Jonathan Mannhart

• Jonathan Mannhart 7 Jun 2026 17:37 UTC

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Yarrow Bouchard 🔸’s comment on: Yar­row Bouchard’s Quick takes

  Yeah, probably just slightly disagree with the word “takeover“ in Oliver‘s comment to some extent, but that seems like a reasonable linguistic disagreement. (If it’s not taken over for a significant amount of time, because then the other people kicked you out, it wasn’t much of a takeover. Maybe Oliver and me would arrive at “long/​mid-term-unsuccessful-takeover“ as the concept we‘d both agree on. Also acknowledging that I wasn’t there at the time, and he was.)

  
  Doesn’t change the fundamental point that it seems important to have some transparent documentation on this. Seems good.

• Jonathan Mannhart 7 Jun 2026 2:35 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Yarrow Bouchard 🔸’s comment on: Yar­row Bouchard’s Quick takes

  “Did it take over the Centre for Effective Altruism?“
  
  This seems false? (Depending on how you meant the framing.) My (unprofessional) read of the situation is that something closer to the inverse is true.

  (Redacted a few comments because I work at CEA and this could be taken as more authoritative/​official than it was meant to be. The info in those comments I already knew before I joined CEA.)

  
  (Please correct me if I‘m wrong here, that’s just my impression from talking to people. And I‘ve talked to both Leverage and non-Leverage early EAs about this.)

  
  The post itself seems like a good idea to me. I think most of the info is public (lots of threads on Twitter) and not hard to find.

  
  (Edit: It also doesn’t seem true that “Leverage“ was organising EAGs & CEA so much as individual people who were into EA/​CEA (like Kerry & Larissa) at some point started also being into Leverage. But epistemic status a bit unclear. Just my impression.)

• Jonathan Mannhart 19 Jun 2024 10:35 UTC

  −1 points

  2 ∶ 4

  in reply to: TheAthenians’s comment on: Why so many “racists” at Man­i­fest?

  “But very very different“.

  I think this is not true, at least not in my view. Dehumanising people is really bad, (mostly) independent of which group you’re dehumanising. I think that’s an extremely good social norm to have, and it should be costly to break.

  (You seem to argue this specific point a lot, which repeatedly gets downvoted. I thought I’d explain my perspective on why I think that’s the case. I don’t believe your counterpoint works well. “Not great“ is also a serious euphemism for dehumanisation.)

• Jonathan Mannhart 25 Mar 2023 14:19 UTC

  15 points

  6 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Toby_Ord’s comment on: Reflect­ing on the Last Year — Les­sons for EA (open­ing keynote at EAG)

  I value the “it is something that everyone in EA can work on“-sentiment.

  Particularily in these times, I think it is excellent to find things that (1) seem robustly good and (2) we can broadly agree on as a community to do more of. It can help alleviate feelings of powerlessness (and help with this is, I believe, one of the things we need.)

  This seems to be one of those things. Thanks!

• Jonathan Mannhart 20 Feb 2023 21:56 UTC

  64 points

  44 ∶ 4

  in reply to: burner9372’s comment on: A state­ment and an apology

  I have a lot of other issues with this comment, but I think just from reading Owen’s statement your portrayal of “if anyone feels feels the need to harm someone’s career to such an extent just because they felt uncomfortable from a single comment” is just objectively false?

  who said in a recent email to me “I deliberately did not name you as I want to draw attention to [systemic issues]”

  The mischaracterisation of people who come forward like this is something I really really wish nobody in the EA community would do. It can be incredibly hard to come forward. (And comments like this one make it harder.)
  
  (Edit: you edited your comment, and your new wording I also disagree with. It seems to me that “someone’s career deserves to be harmed” wasn’t her motivation. It was drawing attention to systemic issues. Which would make sense and is plausibly very altruistic. To just strongly assume otherwise seems bad faith.
  
  Personally, your phrasing “should grow up” is what I disagree with most. This is a serious conversation and that is not an argument, just an insult, which should have no place here.)

• Jonathan Mannhart 5 Feb 2023 16:27 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

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• Jonathan Mannhart 4 Feb 2023 3:35 UTC

  32 points

  11 ∶ 0

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• Jonathan Mannhart 3 Feb 2023 20:37 UTC

  33 points

  12 ∶ 3

  in reply to: burner’s comment on: EA, Sex­ual Harass­ment, and Abuse

  I voted disagree & want to explain why:
  
  
  I don’t think it’s a “sacred cow” in EA and I don’t think there are a number of reasons our priors should be that way. I very strongly don’t think it can be generalised to that extent. (Background: I’ve been on the receiving end of some bad social dynamics in which polyamory kind of played a role. Think unwanted attention of a person with more social power, not knowing what to do about it, etc. So I think I know what I’m talking about, at least to a small extent.)
  

  I think the main negative prior should be “is there a distinction between professional and romantic/​sexual relationships and do people feel pressured/​unsafe”.
  
  In the Time piece, in every instance, this has been problematic. I think once social groups remove too many barriers between “professional” and “romantic/​sexual”, you can run into problems (i.e. become more “cult-like”). Unhealthy interplay between romantic and professional connections is exactly one of the big things what the community team and people like Julia Wise are concerned with (and what they are for), and I personally think they’re doing a good job.

  I think it’s perfectly okay (and extremely possible) to be in polyamorous relationships while not violating those boundaries. I think most people do this! (This also shouldn’t matter, but I’m not polyamorous myself.)

  I think one can make an argument that goes like “but polyamorous relationships make it more likely for these borders to fade away”. I think that’s not a terrible argument. But again, the job of the people in polyamorous relationships is to not make people uncomfortable and violate their boundaries, especially in professional settings, irrespective of the relationship style they choose! Polyamory itself does not mean “violating people’s boundaries is okay”. So it’s up to the individual people to not behave unethically.
  
  I think if we were to somehow try to intervene in people’s personal lives (i.e. try to discourage or ban polyamorous relationships or try to “inform” people how bad they are), it would go terribly. It’s exactly the kind of lack of separation of professional and romantic spaces that usually leads to problems.

  We should let people live their personal lives as they wish, as long as they don’t harm anyone. And an insufficient lack of separation between professional and personal spaces (power dynamics making people feel romantically/​sexually pressured) counts as harm.

  (Edit: While trying to steelman your argument, I came up with this:

  I think one can make a very good case for why social groups (like EA) should be really cautious about “are we encouraging people to become poly even if they might not want to”. I think this could be quite bad, and I think it can happen quite easily, even without it being intended. (E.g. most people in one social bubble being poly, it seeming “cool” because it’s modern and open, etc.).

  I think that is a dynamic we/​EA should be cautious with, and I think it does sometimes play a role in interactions like the ones described in the Time piece, although I absolutely have no idea how often. I’ve also felt small amounts of pressure in that direction myself. But I also see that almost nobody actually intends for that pressure to happen. It’s just a really tricky subject to navigate! But I think “being conscious of that dynamic” is highly likely to be a good thing. And I think your comment is making that argument in a way, which I agree with.)

• Jonathan Mannhart 24 Nov 2022 2:02 UTC

  26 points

  9 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Making this account""’s comment on: A Let­ter to the Bul­letin of Atomic Scientists

  For what it’s worth, I don’t think Matt and Kelsey are “piling on” in an unfair way here. This thread was about wealth signals & EAG food. I don’t think it’s bad faith criticism comparable to Torres.

  In the case of the FTX disaster, people in the thread were speculating that obvious non-frugal behaviour might have been one of the only good signals/​red flags regarding SBF prior the public scandal. I think that’s somewhat fair and at least a reasonable hypothesis. CEA spending lots of money on things like food at conferences are also less frugal behaviour compared to the past. I think “being sceptical” is not unreasonable (coupled with the obvious mistakes made regarding trust put in SBF by CEA).

  (This doesn’t mean that CEA decisionmaking is obviously flawed in a big way, at all. I don’t think they’re saying that. I think they’re updating something like from CEA making 99.9% correct decisions to 98% correct decisions, non-frugality likely being one of them. We all just have very high standards here!)