I’m one of the Community Liaisons for the EA community (alongside Julia Wise and Charlotte Darnell).
I’m a contact for community health support for EA groups, and I also works on assessing and mitigating risks to the EA community.
I initially studied a lot of physics, then was a high school teacher for 11 years before moving full time into EA community building. I ran local and national EA groups and worked on EA outreach projects, before joining CEA’s Groups Team in early 2020 to support EA groups worldwide. I started working for the Community Health team mid 2021.
Catherine Low
Karma: 3,549
Thanks for the public update. Some readers might also be interested in what actions and decisions EV and the Community Health team have been taking around this.
Over the last 9 months Owen has not been allowed to attend EV-run events and in-person spaces (like EA Global and EV run offices). EV exec is currently deciding how EV will interact with Owen going forward, and are planning to publish that in the future. They have sought external advice and advice from our team.
We are in communication with Owen about professional updates on his end so we can check in about safeguards where relevant. We have given him some advice aimed to prevent possible future harm.
People actively considering the choice of whether to work with Owen based on the balance of information available are welcome to reach out to us for input as part of their decision making process. Feel free to reach out to me (catherine@centreforeffectivealtruism.org) if you are in this position.
Thanks for sharing all this information Kat. It seems like this situation has been very difficult for everyone involved. Members of the community health team will look through the post, comments and appendix and work out what our next steps (if any) will be.
Congrats on the new job, and a warm welcome to our community!
I encourage you to reach out to Kathryn from Magnify Mentoring (I’m one of the board members). We support and connect women, non-binary and trans people interested in having a large impact. We have dozens of great mentors, many of whom are young women in leadership positions at orgs funded by EA motivated donors. (You also might be a good fit for becoming a mentor in the future once you have your bearings!)
Good luck!
Catherine from Community Health here. I was aware of this grant application. After discussion with my colleagues in Community Health who were also aware of the same concerns about Nonlinear mentioned in this post, I decided not to advise EAIF to decline this application. Some of the reasons for that were:
The funding was for a project run by three other people (not Nonlinear staff), and I had no concerns about those people working on this project
The three people were not going to be living with Kat and Emerson, which made risks to them lower
At that stage, I had heard some but not all of the complaints listed in this post, so I didn’t have the same picture as I do now. The complaints were confidential, which constrained the possible moves I could make – I wasn’t able to get more information, and I couldn’t share information with the EAIF team that might lead to someone identifying the complainant or Nonlinear guessing that someone complaining had affected their grant decision.
I could and did put some risk mitigation measures in place, in particular, by requiring the grant to be made on the condition that they set up an incubation contract to formalise the roles, reducing the risk that the incubatees and Nonlinear would have different expectation of access to funds and ownership of the project (which was one of the problems Alice reported).
I didn’t request that EAIF send the money directly to the three people involved in the project, rather than Nonlinear, but I was pleased that it happened
Looking back, given the information and constraints I had at the time, I think this was a reasonable decision.
The situation with person L was deeply tragic. This comment explains some of the actions taken by CEA’s Community Health team as a result of their reports.
The situation with person L was deeply tragic. This comment explains some of the actions taken by CEA’s Community Health team as a result of their reports.
Hi Mandelbrot,
Thanks for sharing. The stories of individual women from Silicon Valley are very harrowing.
This point in struck me:
> The men who victimized us are shaping the world. We are canaries for their disregard for human dignity.
It is a deeply sad thing about the world that those who wield power are often unethical or ignorant of the plight of those who they affect. With the improvement in AI technology, I’m expecting rapid changes in who (or what) wields power, so I’m feeling very anxious about this getting worse.
I encourage victims of sexual misconduct to reach out to others for support, and to seriously consider reporting the incident.
People you can report to or seek support from:
If the incident relates to someone involved in the EA community in some way, you can contact the Community Liaisons (Julia Wise, Charlotte Darnell and me), anonymously if you wish.
University authorities if the misconduct involved university staff or students, or a university affiliated group
Police
Human resources staff or managers, if the misconduct was associated with a workplace
The organiser of the event, if the incident happened at an event.
A lawyer—one option with an advice line is Bay Area Legal Aid, or this guidance from Women’s Law on finding a lawyer
And friends and family
Many countries have free sexual misconduct advice available. Some people find it helpful to talk to one of these support services to learn more about what is likely to happen if you report to the police. Here are some resources that may be useful for the US, UK and Australia. We don’t have experience working with these organisations.Information and Support for Sexual Harassment Survivors - mostly US
RAINN—US
Free legal advice on sexual assault or sexual harassment (US only)
List of sexual assault services—Australia
Respect@Work—Australia (workplace)
We also encourage victims to seek mental health support. EA Mental Health Navigator can help people in our community access support.
In case you missed it, and you’re interested. I’ve put some updates relating to the the Community Health and Special Projects Team thinking and actions about concerns about Nonlinear on Ben’s initial post.
General statement (10th Sept)
An incomplete list of actions we’ve taken to reduce risk of other people ending up in similarly bad situations (11th Sept)
Rough timeline and thinking (New − 20th Sept)
Some confidentiality constraints have been lifted in the last few days, so I’m now able to share more information from the Community Health and Special Projects team to give people a sense of how this case went from our perspective, and how we think about these things.
Previous updates:
An incomplete list of actions we’ve taken to reduce risk of other people ending up in similarly bad situations.
To give a picture of how things happened over time:
Starting mid last year, our team heard about many of the concerns mentioned in this post.
At the time of our initial conversations with former staff/associates of Nonlinear, they were understandably reluctant for us to do anything that would let on to Nonlinear that they were raising complaints. This limited our ability to hear Nonlinear’s side of the story, though members of our team did have some conversations with Kat that touched on some of these topics. It also meant that the former staff/associates did not give permission at that time for us to take some steps that we suggested. They also suggested some steps that we didn’t see as feasible for us.
At one point we discussed the possibility of the ex-staff writing a public post of some kind, but at that time they were understandably unwilling to do this. Our impression is that the impetus for that eventually coming together was Ben being willing to put in a lot of work.
Over time, confidentiality became less of a constraint. The people raising the concerns became more willing to have information shared, and some people made public comments, meaning we were able to take some more actions without compromising confidentiality. We were then able to take some steps including what we describe here, and pointing various people to the publicly available claims, to reduce the risk of other people ending up in bad situations.
We had been considering taking more steps when we heard Ben was working with theformer staff/associates on a public post. We felt that this public post might make some of those steps less necessary. We kept collecting information about Nonlinear, but did not do as much as we might have done had Ben not been working on this.
We continued to track Nonlinear and were ready to prioritise the case more highly if it seemed that the risk to others in the community was rising.
- Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong by (19 Dec 2023 12:00 UTC; 337 points)
- Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong by (LessWrong; 19 Dec 2023 12:00 UTC; 167 points)
- 's comment on Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims by (14 Dec 2023 7:19 UTC; 123 points)
- 's comment on Closing Notes on Nonlinear Investigation by (20 Sep 2023 20:08 UTC; 33 points)
Catherine from CEA’s Community Health and Special Projects Team here. I have a different perspective on the situation than Jaime does and appreciate that he noted that “these stories have a lot of nuance to them and are in each case the result of the CHT making what they thought were the best decisions they could make with the tools they had.”
I believe Jaime’s points 1, 2 and 3 refer to the same conflict between two people. In that situation, I have deep empathy for the several people that have suffered during the conflict. It was (and still is) a complex and very upsetting situation.
Typically CEA’s Groups team is the team at CEA that interfaces most closely with EA groups. The conflict mentioned here was an unusual situation which led the Community Health team to have more contact with that group than usual. From the information we gathered after talking to several individuals affected, this was an interpersonal conflict. We made a judgement call about what was best given the information, which Jaime disagrees with. To be clear, based on the information we had, there were no threats of violence, sexual harassment, or other forms of seriously harmful behavior that would warrant us to take the steps that Jaime suggests.
Ultimately, I think both Jaime and I had the same goals of increasing the chances that the group thrives and continues to do its important work over the long term, but we had a different perspective on how to move towards that goal in this situation.
I don’t recognise the situation in 4. I’m not sure if that is because I’m unaware, or if I have a different understanding of the situation. If anyone reading knows and wants to share information or give us feedback I’d be very grateful. There are ways you can contact our community liaisons or managers Chana and Nicole anonymously.
Hey Morpheus. This comment provides a partial answer to your question.
Hey Agrippa, this comment provides a partial answer.
Thanks for the questions Morpheus_Trinity. I’m sorry but we are not able to give a response to most of your questions. This comment provides a partial answer.
I understand your desire to know this information, Morpheus_Trinity. I’m sorry but we’re not in a position to share all that information here. This comment provides a partial answer.
Thanks for asking Yadav. I can confirm that:
Nonlinear has not been invited or permitted to run sessions or give talks relating to their work, or host a recruiting table at EAG and EAGx conferences this year.
Kat ran a session on a personal topic at EAG Bay Area 2023 in February. EDIT: Kat, Emerson and Drew also had a community office hour slot at that conference.
Since then we have not invited or permitted Kat or Emerson to run any type of session.We have been considering blocking them from attending future conferences since May, and were planning on making that decision if/when Kat or Emerson applied to attend a future conference.
- Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong by (19 Dec 2023 12:00 UTC; 337 points)
- Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong by (LessWrong; 19 Dec 2023 12:00 UTC; 167 points)
- 's comment on Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims by (14 Dec 2023 7:19 UTC; 123 points)
- 's comment on Sharing Information About Nonlinear by (20 Sep 2023 19:53 UTC; 67 points)
- 's comment on Closing Notes on Nonlinear Investigation by (20 Sep 2023 20:08 UTC; 33 points)
- 's comment on Sharing Information About Nonlinear by (11 Sep 2023 16:43 UTC; 8 points)
- 's comment on Sharing Information About Nonlinear by (11 Sep 2023 16:46 UTC; 4 points)
- 's comment on Sharing Information About Nonlinear by (12 Sep 2023 12:51 UTC; 4 points)
- 's comment on Sharing Information About Nonlinear by (12 Sep 2023 12:48 UTC; 3 points)
I’m on CEA’s Community Health and Special Projects team, and I sometimes contribute to EAG and EAGx event admissions and speaker decisions. I can understand your concern Lauren Maria. I’d really like for EA events to be places where attendees can have a high level of confidence in the other attendees (especially the attendees in positions of power). CEA does a small amount of vetting of speakers and organisations attending the career fairs. We also have our regular admissions process, where we sometimes choose to reject people from attending the conference if we have reasons to think their attendance would be bad for others (the most common reason is getting complaints of poor behaviour from members of the EA community). This hopefully reduces the risk, but people will still attend who could cause harm.
My main advice is to encourage community members to not implicitly trust others at EA events. Do your own due diligence, and talk it over with trusted friends, family, or mentors before making large decisions.
I’m one of the Community Liaisons for CEA’s Community Health and Special Projects team. The information shared in this post is very troubling. There is no room in our community for manipulative or intimidating behaviour.
We were familiar with many (but not all) of the concerns raised in Ben’s post based on our own investigation. We’re grateful to Ben for spending the time pursuing a more detailed picture, and grateful to those who supported Alice and Chloe during a very difficult time.
We talked to several people currently or formerly involved in Nonlinear about these issues, and took some actions as a result of what we heard. We plan to continue working on this situation.
From the comments on this post, I’m guessing that some readers are trying to work out whether Kat and Emerson’s intentions were bad. However, for some things, intentions might not be very decision-relevant. In my opinion, meta work like incubating new charities, advising inexperienced charity entrepreneurs, and influencing funding decisions should be done by people with particularly good judgement about how to run strong organisations, in addition to having admirable intentions.
I’m looking forward to seeing what information Nonlinear shares in the coming weeks.
Hey Rainer and Mandy. This is really exciting!
My first suggestion would be to sync up with Animals Aotearoa which are an EA aligned, EA Animal Welfare funds funded org.
[I used to be involved in Animal Advocacy work in NZ (and in EA NZ) - I’m now in the UK, but I still have contacts and can intro you to some folk. Let’s talk at EAG London if not before].
Thanks to all the commenters asking us about whether our response is different depending on the person’s perceived value to the community and world. The community health team discussed responding to these questions when this post was first written, but we wanted all relevant team members to be able to carefully check and endorse our statements, and it was a very busy time. So we put our response on hold for a bit. Apologies for the delay.
First, I want to say that our team cares a lot about the culture of EA. It would be a terrible loss to EA’s work if bad behaviour were tolerated here, both because of the harm that would do to individuals and because of the effect on people’s interest in getting involved and staying involved with EA projects. We care about the experience of individuals who go through any kind of harm, but there’s a reason we focus on people in EA. We do this work in EA and not in some other community because we think EA has a real chance at making a difference on very serious problems in the world, and we think it’s especially important that this community be a healthy one that doesn’t lose people because they don’t feel safe. We’ve changed some wording on our website to better reflect this.
I’ll give some examples of how this looks in practice. I don’t want to convey that we’ve developed the ideal policy here—it’s definitely a work in progress and I think it is likely that we’ve made mistakes.
I do want to be clear on one thing: If we believe someone had committed a violent crime then we would take serious action (including, if the victim wished) helping the victim navigate the police and justice system. It doesn’t matter how valuable the person’s work is. No one is above the law. Tolerating this kind of behaviour would erode basic norms that allow people to cooperate.
If we had good reason to think someone had committed a serious offence against another person (e.g. assault) it wouldn’t matter the value of their work, we would not want them at CEA events.
Exceptions we have made a handful of times (~5 times in thousands of conference applications over 7 years):
If the victim/survivor did not want action taken, for example because they believed it would increase danger to themselves.
if the assault happened a long time ago and there is strong reason to believe the person is not at risk of causing problems now (e.g. if the victim doesn’t believe other people are at risk and doesn’t want the person banned.)
In situations where the action was minor (e.g. by being quite argumentative with people, or making a person feel uncomfortable by flirting but without a significant power difference) or when we can’t get much information (i.e. the reports are hearsay/rumour) then our approach has been:
If the grantmaker/events admissions team already think it is borderline whether the person should be given the opportunity, we might recommend the person not get the opportunity.
But if the grantmaker/events admissions team think there is a lot of value from this person getting the opportunity and still want to proceed knowing our concerns, we’ll aim to do harm reduction e.g. by
talking to the person about how their actions weren’t received well and giving them suggestions to prevent this happening. We try to do this in cases where we have reason to think the person is well intentioned but unaware of the effect they sometimes have on others.
suggesting some alterations to the project (e.g. by suggesting a different person working on their project does some of the tasks)
trying to find more information about the person or incident. For example, we might talk to the person directly, the people who reported the concern, or ask one of their colleagues or the organiser of their EA group if they have any concerns about this person in other contexts. If we’re not able to share the identity of the person, we might just ask how their group/workplace is going and if there are any worries they have—which is something we commonly do whether or not there are concerns about a member of their group/workplace).
If we are only concerned about someone’s in-person actions, we generally don’t try to block remote or intellectual work like research funding.
Given that EAGx Utrecht might be the most convenient EAGx for a good chunk of Western Europe, I’m not sure how important it is to have a goal for a % speakers with strong Dutch connections rather than Europe connections. But the density of talented Dutch folk in the community is very high, so you might hit 35% without any specific goal to do so.