One reasonable, good-for-women social norm that is being questioned here: believing most women who make accusations of sexual misconduct.
I think it’s not clear that ‘conventional social norms’ are all that conventional. Many of us live or grew up outside of the Anglo-American world (or grew up in another generation, or in less elite areas) and might place more importance to principles such as the presumption of innocence.
Part of my point is that whether EA is good for women depends on your point of comparison. You’re right that norms vary across contexts, so when I say “conventional social norms,” I’m referring to my comparison class. (As I say in footnote 4, “My most direct point of comparison is academia, so if you’re working in a progressive, feminist space, the features of EA I highlight might not sound particularly special.” Of course, the opposite can be true, too: the features of EA I highlight might be particularly good for women based in more regressive environments.)
But also: I don’t think believing women (in day-to-day life) and presuming innocence (a legal standard) conflict in the way you seem to imply. This isn’t just because these principles are generally employed in different contexts; it’s also because these principles may not genuinely be in tension. There’s a nice discussion of this in this recent paper (page 16):
”Interpreting the presumption of innocence does not genuinely conflict with believing women, if we respect the evidence we receive. Here’s why: an accusation is made. We start with no evidence, then the accuser offers her testimony that p. If we’re good Bayesians, we update by conditionalizing our prior in p on how probable p is given this new evidence. Where this leaves us depends on where we started, how attached we were to that starting point (sometimes called resilience), and how much we trust the evidence we got. If we put more stock in the trustworthiness of the testimony than in our starting presumptions—which we should—then no matter our starting point, it will be pretty easy for testimony that p to move us to significant confidence in p. The more attached we are to the starting point (or the less we trust the testimony), the more the difference between the alternative understandings of the presumption of innocence makes a difference to the post-update degree of confidence. If the starting point is resilient, it will take an overwhelming amount of evidence to convince someone who starts out presuming ~p that in fact p is probably true. But insofar as the presumption of innocence is a stance defined by the absence of any evidence, the starting credence it yields should not be resilient, and so should easily shift in response to the weight of evidence with any real probative force.”
Regarding believing accusations and presuming innocence, I think we’re using ‘believe’ in two different senses.
I agree that (in the overwhelmingly vast majority of cases in which we’re not multiplying by a Bayes factor of 1) one’s probabilities should change after updating. In that sense, we should ‘believe (or disbelieve)’ accusations.
However, I’m not confident that we should ‘believe’ in the sense of updating our probabilities so that they’re above a probability threshold high enough to mete out significant social or legal consequences. This seems to be what presuming innocence is about.
I’m skeptical whether the barriers between social and legal contexts are as strong as you seem to imply. Those contexts affect each other a lot. How we act in society affects how it evolves, and what laws are adopted.
EDIT: I took a closer look at the passage you quoted and I think I also take issue with the conclusion it implies: “But insofar as the presumption of innocence is a stance defined by the absence of any evidence, the starting credence it yields should not be resilient, and so should easily shift in response to the weight of evidence with any real probative force.”
One might view the presumption of innocence as being at least partially defined by base rates, rather than by the absence of any evidence. Think about it: it obviously doesn’t apply when almost everyone is actually guilty/out to get you (e.g. it doesn’t make sense to presume the enemy isn’t going to shoot you in a war, or presume that hungry predators won’t try to eat you). But it applies in our world because false accusations do exist. In this sense, it’s more ‘resilient’ than the passage argues that it is. If someone insists on using the author’s concept of how its defined then that seems like a definitional dispute.
I’m skeptical whether the barriers between social and legal contexts are as strong as you seem to imply. Those contexts affect each other a lot. How we act in society affects how it evolves, and what laws are adopted.
If a friend confided in you that they were sexually assaulted, would you wait until this was confirmed in court before believing her? Do you hold back because you worry about how your actions may affect the legal principle of “presumption of innocence”, and how this affects what laws are adopted?
I see you’re focusing on a particular subset of cases. I think it’s also worth mentioning that in the majority of cases accusations are not made by friends. When I have limited knowledge about those involved, I tend to uphold stricter standards.
In the case where it is a friend, I’d assume those who I call friends are honest people (with sufficient mental health as to make accurate claims), so I think I’d tend to believe them in the sense of updating beyond a significant threshold. Although, I’ve also made the mistake of misjudging my friends’ honesty in the past, so I might be careful not to be overly confident in my beliefs.
I’m mainly responding to your point that “social and legal contexts affect each other a lot...” etc, and illustrating the point that legal principles and standards are often not (and should not be) the standards that are upheld in day-to-day life. Would you expect the community health team to only take action if accusations could be supported to a legal standard?
in the majority of cases accusations are not made by friends
I agree that legal standards and standards upheld in day-to-day life shouldn’t be the same, but some of the ‘willingness to believe bad things happened’ I’m seeing in the social groups that EA draws from seems a bit immoderate, so I’m cautious of straying too far from those stricter standards (and straying too far also has a risk of undermining them).
To answer your other question (which you have now deleted), I downvoted your first comment instead of disagree-voting because it appeared to me that you were concentrating on instances where we evaluate accusations made by friends, to the exclusion of the vast majority of situations where we evaluate accusations made by individuals who are not friends (fyi, just so it’s less confusing—I make a distinction between friends and acquaintances, and EA seems big enough that not everyone can be considered a friend). That made your comment potentially misleading. However, I do I agree with your comment in that I should believe a friend’s accusations (unless it turns out I’m a poor judge of character).
I now realize that by asking about what I meant by “the majority of cases accusations are not made by friends,” you indicate that you did not make that distinction as I did.
However, I’m not confident that we should ‘believe’ in the sense of updating our probabilities so that they’re above a probability threshold high enough to mete out significant social or legal consequences. This seems to be what presuming innocence is about.
I think the problem here might be equating “presumption of innocence” with “beyond reasonable doubt”. Criminal punishments have an incredibly high standard of evidence because the punishment is extremely severe, so we are willing to let 10 guilty people free to prevent 1 innocent being punished.
Social punishments are significantly less severe, and should have a smaller threshold for action. This is because inaction can cause severe consequences. Offenders are likely to reoffend, and exploit your group for their own gain.
Also consider that if, say, A credibly accuses B of sexual assault, but you refuse to kick out B because of “presumption of innocence”, then you are effectively kicking out the victim A (or expecting them to just hang around with their assaulter). Someone is leaving the group either way, you have to decide which one you prefer.
I’m not sure that I’m equating those two. I personally wouldn’t want to be a person who doesn’t have enough information, but upon hearing a single accusation (from someone who I don’t really know), will presume guilt (i.e. assign a moderately high probability). If A credibly accuses B then that’s different, but I’d assume in most cases, things are more uncertain.
EDIT: Actually, regarding assault, yeah I think it seems to make sense to assign a moderately high probability (say ~80%), and you seem to be right that I’m using the “beyond reasonable doubt” principle here (including in social settings—though I’m uncertain whether or not it’s the right call). Although, lilly’s comment which I was responding to was actually on misconduct, and I think the influence of the “presumption of innocence” factor is larger in those cases. More in my response below.
Out of curiosity, did you read the comment in response to your original comment earlier? Specifically this part:
these principles may not genuinely be in tension. There’s a nice discussion of this in this recent paper (page 16):
”Interpreting the presumption of innocence does not genuinely conflict with believing women, if we respect the evidence we receive. Here’s why: an accusation is made. We start with no evidence, then the accuser offers her testimony that p. If we’re good Bayesians, we update by conditionalizing our prior in p on how probable p is given this new evidence. Where this leaves us depends on where we started, how attached we were to that starting point (sometimes called resilience), and how much we trust the evidence we got. If we put more stock in the trustworthiness of the testimony than in our starting presumptions—which we should—then no matter our starting point, it will be pretty easy for testimony that p to move us to significant confidence in p. The more attached we are to the starting point (or the less we trust the testimony), the more the difference between the alternative understandings of the presumption of innocence makes a difference to the post-update degree of confidence. If the starting point is resilient, it will take an overwhelming amount of evidence to convince someone who starts out presuming ~p that in fact p is probably true. But insofar as the presumption of innocence is a stance defined by the absence of any evidence, the starting credence it yields should not be resilient, and so should easily shift in response to the weight of evidence with any real probative force.”
Thanks for bringing that up again. I realized I misparsed a bit at the end. However, the conclusion it seems to imply seems a bit dubious, i.e. it seems that our starting credence is more ‘resilient’ than the passage presents it to be if we’re anchoring to base rates. I edited in a section to my initial response to that comment.
What are the base rates you are anchoring to here? This is basically comparing the probability of someone being sexually assaulted VS the probability of someone making a false accusation right?
Update (2023-04-27): In retrospect, I think I could have underestimated the probabilities, although perhaps not by much?
I still think there are strong differences between different parts of society/the world. A lot has changed this past decade, it seems. I would probably still assign higher-than-average probabilities to accusations in places where it’s more costly to accuse (e.g. outside of English-speaking countries, more conservative areas etc.), and lower-than-average probability to accusations in places where it’s less costly (or even slightly status-elevating) to accuse (e.g. within English-speaking countries, more progressive areas etc.).
For now, I’ll avoid stating a new number so I don’t anchor to it while updating. I should also be less susceptible to pressures from the community to think in a certain way, with more time to think about it.
In any case, I don’t appreciate uncharitable interpretations of views that challenge apparent community consensus. I intend to continue to speak my mind.
lilly’s comment was on misconduct, which seems to have a lower rate of being true than assault, given that it encompasses milder problems, as well as different interpretations of what harassment means (this seems particularly the case in the Anglo-American world). My guess is that base rates could range anywhere between 20% and 90%. Recent societal trends have introduced a lot of uncertainty, and have made me doubt accusations more. I think 37.5% prior probability conditional on an accusation (maybe 25% in progressive-leaning social environments) might make sense. (I think I have higher-than-average doubt relative to many EAs on humans acting justly when they perceive an increase in power. It only takes a small percentage of individuals who are willing to exploit things.)
On assault accusations, which titotal’s comment refers to, the base rate seems higher (although the error bars seem large—Scott Alexander on a related statistic). Perhaps I should assign an ~80% prior probability conditional on an accusation. Yeah, that does seem like a “moderately high probability” actually—it makes sense for me to correct my reply to titotal. I think I’d still be less willing to punish severely with that amount of uncertainty, because of “beyond a reasonable doubt” reasons actually, as titotal pointed out, but it’s hard to be confident that that’s the right thing to do.
Makes sense RE: it encompassing milder problems, but this means it is also more likely, so it’s not clear that this cashes out favorably in the direction of the false accusations.
What do you think the base rate of sexual harassment is? e.g. if you think 80% is the baseline risk for someone, i don’t know how you justify a 25% to 37.5% likelihood of actual harassment conditional on an accusation. It sounds like you’re basically saying that 2⁄3 to 3⁄4 accusations are false? Are you grounding these in anything empirical or are these uninformed priors?
EDIT2: It seems like the people responding to me don’t really consider the possibility of missteps/someone’s intent? That seems unfortunate.
EDIT: the link I posted earlier (https://hiddentribes.us/) is quite relevant in introducing nuance to what I wrote about people in “parts of the Anglosphere” becoming more sensitive. It’s different for different people in the Anglosphere. E.g. about a 49-51 split on “harassment is commonplace” to “too many ordinary behaviors are labeled as sexual harassment” in the U.S.
I suspect my probabilities are probably very different from yours mainly because of different ideas of what harassment means.
For instance, one acquaintance of mine puts his hands around me in a somewhat intimate way sometimes, but I honestly don’t consider it “harassment” (edit: it does make me feel slightly uncomfortable and I haven’t raised the issue, but I really don’t think he has bad intentions—we’re probably just raised differently etc.). One friend makes sexual remarks a lot—some people might feel very uncomfortable—I don’t really.
I think those examples point to differences in expectations of what’s comfortable/uncomfortable to people. In parts of the Anglosphere, people seem more sensitive to an extent that in some cases I would consider them to be overreaching. Sure, maybe avoid those things if you think if it makes people uncomfortable (or not, if you think there are risks of safetyism?) - but I don’t see the case for expanding a concept that comes with significant legal and social consequences.
I’m guessing I’m less inclined than you are to consider discomfort to mean harassment (I believe Aella made several great points in her post that are relevant to this view). In a larger number of cases where there’s an accusation that simply refers to “sexual harassment” I’m doubtful that it means what (many others and) I have in mind.
I didn’t make a claim that this was just about making sexual jokes or just about ‘discomfort’, and I’m not really sure where you got that from.
Also, you’re clearly entitled to your opinion around what you consider uncomfortable personally, but what happens if someone else thinks putting you putting your hand around them in a somewhat intimate way is inappropriate? It sounds like you’d consider this a false accusation? That this shouldn’t be something classified as sexual harassment?
Again,
It sounds like you’re basically saying that 2⁄3 to 3⁄4 accusations are false? Are you grounding these in anything empirical or are these uninformed priors?
I want to make a meta point about why I chose not to engage in a back-and-forth with @Timothy Chan about this. My language here is a little sharp, because I’m frustrated by his exchange with @pseudonym (and think it’s reasonable for me to be frustrated).
From the outset, I was a bit worried that what was motivating Timothy’s comment was not a rejection of the claim that “believing most women who make accusations of sexual misconduct” is a conventional social norm, but rather that it is a reasonable one. His initial point (“Many of us live or grew up outside of the Anglo-American world… and might place more importance to principles such as the presumption of innocence”) is, of course, true. But my post isn’t about what conventional social norms are, and to the extent that it does touch on this, the relevant claim is just: “whether norms in EA are good or bad for you will depend on your point of comparison,” not a substantive descriptive claim about what norms are “conventional.”
The bar for commenting on the Forum definitely shouldn’t be “you have to engage with the core point of the post,” which is why I responded in good faith. But his initial comment wasn’t giving me big scout mindset vibes, because he didn’t attempt to tie his comment to the upshot of that section, didn’t read the relevant footnote, and didn’t meaningfully engage with the substance of the post.
I responded by citing a paper on whether there’s tension between the presumption of innocence and believing women, since I took the subtext of his comment to be that there is a tradeoff here. He proceeded to not substantively engage with my response, either. (@pseudonym later quoted the same passage again, leading Timothy to eventually acknowledge: “I realized I misparsed a bit at the end,” and edit his response, which I appreciate.) By that point, I strongly suspected that what was actually going on here was that Timothy didn’t like that I had suggested that “believing most women” was a reasonable norm, and what he was actually taking issue with was that, but was couching this in a trivially true descriptive claim. I decided to stop responding.
Eventually, in his exchange with pseudonym, he all but confirms my initial hypothesis, saying: “In a larger number of cases where there’s an accusation that simply refers to ‘sexual harassment’ I’m doubtful that it means what (many others and) I have in mind.” In other words, he doesn’t think it’s reasonable to believe mostwomen who make allegations of sexual harassment because, as he puts it, they’re perhaps just “sensitive.” (One might read my interpretation here as uncharitable, but I think I’m drawing inferences that are reasonable to draw, especially because discussions on this issue often play out this way. #baserates)
I had intentionally kept the claim in the post weak—”believe most women”—because I wanted to avoid this kind of back-and-forth. What I said isn’t deep: you’d believe most people if they told you it was cold outside, you’d believe most people if they told you they didn’t like olives, you’d believe most people if they told you someone made a rude remark, and you should similarly believe most women who accuse someone of sexual misconduct. I didn’t quote some statistic about how 92% of the time, women are telling the truth; I just said it’s reasonable to believe most women who accuse others of misconduct, which it is.
Note that I was specifically talking about people (of all genders/in general) in parts of theAnglosphere being “sensitive”. I’ll quote myself.
In parts of the Anglosphere, people seem more sensitive to an extent that in some cases I would consider them to be overreaching.
Of course, it’s also influencing much outside of it.
Although, there does seem to be a phenomenon where a combination of being young, female, and being politically liberal, makes someone particularly vulnerable to anxiety and depression. This seems to have also increased in recent years in the U.S. https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/mental-health-liberal-girls I do prefer that we can reverse such trends.
EDIT: Apart from quoting a part of my previous comment and stating a preference for there to be less anxiety and depression, everything in this comment is purely descriptive. Are people strong downvoting over offense over that? It’s really not a good sign of community epistemic health.
If you do want my (normative) opinions on all this, I think it’s beneficial and possible for the subset of people in Anglosphere whom I was referring to, to reverse recent trends and become more resilient. There is currently a combination of high false positive rates + expanded notions of perceived malice and of harm, which isn’t very good for your democratic societies, in my opinion.
I think it’s not clear that ‘conventional social norms’ are all that conventional. Many of us live or grew up outside of the Anglo-American world (or grew up in another generation, or in less elite areas) and might place more importance to principles such as the presumption of innocence.
Part of my point is that whether EA is good for women depends on your point of comparison. You’re right that norms vary across contexts, so when I say “conventional social norms,” I’m referring to my comparison class. (As I say in footnote 4, “My most direct point of comparison is academia, so if you’re working in a progressive, feminist space, the features of EA I highlight might not sound particularly special.” Of course, the opposite can be true, too: the features of EA I highlight might be particularly good for women based in more regressive environments.)
But also: I don’t think believing women (in day-to-day life) and presuming innocence (a legal standard) conflict in the way you seem to imply. This isn’t just because these principles are generally employed in different contexts; it’s also because these principles may not genuinely be in tension. There’s a nice discussion of this in this recent paper (page 16):
”Interpreting the presumption of innocence does not genuinely conflict with believing women, if we respect the evidence we receive. Here’s why: an accusation is made. We start with no evidence, then the accuser offers her testimony that p. If we’re good Bayesians, we update by conditionalizing our prior in p on how probable p is given this new evidence. Where this leaves us depends on where we started, how attached we were to that starting point (sometimes called resilience), and how much we trust the evidence we got. If we put more stock in the trustworthiness of the testimony than in our starting presumptions—which we should—then no matter our starting point, it will be pretty easy for testimony that p to move us to significant confidence in p. The more attached we are to the starting point (or the less we trust the testimony), the more the difference between the alternative understandings of the presumption of innocence makes a difference to the post-update degree of confidence. If the starting point is resilient, it will take an overwhelming amount of evidence to convince someone who starts out presuming ~p that in fact p is probably true. But insofar as the presumption of innocence is a stance defined by the absence of any evidence, the starting credence it yields should not be resilient, and so should easily shift in response to the weight of evidence with any real probative force.”
Thank you for pointing to your footnote.
Regarding believing accusations and presuming innocence, I think we’re using ‘believe’ in two different senses.
I agree that (in the overwhelmingly vast majority of cases in which we’re not multiplying by a Bayes factor of 1) one’s probabilities should change after updating. In that sense, we should ‘believe (or disbelieve)’ accusations.
However, I’m not confident that we should ‘believe’ in the sense of updating our probabilities so that they’re above a probability threshold high enough to mete out significant social or legal consequences. This seems to be what presuming innocence is about.
I’m skeptical whether the barriers between social and legal contexts are as strong as you seem to imply. Those contexts affect each other a lot. How we act in society affects how it evolves, and what laws are adopted.
EDIT: I took a closer look at the passage you quoted and I think I also take issue with the conclusion it implies: “But insofar as the presumption of innocence is a stance defined by the absence of any evidence, the starting credence it yields should not be resilient, and so should easily shift in response to the weight of evidence with any real probative force.”
One might view the presumption of innocence as being at least partially defined by base rates, rather than by the absence of any evidence. Think about it: it obviously doesn’t apply when almost everyone is actually guilty/out to get you (e.g. it doesn’t make sense to presume the enemy isn’t going to shoot you in a war, or presume that hungry predators won’t try to eat you). But it applies in our world because false accusations do exist. In this sense, it’s more ‘resilient’ than the passage argues that it is. If someone insists on using the author’s concept of how its defined then that seems like a definitional dispute.
If a friend confided in you that they were sexually assaulted, would you wait until this was confirmed in court before believing her? Do you hold back because you worry about how your actions may affect the legal principle of “presumption of innocence”, and how this affects what laws are adopted?
I see you’re focusing on a particular subset of cases. I think it’s also worth mentioning that in the majority of cases accusations are not made by friends. When I have limited knowledge about those involved, I tend to uphold stricter standards.
In the case where it is a friend, I’d assume those who I call friends are honest people (with sufficient mental health as to make accurate claims), so I think I’d tend to believe them in the sense of updating beyond a significant threshold. Although, I’ve also made the mistake of misjudging my friends’ honesty in the past, so I might be careful not to be overly confident in my beliefs.
I’m mainly responding to your point that “social and legal contexts affect each other a lot...” etc, and illustrating the point that legal principles and standards are often not (and should not be) the standards that are upheld in day-to-day life. Would you expect the community health team to only take action if accusations could be supported to a legal standard?
What do you mean by this sorry?
I agree that legal standards and standards upheld in day-to-day life shouldn’t be the same, but some of the ‘willingness to believe bad things happened’ I’m seeing in the social groups that EA draws from seems a bit immoderate, so I’m cautious of straying too far from those stricter standards (and straying too far also has a risk of undermining them).
To answer your other question (which you have now deleted), I downvoted your first comment instead of disagree-voting because it appeared to me that you were concentrating on instances where we evaluate accusations made by friends, to the exclusion of the vast majority of situations where we evaluate accusations made by individuals who are not friends (fyi, just so it’s less confusing—I make a distinction between friends and acquaintances, and EA seems big enough that not everyone can be considered a friend). That made your comment potentially misleading. However, I do I agree with your comment in that I should believe a friend’s accusations (unless it turns out I’m a poor judge of character).
I now realize that by asking about what I meant by “the majority of cases accusations are not made by friends,” you indicate that you did not make that distinction as I did.
I think the problem here might be equating “presumption of innocence” with “beyond reasonable doubt”. Criminal punishments have an incredibly high standard of evidence because the punishment is extremely severe, so we are willing to let 10 guilty people free to prevent 1 innocent being punished.
Social punishments are significantly less severe, and should have a smaller threshold for action. This is because inaction can cause severe consequences. Offenders are likely to reoffend, and exploit your group for their own gain.
Also consider that if, say, A credibly accuses B of sexual assault, but you refuse to kick out B because of “presumption of innocence”, then you are effectively kicking out the victim A (or expecting them to just hang around with their assaulter). Someone is leaving the group either way, you have to decide which one you prefer.
I’m not sure that I’m equating those two. I personally wouldn’t want to be a person who doesn’t have enough information, but upon hearing a single accusation (from someone who I don’t really know), will presume guilt (i.e. assign a moderately high probability). If A credibly accuses B then that’s different, but I’d assume in most cases, things are more uncertain.
EDIT: Actually, regarding assault, yeah I think it seems to make sense to assign a moderately high probability (say ~80%), and you seem to be right that I’m using the “beyond reasonable doubt” principle here (including in social settings—though I’m uncertain whether or not it’s the right call). Although, lilly’s comment which I was responding to was actually on misconduct, and I think the influence of the “presumption of innocence” factor is larger in those cases. More in my response below.
Out of curiosity, did you read the comment in response to your original comment earlier? Specifically this part:
Thanks for bringing that up again. I realized I misparsed a bit at the end. However, the conclusion it seems to imply seems a bit dubious, i.e. it seems that our starting credence is more ‘resilient’ than the passage presents it to be if we’re anchoring to base rates. I edited in a section to my initial response to that comment.
What are the base rates you are anchoring to here? This is basically comparing the probability of someone being sexually assaulted VS the probability of someone making a false accusation right?
Update (2023-04-27): In retrospect, I think I could have underestimated the probabilities, although perhaps not by much?
I still think there are strong differences between different parts of society/the world. A lot has changed this past decade, it seems. I would probably still assign higher-than-average probabilities to accusations in places where it’s more costly to accuse (e.g. outside of English-speaking countries, more conservative areas etc.), and lower-than-average probability to accusations in places where it’s less costly (or even slightly status-elevating) to accuse (e.g. within English-speaking countries, more progressive areas etc.).
For now, I’ll avoid stating a new number so I don’t anchor to it while updating. I should also be less susceptible to pressures from the community to think in a certain way, with more time to think about it.
In any case, I don’t appreciate uncharitable interpretations of views that challenge apparent community consensus. I intend to continue to speak my mind.
lilly’s comment was on misconduct, which seems to have a lower rate of being true than assault, given that it encompasses milder problems, as well as different interpretations of what harassment means (this seems particularly the case in the Anglo-American world). My guess is that base rates could range anywhere between 20% and 90%. Recent societal trends have introduced a lot of uncertainty, and have made me doubt accusations more. I think 37.5% prior probability conditional on an accusation (maybe 25% in progressive-leaning social environments) might make sense. (I think I have higher-than-average doubt relative to many EAs on humans acting justly when they perceive an increase in power. It only takes a small percentage of individuals who are willing to exploit things.)
On assault accusations, which titotal’s comment refers to, the base rate seems higher (although the error bars seem large—Scott Alexander on a related statistic). Perhaps I should assign an ~80% prior probability conditional on an accusation. Yeah, that does seem like a “moderately high probability” actually—it makes sense for me to correct my reply to titotal. I think I’d still be less willing to punish severely with that amount of uncertainty, because of “beyond a reasonable doubt” reasons actually, as titotal pointed out, but it’s hard to be confident that that’s the right thing to do.
Makes sense RE: it encompassing milder problems, but this means it is also more likely, so it’s not clear that this cashes out favorably in the direction of the false accusations.
What do you think the base rate of sexual harassment is? e.g. if you think 80% is the baseline risk for someone, i don’t know how you justify a 25% to 37.5% likelihood of actual harassment conditional on an accusation. It sounds like you’re basically saying that 2⁄3 to 3⁄4 accusations are false? Are you grounding these in anything empirical or are these uninformed priors?
EDIT2: It seems like the people responding to me don’t really consider the possibility of missteps/someone’s intent? That seems unfortunate.
EDIT: the link I posted earlier (https://hiddentribes.us/) is quite relevant in introducing nuance to what I wrote about people in “parts of the Anglosphere” becoming more sensitive. It’s different for different people in the Anglosphere. E.g. about a 49-51 split on “harassment is commonplace” to “too many ordinary behaviors are labeled as sexual harassment” in the U.S.
I suspect my probabilities are probably very different from yours mainly because of different ideas of what harassment means.
For instance, one acquaintance of mine puts his hands around me in a somewhat intimate way sometimes, but I honestly don’t consider it “harassment” (edit: it does make me feel slightly uncomfortable and I haven’t raised the issue, but I really don’t think he has bad intentions—we’re probably just raised differently etc.). One friend makes sexual remarks a lot—some people might feel very uncomfortable—I don’t really.
I think those examples point to differences in expectations of what’s comfortable/uncomfortable to people. In parts of the Anglosphere, people seem more sensitive to an extent that in some cases I would consider them to be overreaching. Sure, maybe avoid those things if you think if it makes people uncomfortable (or not, if you think there are risks of safetyism?) - but I don’t see the case for expanding a concept that comes with significant legal and social consequences.
I’m guessing I’m less inclined than you are to consider discomfort to mean harassment (I believe Aella made several great points in her post that are relevant to this view). In a larger number of cases where there’s an accusation that simply refers to “sexual harassment” I’m doubtful that it means what (many others and) I have in mind.
I didn’t make a claim that this was just about making sexual jokes or just about ‘discomfort’, and I’m not really sure where you got that from.
Also, you’re clearly entitled to your opinion around what you consider uncomfortable personally, but what happens if someone else thinks putting you putting your hand around them in a somewhat intimate way is inappropriate? It sounds like you’d consider this a false accusation? That this shouldn’t be something classified as sexual harassment?
Again,
I want to make a meta point about why I chose not to engage in a back-and-forth with @Timothy Chan about this. My language here is a little sharp, because I’m frustrated by his exchange with @pseudonym (and think it’s reasonable for me to be frustrated).
From the outset, I was a bit worried that what was motivating Timothy’s comment was not a rejection of the claim that “believing most women who make accusations of sexual misconduct” is a conventional social norm, but rather that it is a reasonable one. His initial point (“Many of us live or grew up outside of the Anglo-American world… and might place more importance to principles such as the presumption of innocence”) is, of course, true. But my post isn’t about what conventional social norms are, and to the extent that it does touch on this, the relevant claim is just: “whether norms in EA are good or bad for you will depend on your point of comparison,” not a substantive descriptive claim about what norms are “conventional.”
The bar for commenting on the Forum definitely shouldn’t be “you have to engage with the core point of the post,” which is why I responded in good faith. But his initial comment wasn’t giving me big scout mindset vibes, because he didn’t attempt to tie his comment to the upshot of that section, didn’t read the relevant footnote, and didn’t meaningfully engage with the substance of the post.
I responded by citing a paper on whether there’s tension between the presumption of innocence and believing women, since I took the subtext of his comment to be that there is a tradeoff here. He proceeded to not substantively engage with my response, either. (@pseudonym later quoted the same passage again, leading Timothy to eventually acknowledge: “I realized I misparsed a bit at the end,” and edit his response, which I appreciate.) By that point, I strongly suspected that what was actually going on here was that Timothy didn’t like that I had suggested that “believing most women” was a reasonable norm, and what he was actually taking issue with was that, but was couching this in a trivially true descriptive claim. I decided to stop responding.
Eventually, in his exchange with pseudonym, he all but confirms my initial hypothesis, saying: “In a larger number of cases where there’s an accusation that simply refers to ‘sexual harassment’ I’m doubtful that it means what (many others and) I have in mind.” In other words, he doesn’t think it’s reasonable to believe most women who make allegations of sexual harassment because, as he puts it, they’re perhaps just “sensitive.” (One might read my interpretation here as uncharitable, but I think I’m drawing inferences that are reasonable to draw, especially because discussions on this issue often play out this way. #baserates)
I had intentionally kept the claim in the post weak—”believe most women”—because I wanted to avoid this kind of back-and-forth. What I said isn’t deep: you’d believe most people if they told you it was cold outside, you’d believe most people if they told you they didn’t like olives, you’d believe most people if they told you someone made a rude remark, and you should similarly believe most women who accuse someone of sexual misconduct. I didn’t quote some statistic about how 92% of the time, women are telling the truth; I just said it’s reasonable to believe most women who accuse others of misconduct, which it is.
Note that I was specifically talking about people (of all genders/in general) in parts of the Anglosphere being “sensitive”. I’ll quote myself.
Of course, it’s also influencing much outside of it.
Although, there does seem to be a phenomenon where a combination of being young, female, and being politically liberal, makes someone particularly vulnerable to anxiety and depression. This seems to have also increased in recent years in the U.S. https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/mental-health-liberal-girls I do prefer that we can reverse such trends.
EDIT: Apart from quoting a part of my previous comment and stating a preference for there to be less anxiety and depression, everything in this comment is purely descriptive. Are people strong downvoting over offense over that? It’s really not a good sign of community epistemic health.
If you do want my (normative) opinions on all this, I think it’s beneficial and possible for the subset of people in Anglosphere whom I was referring to, to reverse recent trends and become more resilient. There is currently a combination of high false positive rates + expanded notions of perceived malice and of harm, which isn’t very good for your democratic societies, in my opinion.