Some suggested remedies. I know some of these are weird, but I honestly think they are good. Many solutions don’t attempt to manage appropriate to scale, in a distributed way or with correct incentives, I think these do:
Poll to understand the scale of the problem
Let’s know how many people feel this way. Is there a link between this and the number of women the community? We don’t have to guess this stuff, we can just know
People at EAGs can report people who used meetings to try and flirt with them in a way they didn’t like. Slowly increase punishments (I suggest probabilistic bans from EAGs eg 5% you are banned for 6 months) until the harms to women are less than the cost of the bans. I like flirting at EAG parties, so I think there is a different tone there, but seems fine for during the day for there to be a high risk to flirting without someone appreciating it.
I like probabilistic bans because most of the time they are just a warning but they still sometimes have bite.
(This image is from the last time we had this discourse. I guess it would replicate in a representative poll. Most women don’t want to be flirted with at a conference during the day, though some do. As I say, seems we should increase the cost of doing so)
People sometimes argue that I’m too harsh on this. But currently I think the harms from people being flirted with who dont’ want to be are greater than the harms from those who would have their freedom curtailed, so I suggest we try it.
I unironically support people who have been harmed gossiping about people who have done so. If you hear a bad rumour about someone, by all means check it, but I think it’s okay to share what someone has said to you.
There are costs to this in terms of community trust so consider carefully if rumours are true, but I still think we undergossip tbh.
There should be a clear process for what happens around bad behaviour in relation to EAGs in particular and a way for people to be forgiven of bad behaviour (given credible change and timescales based on badnesss). EA should not operate on reasonable doubt, but on balance of harms (and I say this as someone who sometimes falls afoul of this stuff—but the harms to all involved matter equally, where as “beyond reasonable doubt” generally ignores harms to the accuser imo)
Scandal markets. I unironically think there should be a manifold market on whether any EA above a certain reputation level is found guilty of harassment by and independent investigator. Then people can share their information by betting privately. Investigations happen at random
This sounds mechanistic and weird, but imagine if it was normal, would we remove it? I doubt it
Prediction markets are distributed whistleblowing
“What if the accused manipulates the market?” This increases liquidity and draws attention to the market
“Wouldn’t it feel awful/be tasteless for powerful people to have markets on whether they would harass someone?” I think the status quo is worse. I don’t mind putting additional burdens on people in positions of power. And I am confident that this would decrease the likelihood of some big scandal such as destroys other communities.
Because I believe you can’t advocate for this without having a market yourself, mine is here.
I’m worried a lot of this is missing the point, and potentially missing important solutions. I’m going to use EAG for my examples here, as I think it is the strongest case of what I’m describing, but I think my argument generalises to a lot of scenarios and spaces in the EA community.
In my mind, there are two competing things going on here:
At an EAG, you are likely to meet people who are at a similar stage in their life to you, who have similar interests, and who are likely to be both intelligent and altruistic, both attractive qualities. If you meet one of these people, and they feel similarly about you, you could enjoy some flavour of romance together, and it would be mutually fulfilling. Things being mutually fulfilling between parties is self-evidently a good thing.
At an EAG, some people, primarily women, have bad experiences as a result of others’ romantic attention. These experiences can range from uncomfortable to traumatic. I think these negative experiences can then be grouped into two further categories:
Those that are are the result of malicious intent
Those that are the result of power dynamics, and can arise despite positive intentions.
I think your solutions are primarily concerned with the 2a category, and when reading it I was reminded of this comment, which I think puts it better than I could. There are people with malicious intent in every community, and I don’t think EA requires any particularly novel solution to deal with them. I agree with Isabel in that I’m also worried that when these threads come up, people will spend their efforts trying to either gauge the size of the problem, or theorise the optimal solution, rather than take any meaningful action.
I think 2b can be equally as damaging, and more should be done about it. Because EA is such a small, well-resourced community, there are especially strong power dynamics at play between individuals. As discussed in the blog post linked above, the EA community does not have strong boundaries between professional and romantic lives, in fact it seems especially tolerant of this intermingling—I claim this is a strongly negative thing. If someone a prospective future employer/grantmaker/”senior leader” starts flirting with me at EAG, even if they are being incredibly respectful and only have good intentions, I am under a lot of pressure to cooperate, even if that’s not what I want at all. If at the start I do genuinely reciprocate that attraction, and we engage in some kind of romantic interaction, and I later change my mind, there is again a huge pressure on me not to leave the arrangement, even though that’s what I want to do.
I’m not suggesting that EAs shouldn’t date one another, but I am suggesting a much stronger acknowledgement of power dynamics at play, both on an individual community level. Due to the lack of community emphasis, I suspect many beneficiaries of power dynamics in these situations do not think of themselves that way, and so may inadvertently do harm (this isn’t aimed at you personally—I don’t know whether you are or aren’t aware of this). It seems plausible to me that this would also help with 2a, as well as make the community feel more inclusive.
I’m worried your subdivision misses a significant proportion of harms that don’t fall into either category. For instance, interactions that don’t involve malice or power dynamics and are innocuous in isolation but harmful when repeated. This repetition can be made more likely by imbalanced gender ratios.
I think being flirted with during the day at an EAG like Nathan discussed above is a good example of this. If you’re flirted with once over the weekend, perhaps it’s fine or even nice, especially if it’s from the person you found most interesting. But if you’re flirted with several times, you may start to feel uncomfortable.
Well if a conference has 3x more men than woman and 1-on-1s are matched uniformly at random, then women have 3x more cross-gender 1-on-1s than men. Assuming all people are equally likely to flirt with someone of a different gender than them, it’s very possible that the average man receives a comfortable amount of flirting while the average woman receives an uncomfortable amount.
And it probably gets worse when one considers that these are random variables and we don’t care about the average but rather about how many people exceed the uncomfortable threshold and to what degree. And perhaps worse again if certain “attractive” people are more likely to receive flirting.
Overall, my point is that behaviors and norms that would be fine with balanced gender ratios can be harmful with imbalanced ones. Unfortunately, we have imbalanced ones and we need to adapt accordingly.
My sense is that gauging the size of the problem and thinking of good solutions is a useful thing to do.
Also I link the intermingling of romantic and personal lives, but I don’t like the harm it causes. And I think we can attempt solutions that attack the specific harms without damaging other benefits.
idk about “punishments” exactly; I would like EAG organizers to prioritise preventing harm, rather than acting as a justice system. Preventing harm is sometimes going to mean making clear to people that they should stop doing what they’re doing, and sometimes going to mean temporarily or permanently excluding people. These things look like punishments but I don’t know if I’d describe them as such.
How about an opt-in speed dating event in the evening? That way the 40+% of women who desire flirts can obtain them, and there is no need or excuse to flirt with people during professional 1-on-1s.
If the conference organizers aren’t comfortable organizing a speed dating event, maybe one of the women who wants to be flirted with could step up and organize it unofficially. Could do lottery admission to keep the gender ratio even.
I apologize for making so many edits instead of submitting separate comments the way Nathan did. Based on checking the vote tallies on this comment repeatedly, I think it got most agreevotes after the first edit and before the second one. (I believe the agreevote was at around +8 at one point.) Suggesting that matchmaking is the idea that people like the most. Also, by “maybe you women should put your heads together on this” I was essentially suggesting a panel or focus group. I find myself increasingly unenthusiastic about participating in this thread. I think it could use a little more assumption-of-good-faith and sense of humor instead of what feels like eagerness to take offense.
Some suggested remedies. I know some of these are weird, but I honestly think they are good. Many solutions don’t attempt to manage appropriate to scale, in a distributed way or with correct incentives, I think these do:
Poll to understand the scale of the problem
Let’s know how many people feel this way. Is there a link between this and the number of women the community? We don’t have to guess this stuff, we can just know
People at EAGs can report people who used meetings to try and flirt with them in a way they didn’t like. Slowly increase punishments (I suggest probabilistic bans from EAGs eg 5% you are banned for 6 months) until the harms to women are less than the cost of the bans. I like flirting at EAG parties, so I think there is a different tone there, but seems fine for during the day for there to be a high risk to flirting without someone appreciating it.
I like probabilistic bans because most of the time they are just a warning but they still sometimes have bite.
(This image is from the last time we had this discourse. I guess it would replicate in a representative poll. Most women don’t want to be flirted with at a conference during the day, though some do. As I say, seems we should increase the cost of doing so)
People sometimes argue that I’m too harsh on this. But currently I think the harms from people being flirted with who dont’ want to be are greater than the harms from those who would have their freedom curtailed, so I suggest we try it.
I unironically support people who have been harmed gossiping about people who have done so. If you hear a bad rumour about someone, by all means check it, but I think it’s okay to share what someone has said to you.
There are costs to this in terms of community trust so consider carefully if rumours are true, but I still think we undergossip tbh.
There should be a clear process for what happens around bad behaviour in relation to EAGs in particular and a way for people to be forgiven of bad behaviour (given credible change and timescales based on badnesss). EA should not operate on reasonable doubt, but on balance of harms (and I say this as someone who sometimes falls afoul of this stuff—but the harms to all involved matter equally, where as “beyond reasonable doubt” generally ignores harms to the accuser imo)
Scandal markets. I unironically think there should be a manifold market on whether any EA above a certain reputation level is found guilty of harassment by and independent investigator. Then people can share their information by betting privately. Investigations happen at random
This sounds mechanistic and weird, but imagine if it was normal, would we remove it? I doubt it
Prediction markets are distributed whistleblowing
“What if the accused manipulates the market?” This increases liquidity and draws attention to the market
“Wouldn’t it feel awful/be tasteless for powerful people to have markets on whether they would harass someone?” I think the status quo is worse. I don’t mind putting additional burdens on people in positions of power. And I am confident that this would decrease the likelihood of some big scandal such as destroys other communities.
Because I believe you can’t advocate for this without having a market yourself, mine is here.
Polling seems like a good idea
I’m worried a lot of this is missing the point, and potentially missing important solutions. I’m going to use EAG for my examples here, as I think it is the strongest case of what I’m describing, but I think my argument generalises to a lot of scenarios and spaces in the EA community.
In my mind, there are two competing things going on here:
At an EAG, you are likely to meet people who are at a similar stage in their life to you, who have similar interests, and who are likely to be both intelligent and altruistic, both attractive qualities. If you meet one of these people, and they feel similarly about you, you could enjoy some flavour of romance together, and it would be mutually fulfilling. Things being mutually fulfilling between parties is self-evidently a good thing.
At an EAG, some people, primarily women, have bad experiences as a result of others’ romantic attention. These experiences can range from uncomfortable to traumatic. I think these negative experiences can then be grouped into two further categories:
Those that are are the result of malicious intent
Those that are the result of power dynamics, and can arise despite positive intentions.
I think your solutions are primarily concerned with the 2a category, and when reading it I was reminded of this comment, which I think puts it better than I could. There are people with malicious intent in every community, and I don’t think EA requires any particularly novel solution to deal with them. I agree with Isabel in that I’m also worried that when these threads come up, people will spend their efforts trying to either gauge the size of the problem, or theorise the optimal solution, rather than take any meaningful action.
I think 2b can be equally as damaging, and more should be done about it. Because EA is such a small, well-resourced community, there are especially strong power dynamics at play between individuals. As discussed in the blog post linked above, the EA community does not have strong boundaries between professional and romantic lives, in fact it seems especially tolerant of this intermingling—I claim this is a strongly negative thing. If someone a prospective future employer/grantmaker/”senior leader” starts flirting with me at EAG, even if they are being incredibly respectful and only have good intentions, I am under a lot of pressure to cooperate, even if that’s not what I want at all. If at the start I do genuinely reciprocate that attraction, and we engage in some kind of romantic interaction, and I later change my mind, there is again a huge pressure on me not to leave the arrangement, even though that’s what I want to do.
I’m not suggesting that EAs shouldn’t date one another, but I am suggesting a much stronger acknowledgement of power dynamics at play, both on an individual community level. Due to the lack of community emphasis, I suspect many beneficiaries of power dynamics in these situations do not think of themselves that way, and so may inadvertently do harm (this isn’t aimed at you personally—I don’t know whether you are or aren’t aware of this). It seems plausible to me that this would also help with 2a, as well as make the community feel more inclusive.
I’m worried your subdivision misses a significant proportion of harms that don’t fall into either category. For instance, interactions that don’t involve malice or power dynamics and are innocuous in isolation but harmful when repeated. This repetition can be made more likely by imbalanced gender ratios.
I think being flirted with during the day at an EAG like Nathan discussed above is a good example of this. If you’re flirted with once over the weekend, perhaps it’s fine or even nice, especially if it’s from the person you found most interesting. But if you’re flirted with several times, you may start to feel uncomfortable.
Well if a conference has 3x more men than woman and 1-on-1s are matched uniformly at random, then women have 3x more cross-gender 1-on-1s than men. Assuming all people are equally likely to flirt with someone of a different gender than them, it’s very possible that the average man receives a comfortable amount of flirting while the average woman receives an uncomfortable amount.
And it probably gets worse when one considers that these are random variables and we don’t care about the average but rather about how many people exceed the uncomfortable threshold and to what degree. And perhaps worse again if certain “attractive” people are more likely to receive flirting.
Overall, my point is that behaviors and norms that would be fine with balanced gender ratios can be harmful with imbalanced ones. Unfortunately, we have imbalanced ones and we need to adapt accordingly.
[edit: addressed]
Thanks for pointing this out—I’d pasted the wrong link, and have edited my original comment.
My sense is that gauging the size of the problem and thinking of good solutions is a useful thing to do.
Also I link the intermingling of romantic and personal lives, but I don’t like the harm it causes. And I think we can attempt solutions that attack the specific harms without damaging other benefits.
Punishments for people who make people uncomfortable at EAGs seem like a good idea
idk about “punishments” exactly; I would like EAG organizers to prioritise preventing harm, rather than acting as a justice system. Preventing harm is sometimes going to mean making clear to people that they should stop doing what they’re doing, and sometimes going to mean temporarily or permanently excluding people. These things look like punishments but I don’t know if I’d describe them as such.
Transparent process with room for forgiveness but that considered harms to all parties (rather than underrating accused)
Scandal markets are a good idea
Gossip is good
How about an opt-in speed dating event in the evening? That way the 40+% of women who desire flirts can obtain them, and there is no need or excuse to flirt with people during professional 1-on-1s.
If the conference organizers aren’t comfortable organizing a speed dating event, maybe one of the women who wants to be flirted with could step up and organize it unofficially. Could do lottery admission to keep the gender ratio even.
Edit: An EA matchmaking service is another idea
2nd edit: Amanda Askell says she likes ambiguity. Maybe you women should put your heads together on this
I’m sure they’ll discuss it at the next big meeting.
I apologize for making so many edits instead of submitting separate comments the way Nathan did. Based on checking the vote tallies on this comment repeatedly, I think it got most agreevotes after the first edit and before the second one. (I believe the agreevote was at around +8 at one point.) Suggesting that matchmaking is the idea that people like the most. Also, by “maybe you women should put your heads together on this” I was essentially suggesting a panel or focus group. I find myself increasingly unenthusiastic about participating in this thread. I think it could use a little more assumption-of-good-faith and sense of humor instead of what feels like eagerness to take offense.