When I shared this with two people (who are “deep EA” and employed/founded orgs in EA) who knew and worked on the same cause as this high-power individual – the two people spoke to the harm their cause would suffer if the story came out, and how it could be used against the cause. I had to remind both that this high-power individual had been credibly accused of sexual assault.
I find this highly disturbing. Even putting aside the whole “don’t do evil things in the service of the cause” thing that I thought everyone was onboard with after FTX, ignoring abuse doesn’t actually help any cause. An abuser is inherently compromised, they will put their own wellbeing above the cause by nature. They are likely to be caught eventually, and the later they are caught, the greater the reputational damage to the cause will be and the more damage will be done. Also, EA may end up being highly influential in policy and in the values of future AI systems: it’s important that those values don’t include things like “cover up abuse”. If we’re poisoned at the top, the rot will grow.
I’m hoping sentiments like the quote are fringe opinions, or else EA is gonna keep sleepwalking into scandal after scandal, and things will get worse and worse.
Came here to say exactly this. It’s extremely short-sighted, even by strict utilitarian standards. Apart from anything else, it assumes that the stories will be kept secret forever, and that the abuser will end up being more impactful than any victims they drive away. Tbc I’m not convinced that explicit cost/benefit calculations are the right way to approach these things, but even by that standard protecting abusers just dramatically fails imo.
And without litigating the whole issue of potential EA leadership awareness of SBF being rather shady, that topic has already left EA open to charges of employing an ends-justifies-the-means morality in practice. For example, I think there would be a real risk of second-impact syndrome if convincing evidence came to light that leadership EAs had failed to act on well-supported allegations because of the perceived object-level importance of the accused’s work. (I am not expressing any view on whether this has happened, only noting how there is an interaction between this topic and the SBF one.)
Hm, I didn’t think that bit was the worse. I DO have both of those people’s words in text (DM on this forum that I took screenshots of & FB messenger messages). I’ve shared them with one other person.
I feel that the potential legal claims—including the one I’m contemplating bringing, or the accused/accusers that I have connections to (again, caveat with—these are still speculative, and I’d like to share the speculation as a warning to the community) - would be far more scandalous and damaging than those DMs/messages. They would be more public than the messages, take more time, and could make other information more public (no idea what this other information could be), they’d piggyback on the SBF/FTX ties and scandals, and they’d piggyback on the Time and Bloomberg pieces.
I would like to add that I did give the name of that high powered individual to CEA via email. I’m not one of the accusers, so any information they received from me would be second hand and highly circumspect and would need further investigation before action was taken. When I shared the name, they asked several questions that I did not answer, then a couple days later—they also wrote this and chose to stop engaging with me.
From that post—“She referred to some other situations both on the Forum and privately, which did not contain enough information for us to identify the situation or learn more.” I’m a private individual, and the onus cannot be on me in any way whatsoever to provide “enough information” or help CEA. They have the name of someone powerful, and they can chose to pursue that lead and investigate it. They have the resources and absolutely should work with the proper professionals. Rather than stating that my statements did not “contain enough information for us to identify the situation or learn more”, I would have hoped they said something to the effect of “She referred to some other situations both on the Forum, and we need to investigate further before taking action.” That they responded in the manner that they did is at best, not sharing information with the community (eg, if they are investigating instead of simply dropping it as stated in their comment—then they misrepresented the situation to me and the community in that comment), and at worst, disavowing their responsibility to mitigate sexual assault within the EA movement (by choosing to drop the issue altogether because I didn’t give them more than “I received an accusation of SA and silencing by high power individual”) --- though I suppose there is an even worse possibility that you (@titotal and @Amber Dawn) allude to you in your comments. I’m speculating here, because it’s hard to say what the intent behind that comment was when so much information is kept hidden, and there are no open channels of communication.
As an outsider to these orgs, there’s not a lot I can do here, except strongly advocate for people to take abuse seriously and not look the other way when it happens. I certainly hope it’s not the case that people are looking the other way, but people will always find it tempting to rationalise doing nothing when they thinks their career (or in this case, the fate of the world) is at stake, so I want to be as clear as humanly possible that the results of doing so could be disastrous.
I think in your shoes I probably would have sent on more information about the high profile EA accusation, but I recognize you’re in a tough position here (and I’m also not as familiar with the relevant laws and stuff as you are). Hoping you’re doing okay, and that any wrongdoing gets exposed as soon as possible.
May I ask why I should share information with CEA? CEA has made it clear that they find it unproductive to speak with me, and do not feel that my work is of value? If they’ve said it’s unproductive to speak to me—and when I shared that information, they had already not been responding when I wanted to other information—then wouldn’t I be crossing boundaries by continuing to push contact w/them?
On this forum, I was doxxed, and the mods didn’t remove the doxxing posts for 3 days. I had to resubmit requests for doxxing posts to be removed multiple times. I’ve been called “scary”—which was upvoted—and my posts, even when thoughtful—are continuously downvoted. CEA said I’m a liar and more.
Do you have an alternate plan for how to get these accusations investigated? My thinking is that giving info to the community health team is at least worth a shot. If there’s even a small chance of ejecting an abuser from a position of power and influence, isn’t that worth it?
Again, I’m not an expert in this matter, I’m just upset and don’t want to see awful people continue to gain power.
I’m just upset and don’t want to see awful people continue to gain power
The people who put those rapists in power and keep them there are the ones to be upset at. If people didn’t support serial rapists, they wouldn’t feel empowered to keep raping.
Do you have an alternate plan for how to get these accusations investigated? My thinking is that giving info to the community health team is at least worth a shot. If there’s even a small chance of ejecting an abuser from a position of power and influence, isn’t that worth it?
This isn’t a question for me, it’s a question for community health and CEA. The ball is in their court—it’s up to them to investigate.
The “alternate plan” you speak of is something I’d charge for. It would be weeks of work, and CEA made it clear they’d not pay me. Also, lawyers charge tens of thousands of dollars for investigations with orgs; it’s unrealistic that I should do them for free.
As well—on top of not being paid, I will not accept CEA’s actions potentially costing me money I can’t spare, can’t accept them being emotionally abusive to me, being called a liar—defamation, slander—but most of all, I can’t accept how many upset survivors I’ve spoken to that feel harmed by this movement that’s willing to accept “some rape as long as its’ not more than the average”.
I find this highly disturbing. Even putting aside the whole “don’t do evil things in the service of the cause” thing that I thought everyone was onboard with after FTX, ignoring abuse doesn’t actually help any cause. An abuser is inherently compromised, they will put their own wellbeing above the cause by nature. They are likely to be caught eventually, and the later they are caught, the greater the reputational damage to the cause will be and the more damage will be done. Also, EA may end up being highly influential in policy and in the values of future AI systems: it’s important that those values don’t include things like “cover up abuse”. If we’re poisoned at the top, the rot will grow.
I’m hoping sentiments like the quote are fringe opinions, or else EA is gonna keep sleepwalking into scandal after scandal, and things will get worse and worse.
Came here to say exactly this. It’s extremely short-sighted, even by strict utilitarian standards. Apart from anything else, it assumes that the stories will be kept secret forever, and that the abuser will end up being more impactful than any victims they drive away. Tbc I’m not convinced that explicit cost/benefit calculations are the right way to approach these things, but even by that standard protecting abusers just dramatically fails imo.
And without litigating the whole issue of potential EA leadership awareness of SBF being rather shady, that topic has already left EA open to charges of employing an ends-justifies-the-means morality in practice. For example, I think there would be a real risk of second-impact syndrome if convincing evidence came to light that leadership EAs had failed to act on well-supported allegations because of the perceived object-level importance of the accused’s work. (I am not expressing any view on whether this has happened, only noting how there is an interaction between this topic and the SBF one.)
Hm, I didn’t think that bit was the worse. I DO have both of those people’s words in text (DM on this forum that I took screenshots of & FB messenger messages). I’ve shared them with one other person.
I feel that the potential legal claims—including the one I’m contemplating bringing, or the accused/accusers that I have connections to (again, caveat with—these are still speculative, and I’d like to share the speculation as a warning to the community) - would be far more scandalous and damaging than those DMs/messages. They would be more public than the messages, take more time, and could make other information more public (no idea what this other information could be), they’d piggyback on the SBF/FTX ties and scandals, and they’d piggyback on the Time and Bloomberg pieces.
I would like to add that I did give the name of that high powered individual to CEA via email. I’m not one of the accusers, so any information they received from me would be second hand and highly circumspect and would need further investigation before action was taken. When I shared the name, they asked several questions that I did not answer, then a couple days later—they also wrote this and chose to stop engaging with me.
From that post—“She referred to some other situations both on the Forum and privately, which did not contain enough information for us to identify the situation or learn more.” I’m a private individual, and the onus cannot be on me in any way whatsoever to provide “enough information” or help CEA. They have the name of someone powerful, and they can chose to pursue that lead and investigate it. They have the resources and absolutely should work with the proper professionals. Rather than stating that my statements did not “contain enough information for us to identify the situation or learn more”, I would have hoped they said something to the effect of “She referred to some other situations both on the Forum, and we need to investigate further before taking action.” That they responded in the manner that they did is at best, not sharing information with the community (eg, if they are investigating instead of simply dropping it as stated in their comment—then they misrepresented the situation to me and the community in that comment), and at worst, disavowing their responsibility to mitigate sexual assault within the EA movement (by choosing to drop the issue altogether because I didn’t give them more than “I received an accusation of SA and silencing by high power individual”) --- though I suppose there is an even worse possibility that you (@titotal and @Amber Dawn) allude to you in your comments. I’m speculating here, because it’s hard to say what the intent behind that comment was when so much information is kept hidden, and there are no open channels of communication.
As an outsider to these orgs, there’s not a lot I can do here, except strongly advocate for people to take abuse seriously and not look the other way when it happens. I certainly hope it’s not the case that people are looking the other way, but people will always find it tempting to rationalise doing nothing when they thinks their career (or in this case, the fate of the world) is at stake, so I want to be as clear as humanly possible that the results of doing so could be disastrous.
I think in your shoes I probably would have sent on more information about the high profile EA accusation, but I recognize you’re in a tough position here (and I’m also not as familiar with the relevant laws and stuff as you are). Hoping you’re doing okay, and that any wrongdoing gets exposed as soon as possible.
May I ask why I should share information with CEA? CEA has made it clear that they find it unproductive to speak with me, and do not feel that my work is of value? If they’ve said it’s unproductive to speak to me—and when I shared that information, they had already not been responding when I wanted to other information—then wouldn’t I be crossing boundaries by continuing to push contact w/them?
On this forum, I was doxxed, and the mods didn’t remove the doxxing posts for 3 days. I had to resubmit requests for doxxing posts to be removed multiple times. I’ve been called “scary”—which was upvoted—and my posts, even when thoughtful—are continuously downvoted. CEA said I’m a liar and more.
Do you have an alternate plan for how to get these accusations investigated? My thinking is that giving info to the community health team is at least worth a shot. If there’s even a small chance of ejecting an abuser from a position of power and influence, isn’t that worth it?
Again, I’m not an expert in this matter, I’m just upset and don’t want to see awful people continue to gain power.
The people who put those rapists in power and keep them there are the ones to be upset at. If people didn’t support serial rapists, they wouldn’t feel empowered to keep raping.
This isn’t a question for me, it’s a question for community health and CEA. The ball is in their court—it’s up to them to investigate.
The “alternate plan” you speak of is something I’d charge for. It would be weeks of work, and CEA made it clear they’d not pay me. Also, lawyers charge tens of thousands of dollars for investigations with orgs; it’s unrealistic that I should do them for free.
As well—on top of not being paid, I will not accept CEA’s actions potentially costing me money I can’t spare, can’t accept them being emotionally abusive to me, being called a liar—defamation, slander—but most of all, I can’t accept how many upset survivors I’ve spoken to that feel harmed by this movement that’s willing to accept “some rape as long as its’ not more than the average”.