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]
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: