I think I’ve recently got a reputation as one of the people really against personal and professional mixing, so I wanted to clarify more about how I think about this.
I definitely think it’s ok (beautiful even) for EAs to date other EAs. There’s nothing wrong with this. I think where it goes wrong is how it is handled. It needs to be handled with a lot of thought and care.
Essentially, a few things:
I think we as a community need to make clearer differentiations between personal and professional spaces and then avoid asking people out in professional spaces. EA Global is a professional space and I’m glad we now have a “Swapcard is not for dating” rule. Other events, like EA Global afterparties, that feel more ambiguous should probably do more to clearly set expectations upfront so attendees know what they’re getting into.
We shouldn’t be able to make decisions of power (e.g., grants, hiring decisions, management, performance reviews) to people we are dating. That is a clear conflict of interest. Any grantmaking body or organization has to have some sort of system to handle this. For example, if you date someone on the EA Infrastructure Fund, you still should apply, but someone else other than the person you are dating should review the application and your relationship to the grantee should be disclosed confidentially to the Fund when relevant.
EAs who are in positions of power (e.g., CEOs of research organizations, grantmakers at OP) need to be extra careful and extra thoughtful about how they go about their relationships.
People should be able to engage fully within the professional aspects of EA without having to give up their personal life too. EA needs to be structured to allow this. I think we’ve made a lot of progress on this.
All of these things apply equally well to any community or professional group, not just EA. There’s nothing EA-specific about how to navigate conflicts of interest.
I think “Power dynamics in EA” was a really thoughtful post that captures a lot of the relevant trade-offs here.
Re differentiating social from professional spaces, do you think (unofficial, non-CEA-sponsored) dating events around the time of EAGs is a step in the right or the wrong direction?
Arguments that it’s unhelpful: it sets an expectation that you can/should be viewing the conference and adjacent socials as a way to find partners, which isn’t true of the conference proper; you may encounter people you’ve had professional 1-on-1s with at the dating event which may make things blurry/awkward.
Arguments that it’s helpful: it quarantines all the flirty energy in one place so people feel “less of a need” to hit on each other at the conferences and general afterparties; by making that space be explicitly social, it helps the conference itself be more implicitly professional?
I do personally think it would be helpful to have explicit dating events, so that people who are in to that thing have an explicit place to be and go and people who are not in to that thing can know to steer clear.
I personally think that people are personal and professional people, so it shouldn’t be weird or bad to see people in personal and professional contexts and to interact with them very differently depending on the context.
What exactly does “EA Global is a professional space” entail for you? Professional evokes a certain image for me that might not be the same for you, which is why I ask. In my mind, “professional space” implies a place where sidebar or causal conversation is quite limited, where interaction amongst people comes in the form of conferences instead of conversations between friends, the type of space where I might get in trouble for talking to someone for too long about League of Legends or some other random interest of mine rather than my effective way of improving the world. If this is your proposition, I think I stand in stark opposition, but I imagine you might have a different idea in mind, one I’d like to hear more about.
I think I’ve recently got a reputation as one of the people really against personal and professional mixing, so I wanted to clarify more about how I think about this.
I definitely think it’s ok (beautiful even) for EAs to date other EAs. There’s nothing wrong with this. I think where it goes wrong is how it is handled. It needs to be handled with a lot of thought and care.
Essentially, a few things:
I think we as a community need to make clearer differentiations between personal and professional spaces and then avoid asking people out in professional spaces. EA Global is a professional space and I’m glad we now have a “Swapcard is not for dating” rule. Other events, like EA Global afterparties, that feel more ambiguous should probably do more to clearly set expectations upfront so attendees know what they’re getting into.
We shouldn’t be able to make decisions of power (e.g., grants, hiring decisions, management, performance reviews) to people we are dating. That is a clear conflict of interest. Any grantmaking body or organization has to have some sort of system to handle this. For example, if you date someone on the EA Infrastructure Fund, you still should apply, but someone else other than the person you are dating should review the application and your relationship to the grantee should be disclosed confidentially to the Fund when relevant.
EAs who are in positions of power (e.g., CEOs of research organizations, grantmakers at OP) need to be extra careful and extra thoughtful about how they go about their relationships.
People should be able to engage fully within the professional aspects of EA without having to give up their personal life too. EA needs to be structured to allow this. I think we’ve made a lot of progress on this.
All of these things apply equally well to any community or professional group, not just EA. There’s nothing EA-specific about how to navigate conflicts of interest.
I think “Power dynamics in EA” was a really thoughtful post that captures a lot of the relevant trade-offs here.
This all seems right!
Re differentiating social from professional spaces, do you think (unofficial, non-CEA-sponsored) dating events around the time of EAGs is a step in the right or the wrong direction?
Arguments that it’s unhelpful: it sets an expectation that you can/should be viewing the conference and adjacent socials as a way to find partners, which isn’t true of the conference proper; you may encounter people you’ve had professional 1-on-1s with at the dating event which may make things blurry/awkward.
Arguments that it’s helpful: it quarantines all the flirty energy in one place so people feel “less of a need” to hit on each other at the conferences and general afterparties; by making that space be explicitly social, it helps the conference itself be more implicitly professional?
I do personally think it would be helpful to have explicit dating events, so that people who are in to that thing have an explicit place to be and go and people who are not in to that thing can know to steer clear.
I personally think that people are personal and professional people, so it shouldn’t be weird or bad to see people in personal and professional contexts and to interact with them very differently depending on the context.
What exactly does “EA Global is a professional space” entail for you? Professional evokes a certain image for me that might not be the same for you, which is why I ask. In my mind, “professional space” implies a place where sidebar or causal conversation is quite limited, where interaction amongst people comes in the form of conferences instead of conversations between friends, the type of space where I might get in trouble for talking to someone for too long about League of Legends or some other random interest of mine rather than my effective way of improving the world. If this is your proposition, I think I stand in stark opposition, but I imagine you might have a different idea in mind, one I’d like to hear more about.