Iâm one of the Community Liaisons for the EA community (alongside Julia Wise and Charlotte Darnell).
Iâm 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 CEAâs Groups Team in early 2020 to support EA groups worldwide. I started working for the Community Health team mid 2021.
Catherine Lowđ¸
Karma: 4,040
In case you missed it, and youâre interested. Iâve put some updates relating to the the Community Health and Special Projects Team thinking and actions about concerns about Nonlinear on Benâs initial post.
General statement (10th Sept)
An incomplete list of actions weâve taken to reduce risk of other people ending up in similarly bad situations (11th Sept)
Rough timeline and thinking (New â 20th Sept)
Some confidentiality constraints have been lifted in the last few days, so Iâm 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 weâve 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/âassociates 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 Nonlinearâs 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/âassociates did not give permission at that time for us to take some steps that we suggested. They also suggested some steps that we didnât 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/âassociates 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.
- EffecÂtive AsperÂsions: How the NonÂlinÂear InÂvesÂtiÂgaÂtion Went Wrong by (Dec 19, 2023, 12:00 PM; 350 points)
- EffecÂtive AsperÂsions: How the NonÂlinÂear InÂvesÂtiÂgaÂtion Went Wrong by (LessWrong; Dec 19, 2023, 12:00 PM; 188 points)
- 's comment on NonÂlinÂearâs EvÂiÂdence: DeÂbunkÂing False and MisleadÂing Claims by (Dec 14, 2023, 7:19 AM; 123 points)
- 's comment on ClosÂing Notes on NonÂlinÂear Investigation by (Sep 20, 2023, 8:08 PM; 33 points)
Catherine from CEAâs Community Health and Special Projects Team here. I have a different perspective on the situation than Jaime does and appreciate that he noted that âthese 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.â
I believe Jaimeâs 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 CEAâs 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 donât recognise the situation in 4. Iâm not sure if that is because Iâm unaware, or if I have a different understanding of the situation. If anyone reading knows and wants to share information or give us feedback Iâd be very grateful. There are ways you can contact our community liaisons or managers Chana and Nicole anonymously.
MisÂtakes, flukes, and good calls I made in my mulÂtiÂple caÂreers
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. Iâm 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. Iâm sorry but weâre 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/âwhen Kat or Emerson applied to attend a future conference.
- EffecÂtive AsperÂsions: How the NonÂlinÂear InÂvesÂtiÂgaÂtion Went Wrong by (Dec 19, 2023, 12:00 PM; 350 points)
- EffecÂtive AsperÂsions: How the NonÂlinÂear InÂvesÂtiÂgaÂtion Went Wrong by (LessWrong; Dec 19, 2023, 12:00 PM; 188 points)
- 's comment on NonÂlinÂearâs EvÂiÂdence: DeÂbunkÂing False and MisleadÂing Claims by (Dec 14, 2023, 7:19 AM; 123 points)
- 's comment on SharÂing InÂforÂmaÂtion About Nonlinear by (Sep 20, 2023, 7:53 PM; 67 points)
- 's comment on ClosÂing Notes on NonÂlinÂear Investigation by (Sep 20, 2023, 8:08 PM; 33 points)
- 's comment on SharÂing InÂforÂmaÂtion About Nonlinear by (Sep 11, 2023, 4:43 PM; 8 points)
- 's comment on SharÂing InÂforÂmaÂtion About Nonlinear by (Sep 11, 2023, 4:46 PM; 4 points)
- 's comment on SharÂing InÂforÂmaÂtion About Nonlinear by (Sep 12, 2023, 12:51 PM; 4 points)
- 's comment on SharÂing InÂforÂmaÂtion About Nonlinear by (Sep 12, 2023, 12:48 PM; 3 points)
Iâm on CEAâs 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. Iâd 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.
Iâm one of the Community Liaisons for CEAâs 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 Benâs post based on our own investigation. Weâre 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, Iâm guessing that some readers are trying to work out whether Kat and Emersonâs 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.
Iâm 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) - Iâm now in the UK, but I still have contacts and can intro you to some folk. Letâs talk at EAG London if not before].
Thanks to all the commenters asking us about whether our response is different depending on the personâs 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 EAâs work if bad behaviour were tolerated here, both because of the harm that would do to individuals and because of the effect on peopleâs 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 thereâs 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 itâs especially important that this community be a healthy one that doesnât lose people because they donât feel safe. Weâve changed some wording on our website to better reflect this.
Iâll give some examples of how this looks in practice. I donât want to convey that weâve developed the ideal policy hereâitâs definitely a work in progress and I think it is likely that weâve 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 doesnât matter how valuable the personâs 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 wouldnât 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/âsurvivor 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 doesnât believe other people are at risk and doesnât 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 canât get much information (i.e. the reports are hearsay/ârumour) then our approach has been:
If the grantmaker/âevents 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/âevents admissions team think there is a lot of value from this person getting the opportunity and still want to proceed knowing our concerns, weâll aim to do harm reduction e.g. by
talking to the person about how their actions werenât 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 weâre not able to share the identity of the person, we might just ask how their group/âworkplace is going and if there are any worries they haveâwhich is something we commonly do whether or not there are concerns about a member of their group/âworkplace).
If we are only concerned about someoneâs in-person actions, we generally donât try to block remote or intellectual work like research funding.
Thanks Ivy and Jason for your thoughts on internal and external investigations of problems of sexual misconduct in EA.
There are a few different investigation type things going on at the moment, and some of them arenât fully scoped or planned. So it is a bit confusing. To clarify, this is where we are at right now:
Catherine, Anu and Lukasz from the Community Health team are investigating the experiences of women and gender minorities in EA.
Analysing existing data sources (in progressâRethink Priorities has kindly given us some (as yet) unpublished data from the 2022 Survey to help with this step)
We are considering gathering and analysing more data about the experiences of women and gender minorities in EA, and have talked with Rethink Priorities about whether and how they could help. Nothing has been decided yet. To clarify a statement in Ivyâs comment though, weâre not planning to hand over any information we have (e.g. survey data from EAG(x)s or information about sexual misconduct cases raised to our team) to Rethink Priorities as part of this process.
The EV board has commissioned an external investigation by an independent law firm into Owenâs behaviour and the Community Health teamâs response.
The Community Health team are doing our own internal review into our handling of the complaints about Owen and our overall processes for dealing with complaints and concerns. More information about this here.
Thanks for this lovely post. I have SO many reasons to love effective altruism, hereâs one (maybe Iâll write more later):
TruthseekingnessIâve been seeking out truthseeking communities all my life, but they all fell short of my goals until I found EA. Some examples:
I studied particle physicsâwhat could be more truthseeky than trying to find the fundamental nature of the universe? Back then, a bunch of particle physicists claimed to believe in a class of theories called âsupersymmetryââand I never understood whyâthere was no evidence for it, and I never really grokked why people thought the theoretical arguments were so compelling. At the time I just thought I wasnât intelligent or knowledgeable enough to get it, but I might have undersold myself. The Large Hadron Collider has since ruled out all the then most popular versions of supersymmetry, and it isnât cool any more. I think there might have been some sort of shared delusion because people wanted it to be true, partly because it was testable by the particle accelerator that was under construction.
When I was a science teacher it used to drive me BONKERS that students were taught (and required to regurgitate in national exams) incorrect force diagrams. (E.g. for a car accelerating on a flat, level road, students were required to draw the âfrictionâ arrow pointing backwardsâwhereas in reality, friction is forward and without it the wheels would just spin and the car wouldnât go anywhere). I get the need for simplification as much as the next guy, but you canât tell me that âpoint the arrow in the exact opposite directionâ counts as simplification. I talked to a bunch of teachers, the national qualifications authority, the ministry of education, and created draft alternative (and equally simple) resources for them to review. But no one else seemed to care at all about whether what we were teaching was accurateâor at least didnât care enough to do anything about it.
But EA seems to be very differentâthis community seems to be unusually good at seeking the truth, even (or especially?) when it is inconvenient, scary, or even shameful. One of the first EA talks I went to blew my mind by questioning whether we are currently wasting our donations, by doing and then undoing good. Then I read GiveWellâs noodling on whether or not some of their (then) top charities are likely to have no impact, and discussions on whether becoming vegetarian increases animal suffering. More recently Iâve seen commentary about whether our community has accelerated dangerous AI capabilities or whether our community contributed to an environment that led to multi-billion dollar fraud. We should take these possible negatives very seriously. The fact that we do take these negatives seriously, and that we continue to try to get better a truth seeking gives me a whole bunch of hope.
I havenât personally heard any instances of this, but itâs certainly possible :(
Hi all -
This post has now been edited, but we would like to address some of the original claims, since many people have read them. In particular, the author claims:
They have identified 30 incidents of rape or abuse with strong ties to EA, as well as 14 that are âEA adjacentâ
They have been fighting assault in EA since 2016
Here is some context:
The author emailed the Community Health team about 7 months ago, when she shared some information about interpersonal harm; someone else previously forwarded us some anonymous information that she may have compiled. Before about 7 months ago, we hadnât been in contact with her.
The information from her included serious concerns about various people in the Bay Area, most of whom had no connection to EA as far as we know. 4 of the accused seemed to be possibly or formerly involved with EA. CEA will not allow those 4 people at our events (though for context most of them havenât applied). As weâve said before, weâre grateful to her for this information.
In addition, she later sent us some information that we had also previously received from other sources and we were already taking action on. We appreciate people sharing information even when it turns out we already have it, but it is relevant for clarifying the degree to which she is counterfactually responsible for our actions.
Based on our records, this is the extent of the relevant information she has shared with us.
She referred to some other situations both on the Forum and privately, which did not contain enough information for us to identify the situation or learn more.
We have emailed the author to tell her we will not be contracting her services.
We donât think itâs productive to go into more depth about the authorâs specific claims or engage in a back and forth with her, but we wanted to publicly flag that we disagree with many of her claims.
If you have concerns about our approach here, our reasoning etc., please let us know. Please reach out to me by email (catherine@centreforeffectivealtruism.org) or fill in this form (anonymously if you wish) to reach the whole Community Health team. You can read more about Julia Wise and my roles as contact people for the EA community here.
Thanks Keerthana. Iâm afraid I donât know anything about CFARâs processes. It might be worth you reaching out to CFAR directly: contact@rationality.org.
I look forward to reading your
> women-friendly culture updates a movement can take
If and when you choose to share.
Thanks for all the suggestions and comments on this post! I have read them and will respond.
I know some commenters have been trying to square the uncertainty I express in this post with the allegations in TIME. Iâve added a new comment where Iâve shared the Community Health teamâs understanding about most (not all) of the cases:
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, Iâm expecting rapid changes in who (or what) wields power, so Iâm 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 lawyerâone option with an advice line is Bay Area Legal Aid, or this guidance from Womenâs 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 donât have experience working with these organisations.
Information and Support for Sexual Harassment Survivors - mostly US
RAINNâUS
Free legal advice on sexual assault or sexual harassment (US only)
24â7 Rape and Sexual Abuse Support LineâUK
List of sexual assault servicesâAustralia
Respect@WorkâAustralia (workplace)
We also encourage victims to seek mental health support. EA Mental Health Navigator can help people in our community access support.