Again begs the question, why status in a community oriented around “doing good” has anything to do with sexuality and is not uniformly distributed across all sexualities. Status in EA should be a function of doing good and should be sexuality-neutral, period.
I think you’re reframing on a technicality. Status and success are fairly related in many ways in the real world, because status opens doors and signals greater opportunity.
EA might want to hire competent women but competent women might not want to stick around if they’re lower status due to factors outside of their control such as sexuality/race/etc.
EA might want to hire competent women but competent women might not want to stick around if they’re lower status due to factors outside of their control such as sexuality/race/etc.
I fully agree with this point, but I have a hard time drawing the line from what my and Ivy’s topic of conversation is and this. What I think you’re talking about is a problem where power dynamics is involved including mentor/mentee relationships and coworkers etc etc. This is a separate topic from the social status increase and feeling-dejected by it that Ivy and I are talking about.
I’ll try an illustrate why with an example:
When I was at an EA party the other night a woman I had just met brought up the topic of orgies. I immediately found her more interesting and it opened the span of conversation to many other varied topics not even related to sexuality. She didn’t break any norms, she didn’t try to make people feel uncomfortable, she brought the topic up in a funny socially intelligent way. Her social status in the group in this setting increased. EAs trend towards being open-minded enough to talk about anything. Nothing wrong with this. Another pertinent example: When I met one of my closest EA-adjacent friends in the world for the first time: within 5 minutes we were both talking about the topic of suicide and our own personal struggles. Naturally I also immediately found her more interesting and it opened the span of conversation to many other varied topics not even related to suicide. Her openness increased her social status at said party where people were EAs and EA-adjacent open-minded types.
If these women had been at a conservative catholic social gathering their social status would have decreased with this behaviour. And there is nothing wrong with a different social setting having different status hierarchies.
I bring up this example because your comment begs the question: do you think it is problematic these women brought up these topics and that status hierarchies should be different in EA as a community, as a whole? Because we don’t allow this kind of talk at EA conferences and it has finally come down (as it should) that where power dynamics are concerned this kind of talk between coworkers is likely to be problematic. But if what you’re saying is that absent any professional setting, absent any coworker or mentee/mentor relationship, people who identify as “EAs” should still not grant anyone any social status for being interesting when the topic of sexuality is brought up… what you’re effectively demanding is for thousands of people around the world to change their personality and become less sexually liberal and less open-minded.
Now mind you, when I was in my early twenties, I would have felt left out and dejected at these EA parties where people are freely talking about said sexual topics where I don’t have any status because of factors outside of my control. I certainly would have felt like my dating life is some sort of proxy for not being good enough to be part of EA and that it was locking opportunities away from me. But how I feel and how things are are two different things.
It would have been wrong for me to make the leap from “I feel like I’m not high status and not good enough at this EA party” to “EAs wont hire me because I’m not high status enough and sexually liberal enough at their EA parties.” I think this is the mistake you are making when you say “Status and success are fairly related in many ways in the real world, because status opens doors and signals greater opportunity.” This is an obviously true statement in some contexts (e.g. mentor/mentee or grant/grantee relationships etc) and an obviously false statement in the context that Ivy and I are talking about.
That said, an obvious crux here that would convince me that we have a problem that requires action is if the number of women in EA does indeed dwindle or show a downward trend. I don’t see that happening.
If anything the EA Community’s gendar ratio over the years (including at EA casual socials) is trending towards becoming more women-heavy suggesting to me that women are feeling more comfortable as a whole in the movement rather than less so.
This doesn’t mean that there haven’t been incidents that have made some women feel unwelcome or unsafe. These are serious and need to be dealt with. But I’m unconvinced this is indicative of a larger trend. I talk about this view of mine more in this comment on a post by Maya saying they are sad, disappointed and scared of the EA community.
And guess what: she updated her initial negative view towards the EA community after considering the full context of things as you can see in her comment here:
Thanks for your comment—for all who are interested, I did reach out to Scott and he provided me with an in-depth explanation of some of the context behind Kathy’s accusations and suicide. His explanation provided me with a deeper understanding of the situation and helped me realize that action was taken to check the validity of some of Kathy claims and that there was a more involved and nuanced response to the situation than I realized initially.
Final quick point:
Status in EA should be a function of doing good and should be sexuality-neutral, period.
I believe sexuality can be a means of doing good. I think healthy sexuality and specifically talking about it has liberated thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, across history. It’s as valid something to talk about as mental health as an EA cause area. If some are better at talking about it—even if it makes me feel uncomfortable and left out—it’s ok for them to get social status for it.
This is not really entirely different from how when EAs talk about AI Alignment and get status for it that I also feel uncomfortable and left out for not being smart enough. Let their social status increase. It’s my problem for feeling insecure, not theirs.
Likewise it is my problem for feeling like I “need to be better at being poly to be EA.” This is something I genuinely feel. But I know I don’t have to be poly to be fully welcome and I know the feeling is my own problem, not something that is a provably strong indictment against the EA community.
But if what you’re saying is that absent any professional setting, absent any coworker or mentee/mentor relationship, people who identify as “EAs” should still not grant anyone any social status for being interesting when the topic of sexuality is brought up… what you’re effectively demanding is for thousands of people around the world to change their personality and become less sexually liberal and less open-minded.
You’re using the word sexually liberal / open-minded /interesting interchangeably. Catholic nuns can be interesting, monogamous people can be open minded. Private sexual preferences have nothing to do with interestingness or open minded ness.
What I think you’re talking about is a problem where power dynamics is involved including mentor/mentee relationships and coworkers etc etc. This is a separate topic from the social status increase and feeling-dejected by it that Ivy and I are talking about.
I am not just talking about professional relationships. I’m also talking about what the community should value. Treating women differently as higher/lower status based on their sexuality is simply wrong. A lot of people are intentionally monogamous ( like me). Assigning them default lower status due to their private relationship preference is an awful practice that shouldn’t be adopted community wide.
Which also speaks to a broader point: if you’re poly you’re interesting and get invited to speak on the Clearer Thinking podcasts etc etc
May be you’re struggling to understand my point, so let me try to demonstrate why this sort of language is troubling. If you substitute the word “poly” with “white” ( ethnicity)/”male” (gender)/ “homosexual”(orientation) or other equivalents, this sentence sounds so wrong. I don’t think that my choice / programming of sexuality is something that needs work, I love being monogamous, just like how I don’t feel lesser because of my gender or ethnicity. All other things being equal, I want to be given equal status as someone else with a different sexuality, just like how I want the same status as a man / white person / a person of different nationality. That’s all.
Likewise it is my problem for feeling like I “need to be better at being poly to be EA.” This is something I genuinely feel.
I am sorry you feel this way.
This is not really entirely different from how when EAs talk about AI Alignment and get status for it that I also feel uncomfortable and left out for not being smart enough. Let their social status increase. It’s my problem for feeling insecure, not theirs.
This is actually status working the right way. Status can be used as an incentive to promote behaviors we want from people because humans are great incentive maximizers. We want alignment researchers to gain status by producing high quality alignment work, because EA thinks this work is of high impact. Conversely, we want more people to aspire to become alignment researchers because this work is highly regarded / high status in EA. Unlike promoting certain type of technical AI work over others in EA, the community should not promote a certain type of sexuality over others. Let EA be about doing good alone, and decoupled from sexuality / race / ethnicity / orientation.
You’re using the word sexually liberal / open-minded /interesting interchangeably. Catholic nuns can be interesting, monogamous people can be open minded. Private sexual preferences have nothing to do with interestingness or open minded ness.
A valuable point I am glad you brought up so I can clarify that of course I believe Catholic nuns can be interesting and open minded and even sexually liberal in beliefs without practising. I’d hate to make anyone feel otherwise. I’m not using them interchangeably. I said “sexually liberal and less open-minded” indicating two separate things, not two synonymous things. Private sexual preferences can totally be related to someone’s interestingness, sexually liberal mindset and open-mindedness and there is nothing wrong with that. Some things correlate and this is hardly controversial. And just because I acknowledge they correlate for me (interestingness is subjective after all) does not mean I’m saying other groups cannot be interesting, sexually liberal or open-minded. Likewise poly people can be dull and closed-minded as well.
People just aren’t black-and-white enough to be easily categorized.
I kinda also just want to stop here and point out that it is a private relationship preferences, not sexual preferences. A lot of polyamorous people aren’t even sexual. There are poly people that just sleep together cuddling, yet have full blown loving relationship polycules complete with horrendously messy breakups like any monogamous relationship.
I met a a poly man this year that—to my shock—is asexual. Mostly shocking because he presented to me as interested in sex like me but when I talked to one of the (many) women he is or has dated I found out he doesn’t care much for sex.
And there is nothing wrong with me being more interested in this asexual poly man with multiple girlfriends (some of said girlfriends whom I might add are interested in sex) as a direct consequence of his relationship dynamics. Me assigning him more status in my social circles is no more a moral problem than traditionally monogamous people giving status to people who are traditionally married. Different social groups have different social status hierarchies. Both are as valid as any preference you might have where everyone is consenting to be a part of a social dynamic.
I am not just talking about professional relationships. I’m also talking about what the community should value. Treating women differently as higher/lower status based on their sexuality is simply wrong.
You cannot police people’s preferences when nobody is being harmed. That is wrong. If there are zero problematic power dynamics (e.g. no professional relationships), consenting adults can do as they please. A woman, just like any man, has every right to assign status to different people based on whatever reasons they choose. We all do this instinctively and automatically. The problem is not that that treating women differently as higher/lower status based on whatever preference you might have is wrong—it is that doing so insensitively can hurt someone and that hurting others is wrong.
In eras long forgotten I’ve had brief but magical “poly-heaven” moments where I’m dating multiple people and everyone is happy and it is sheer bliss, but I don’t go loudly proclaiming it all to all my friends who aren’t happy with their dating lives. That would be incredibly insensitive of me. Just because someone is lower status on some subjective metric doesn’t mean I want them to viscerally feel it. We should all be kindly helping lift each other up.
A lot of people are intentionally monogamous ( like me). Assigning them default lower status due to their private relationship preference is an awful practice that shouldn’t be adopted community wide.
So I’ll start by saying it is absolutely awful you feel like the EA community is assigning you lower status for being a monogamous woman. I have to ask though, isn’t this something where you can look at the individuals who were this insensitive towards you and call them assholes without calling the EA community as a whole asshole-ish?
When I, as a poly person, hang out with my more conservative mono friends, they don’t make me feel lower status. I’m their friend. However, I am lower status around them relative to their status hierarchy, especially when it comes to my viability as a mate. I accept and respect that I’m lower status around them.
A perhaps better example (“more conservative mono” is a bit too vague) is that when I a hang out with my death metal friends who have crazy tats and know everything about metal music and playing instruments I likewise have lower relative social status. And perhaps an illustrative example here is that yes, some in the death metal community do put more status on tattoos while some do not—which, like polyamory to EA, is wholly separate from what the core of the community is actually focused on, namely death metal music. I accept and respect that to some people within the metal community I’m lower status due to not having tattoos. They aren’t being mean to me by assigning me lower status.
However, if a particular strictly monogamous person or death metal friend went out of their way to highlight or was insensitive about my relative low status, I’d call them an asshole. I would not however call the death metal community as a whole asshole-ish for assigning me lower status due to my private preference of not wanting to have tattoos. And I wouldn’t say they are wrong to value tattoos and should only appraise my social status based on my love of death metal.
Assigning people status based on their private relationship preference is not something that is adopted community-wide in EA. Assigning status based on your tattoos is not something adopted community-wide in the death metal community. In both cases though there might be an epiphenomenon where the people you hang out within the EA/Death Metal community just happen to also be into polyamory/tattoos, but that doesn’t mean their personal preference and the status hierarchies you experience because of those preferences are a community-wide practice.
You might immediately want to counter-argue that “the sum aggregate of statuses being assigned is what takes something from individuals practising it to it being a community-wide practice.” In anticipating this counter-argument, let’s look at my death metal analogy and see how it can come crashing down:
Let’s assume that women with tattoos disproportionately find themselves in favourable career positions in the death metal community which is not relative to their actual career skill. Women without tattoos do not see this advantage. Let’s assume this is a result of increased professional networking opportunities afforded to women with tattoos as a direct result of many high in power and status in the death metal community disproportionately giving social status to women with tattoos (And it is only due to this and NOT due to problematic romantic relationships with problematic power dynamics). Consequently we enter vicious feedback loop of women without tattoos feeling dis-empowered and unfair pressure to get tattoos to get ahead. And those that wont put up with this obvious bullshit just decide to leave the Death Metal Community altogether despite their talent.
I think we are now looking dead in the eye at something much more like what you’re afraid of is happening in the EA community. You’re saying that even absent problematic power dynamics and the appearance of nobody is being harmed, actually women are still being harmed.
So I think there are a few further steps we need to take before we start calling out the entire Death Metal community:
Women with tattoos actually have to be less competent than women without that aren’t getting said career positions. It’s totally possible that actually there are just more competent Death Metal women with tattoos and their tattoos are completely unrelated to their getting their positions
Women who feel pressured to get tattoos might just be pattern-matching on something that isn’t actually relevant to their professional success in the Death Metal Community
In the EA community I have not seen broad evidence of poly women being treated preferentially professionally because they are poly
It has to be broadly systemic and not just a feature of some subset of the community
It shouldn’t be something like Sonia points out appears to occur mostly in The Bay Area which appears to have features conducive to abusive dynamics
If there was some city where a scandal took place in the Death Metal community where some women appeared to have gotten preferential treatment due to their tattoos, it would be pretty unthinkable for anyone to conclude “The Death Metal Community is abusive” instead of “The Death Metal Community in this city is abusive”
Nobody caring to course correct, no action being taken.
I really doubt I need to make a case that concerns of women are being taken seriously. If they weren’t the number of women in EA wouldn’t be growing.
If things were true, however, we are no longer talking about individuals who are assholes but an entire community that has a deep rot.
But for sub-points I added I don’t think any of them hold for the EA community.
Ergo, I think the correct response is to call out individuals. Which has happened in the EA community a bunch of times leading to said individuals being banned from the EA community (or other punishments that make sense)
Which also speaks to a broader point: if you’re poly you’re interesting and get invited to speak on the Clearer Thinking podcasts etc etc
May be you’re struggling to understand my point, so let me try to demonstrate why this sort of language is troubling. If you substitute the word “poly” with “white” ( ethnicity)/”male” (gender)/ “homosexual”(orientation) or other equivalents, this sentence sounds so wrong. I don’t think that my choice / programming of sexuality is something that needs work, I love being monogamous, just like how I don’t feel lesser because of my gender or ethnicity. All other things being equal, I want to be given equal status as someone else with a different sexuality, just like how I want the same status as a man / white person / a person of different nationality. That’s all.
Thank you for trying to make your point clearer. I appreciate this a lot. I’m beginning to think we have an unusually high inferential distance between us, but actually at the object-level we don’t disagree on a lot at all.
So, actually, all those do occur and frequently. Certain black (ethnicity), women (gendar), homosexual (orientation) people have interesting stories to tell because of their experience tied to their ethnicity/gendar/orientation and get invited to podcasts because of it. So the sentence doesn’t strike me as “wrong” per se. It strikes me as feeling wrong.
But, if it isn’t just because of some protected characteristic, it is totally ok for people to assign others more social status, in part, because of protected characteristics. People assign people who are women/black/homosexual <insert-reason-here> more status because their experience as a <insert-category-here> is essential to whatever they have to share—e.g. it is something where they are oppressed
Likewise, polyamory is quite stigmatised and we don’t really have many role-models or representation. So, when someone is speaking for us and they do so eloquently, it is only natural that we assign this person more status because they can do so—and doing so is intricately tied to their identity in being poly. Someone who isn’t poly that can still “talk as well” wouldn’t get the status. This would be problematic for the same reason that we don’t assign status to a white man who can “talk as well” about the experience of being black as someone who is black.
I guess the question then is, if you possibly don’t feel it wrong to assign a women more social status for being a good role-model for women as a woman, why do you feel uncomfortable when poly people are assigned more status for being a good role-model for poly people as a poly person themselves? This, like AI Alignment in the EA community, is status working in the right way and incentivising good and worthwhile behaviour in the poly community.
I might feel bad or left out due to this, but that is not really that different from a woman feeling bad and left out when they compare themselves to other women who have gained social status in part for sharing their experiences as women.
Also I just want to explicitly state I didn’t mean for anything I wrote to imply I think your programming of sexuality is something that needs work. I’ll also add, in case you’re worrying whether you’ve offended me, nothing you’ve written thus far has made me feel like you think my programming of sexuality is something I need to work on.
This is actually status working the right way. Status can be used as an incentive to promote behaviors we want from people because humans are great incentive maximizers. We want alignment researchers to gain status by producing high quality alignment work, because EA thinks this work is of high impact. Conversely, we want more people to aspire to become alignment researchers because this work is highly regarded / high status in EA. Unlike promoting certain type of technical AI work over others in EA, the community should not promote a certain type of sexuality over others. Let EA be about doing good alone, and decoupled from sexuality / race / ethnicity / orientation.
And some people want to meet more people who have cool tattoos or more people who are polyamorous. Humans are going to throw out incentives to get what they want. The answer is not to quash it, it is to teach people to do so maturely, tactfully and with kindness. I like big-tent EA so people with near any preference might also like doing EA stuff. They might even be EA leaders. But we shouldn’t let their preferences automatically lead us to conclude that is the preference of the community as a whole.
And maybe I’m too woke but I’d caution against trying to decouple doing good from sexuality / race / ethnicity / orientation completely. A full understanding of people’s identities, I think, is important to doing good better. A sex-race-ethnic-orientation blind approach might invalidate people’s experiences, especially those that are marginalized.
For anyone that actually read this whole damn comment, if you are in the Bay Area for the next month I’d love to meet you at the EA Taco Tuesday meetup and give you an appreciative high five, lol, even if you disagree with me. I’ll be highly talkative excitable guy in the panda hat.
And perhaps an illustrative example here is that yes, some in the death metal community do put more status on tattoos while some do not—which, like polyamory to EA, is wholly separate from what the core of the community is actually focused on, namely death metal music. I accept and respect that to some people within the metal community I’m lower status due to not having tattoos. They aren’t being mean to me by assigning me lower status.
Nice of you, but I do not accept or respect having lower status in EA due to being monogamous. They are being mean to me and thousands of monogamous women they’re recruiting / want to recruit / who are dedicated EAs by assigning us lower status. I am not willing to participate in a community where I have lower status due to factors I didn’t choose (race/gender/sexuality), and I’d think many self respecting others will also not put up with what you’re calling “relative lower status”. No fuck that. We want equality, equal respect, equal opportunity.
So I’ll start by saying it is absolutely awful you feel like the EA community is assigning you lower status for being a monogamous woman. I have to ask though, isn’t this something where you can look at the individuals who were this insensitive towards you and call them assholes without calling the EA community as a whole asshole-ish?
I am not calling the whole EA community asshole-ish, but it is big problem here because there are many such individuals. There’s no push back against these people that I’m seeing widely either. I’m also confused you think individuals who assign me lower status are assholes after saying above yourself that may be I should be ok with being assigned lower status like you’re ok being lower status elsewhere.
I’m sorry but the death metal-tattoo analogy got lost on me. You can get a tattoo if you chose to, many people can’t change their sexual preference, so it’s a false comparison. It’s like you’re saying white people have higher status and you should be ok with that, but I can’t paint my face white and become a white person if I wanted to. Secondly tattoos are nothing like sex. Sex involves two people ( often) and conveys a relationship where you can benefit a higher status individual. Your getting a tattoo is not pleasurable to high status men. I do not want to get into the frame of arguing based on this analogy because the analogy doesn’t model many complications.
I really doubt I need to make a case that concerns of women are being taken seriously. If they weren’t the number of women in EA wouldn’t be growing.
If you recruit more women than you hurt and if you drive out and silence the ones who speak up, number of women will grow but that doesn’t mean concerns of women are taken seriously. I’m not saying this is happening but your logic is flawed in many ways. Your implied casuality, ie, evidence that women’s numbers are growing means concerns of women are taken seriously, is false.
Likewise, polyamory is quite stigmatised and we don’t really have many role-models or representation.
Bay area EA has around 60% poly, so I’d say monogamists are the minority here.
guess the question then is, if you possibly don’t feel it wrong to assign a women more social status for being a good role-model for women as a woman, why do you feel uncomfortable when poly people are assigned more status for being a good role-model for poly people as a poly person themselves?
Your original statement said “if you’re poly you’re interesting and would be invited to speak on podcasts” so matter-of-factly. That is very different from “if you’re a good role-model for poly people as a poly person...”. Good role models should get status, I agree, but that’s not what you said. The equivalent of what you initially said would be ” if you’re a man you’re interesting and would be invited to speak on clearer thinking podcast etc”.
Which also speaks to a broader point: if you’re poly you’re interesting and get invited to speak on the Clearer Thinking podcasts etc etc
a woman feeling bad and left out when they compare themselves to other women who have gained social status in part for sharing their experiences as women.
Inverted casual reasoning. But if we look carefully at your first quote the order of events is being poly gets status that converts into the opportunity to speak on podcasts. But in your justification, sharing experiences gets status. Sharing experiences should get more status, but just being poly/mono shouldn’t. Being a good role model for monogamous people and sharing that experience should also get higher status, but tell me dear friend, are they getting invited to podcasts? I am amazing at monogamy, the absolute best, do get me an invite. Or are these opportunities gate-kept?
I like big-tent EA so people with near any preference might also like doing EA stuff. They might even be EA leaders. But we shouldn’t let their preferences automatically lead us to conclude that is the preference of the community as a whole.
Have you heard of the netflix quote “The actual company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.” Almost all top rationalists are poly, many top EAs are as well. >50% of bay area EA is poly while base population rate is 15% or less. Tell me this is not a preference of the community once again :) Tell me what monogamous people need to do to rise the ranks.
Again begs the question, why status in a community oriented around “doing good” has anything to do with sexuality and is not uniformly distributed across all sexualities. Status in EA should be a function of doing good and should be sexuality-neutral, period.
I think you’re reframing on a technicality. Status and success are fairly related in many ways in the real world, because status opens doors and signals greater opportunity.
EA might want to hire competent women but competent women might not want to stick around if they’re lower status due to factors outside of their control such as sexuality/race/etc.
I fully agree with this point, but I have a hard time drawing the line from what my and Ivy’s topic of conversation is and this. What I think you’re talking about is a problem where power dynamics is involved including mentor/mentee relationships and coworkers etc etc. This is a separate topic from the social status increase and feeling-dejected by it that Ivy and I are talking about.
I’ll try an illustrate why with an example:
When I was at an EA party the other night a woman I had just met brought up the topic of orgies. I immediately found her more interesting and it opened the span of conversation to many other varied topics not even related to sexuality. She didn’t break any norms, she didn’t try to make people feel uncomfortable, she brought the topic up in a funny socially intelligent way. Her social status in the group in this setting increased. EAs trend towards being open-minded enough to talk about anything. Nothing wrong with this. Another pertinent example: When I met one of my closest EA-adjacent friends in the world for the first time: within 5 minutes we were both talking about the topic of suicide and our own personal struggles. Naturally I also immediately found her more interesting and it opened the span of conversation to many other varied topics not even related to suicide. Her openness increased her social status at said party where people were EAs and EA-adjacent open-minded types.
If these women had been at a conservative catholic social gathering their social status would have decreased with this behaviour. And there is nothing wrong with a different social setting having different status hierarchies.
I bring up this example because your comment begs the question: do you think it is problematic these women brought up these topics and that status hierarchies should be different in EA as a community, as a whole? Because we don’t allow this kind of talk at EA conferences and it has finally come down (as it should) that where power dynamics are concerned this kind of talk between coworkers is likely to be problematic. But if what you’re saying is that absent any professional setting, absent any coworker or mentee/mentor relationship, people who identify as “EAs” should still not grant anyone any social status for being interesting when the topic of sexuality is brought up… what you’re effectively demanding is for thousands of people around the world to change their personality and become less sexually liberal and less open-minded.
Now mind you, when I was in my early twenties, I would have felt left out and dejected at these EA parties where people are freely talking about said sexual topics where I don’t have any status because of factors outside of my control. I certainly would have felt like my dating life is some sort of proxy for not being good enough to be part of EA and that it was locking opportunities away from me. But how I feel and how things are are two different things.
It would have been wrong for me to make the leap from “I feel like I’m not high status and not good enough at this EA party” to “EAs wont hire me because I’m not high status enough and sexually liberal enough at their EA parties.” I think this is the mistake you are making when you say “Status and success are fairly related in many ways in the real world, because status opens doors and signals greater opportunity.” This is an obviously true statement in some contexts (e.g. mentor/mentee or grant/grantee relationships etc) and an obviously false statement in the context that Ivy and I are talking about.
That said, an obvious crux here that would convince me that we have a problem that requires action is if the number of women in EA does indeed dwindle or show a downward trend. I don’t see that happening.
If anything the EA Community’s gendar ratio over the years (including at EA casual socials) is trending towards becoming more women-heavy suggesting to me that women are feeling more comfortable as a whole in the movement rather than less so.
This doesn’t mean that there haven’t been incidents that have made some women feel unwelcome or unsafe. These are serious and need to be dealt with. But I’m unconvinced this is indicative of a larger trend. I talk about this view of mine more in this comment on a post by Maya saying they are sad, disappointed and scared of the EA community.
And guess what: she updated her initial negative view towards the EA community after considering the full context of things as you can see in her comment here:
Final quick point:
I believe sexuality can be a means of doing good. I think healthy sexuality and specifically talking about it has liberated thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, across history. It’s as valid something to talk about as mental health as an EA cause area. If some are better at talking about it—even if it makes me feel uncomfortable and left out—it’s ok for them to get social status for it.
This is not really entirely different from how when EAs talk about AI Alignment and get status for it that I also feel uncomfortable and left out for not being smart enough. Let their social status increase. It’s my problem for feeling insecure, not theirs.
Likewise it is my problem for feeling like I “need to be better at being poly to be EA.” This is something I genuinely feel. But I know I don’t have to be poly to be fully welcome and I know the feeling is my own problem, not something that is a provably strong indictment against the EA community.
You’re using the word sexually liberal / open-minded /interesting interchangeably. Catholic nuns can be interesting, monogamous people can be open minded. Private sexual preferences have nothing to do with interestingness or open minded ness.
I am not just talking about professional relationships. I’m also talking about what the community should value. Treating women differently as higher/lower status based on their sexuality is simply wrong. A lot of people are intentionally monogamous ( like me). Assigning them default lower status due to their private relationship preference is an awful practice that shouldn’t be adopted community wide.
May be you’re struggling to understand my point, so let me try to demonstrate why this sort of language is troubling. If you substitute the word “poly” with “white” ( ethnicity)/”male” (gender)/ “homosexual”(orientation) or other equivalents, this sentence sounds so wrong. I don’t think that my choice / programming of sexuality is something that needs work, I love being monogamous, just like how I don’t feel lesser because of my gender or ethnicity. All other things being equal, I want to be given equal status as someone else with a different sexuality, just like how I want the same status as a man / white person / a person of different nationality. That’s all.
I am sorry you feel this way.
This is actually status working the right way. Status can be used as an incentive to promote behaviors we want from people because humans are great incentive maximizers. We want alignment researchers to gain status by producing high quality alignment work, because EA thinks this work is of high impact. Conversely, we want more people to aspire to become alignment researchers because this work is highly regarded / high status in EA. Unlike promoting certain type of technical AI work over others in EA, the community should not promote a certain type of sexuality over others. Let EA be about doing good alone, and decoupled from sexuality / race / ethnicity / orientation.
A valuable point I am glad you brought up so I can clarify that of course I believe Catholic nuns can be interesting and open minded and even sexually liberal in beliefs without practising. I’d hate to make anyone feel otherwise. I’m not using them interchangeably. I said “sexually liberal and less open-minded” indicating two separate things, not two synonymous things. Private sexual preferences can totally be related to someone’s interestingness, sexually liberal mindset and open-mindedness and there is nothing wrong with that. Some things correlate and this is hardly controversial. And just because I acknowledge they correlate for me (interestingness is subjective after all) does not mean I’m saying other groups cannot be interesting, sexually liberal or open-minded. Likewise poly people can be dull and closed-minded as well.
People just aren’t black-and-white enough to be easily categorized.
I kinda also just want to stop here and point out that it is a private relationship preferences, not sexual preferences. A lot of polyamorous people aren’t even sexual. There are poly people that just sleep together cuddling, yet have full blown loving relationship polycules complete with horrendously messy breakups like any monogamous relationship.
I met a a poly man this year that—to my shock—is asexual. Mostly shocking because he presented to me as interested in sex like me but when I talked to one of the (many) women he is or has dated I found out he doesn’t care much for sex.
And there is nothing wrong with me being more interested in this asexual poly man with multiple girlfriends (some of said girlfriends whom I might add are interested in sex) as a direct consequence of his relationship dynamics. Me assigning him more status in my social circles is no more a moral problem than traditionally monogamous people giving status to people who are traditionally married. Different social groups have different social status hierarchies. Both are as valid as any preference you might have where everyone is consenting to be a part of a social dynamic.
You cannot police people’s preferences when nobody is being harmed. That is wrong. If there are zero problematic power dynamics (e.g. no professional relationships), consenting adults can do as they please. A woman, just like any man, has every right to assign status to different people based on whatever reasons they choose. We all do this instinctively and automatically. The problem is not that that treating women differently as higher/lower status based on whatever preference you might have is wrong—it is that doing so insensitively can hurt someone and that hurting others is wrong.
In eras long forgotten I’ve had brief but magical “poly-heaven” moments where I’m dating multiple people and everyone is happy and it is sheer bliss, but I don’t go loudly proclaiming it all to all my friends who aren’t happy with their dating lives. That would be incredibly insensitive of me. Just because someone is lower status on some subjective metric doesn’t mean I want them to viscerally feel it. We should all be kindly helping lift each other up.
So I’ll start by saying it is absolutely awful you feel like the EA community is assigning you lower status for being a monogamous woman. I have to ask though, isn’t this something where you can look at the individuals who were this insensitive towards you and call them assholes without calling the EA community as a whole asshole-ish?
When I, as a poly person, hang out with my more conservative mono friends, they don’t make me feel lower status. I’m their friend. However, I am lower status around them relative to their status hierarchy, especially when it comes to my viability as a mate. I accept and respect that I’m lower status around them.
A perhaps better example (“more conservative mono” is a bit too vague) is that when I a hang out with my death metal friends who have crazy tats and know everything about metal music and playing instruments I likewise have lower relative social status. And perhaps an illustrative example here is that yes, some in the death metal community do put more status on tattoos while some do not—which, like polyamory to EA, is wholly separate from what the core of the community is actually focused on, namely death metal music. I accept and respect that to some people within the metal community I’m lower status due to not having tattoos. They aren’t being mean to me by assigning me lower status.
However, if a particular strictly monogamous person or death metal friend went out of their way to highlight or was insensitive about my relative low status, I’d call them an asshole. I would not however call the death metal community as a whole asshole-ish for assigning me lower status due to my private preference of not wanting to have tattoos. And I wouldn’t say they are wrong to value tattoos and should only appraise my social status based on my love of death metal.
Assigning people status based on their private relationship preference is not something that is adopted community-wide in EA. Assigning status based on your tattoos is not something adopted community-wide in the death metal community. In both cases though there might be an epiphenomenon where the people you hang out within the EA/Death Metal community just happen to also be into polyamory/tattoos, but that doesn’t mean their personal preference and the status hierarchies you experience because of those preferences are a community-wide practice.
You might immediately want to counter-argue that “the sum aggregate of statuses being assigned is what takes something from individuals practising it to it being a community-wide practice.” In anticipating this counter-argument, let’s look at my death metal analogy and see how it can come crashing down:
Let’s assume that women with tattoos disproportionately find themselves in favourable career positions in the death metal community which is not relative to their actual career skill. Women without tattoos do not see this advantage. Let’s assume this is a result of increased professional networking opportunities afforded to women with tattoos as a direct result of many high in power and status in the death metal community disproportionately giving social status to women with tattoos (And it is only due to this and NOT due to problematic romantic relationships with problematic power dynamics). Consequently we enter vicious feedback loop of women without tattoos feeling dis-empowered and unfair pressure to get tattoos to get ahead. And those that wont put up with this obvious bullshit just decide to leave the Death Metal Community altogether despite their talent.
I think we are now looking dead in the eye at something much more like what you’re afraid of is happening in the EA community. You’re saying that even absent problematic power dynamics and the appearance of nobody is being harmed, actually women are still being harmed.
So I think there are a few further steps we need to take before we start calling out the entire Death Metal community:
Women with tattoos actually have to be less competent than women without that aren’t getting said career positions. It’s totally possible that actually there are just more competent Death Metal women with tattoos and their tattoos are completely unrelated to their getting their positions
Women who feel pressured to get tattoos might just be pattern-matching on something that isn’t actually relevant to their professional success in the Death Metal Community
In the EA community I have not seen broad evidence of poly women being treated preferentially professionally because they are poly
It has to be broadly systemic and not just a feature of some subset of the community
It shouldn’t be something like Sonia points out appears to occur mostly in The Bay Area which appears to have features conducive to abusive dynamics
If there was some city where a scandal took place in the Death Metal community where some women appeared to have gotten preferential treatment due to their tattoos, it would be pretty unthinkable for anyone to conclude “The Death Metal Community is abusive” instead of “The Death Metal Community in this city is abusive”
Nobody caring to course correct, no action being taken.
I really doubt I need to make a case that concerns of women are being taken seriously. If they weren’t the number of women in EA wouldn’t be growing.
If things were true, however, we are no longer talking about individuals who are assholes but an entire community that has a deep rot.
But for sub-points I added I don’t think any of them hold for the EA community.
Ergo, I think the correct response is to call out individuals. Which has happened in the EA community a bunch of times leading to said individuals being banned from the EA community (or other punishments that make sense)
Thank you for trying to make your point clearer. I appreciate this a lot. I’m beginning to think we have an unusually high inferential distance between us, but actually at the object-level we don’t disagree on a lot at all.
So, actually, all those do occur and frequently. Certain black (ethnicity), women (gendar), homosexual (orientation) people have interesting stories to tell because of their experience tied to their ethnicity/gendar/orientation and get invited to podcasts because of it. So the sentence doesn’t strike me as “wrong” per se. It strikes me as feeling wrong.
But, if it isn’t just because of some protected characteristic, it is totally ok for people to assign others more social status, in part, because of protected characteristics. People assign people who are women/black/homosexual <insert-reason-here> more status because their experience as a <insert-category-here> is essential to whatever they have to share—e.g. it is something where they are oppressed
Likewise, polyamory is quite stigmatised and we don’t really have many role-models or representation. So, when someone is speaking for us and they do so eloquently, it is only natural that we assign this person more status because they can do so—and doing so is intricately tied to their identity in being poly. Someone who isn’t poly that can still “talk as well” wouldn’t get the status. This would be problematic for the same reason that we don’t assign status to a white man who can “talk as well” about the experience of being black as someone who is black.
I guess the question then is, if you possibly don’t feel it wrong to assign a women more social status for being a good role-model for women as a woman, why do you feel uncomfortable when poly people are assigned more status for being a good role-model for poly people as a poly person themselves? This, like AI Alignment in the EA community, is status working in the right way and incentivising good and worthwhile behaviour in the poly community.
I might feel bad or left out due to this, but that is not really that different from a woman feeling bad and left out when they compare themselves to other women who have gained social status in part for sharing their experiences as women.
Also I just want to explicitly state I didn’t mean for anything I wrote to imply I think your programming of sexuality is something that needs work. I’ll also add, in case you’re worrying whether you’ve offended me, nothing you’ve written thus far has made me feel like you think my programming of sexuality is something I need to work on.
And some people want to meet more people who have cool tattoos or more people who are polyamorous. Humans are going to throw out incentives to get what they want. The answer is not to quash it, it is to teach people to do so maturely, tactfully and with kindness. I like big-tent EA so people with near any preference might also like doing EA stuff. They might even be EA leaders. But we shouldn’t let their preferences automatically lead us to conclude that is the preference of the community as a whole.
And maybe I’m too woke but I’d caution against trying to decouple doing good from sexuality / race / ethnicity / orientation completely. A full understanding of people’s identities, I think, is important to doing good better. A sex-race-ethnic-orientation blind approach might invalidate people’s experiences, especially those that are marginalized.
For anyone that actually read this whole damn comment, if you are in the Bay Area for the next month I’d love to meet you at the EA Taco Tuesday meetup and give you an appreciative high five, lol, even if you disagree with me. I’ll be highly talkative excitable guy in the panda hat.
Nice of you, but I do not accept or respect having lower status in EA due to being monogamous. They are being mean to me and thousands of monogamous women they’re recruiting / want to recruit / who are dedicated EAs by assigning us lower status. I am not willing to participate in a community where I have lower status due to factors I didn’t choose (race/gender/sexuality), and I’d think many self respecting others will also not put up with what you’re calling “relative lower status”. No fuck that. We want equality, equal respect, equal opportunity.
I am not calling the whole EA community asshole-ish, but it is big problem here because there are many such individuals. There’s no push back against these people that I’m seeing widely either. I’m also confused you think individuals who assign me lower status are assholes after saying above yourself that may be I should be ok with being assigned lower status like you’re ok being lower status elsewhere.
I’m sorry but the death metal-tattoo analogy got lost on me. You can get a tattoo if you chose to, many people can’t change their sexual preference, so it’s a false comparison. It’s like you’re saying white people have higher status and you should be ok with that, but I can’t paint my face white and become a white person if I wanted to. Secondly tattoos are nothing like sex. Sex involves two people ( often) and conveys a relationship where you can benefit a higher status individual. Your getting a tattoo is not pleasurable to high status men. I do not want to get into the frame of arguing based on this analogy because the analogy doesn’t model many complications.
If you recruit more women than you hurt and if you drive out and silence the ones who speak up, number of women will grow but that doesn’t mean concerns of women are taken seriously. I’m not saying this is happening but your logic is flawed in many ways. Your implied casuality, ie, evidence that women’s numbers are growing means concerns of women are taken seriously, is false.
Bay area EA has around 60% poly, so I’d say monogamists are the minority here.
Your original statement said “if you’re poly you’re interesting and would be invited to speak on podcasts” so matter-of-factly. That is very different from “if you’re a good role-model for poly people as a poly person...”. Good role models should get status, I agree, but that’s not what you said. The equivalent of what you initially said would be ” if you’re a man you’re interesting and would be invited to speak on clearer thinking podcast etc”.
Inverted casual reasoning. But if we look carefully at your first quote the order of events is being poly gets status that converts into the opportunity to speak on podcasts. But in your justification, sharing experiences gets status. Sharing experiences should get more status, but just being poly/mono shouldn’t. Being a good role model for monogamous people and sharing that experience should also get higher status, but tell me dear friend, are they getting invited to podcasts? I am amazing at monogamy, the absolute best, do get me an invite. Or are these opportunities gate-kept?
Have you heard of the netflix quote “The actual company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.” Almost all top rationalists are poly, many top EAs are as well. >50% of bay area EA is poly while base population rate is 15% or less. Tell me this is not a preference of the community once again :) Tell me what monogamous people need to do to rise the ranks.