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 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.