A couple more personal thoughts: (these ended up long, I hope the algorithm collapses them. Interested parties can choose to read and the rest ignore)
1. I’m having trouble trusting the terminology being used is accurate because of the author’s liberal use of terminology in the past that did not make sense to me then. Eg, would the victim describe their experiences as they are described here? And again, teminology around calling people EAs? It’s possible the author is trying to do better this time, but I’m very unsure of that as they might just be sticking to their guns as well. And anyway, even solid attempts to do better might still end up wrong for an EA outsider/newbie (eg, is the “highpowered” person Michael Vassar perhaps?). I wish I could tell but without instances and more specificity I just find it very hard to trust.
2. Emotionally, I feel frustrated. Truth is that for the last 3 weeks I’ve been avoiding the Forum because of stuff like this, and the day I resolve to come back, this was just posted. I feel cursed or something (tongue in cheek, but also..). I’d like the Forum to not feel like a cursed place. I’d like EA to not feel like a cursed movement doomed to never become respected again because once the waters calm someone has something else to say (valid or not it may be, [most of us can’t keep dealing with this]). I’d like to feel like my mental health is not at risk by visiting the Forum or participating in EA generally. I feel such a drive to defend EA from what I view as epistemically-lacking piling on, and I have doubts that anyone else will stick out their neck to do so. FWIW there doesn’t appear to have been much of this “piling on” while I was gone though! But yeah I’m frustrated. [I came back all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and now I feel deflated again]
3. Idea: I wonder if all Forum community posts could go through a brief review period, eg “We review all community posts within 24 hours of submitting. If this post doesn’t meet our epistemic standards we will give you some feedback and you are free to integrate some or all of it and resubmit. We also reserve the right to approve this post but add some caveats at the top”. I believe that my complaints I listed above would also have been noted by the Forum team and I do believe that helping people improve their posts is worthy.
4. My unfairness alarm is ringing, and it’s saying something like “I hope that this ‘pertinent’ info is being shared in major tech forums, burning man camps etc as well. Those groups which are likely to be more implicated.” If not, this seems like a vendetta against EA. I mean the article does talk more about EA than the other groups and I’m wondering if it is because EAs are the ones the author tried to interface with about all this (correctly or incorrectly) and when the author didn’t get the response they wanted, EA started to get classed in their mind as the “bad guys”. Maybe EA is getting punished because it is the only group of those listed which does actually have a [dedicated] team which is actually trying and having conversations about this. The visible are easier to name than the invisible. It definitely feels to me that we are getting most or all the responsiblity for the SF SAs that the author has heard of, even if the victims or accusers may have been 2 or 3 steps removed from EA? Perhaps I am wrong and I’d be glad to see that I am. I’d like to trust that the world is not just piling on EA but that this is an overall motion throughout the SF Bay area. The way that I can be proved wrong here is if someone shows me evidence that this is being brought to other groups too with equal fervor? Of course it is hard to do with this article since it basically let’s everyone else off scott free except EA. I’d appreciate anyone sharing links to such discussion in other communities if you have it, and in future I’ll calm down about my suspicions that EA is getting scapegoated. The communities named in the piece are: subgroups of tech, EA (Effective Altruists), rationalists, cybersecurity/hackers, crypto/blockchain, Burning Man camps, secret parties, and coliving houses.
5. On a complimentary note, I agree with the author’s ideas that a more formal and professional process is needed in reporting and determining community response. I wish I could stop at the compliment, but that said I feel confused that the author appears to believe that a closer-to-judicial process is out of bounds. In my mind, if you don’t want a judicial-like process for claims of rape and sexual assault (which boggles my mind but moving on), the CH team’s process is quite good. At least as a starting point, I’d think it’s like 80% of the way there and leagues better than what most non-corporations/social communities have? So I wonder what else they might mean. So, to clarify, I want a more formal process too but personally I think that if anything the CH team’s reporting process right now isn’t judicial enough, notably in that the accused is not necessarily privy to the details of the claims made against them. I think as long as things are not fully transparent to the accused, we should expect problems to go under the radar and accused parties to return to private parties and things, because frankly people will assume it was less bad without knowing details. If victims want justice and proper response and are wiling to report at all, that’s great and I really want to support them! I also think it’s the nature of the world that you can’t expect a proper response without something more trial-like occurring. I think many different cultures evolved toward the schelling point of trials for a reason. We have a duty to other members of the community and future potential victims as much as to the victims, and trial-like-things do the best job at ensuring future safety and ensuring that concrete policies (which the author seems to like) are implemented, I think. And we (or, the people handling reports anyway) also have an ethical duty to hear both sides as accurately as possible. I have learned from personal experience that it is often unworkably labor-intensive to do due diligence on complaints without doing the discussion in real-time with multiple actors/jury present. I’m not saying that the victim and accused need to be on the same call or anything, but that processes which are deliberately not in-person or deliberately giving the victim more services than the accused to avoid the judicial feel, and avoid putting the victim on the spot, either lead to a lot more work in writing (an unworkable amount. Like think 2 weeks or more of work-hours of writing back and forth for each serious detailed case), or missed opportunities to address things and ask clarification as concerns arise, or misunderstandings that will come up later. BTW I say all this as someone who has reported men in my personal life and EA. Communities should support victims in coming forward.. and with serious claims that will sometimes mean all the way forward to ensure proper response.
I expect this comment to get disagrees from most because there are multiple different unpopular or rarely voiced things so it has something for everyone to dislike lol. I’ve noticed forum users tend to disagree-vote any comment that has even one false/disagreeable statement even if the rest is okay, in true logician fashion. I’ll just remind anyone who got this far that its just my thoughts I didn’t even want as a top level comment, but maybe someone will find value here and there.
@Ivy Mazzola I have a JD, and have worked in this field for over six years. I looked you up on LinkedIn since you used your full name here, and I hope you can understand that—given the difference in our professional experience and education—your insinuation that I’m somehow trying do something outside of the law and that your speculations on how close to a judicial process CH is—does not sit well with me.
I insinuated that you were trying to do something outside of the law? Where? I honestly didn’t mean to [Edit: Oh I think I know what line you noticed… no I wasn’t meaning to insinuate that in a negative way. If I insinuated that as going against the law I’d be insinuating negative toward all people who do external justice processes. I more mean “that’s a difference of opinion that boggles my mind” I know why people avoid it, as you say victims find it retraumatizing to go through judicial process. But it still boggles my mind that you and others are coming up with different value calculation here than me.
Also I implied that CH has a process very far from a judicial process. It sounded like, in your article, you don’t want a judicial process, and I’m confused what you’d want that isn’t essentially judicial yet is also quite different from what CEA is doing. Whereas I would want one much closer to typical judicial process than what CEA has.]
A couple more personal thoughts:
(these ended up long, I hope the algorithm collapses them. Interested parties can choose to read and the rest ignore)
1. I’m having trouble trusting the terminology being used is accurate because of the author’s liberal use of terminology in the past that did not make sense to me then. Eg, would the victim describe their experiences as they are described here? And again, teminology around calling people EAs? It’s possible the author is trying to do better this time, but I’m very unsure of that as they might just be sticking to their guns as well. And anyway, even solid attempts to do better might still end up wrong for an EA outsider/newbie (eg, is the “highpowered” person Michael Vassar perhaps?). I wish I could tell but without instances and more specificity I just find it very hard to trust.
2. Emotionally, I feel frustrated. Truth is that for the last 3 weeks I’ve been avoiding the Forum because of stuff like this, and the day I resolve to come back, this was just posted. I feel cursed or something (tongue in cheek, but also..). I’d like the Forum to not feel like a cursed place. I’d like EA to not feel like a cursed movement doomed to never become respected again because once the waters calm someone has something else to say (valid or not it may be, [most of us can’t keep dealing with this]). I’d like to feel like my mental health is not at risk by visiting the Forum or participating in EA generally. I feel such a drive to defend EA from what I view as epistemically-lacking piling on, and I have doubts that anyone else will stick out their neck to do so. FWIW there doesn’t appear to have been much of this “piling on” while I was gone though! But yeah I’m frustrated. [I came back all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and now I feel deflated again]
3. Idea: I wonder if all Forum community posts could go through a brief review period, eg “We review all community posts within 24 hours of submitting. If this post doesn’t meet our epistemic standards we will give you some feedback and you are free to integrate some or all of it and resubmit. We also reserve the right to approve this post but add some caveats at the top”. I believe that my complaints I listed above would also have been noted by the Forum team and I do believe that helping people improve their posts is worthy.
4. My unfairness alarm is ringing, and it’s saying something like “I hope that this ‘pertinent’ info is being shared in major tech forums, burning man camps etc as well. Those groups which are likely to be more implicated.” If not, this seems like a vendetta against EA. I mean the article does talk more about EA than the other groups and I’m wondering if it is because EAs are the ones the author tried to interface with about all this (correctly or incorrectly) and when the author didn’t get the response they wanted, EA started to get classed in their mind as the “bad guys”. Maybe EA is getting punished because it is the only group of those listed which does actually have a [dedicated] team which is actually trying and having conversations about this. The visible are easier to name than the invisible. It definitely feels to me that we are getting most or all the responsiblity for the SF SAs that the author has heard of, even if the victims or accusers may have been 2 or 3 steps removed from EA? Perhaps I am wrong and I’d be glad to see that I am. I’d like to trust that the world is not just piling on EA but that this is an overall motion throughout the SF Bay area. The way that I can be proved wrong here is if someone shows me evidence that this is being brought to other groups too with equal fervor? Of course it is hard to do with this article since it basically let’s everyone else off scott free except EA. I’d appreciate anyone sharing links to such discussion in other communities if you have it, and in future I’ll calm down about my suspicions that EA is getting scapegoated. The communities named in the piece are: subgroups of tech, EA (Effective Altruists), rationalists, cybersecurity/hackers, crypto/blockchain, Burning Man camps, secret parties, and coliving houses.
5. On a complimentary note, I agree with the author’s ideas that a more formal and professional process is needed in reporting and determining community response. I wish I could stop at the compliment, but that said I feel confused that the author appears to believe that a closer-to-judicial process is out of bounds. In my mind, if you don’t want a judicial-like process for claims of rape and sexual assault (which boggles my mind but moving on), the CH team’s process is quite good. At least as a starting point, I’d think it’s like 80% of the way there and leagues better than what most non-corporations/social communities have? So I wonder what else they might mean.
So, to clarify, I want a more formal process too but personally I think that if anything the CH team’s reporting process right now isn’t judicial enough, notably in that the accused is not necessarily privy to the details of the claims made against them. I think as long as things are not fully transparent to the accused, we should expect problems to go under the radar and accused parties to return to private parties and things, because frankly people will assume it was less bad without knowing details. If victims want justice and proper response and are wiling to report at all, that’s great and I really want to support them! I also think it’s the nature of the world that you can’t expect a proper response without something more trial-like occurring. I think many different cultures evolved toward the schelling point of trials for a reason.
We have a duty to other members of the community and future potential victims as much as to the victims, and trial-like-things do the best job at ensuring future safety and ensuring that concrete policies (which the author seems to like) are implemented, I think.
And we (or, the people handling reports anyway) also have an ethical duty to hear both sides as accurately as possible. I have learned from personal experience that it is often unworkably labor-intensive to do due diligence on complaints without doing the discussion in real-time with multiple actors/jury present. I’m not saying that the victim and accused need to be on the same call or anything, but that processes which are deliberately not in-person or deliberately giving the victim more services than the accused to avoid the judicial feel, and avoid putting the victim on the spot, either lead to a lot more work in writing (an unworkable amount. Like think 2 weeks or more of work-hours of writing back and forth for each serious detailed case), or missed opportunities to address things and ask clarification as concerns arise, or misunderstandings that will come up later. BTW I say all this as someone who has reported men in my personal life and EA. Communities should support victims in coming forward.. and with serious claims that will sometimes mean all the way forward to ensure proper response.
I expect this comment to get disagrees from most because there are multiple different unpopular or rarely voiced things so it has something for everyone to dislike lol. I’ve noticed forum users tend to disagree-vote any comment that has even one false/disagreeable statement even if the rest is okay, in true logician fashion. I’ll just remind anyone who got this far that its just my thoughts I didn’t even want as a top level comment, but maybe someone will find value here and there.
@Ivy Mazzola I have a JD, and have worked in this field for over six years. I looked you up on LinkedIn since you used your full name here, and I hope you can understand that—given the difference in our professional experience and education—your insinuation that I’m somehow trying do something outside of the law and that your speculations on how close to a judicial process CH is—does not sit well with me.
I insinuated that you were trying to do something outside of the law? Where? I honestly didn’t mean to [Edit: Oh I think I know what line you noticed… no I wasn’t meaning to insinuate that in a negative way. If I insinuated that as going against the law I’d be insinuating negative toward all people who do external justice processes. I more mean “that’s a difference of opinion that boggles my mind” I know why people avoid it, as you say victims find it retraumatizing to go through judicial process. But it still boggles my mind that you and others are coming up with different value calculation here than me.
Also I implied that CH has a process very far from a judicial process. It sounded like, in your article, you don’t want a judicial process, and I’m confused what you’d want that isn’t essentially judicial yet is also quite different from what CEA is doing. Whereas I would want one much closer to typical judicial process than what CEA has.]