it’s reasonable to be cautious of confidence.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to comment much more. I’m a slow writer and I’m exhausted from having to follow up so much. I only wanted to make that point about John’s comment and get him to follow better practices—but that’s been unsuccessful. I hope our future interactions could be under better circumstances.
Thanks for the reply Timothy, and I totally appreciate you choosing to not engage again as this can be quite time and energy consuming. There’s one thing I wasn’t clear enough in my original comment which I’ve now edited which might mean we’re not as misaligned as one might think!
Namely, I didn’t say (or even necessarily think) that your comment on the truthfulness of John’s claim was net negative, as you suggest. I’ve edited the original comment but in practice what I meant was, I think there’s better ways of doing so, without questioning the sexual harassment claims actually made by the women affected in these incidents. So overall I agree it’s important to point about claims that are untruthful, but I also think you did this in a way that a) casted doubted on the actual sexual harassment, which IMO seems very likely so it is insensitive to suggest otherwise and b) is damaging to the EA community as a safe place for women.
For reference, this is what I updated my sentence to in the previous comment:
Again, I agree there are some epistemic benefits to calling out statements that don’t seem correct, but I think there are also some large downsides to the way you did this in this instance. [edited last sentence only]
How would you have described, in plain English, the apology post?
I think it is important to read between the lines of his apology post. Having received numerous complaints, CEA made Jacy write an apology post. He claims not to know what the complaints are about, but tries to give the impression that it is because of saying stuff like “hey cutie” to people. As mentioned below, there must be an awful lot of inept flirting in the community given the social awkwardness of EAs and the gender skew of the community. Despite that, to my knowledge Jacy is the only person who has ever been banned from all EA events for sexual misconduct. This suggests that allegations are probably worse than Jacy suggests.
Note that CEA cannot reveal the nature of the accusations in order to protect the identity of the complainants.
We then also learn that he was thrown out of university for sexual misconduct in 2012. This was in 2012, before the start of metoo. Someone at Brown at this time told me that no-one was expelled by Brown for sexual misconduct during the whole time they were there. This suggests that the allegations were bad.
How else would you define the apology post other than an apology for sexual harassment? I would have thought the debate would be about an appropriate time for him to rejoin the community not about whether he actually committed sexual harassment. Or whether he was unfortunate enough for multiple women to independently accuse of him sexual harassment throughout his life
Hi John, just to clarify some inaccuracies in your two comments:
- I’ve never harassed anyone, and I’ve never stated or implied that I have. I have apologized for making some people uncomfortable with “coming on too strong” in my online romantic advances. As I’ve said before in that Apology, I never intended to cause any discomfort, and I’m sorry that I did so. There have, to my knowledge, been no concerns about my behavior since I was made aware of these concerns in mid-2018.
- I didn’t lie on my website. I had (in a few places) described myself as a “co-founder” of EA [Edit: Just for clarity, I think this was only on my website for a few weeks? I think I mentioned it and was called it a few times over the years too, such as when being introduced for a lecture. I co-founded the first dedicated student group network, helped set up and moderate the first social media discussion groups, and was one of the first volunteers at ACE as a college student. I always favored a broader-base view of how EA emerged than what many perceived at the time (e.g., more like the founders of a social movement than of a company). Nobody had pushed back against “co-founder” until 2019, and I stopped using the term as soon as there was any pushback.], as I think many who worked to build EA from 2008-2012 could be reasonably described. I’ve stopped using the term because of all the confusion, which I describe a bit in “Some Early History of Effective Altruism.”
- Regarding SI, we were already moving on from CEA’s fiscal sponsorship and donation platform once we got our 501c3 certification in February 2019, so “stopped” and “severed ties” seem misleading.
- CEA did not make me write an apology. We agreed on both that apology document and me not attending CEA events as being the right response to these concerns. I had already written several apologies that were sent privately to various parties without any involvement from CEA.
- There was no discussion of my future posting on the EA Forum, nor to my knowledge any concerns about my behavior on this or other forums.
Otherwise, I have said my piece in the two articles you link, and I don’t plan to leave any more comments in this thread. I appreciate everyone’s thoughtful consideration.
Hi Jacy, you said in your apology “I am also stepping back from the EA community more generally, as I have been planning to since last year in order to focus on my research.”
I haven’t seen you around since then, so was surprised to see you attend an EA university retreat* and start posting more about EA. Would you describe yourself as stepping back into the EA community now?
Hi Khorton, I wouldn’t describe it as stepping back into the community, and I don’t plan on doing that, regardless of this issue, unless you consider occasional posts and presentations or socializing with my EA friends as such. This post on the EV of the future was just particularly suited for the EA Forum (e.g., previous posts on it), and it’s been 3 years since I published that public apology and have done everything asked of me by the concerned parties (around 4 years since I was made aware of the concerns, and I know of no concerns about my behavior since then).
I’m not planning to comment more here. This is in my opinion a terrible place to have these conversations, as Dony pointed out as well.
Why should we believe that you have in fact changed? You were kicked out of Brown for sexual misconduct. You claim to believe that the allegations at that time were false. Instead of being extra-careful in your sexual conduct following this, at least five women complain to CEA about your sexual sexual misconduct, and CEA calls the complaints ‘credible and concerning’. There is zero reason to think you have changed.
Plus, you’re a documented liar, so we should have no reason to believe you.
It’s a comment that is typical of Jacy—he cannot help but dissemble. “I am also stepping back from the EA community more generally, as I have been planning to since last year in order to focus on my research.” It makes it sound like he was going to step back anyway even while he was touting himself as an EA co-founder and was about to promote his book! In fact, if you read between the lines, CEA severed ties between him and the community. He then pretends that he was going to do this anyway. The whole apology is completely pathetic.
Were you expelled from Brown for sexual harassment? Or was that also for clumsy online flirting?
You did lie on your website. It is false that you are a co-founder of effective altruism. There is not a single person in the world who thinks that is true, and you only said it to further your career. That you can’t even acknowledge that that was a lie speaks volumes.
Perhaps CEA can clarify whether there was any connection between the allegations and CEA severing ties with SI.
Were the allegations reported to the Sentience Institute before CEA? Why did you not write a public apology before CEA approached you with the allegations? You agreeing with CEA to being banned from EA events and you being banned from EA events are the same thing.
The issue is how long you should ‘step away’ from the community for.
I wouldn’t have described Jacy as a co-founder of effective altruism and don’t like him having had it on his website, but it definitely doesn’t seem like a lie to me (I kind of dislike the term “co-founder of EA” because of how ambiguous it is).
Anyway I think calling it a lie is roughly as egregious a stretch of the truth as Jacy’s claim to be a co-founder (if less objectionable since it reads less like motivated delusion). In both cases I’m like “seems wrong to me, but if you squint you can see where it’s coming from”.
[meta for onlookers: I’m investing more energy into holding John to high standards here than Jacy because I’m more convinced that John is a good faith actor and I care about his standards being high. I don’t know where Jacy is on the spectrum from “kind of bad judgement but nothing terrible” to “outright bad actor”, but I get a bad smell from the way he seems to consistently turns to present things in a way that puts him in a relatively positive light and ignores hard questions, so absent further evidence I’m just not very interested in engaging]
“I don’t know where Jacy is on the spectrum from “kind of bad judgement but nothing terrible” to “outright bad actor”.”
I don’t understand this and claims like it. To recap, he was thrown out of university in 2012 for sexual misconduct. Someone who was at Brown around this time told me that no-one else was expelled from Brown for sexual misconduct the entire they were there. This suggests that his actions were very bad.
Despite being expelled from Brown, at least five women in the EA community then complain to CEA because of his sexual misconduct. CEA thinks these actions are bad enough to ban him from all EA events and dissociate from him completely. Despite Jacy giving the impression that was due to clumsy flirting, I strongly doubt that this is true. Clumsy flirting must happen a fair amount in this community given the social awkwardness of EAs, but few people are expelled from the community as a result. This again suggests that the allegations against Jacy are very bad.
This should update us towards the view that the Brown allegations were also true (noting that Jacy denies that they are true).
In your view he also makes statements that are gross exaggerations/delusional in order to further his career (though I mustn’t say that he lied).
I think we have enough evidence for the ‘bad actor’ categorisation.
It’s from “man things in the world are typically complicated, and I haven’t spent time digging into this, but although there surface level facts look bad I’m aware that selective quoting of facts can give a misleading impression”.
I’m not trying to talk you out of the bad actor categorization, just saying that I haven’t personally thought it through / investigated enough that I’m confident in that label. (But people shouldn’t update on my epistemic state! It might well be I’d agree with you if I spent an hour on it; I just don’t care enough to want to spend that hour.)
Yes, I personally want to do that, because I want to spend time engaging with good faith actors and having them in gated spaces I frequent.
In general I have a strong perfectionist streak, which I channel only to try to improve things which are good enough to seem worth the investment of effort to improve further. This is just one case of that.
(Criticizing is not itself something that comes with direct negative effects. Of course I’d rather place larger sanctions on bad faith actors than good faith actors, but I don’t think criticizing should be understood as a form of sanctioning.)
Is Jacy’s comment above where he seemed to present things in a way that puts him in a relatively positive light and ignores hard questions? Or the Apology post? I don’t really see how you’re getting that smell. John wrote a very negative comment, whether or not you think that negativity was justified, so it makes sense for Jacy to reply by pointing out inaccuracies that would make him seem more positive. I think it would take an extremely unusual person to engage in a discussion like this that isn’t steering in a more positive direction towards them. I also just took the questions he “ignored” as being ones where he doesn’t see them as inaccurate.
This is all not even mentioning how absolutely miserable and tired Jacy must be to go through this time and time again, again regardless of what you think of him as a person...
In my opinion, this is a bizarre comment. You seem to have more sympathy with Jacy, who has been accused of sexual harassment at least six times in this life for having to defend himself than eg the people who are reading this who he has harassed, or the people who are worried that he might harass them in the future as he tries to rejoin the community.
Actually no I got reasonably good vibes from the comment above. I read it as a bit defensive but it’s a fair point that that’s quite natural if he’s being attacked.
I remember feeling bad about the vibes of the Apology post but I haven’t gone back and reread it lately. (It’s also a few years old, so he may be a meaningfully different person now.)
I actually didn’t mean for any of my comments here to get into attacks on our defence of Jacy. I don’t think I have great evidence and don’t think I’m a very good person to listen to on this! I just wanted to come and clarify that my criticism of John was supposed to be just that, and not have people read into it a defence of Jacy.
(I take it that the bar for deciding personally to disengage is lower than for e.g. recommending others do that. I don’t make any recommendations for others. Maybe I’ll engage with Jacy later; I do feel happier about recent than old evidence, but it hasn’t yet moved me to particularly wanting to engage.)
So, are you saying it is an honest mistake but not a lie? His argument for being a co-founder seems to be that he was involved in the utilitarian forum Felicifia in 2008. He didn’t even found it. I know several other people who founded or were involved in that forum and none of them has ever claimed to be a founder of effective altruism on that basis. Jacy is the only person to do that and it is clear he does it in order to advance his claim to be a public intellectual because it suggests to the outside world that he was as influential as Will MacAskill, Toby Ord, Elie Hassenfeld, and Holden Karnofsky, which he wasn’t and he knows he wasn’t.
The dissembling in the post is typical of him. He never takes responsibility for anything unless forced to do so.
I’m saying it’s a gross exaggeration not a lie. I can imagine someone disinterested saying “ok but can we present a democratic vision of EA where we talk about the hundred founders?” and then looking for people who put energy early into building up the thing, and Jacy would be on that list.
(I think this is pretty bad, but that outright lying is worse, and I want to protect language to talk about that.)
I want to flag that something like “same intention as outright lying, but doing it in a way to maximize plausible deniability” would be just as bad as outright lying. (It is basically “outright lying” but in a not stupid fashion.)
However, the problem is that sometimes people exaggerate or get things wrong for more innocuous reasons like exaggerated or hyperbolic speech or having an inflated sense of one’s importance in what’s happening. Those cases are indeed different and deserve to be treated very different from lying (since we’d expect people to self-correct when they get the feedback, and avoid mistakes in the future). So, I agree with the point about protecting language. I don’t agree with the implicit message “it’s never as bad as outright lying when there’s an almost-defensible interpretation somewhere.” I think protecting the language is important for reasons of legibility and epistemic transparency, not so much because the moral distinction is always clean-cut.
You are taking charitable interpretations to an absolute limit here. You seem to be saying “maybe Jacy was endorsing a highly expansive conception of ‘founding’ which implies that EA has hundreds of founders’”. This is indeed a logical possibility. But I think the correct credence to have in this possibility is ~0. Instead, we should have ~1 credence in the following “he said it knowing it is not true in order to further his career”. And by ‘founding’ he meant, “I’m in the same bracket as Will MacAskill”. Otherwise, why put it on your website and in your bio?
I don’t think it’s like “Jacy had an interpretation in mind and then chose statements”. I think it’s more like “Jacy wanted to say things that made himself look impressive, then with motivated reasoning talked himself into thinking it was reasonable to call himself a founder of EA, because that sounded cool”.
(Within this there’s a spectrum of more and less blameworthy versions, as well as the possibility of the straight-out lying version. My best guess is towards the blameworthy end of the not-lying versions, but I don’t really know.)
This feels off to me. It seems like Jacy deliberately misled people to think that he was a co-founder of EA, to likely further his own career. This feels like a core element of lying, to deceive people for personal gain, which I think is the main reason one would claim they’re the co-founder of EA when almost no one else would say this about them.
Sure I think it can also be called “gross exaggeration” but where do you think the line is between “gross exaggeration” and “lying”? For me, lying means you say something that isn’t true (in the eyes of most people) for significant personal gain (i.e. status) whereas gross exaggeration is a smaller embellishment and/or isn’t done for large personal gain.
So rather than a lie, you think it might be a motivated delusion. Motivated delusions are obviously false. But then at the end you say it is not obviously false. This is inconsistent.
But I think it’s important to reserve terms like “lie” for “completely false”, because otherwise you lose the ability to police that boundary (and it’s important to police it, even if I also want higher standards enforced around many spaces I interact with).
I would reiterate that this was only on my website for a few weeks, and I removed it as soon as I got the negative feedback. [Edit: As I say in my detailed comment, I viewed the term “co-founder” in terms of the broad base of people who built EA as a social movement. Others read it as a narrower term, such as the 1-3 co-founders of a typical company or nonprofit. Now I just avoid the term because I think it’s too vague and confusing.]
The moderation team feels that phrases like “called you out on it being bullshit” aren’t constructive for this discussion (or on the Forum as a general rule). Please don’t use them.
this was only on my website for a few weeks at most… I believe I also casually used the term elsewhere, and it was sometimes used by people in my bio description when introducing me as a speaker.
My impression was that due to multiple accusations of sexual harassment, Jacy Reese Anthis was stepping back from the community. When and why did this stop?
He was evicted from Brown University in 2012 for sexual harassment (as discussed here).
And he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment (as discussed here).
He also lied on his website about being a founder of effective altruism.
Some notes from CEA:
Several people have asked me recently whether Jacy is allowed to post on the Forum. He was never banned from the Forum, although CEA told him he would not be allowed in certain CEA-supported events and spaces.
Three years ago, CEA thought a lot about how to cut ties with a person while not totally losing the positive impact they can have. Our take was that it’s still good to be able to read and benefit from someone’s research, even if not interacting with them in other ways.
Someone’s presence on the Forum or in most community spaces doesn’t mean they’ve been particularly vetted.
This kind of situation is especially difficult when the full information can’t be public. I’ve heard both from people worried that EA spaces are too unwilling to ban people who make the culture worse, and from people worried that EA spaces are too willing to ban people without good enough reasons or evidence. These are both important concerns.
We’re trying to balance fairness, safety, transparency, and practical considerations. We won’t always get that balance right. You can always pass on feedback to me at julia.wise@centreforeffectivealtruism.org, to my manager Nicole at nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org, or via our anonymous contact form.
Is there more information you can share without risking the anonymity of the complainants or victims? E.g.,
How many complainants/witnesses were there?
How many separate concerning instances were there?
Did all of the complaints concern behaviour through text/messaging (or calls), or were some in person, too?
Was the issue that he made inappropriate initial advances, or that he continued to make advances after the individuals showed no interest in the initial advance? Both? Or something else?
I can understand why people want more info. Jacy and I agreed three years ago what each of us would say publicly about this, and I think it would be difficult and not particularly helpful to revisit the specifics now.
If anyone is making a decision where more info would be helpful, for example you’re deciding whether to have him at an event or you’re running a community space and want to think about good policies in general, please feel free to contact me and I’ll do what I can to help you make a good decision.
For convenience, this is CEA’s statement from three years ago:
By my reading, the information about the reports contained in this is:
CEA received reports from several parties about concerns over Jacy’s behavior over several time periods
CEA found the reports ‘credible and concerning’
CEA cannot discuss details of most of these concerns because the people who raised them want to protect their confidentiality
It also implies that Jacy did not treat people with fairness and respect in the reported incidents
‘It’s very important to CEA that EA be a community where people are treated with fairness and respect’ - why say this unless it’s applicable to this case?
Julia also said in a comment at the time that the reports were from members of the animal advocacy and EA communities, and CEA decided to approach Jacy primarily because of these rather than the Brown case:
Thanks for engaging in this discussion Julia. I’m writing replies that are a bit harsh, but I recognize that I’m likely missing some information about these things, which may even be public and I just don’t know where to look for it yet.
However, this sounds… not good, as if the decision on current action is based on Jacy’s interests and on honoring a deal with him. I could think of a few possible good reasons for more information to be bad, e.g. that the victims prefer nothing more is said, or that it would harm CEA’s ability to act in future cases. But readers can only speculate on what the real reason is and whether they agree with it.
Both here and regarding what I asked in my other comment, the reasoning is very opaque. This is a problem, because it means there’s no way to scrutinize the decisions, or to know what to expect from the current situation. This is not only important for community organizers, but also for ordinary members of the community.
For example, it’s not clear to me if CEA has relevant written-out policies regarding this, and what they are. Or who can check if they’re followed, and how.
I would expect CEA’s trustees to be scrutinizing how decisions like this are made.
I have a general objection to this, but I want to avoid getting entirely off topic. So I’ll just say, this seems to me to only shift the problem further away from the people affected.
In addition to what Michael asked in his comment, could you please elaborate on this:
For example, does being able to read their research have to mean giving them a stage that will help them get a higher status in the community? How did you balance the possible positive impact of that person with the negative impact that having him around might have on his victims (or their work, or on whether their even then choose to leave the forum themselves)?
I’ve also been surprised to see Jacy engaging publicly with the EA community again recently, without any public communication about what’s changed.
I downvoted this comment. While I think this discussion is important to have, I do not think that a post about longtermism should be turned into a referendum on Jacy’s conduct. I think it would be better to have this discussion on a separate post or the open thread.
We don’t have any centralized or formal way of kicking people out of EA. Instead, the closest we have, in cases where someone has done things that are especially egregious, is making sure that everyone who interacts with them is aware. Summarizing the situation in the comments here, on Jacy’s first EA forum post in 3 years (Apology, 2019-03), accomplishes that much more than posting in the open thread.
This is a threaded discussion, so other aspects of the post are still open to anyone interested. Personally, I don’t think Jacy should be in the EA movement and won’t be engaging in any of the threads below.
But what about the impact on the topic itself? Having the discussion heavily directed to a largely irrelevant topic, and affecting its down/upvoting situation, doesn’t do the original topic justice. And this topic could potentially be very important for the long-term future.
I think that’s a strong reason for people other than Jacy to work on this topic.
Watching the dynamic here I suspect this might likely be true. But I would still like to point out that there should be a norm about how these situations should be handled. This likely won’t be the last EA forum post that goes this way.
To be honest I am deeply disappointed and very worried that this post has gone this way. I admit that I might be feeling so because I am very sympathetic to the key views described in this post. But I think one might be able to imagine how they feel if certain monumental posts that are crucial to the causes/worldviews they care dearly about, went this way.
I think this topic is more relevant than the original one. Ideas, however important to the long-term future, can surface more than once. The stability of the community is also important for the long-term future, but it’s probably easier to break it than to bury an idea.
I haven’t voted on the post either way despite agreeing that the writer should probably not be here. I don’t know about anyone else, but I suspect the average person here is even less prone than me to downvote for reasons unrelated to content.
Relevant with respect to what? For me, the most sensible standard to use here seems to be “whether it is relevant to the original topic of the post (the thesis being brought up, or its antithesis)”. Yes, the topic of personal behavior is relevant to EA’s stability and therefore how much good we can do, or even the long-term future. But considering that there are other ways of letting people know what is being communicated here, such as starting a new post, I don’t think we should use this criterion of relevance.
That’s true, logically speaking. But that’s also logically true for EA/EA-like communities. In other words, it’s always “possible” that if this EA breaks, there “could be” another similar one that will be formed again. But I am guessing not many people would like to take the bet based on the “come again argument”. Then what is our reason for being willing to take a similar bet with this potentially important—I believe crucial—topic (or just any topic)?
And again, the fact that there are other ways to bring up the topic of personal behavior makes it even less reasonable to use this argument as a justification here. In other words, there seem to be way better alternatives to “reduce X-risk to EA” than commenting patterns like it’s happening here, that might risk “forcing a topic away from the surface”.
And we cannot say that if something “can surface more than once”, then we should expect it to also “surface before it is too late”, or “surface with the same influence”. Timing matters, and so do the “comment sections” of all historical discussions on a topic.
There are also some even more “down-to-earth” issues, such as the future writers on this topic experiencing difficulties of many sorts. For example, seeing this post went this way, should the writer of a next similar post (TBH, I have long thought of writing a similar post to this) just pretend that this post doesn’t exist? This seems to be bad intellectual practice. But if they do cite this post, readers will see the comment section here, and one might worry that readers will be affected. More specifically, what if Jacy got this post exactly spot on? Should people who hold exactly the same view just pretend this post doesn’t exist and post almost exactly the same thing?
I am glad you tried to be fair to the topic. But just like to point out that “not voting either way” isn’t absolute proof that you haven’t been affected—you could have voted positively if not for the extra discussion.
I have to say I am much more pessimistic than you on this. I think it’s psychologically quite natural that with such comments in the comment section, one might find it hard to concentrate through such a long piece, especially if one takes a stance against the writers’ behavior.
I am mindful of the fact that I am contributing to what I am suspecting to be bad practice here, so I am not going to comment on this direction further than this.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I think you raised good points and I’ll only comment on some of them.
Mainly, I think raising the issue somewhere else wouldn’t be nearly as effective, both in terms of directly engaging Jacy and of making his readers aware.
I noticed the post much before John made his comment. I didn’t read it thoroughly or vote then, so I haven’t changed my decision—but yes, I guess I’d be very reluctant to upvote now. So my analysis of myself wasn’t entirely right.
Hmm. Should I have not replied then? … I considered it, but eventually decided some parts of the reply were important enough.
I think it is a good place to have the discussion. Apparently someone has been the subject of numerous sexual harassment allegations throughout his life is turning up at EA events again. This is very concerning.
But wouldn’t a new post on this topic serve the same purpose of expressing and discussing this concern, without having the effects of affecting this topic?
A comment from the moderation team:
This topic is extremely difficult to discuss publicly in a productive way. First, a lot of information isn’t available to everyone — and can’t be made available — so there’s a lot of guesswork involved. Second, there are a number of reasons to be very careful; we want community spaces to be safe for everyone, and we want to make sure that issues with safety can be brought up, but we also require a high level of civility on this Forum.
We ask you to keep this in mind if you decide to contribute to this thread. If you’re not sure that you will contribute something useful, you might want to refrain from engaging. Also, please note that you can get in touch with the Community Health team at CEA if you’d like to bring up a specific concern in a less public way.
I recommend a mediator be hired to work with Jacy and whichever stakeholders are relevant (speaking broadly). This will be more productive than a he-said she-said forum discussion that is very emotionally toxic for many bystanders.
Who do you think the relevant stakeholders are?
It seems to me that “having a safe community” is something that’s relevant to the entire community.
I don’t think long, toxic argument threads are necessary as a decision seems to have been made 3 years ago. The only question is what’s changed. So I’m hoping we see some comment from CEA staff on the matter.
I imagine Jacy turning up to EA events is more toxic for the women that Jacy has harasssed and for the women he might harass in the future. There is no indication that he has learned his lesson. He is totally incapable of taking moral responsibility for anything.
This is not he-said she-said. I have only stated known facts so far and I am surprised to see people dispute them. The guy has been kicked out of university for sexual misconduct and banned from EA events for sexual misconduct. He should not be welcome in the community.
I’m confused that you seem to claim strong evidence on the basis on a variety of things that seem like weak evidence to me. While I am sure details should not be provided, can you clarify whether you have non-public information about what happened post 2016 that contradicts what Kelly and Jacy have said publicly about it?
Thanks for writing this.
As everyone here knows, there has been an influx of people into EA and the forum in the last couple years, and it seems probable that most of the people here (including me) wouldn’t have known about this if not for this reminder.
I was personally unaware of the situation until reading this comment thread, so can confirm
Jacy Reese claims that the allegations discussed in the Forum post centre on ‘clumsy online flirting’. We don’t really know what the allegations are, but CEA :
Severed ties with the Sentience Institute
Stopped being their fiscal sponsor
Banned Jacy from all of their events
Made him write an apology post
We have zero reason to believe Jacy about the substance of the allegations, given his documented history of lying and incentives to lie in the case.
I don’t think (or, you have not convinced me that) it’s appropriate to use CEA’s actions as strong evidence against Jacy. There are many obvious pragmatic justifications to do so that are only slightly related to the factual basis of the allegations—I.e., even if the allegations are unsubstantiated, the safest option for a large organization like CEA would be to cut ties with him regardless. Furthermore, saying someone has “incentives to lie” about their own defense also feels inappropriate (with some exceptions/caveats), since that basically applies to almost every situation where someone has been accused. The main thing that you mentioned which seems relevant is his “documented history of lying,” which (I say this in a neutral rather than accusatory way) I haven’t yet seen documentation of.
Ultimately, these accusations are concerning, but I’m also quite concerned of the idea of throwing around seemingly dubious arguments in service of vilifying someone.
It is bizarre to say that the aforementioned evidence is not strong evidence against Jacy. He was thrown out of university for sexual misconduct. CEA then completely disassociated itself from him because of sexual misconduct several years later. Multiple people at multiple different times in his life have accused him of sexual misconduct.
I think we are agreed that he has incentives to lie. He has also shown that he is a liar.
on his history of lying. https://nonprofitchronicles.com/2019/04/02/the-peculiar-metoo-story-of-animal-activist-jacy-reese/
Please provide specific quotes, I spent a few minutes reading the first part of that without seeing what you were referring to
If you’re referring to the same point about his claim to be a cofounder, I did just see that. However, unless I see some additional and/or more-egregious quotes from Jacy, I have a fairly negative evaluation of your accusation. Perhaps his claim was a bit exaggerative combined with being easily misinterpreted, but it seems he has walked it back. Ultimately, this really does not qualify in my mind as “a history of lying.”
You could also read the entirety of the research he produced for ACE, which it would be fair to describe as ‘comprised entirely of bullshit’.
To stress, it is completely ludicrous for him to claim that he is a co-founder of effective altruism, unless he interpreted the claim to be true of like Sasha Cooper or Pablo Stafforini. They would never say that they are founders of effective altruism because it is not true and they are not sociopaths (like Jacy is).
Some comments in this thread are uncivil and break Forum norms. The moderation team is asking John Halstead to refrain from adding more to this thread.
I’m not vilifying the guy. His actions have done that for him and I have just described his actions.
In most cases where I am actually familiar with the facts CEA has behaved very poorly. They have both been way too harsh on good actors and failed to take sufficient action against bad actors (ex Kathy Forth). They did handle some very obvious cases reasonably though (Diego). I don’t claim I would do a way better job but I don’t trust CEA to make these judgments.
Could you
Quote where in the linked text or elsewhere ‘he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’?
As someone asked in another comment, ‘provide links or specific quotes regarding his claim of being a founder of EA?’
1 - CEA says that the complaints relate to inappropriate behaviour in the sexual realm which they found ‘credible and concerning’ and which he pretends to apologise for in the apology post, presumably to avoid a legal battle
2- https://nonprofitchronicles.com/2019/04/02/the-peculiar-metoo-story-of-animal-activist-jacy-reese/
I still don’t see where ‘he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’ as you’ve claimed.
The post is called ‘apology’ apology usually means you are admitting to wrongdoing. In this case, the wrongdoing was relating to sexual conduct. What do you think it was an apology for?
Then I think it’d be more accurate if you write ‘he admitted to several instances of what I consider to be sexual harassment’.
At the moment, your claim that ‘he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’ seems very misleading. You haven’t provided evidence that supports the claim that he confessed to committing such crimes.
EDIT: I’m approaching this issue with much less lived experience than some of the other commenters here. There appear to be more individuals than just John who are confident in the allegations, so perhaps ‘what [John considers] to be sexual harassment’ is not enough, and instead ‘what [X, Y and so on...] consider to be sexual harassment’ is better. (From what I can tell, the apology post also features some comments that push back on that confidence, to varying extents, and it may be worth mentioning that too. I’m not following this issue extensively and I don’t know if there have been any updates since that post.) I still think John’s comment, as it stands, (‘he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’) is misleading and harmful to community norms. I think people should point out bad epistemics despite possible social pressures to do otherwise.
I’m slightly confused about this. Do you believe that Jacy did commit several instance of sexual harassment but he just hasn’t admitted it? Or you don’t believe Jacy has committed sexual harassment at all?
If the latter: These instances aren’t what John considers sexual harassment, it’s what several women (over 5 at least from my reading of the Apology post) consider to be sexual harassment. If this reasonably large number of women didn’t think it was sexual harassment, they wouldn’t have complained to CEA or others within the community. Therefore I think we can be somewhat confident that Jacy has made sexual advances that a non-negligible number of women consider to be sexual harassment. Subsequently, as John stated, he made an apology post saying sorry for these instances of sexual harassment (of course he would never put it like that, but just because you don’t specifically say “sorry for sexual harassment” it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen). Basically, we have several independent pieces of evidence of Jacy being involved in sexual harassment (reports from 5+ women, being distanced from CEA, being expelled from Brown university) with the only piece of evidence pointing against this being Jacy’s own comments, which is of course biased. Given this, I think a claim that Jacy hasn’t been involved in sexual harassment seems wrong.
If the former: I think this is quite pedantic and it’s irrelevant whether Jacy admits to the bad behaviour, if we have enough evidence to be confident it happened.
Honestly, I’m new—I only just became aware of all this. I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself.
But what I do know is that John’s initial claim that Jacy ‘admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’ seemed misleading, and I decided to point that out because there was a lack of people who did so, which seems harmful to community norms.
Note: Some of the replies below conflate the more stringent notion of ‘judgment’ that I’m referring to, with a less stringent notion of ‘update’. The evidence should certainly update us, but there is a higher bar for judgments.
First, thanks for being honest and saying you’re not particularly well-informed on this, that definitely helped me approach your comment with less judgement. I’ve also seen that you edited your initial comment so thanks for that.
I do however still have some concerns about the comments you made. I agree that the claim “Jacy admitted several instances of sexual harassment” isn’t very easily verifiable (e.g. the discussion on what the “apology” is for). However, I think that this is largely irrelevant and begins a semantic discussion that is totally missing the original point, and generally missing the forest for the trees.
The main point John was making is that Jacy has been accused and punished (maybe not the right word?) for several instances of sexual harassment over his career. In my opinion it is almost totally irrelevant whether Jacy himself admits this, as I (and I think many others) think there is very reasonable evidence to believe these instances of sexual harassment happened. Launching into a semantics discussion about whether Jacy admitted it seems to detract from the key point in unhelpful ways, although I agree that John’s comment might have been better if he had totally excluded the line “Jacy admitted several instances of sexual harassment”. Again, I agree there are some epistemic benefits to calling out statements that don’t seem correct, but I think there are also some large downsides to the way you did this in this instance. [edited last sentence for clarity].
The reason why I’m frustrated by your comments, specifically:
is that it brings about an element of questioning of exactly how much Jacy’s acts constituted ‘sexual harassment’. Women are often accused of making things up, exaggerating claims or otherwise reporting “locker room banter” or “harmless jokes” as sexual harassment, and I felt your comments were adding to this. This feels particularly worrying within the EA movement, which is already only 29% female, as it could show women that EA spaces are not safe for women due to lack of care around sexual harassment issues.
For context, I feel personally strongly about this as I’ve heard from several close women friends of mine who have attended EA events or otherwise met male EAs who have been misogynistic towards them, in ways that have deterred them from becoming more involved in EA. In short, I think EA spaces are already challenging for women to feel comfortable in, without us making comments that seem to trivialise issues of sexual harassment.
I think the fact that you also said “I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself.” adds to this. I don’t think it requires a huge amount of effort to update towards ‘Jacy very likely committed instances of sexual harassment’ based on several independent reports of sexual harassment, expulsion from university, his apology, etc. To not update towards this after even a short consideration again implies to me that you’re doubting whether true sexual harassment even occurred (e.g. ignoring reports from several (over 5?) women for comments by 1 man) which would add to the notion of EA spaces not being safe for women.
Sorry for the slight rant but these are issues that my friends have been affected by within EA spaces, and something I feel strongly about.
I agree with this comment. I find the implication that Jacy’s views deserves equal or greater weight than the testimony of multiple women troubling.
Thank you for being more charitable after reading my comment, and for your effort in a detailed response.
I think I still prefer to challenge a claim that quite blatantly (but probably unintentionally) misleads people into thinking that someone confessed to committing a crime, a claim placed in the highest upvoted comment on a post receiving a lot of attention. I think we should be suspicious of thinking ‘let bad arguments persist because criticizing them would be bad’.
I lean towards disagreeing with your claim that it’s net negative overall to point out that inaccuracy but caveat that I’m not certain of how confident I should be in that position.
One reason I think there are positives is that there are indeed cases in which allegations don’t hold up, and innocent people get hurt (note I’m not saying that this necessarily applies to this case, and from what I can tell it seems to constitute a low percentage of cases). It makes sense to consider the interests of those accused but innocent, in addition to the interests of sexual harassment victims and potential victims.
I think ensuring we aren’t overzealous requires us to uphold certain norms, even when it’s challenging to do so socially. For context, I’m not in the Anglosphere at the moment—but I do see some trends there involving strong emotions and accompanying criticisms that do worry me, and I don’t think this community should be overly concerned with potential criticism so as to not speak up to uphold those norms.
I had to make several comments following up on the misleading statement because John didn’t deliver on the statement, nor take note and rephrase his writing to be less misleading. Unfortunately, he still hasn’t done so.
On how I’ve phrased a possible rephrasing (and the updated possible rephrasing in the edited part of the comment) of John’s statement, to reduce the misleadingness, I wasn’t as aware as you were of your concerns and didn’t know it has risks of making people feel questioned/not taken seriously when I wrote that. Your concerns make sense and I’ll keep them in mind. But I also haven’t made up my mind on the extent to which it’s important to be mindful of how I should present what I consider truthful statements (i.e. we are the ones deciding on what to make of the available evidence—so we are in fact the ones who ‘consider’ whether it constitutes sexual harassment) - in order to reduce the risk of such feelings.
I think we have different understandings of the term ‘judgment’ here. In this quite serious context (which sometimes involves the law), I take ‘judgment’ to mean much more (as in ‘pass judgment’) than updating beliefs. I didn’t say that the evidence didn’t update my views (actually I think it’ll be absurd if it didn’t), nor did I imply that the views of one accused ‘deserves equal or greater weight’ than the testimony of multiple accusers (as Khorton wrote). That multiple people have made complaints should indeed update us towards thinking that sexual harassment happened.
But again, I take ‘judgment’ to mean much more than ‘updating’. When I said that “I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself”, I meant there wasn’t enough time to make a solid conclusion about these especially troubling allegations (edit: time isn’t the only thing you need—it also depends on whether there’s sufficient information to analyze). This might not be the approach some people take, but there are huge personal costs at stake for the parties involved, and I don’t want to condemn anyone so quickly. Also, realize that I wrote that “I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself” within one day of learning of the allegations. I think it’s reasonable to be cautious of confidence.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to comment much more. I’m a slow writer and I’m exhausted from having to follow up so much. I only wanted to make that point about John’s comment and get him to follow better practices—but that’s been unsuccessful. I hope our future interactions could be under better circumstances.
Thanks for the reply Timothy, and I totally appreciate you choosing to not engage again as this can be quite time and energy consuming. There’s one thing I wasn’t clear enough in my original comment which I’ve now edited which might mean we’re not as misaligned as one might think!
Namely, I didn’t say (or even necessarily think) that your comment on the truthfulness of John’s claim was net negative, as you suggest. I’ve edited the original comment but in practice what I meant was, I think there’s better ways of doing so, without questioning the sexual harassment claims actually made by the women affected in these incidents. So overall I agree it’s important to point about claims that are untruthful, but I also think you did this in a way that a) casted doubted on the actual sexual harassment, which IMO seems very likely so it is insensitive to suggest otherwise and b) is damaging to the EA community as a safe place for women.
For reference, this is what I updated my sentence to in the previous comment:
How would you have described, in plain English, the apology post?
I think it is important to read between the lines of his apology post. Having received numerous complaints, CEA made Jacy write an apology post. He claims not to know what the complaints are about, but tries to give the impression that it is because of saying stuff like “hey cutie” to people. As mentioned below, there must be an awful lot of inept flirting in the community given the social awkwardness of EAs and the gender skew of the community. Despite that, to my knowledge Jacy is the only person who has ever been banned from all EA events for sexual misconduct. This suggests that allegations are probably worse than Jacy suggests.
Note that CEA cannot reveal the nature of the accusations in order to protect the identity of the complainants.
We then also learn that he was thrown out of university for sexual misconduct in 2012. This was in 2012, before the start of metoo. Someone at Brown at this time told me that no-one was expelled by Brown for sexual misconduct during the whole time they were there. This suggests that the allegations were bad.
How else would you define the apology post other than an apology for sexual harassment? I would have thought the debate would be about an appropriate time for him to rejoin the community not about whether he actually committed sexual harassment. Or whether he was unfortunate enough for multiple women to independently accuse of him sexual harassment throughout his life
Hi John, just to clarify some inaccuracies in your two comments:
- I’ve never harassed anyone, and I’ve never stated or implied that I have. I have apologized for making some people uncomfortable with “coming on too strong” in my online romantic advances. As I’ve said before in that Apology, I never intended to cause any discomfort, and I’m sorry that I did so. There have, to my knowledge, been no concerns about my behavior since I was made aware of these concerns in mid-2018.
- I didn’t lie on my website. I had (in a few places) described myself as a “co-founder” of EA [Edit: Just for clarity, I think this was only on my website for a few weeks? I think I mentioned it and was called it a few times over the years too, such as when being introduced for a lecture. I co-founded the first dedicated student group network, helped set up and moderate the first social media discussion groups, and was one of the first volunteers at ACE as a college student. I always favored a broader-base view of how EA emerged than what many perceived at the time (e.g., more like the founders of a social movement than of a company). Nobody had pushed back against “co-founder” until 2019, and I stopped using the term as soon as there was any pushback.], as I think many who worked to build EA from 2008-2012 could be reasonably described. I’ve stopped using the term because of all the confusion, which I describe a bit in “Some Early History of Effective Altruism.”
- Regarding SI, we were already moving on from CEA’s fiscal sponsorship and donation platform once we got our 501c3 certification in February 2019, so “stopped” and “severed ties” seem misleading.
- CEA did not make me write an apology. We agreed on both that apology document and me not attending CEA events as being the right response to these concerns. I had already written several apologies that were sent privately to various parties without any involvement from CEA.
- There was no discussion of my future posting on the EA Forum, nor to my knowledge any concerns about my behavior on this or other forums.
Otherwise, I have said my piece in the two articles you link, and I don’t plan to leave any more comments in this thread. I appreciate everyone’s thoughtful consideration.
Hi Jacy, you said in your apology “I am also stepping back from the EA community more generally, as I have been planning to since last year in order to focus on my research.”
I haven’t seen you around since then, so was surprised to see you attend an EA university retreat* and start posting more about EA. Would you describe yourself as stepping back into the EA community now?
*https://twitter.com/jacyanthis/status/1515682513280282631?s=20&t=reRvYxXCs2z-AvszF31Gng
Hi Khorton, I wouldn’t describe it as stepping back into the community, and I don’t plan on doing that, regardless of this issue, unless you consider occasional posts and presentations or socializing with my EA friends as such. This post on the EV of the future was just particularly suited for the EA Forum (e.g., previous posts on it), and it’s been 3 years since I published that public apology and have done everything asked of me by the concerned parties (around 4 years since I was made aware of the concerns, and I know of no concerns about my behavior since then).
I’m not planning to comment more here. This is in my opinion a terrible place to have these conversations, as Dony pointed out as well.
Why should we believe that you have in fact changed? You were kicked out of Brown for sexual misconduct. You claim to believe that the allegations at that time were false. Instead of being extra-careful in your sexual conduct following this, at least five women complain to CEA about your sexual sexual misconduct, and CEA calls the complaints ‘credible and concerning’. There is zero reason to think you have changed.
Plus, you’re a documented liar, so we should have no reason to believe you.
It’s a comment that is typical of Jacy—he cannot help but dissemble. “I am also stepping back from the EA community more generally, as I have been planning to since last year in order to focus on my research.” It makes it sound like he was going to step back anyway even while he was touting himself as an EA co-founder and was about to promote his book! In fact, if you read between the lines, CEA severed ties between him and the community. He then pretends that he was going to do this anyway. The whole apology is completely pathetic.
Were you expelled from Brown for sexual harassment? Or was that also for clumsy online flirting?
You did lie on your website. It is false that you are a co-founder of effective altruism. There is not a single person in the world who thinks that is true, and you only said it to further your career. That you can’t even acknowledge that that was a lie speaks volumes.
Perhaps CEA can clarify whether there was any connection between the allegations and CEA severing ties with SI.
Were the allegations reported to the Sentience Institute before CEA? Why did you not write a public apology before CEA approached you with the allegations? You agreeing with CEA to being banned from EA events and you being banned from EA events are the same thing.
The issue is how long you should ‘step away’ from the community for.
I wouldn’t have described Jacy as a co-founder of effective altruism and don’t like him having had it on his website, but it definitely doesn’t seem like a lie to me (I kind of dislike the term “co-founder of EA” because of how ambiguous it is).
Anyway I think calling it a lie is roughly as egregious a stretch of the truth as Jacy’s claim to be a co-founder (if less objectionable since it reads less like motivated delusion). In both cases I’m like “seems wrong to me, but if you squint you can see where it’s coming from”.
[meta for onlookers: I’m investing more energy into holding John to high standards here than Jacy because I’m more convinced that John is a good faith actor and I care about his standards being high. I don’t know where Jacy is on the spectrum from “kind of bad judgement but nothing terrible” to “outright bad actor”, but I get a bad smell from the way he seems to consistently turns to present things in a way that puts him in a relatively positive light and ignores hard questions, so absent further evidence I’m just not very interested in engaging]
“I don’t know where Jacy is on the spectrum from “kind of bad judgement but nothing terrible” to “outright bad actor”.”
I don’t understand this and claims like it. To recap, he was thrown out of university in 2012 for sexual misconduct. Someone who was at Brown around this time told me that no-one else was expelled from Brown for sexual misconduct the entire they were there. This suggests that his actions were very bad.
Despite being expelled from Brown, at least five women in the EA community then complain to CEA because of his sexual misconduct. CEA thinks these actions are bad enough to ban him from all EA events and dissociate from him completely. Despite Jacy giving the impression that was due to clumsy flirting, I strongly doubt that this is true. Clumsy flirting must happen a fair amount in this community given the social awkwardness of EAs, but few people are expelled from the community as a result. This again suggests that the allegations against Jacy are very bad.
This should update us towards the view that the Brown allegations were also true (noting that Jacy denies that they are true).
In your view he also makes statements that are gross exaggerations/delusional in order to further his career (though I mustn’t say that he lied).
I think we have enough evidence for the ‘bad actor’ categorisation.
It’s from “man things in the world are typically complicated, and I haven’t spent time digging into this, but although there surface level facts look bad I’m aware that selective quoting of facts can give a misleading impression”.
I’m not trying to talk you out of the bad actor categorization, just saying that I haven’t personally thought it through / investigated enough that I’m confident in that label. (But people shouldn’t update on my epistemic state! It might well be I’d agree with you if I spent an hour on it; I just don’t care enough to want to spend that hour.)
Here is an interesting post on the strength of the evidence provided by multiple independent accusations of sexual misconduct throughout one’s life.
http://afro-optimist.blogspot.com/2018/09/why-you-should-probably-believe-ford.html
Isn’t the upshot of this that you want to be more critical of good faith actors than bad faith actors? That seems wrong to me.
Yes, I personally want to do that, because I want to spend time engaging with good faith actors and having them in gated spaces I frequent.
In general I have a strong perfectionist streak, which I channel only to try to improve things which are good enough to seem worth the investment of effort to improve further. This is just one case of that.
(Criticizing is not itself something that comes with direct negative effects. Of course I’d rather place larger sanctions on bad faith actors than good faith actors, but I don’t think criticizing should be understood as a form of sanctioning.)
Is Jacy’s comment above where he seemed to present things in a way that puts him in a relatively positive light and ignores hard questions? Or the Apology post? I don’t really see how you’re getting that smell. John wrote a very negative comment, whether or not you think that negativity was justified, so it makes sense for Jacy to reply by pointing out inaccuracies that would make him seem more positive. I think it would take an extremely unusual person to engage in a discussion like this that isn’t steering in a more positive direction towards them. I also just took the questions he “ignored” as being ones where he doesn’t see them as inaccurate.
This is all not even mentioning how absolutely miserable and tired Jacy must be to go through this time and time again, again regardless of what you think of him as a person...
In my opinion, this is a bizarre comment. You seem to have more sympathy with Jacy, who has been accused of sexual harassment at least six times in this life for having to defend himself than eg the people who are reading this who he has harassed, or the people who are worried that he might harass them in the future as he tries to rejoin the community.
Actually no I got reasonably good vibes from the comment above. I read it as a bit defensive but it’s a fair point that that’s quite natural if he’s being attacked.
I remember feeling bad about the vibes of the Apology post but I haven’t gone back and reread it lately. (It’s also a few years old, so he may be a meaningfully different person now.)
I actually didn’t mean for any of my comments here to get into attacks on our defence of Jacy. I don’t think I have great evidence and don’t think I’m a very good person to listen to on this! I just wanted to come and clarify that my criticism of John was supposed to be just that, and not have people read into it a defence of Jacy.
(I take it that the bar for deciding personally to disengage is lower than for e.g. recommending others do that. I don’t make any recommendations for others. Maybe I’ll engage with Jacy later; I do feel happier about recent than old evidence, but it hasn’t yet moved me to particularly wanting to engage.)
So, are you saying it is an honest mistake but not a lie? His argument for being a co-founder seems to be that he was involved in the utilitarian forum Felicifia in 2008. He didn’t even found it. I know several other people who founded or were involved in that forum and none of them has ever claimed to be a founder of effective altruism on that basis. Jacy is the only person to do that and it is clear he does it in order to advance his claim to be a public intellectual because it suggests to the outside world that he was as influential as Will MacAskill, Toby Ord, Elie Hassenfeld, and Holden Karnofsky, which he wasn’t and he knows he wasn’t.
The dissembling in the post is typical of him. He never takes responsibility for anything unless forced to do so.
I’m saying it’s a gross exaggeration not a lie. I can imagine someone disinterested saying “ok but can we present a democratic vision of EA where we talk about the hundred founders?” and then looking for people who put energy early into building up the thing, and Jacy would be on that list.
(I think this is pretty bad, but that outright lying is worse, and I want to protect language to talk about that.)
I want to flag that something like “same intention as outright lying, but doing it in a way to maximize plausible deniability” would be just as bad as outright lying. (It is basically “outright lying” but in a not stupid fashion.)
However, the problem is that sometimes people exaggerate or get things wrong for more innocuous reasons like exaggerated or hyperbolic speech or having an inflated sense of one’s importance in what’s happening. Those cases are indeed different and deserve to be treated very different from lying (since we’d expect people to self-correct when they get the feedback, and avoid mistakes in the future). So, I agree with the point about protecting language. I don’t agree with the implicit message “it’s never as bad as outright lying when there’s an almost-defensible interpretation somewhere.” I think protecting the language is important for reasons of legibility and epistemic transparency, not so much because the moral distinction is always clean-cut.
I agree with this.
You are taking charitable interpretations to an absolute limit here. You seem to be saying “maybe Jacy was endorsing a highly expansive conception of ‘founding’ which implies that EA has hundreds of founders’”. This is indeed a logical possibility. But I think the correct credence to have in this possibility is ~0. Instead, we should have ~1 credence in the following “he said it knowing it is not true in order to further his career”. And by ‘founding’ he meant, “I’m in the same bracket as Will MacAskill”. Otherwise, why put it on your website and in your bio?
I don’t think it’s like “Jacy had an interpretation in mind and then chose statements”. I think it’s more like “Jacy wanted to say things that made himself look impressive, then with motivated reasoning talked himself into thinking it was reasonable to call himself a founder of EA, because that sounded cool”.
(Within this there’s a spectrum of more and less blameworthy versions, as well as the possibility of the straight-out lying version. My best guess is towards the blameworthy end of the not-lying versions, but I don’t really know.)
This feels off to me. It seems like Jacy deliberately misled people to think that he was a co-founder of EA, to likely further his own career. This feels like a core element of lying, to deceive people for personal gain, which I think is the main reason one would claim they’re the co-founder of EA when almost no one else would say this about them.
Sure I think it can also be called “gross exaggeration” but where do you think the line is between “gross exaggeration” and “lying”? For me, lying means you say something that isn’t true (in the eyes of most people) for significant personal gain (i.e. status) whereas gross exaggeration is a smaller embellishment and/or isn’t done for large personal gain.
So rather than a lie, you think it might be a motivated delusion. Motivated delusions are obviously false. But then at the end you say it is not obviously false. This is inconsistent.
True/false isn’t a dichotomy. The statement here was obviously a stretch / not entirely true. I’d guess it had hundreds of thousands of microlies ( https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SGFRneArKi93qbrRG/truthful-ai?commentId=KdG4kZEu9GA4324AE )
But I think it’s important to reserve terms like “lie” for “completely false”, because otherwise you lose the ability to police that boundary (and it’s important to police it, even if I also want higher standards enforced around many spaces I interact with).
Could you provide links or specific quotes regarding his claim of being a founder of EA? Perhaps unlikely, but maybe through web archive?
It’s briefly referenced in this recent post, though I don’t think this is what John was talking about.
https://jacyanthis.com/some-early-history-of-effective-altruism
Ah, I only just noticed this had gone online. I think the story Jacy tells is potentially a bit misleading, so I’ve left some comments here.
Thanks. I agree with essentially all of this, and I left a comment with details: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZbdNFuEP2zWN5w2Yx/ryancarey-s-shortform?commentId=oxodp9BzigZ5qgEHg
I would reiterate that this was only on my website for a few weeks, and I removed it as soon as I got the negative feedback. [Edit: As I say in my detailed comment, I viewed the term “co-founder” in terms of the broad base of people who built EA as a social movement. Others read it as a narrower term, such as the 1-3 co-founders of a typical company or nonprofit. Now I just avoid the term because I think it’s too vague and confusing.]
You removed it after people called you out on it being bullshit and you know it isn’t true.
The moderation team feels that phrases like “called you out on it being bullshit” aren’t constructive for this discussion (or on the Forum as a general rule). Please don’t use them.
https://nonprofitchronicles.com/2019/04/02/the-peculiar-metoo-story-of-animal-activist-jacy-reese/
From Jacy: