Disclosure: I currently work at CEA, but any comments or posts are personal, not on behalf of CEA
AbsurdlyMax🔹
Karma: 107
EffecÂtive AltruÂism (and the adÂjaÂcent comÂmuÂniÂties) has a SexÂism problem
Thank you for sharing and I’m very sorry you had to even write something like this at all. You’ve always been such a clear and communicative writer, and I’ve admired how you’ve called out bad dynamics in the community before.
I find it so frustrating that in a community dedicated to doing good, where after all our past scandals we hear so much talk about ‘deontic constraints’ and ‘practicing virtue’, where we are all dedicated to creating good outcomes not just good intents, there is still such a pervasive culture of sexism. If we look at so many of the defining aspects of EA it seems mind boggling how some people in the community will react or try to justify to harassment.
How many hours do we have in our career for bird watching, would you say?
Thank you for writing this! I imagine this took a lot of time to put together, and I really appreciated being able to read it.
From the position of someone without a lot of connection or insight into the day-to-day functioning of EV (and its projects) this provided a lot of context, and gave me confidence that reforms at EV were seriously considered, and then instituted. Its one thing to read an announcement that an organization is working on, or investigation reforms — but being able to see the specifics of those reforms feels differently, and meaningfully, important to me. I feel glad to have read this post, and for some of the updates it allowed me to make!
I found your section on frugality and donating very inspiring, and I hope you appreciate how impressive it is!
One of my comments is cited in the section about there being a wide belief in the EA community, so I can provide my personal perspective, as well as comment more broadly.
While other people have already pointed out that your comparison chart has methodological issues, which I agree with, I don’t think this is a crux. While I think communities and spaces can never reach a state where there are no bad actors, or where no one does or experiences harm — I very much don’t think this means harm is okay (which I’m sure you agree with), or that our response to harassment might somehow matter less if it turned out our community did better than ‘baseline’. I was personally very disappointed by how CEA handled the recent harassment case, and my issue isn’t that I think CEA should somehow have created a work environment where nothing bad ever occurred, or that CEA has more HR violations than baseline, but instead that it should have — bare minimum — taken reasonable steps to prevent the harassment, as required by UK law. In this case the number of incidents isn’t the issue, it was how the specific incident was handled.
Regardless, I think sexism isn’t something that ends at, or is only a problem in the context of, the legal definition of sexual harassment. Workplaces and college campuses have a legal obligation to prevent harassment, but the EA community exists in and goes beyond those spaces (such as an EAG afterparty, or twitter/​facebook discussion threads). Sexism isn’t just a failing to meet a legal standard, just like doing good isn’t defined by donating to 501(c)(3) organizations. EA is a community that is dedicated to doing the most good, and has strong norms around truth seeking and respect — sexism and harassment are inherently not those things, which is why I think EA is ideologically opposed to them. As with any community, some parts will be better and some parts will be worse — but I think we have an obligation to aim for The Most Good You Can Do, and for me that obligation doesn’t end once we close the cost effectiveness analysis spreadsheet. I think we as a community aspire to being the best we can.
While we could have a conversation about how harassment/​sexism reduces the ability for EA to be an impactful movement, I also think we should act with virtue in our conduct, and that we have certain deontic obligations. Especially in recent years I think many within EA hold these views, even if it’s not from a pure ‘impact maximization’ justification (I think many EAs would be quite horrified if it was somehow the case the EA movement was producing a lot of positive impact, but also was intentionally allowing harassment to occur). This is why I think the specific rate of harassment within EA is not a crux — clearly there are ongoing issues, even if the true rate of incidents was lower than whatever you think the reference class should be.
I imagine many of the people you cited feel similarly. The rate of harassment is only part of the conversation — I don’t think the question of ‘is the EA community bad at handling harassment’ can be answered with just a comparison between reporting rates by communities. Given we are a community dedicated to doing good better, it feels almost absurd if the community were content with being at ‘baseline’ for harassment and our response to it.