Co-founder of Nonlinear, Charity Entrepreneurship, Charity Science Health, and Charity Science.
Kat Woods
Karma: 4,472
Love it!
I also really like reading mantras because it helps engage so many different parts of your brain, so helps you stay focused.
Huzzah!
I did the technical magic of turning something on the website off and on again and apparently that fixed it.
Thanks for pointing that out!
It was happening on my colleague’s computer too, and we did something that fixed it on his end. Is it still happening on your computer?
Regardless, it should always be fine if you type in www.nonlinear.org/network (for some reason, it wasn’t liking it if you didn’t write the “www” )
Thanks for writing this! Found it really inspiring and uplifting.
I think you’re right that Benjamin Lay, who we’re currently celebrating, would totally be banned from EA events and blacklisted by the Community Health Team.
The same would happen for most historical moral heroes, like Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.
If a community that is trying to be morally ambitious would ban people who, in retrospect, are considered moral heroes, this should make us reconsider our current starndards and processes.
So there’s no confirmed person aside from the one listed, but there could feasibly be more?
Is there anybody aside from the one person publicly listed who asked you to stop expressing interest or asked you to stop talking to them or anything like that?
When this is a situation involving a junior woman and a senior man, social behavior patterns of women being afraid of telling someone “no” often make this worse.
I do think many women experience fear around this, and many have troubles expressing their wants in general. Many don’t though. What’s the solution then?
Should we encourage women to be strong, to do things that scare them, to stand up for themselves? Should we encourage women to tell people what they want instead of holding it in and not getting their needs met?
Or should we make it so they’re never in situations that they might feel scared? Should we protect women from any danger, including the danger of being asked out and it feeling awkward to say no?
I think the former is a better solution.
It might mean, especially when the person who’s doing that is your boss/mentor/someone more senior than you, that you don’t feel like you can (clearly) refuse
It looks like this is saying that women can’t say no to powerful men? Why is that?
I assume that women are strong and independent and if a powerful person tells them to do something, they can say no just fine, just like anybody else.
Am I missing something?
I’m confused. Why would people be afraid to come forward? Owen is being banned, was forced to resign, and many other punishments. One of the women who spoke to the Time journalist got a ton of karma for writing about it.
Even the peope saying he’s a good guy in the comments are saying what he did was still unethical (I disagree, but I’m not saying he’s a good guy. I don’t know him. I just disagree with the ethical framework of this whole thing).
EA does not seem to have an under-reporting problem for issues.
OK. Does it make a difference that the only instance where we have public details, Owen wasn’t making sexual advances in his house? He just mentioned, to a friend where they were both doing radical honesty with each other, inspired by circling, that he was going to masturbate that day. When she wasn’t in the house. Not masturbating about her or anything. Just that he’d do what the vast majority of guys do every day.
She was a friend, not a colleague. He wasn’t doing professional connecting people with jobs or anything like that. He only started that role later.
It’s a weird thing to say in most contexts, but if you’re friends and have mutually agreed radical honesty, it seems fine. It would be like attending a circling event (where radical honesty is expected). As long as people are choosing to do it, then they’re adults and can do what they want.
Now, it’s unclear whether he also expressed romantic interest in others while at his house, and it’s also unclear whether such people were working for/with him or were visting his house as a friend, etc.
I would like to recognize that I have a lot of empathy for the EV board. I think that no matter what decision they made, they would get criticized. That’s a really hard position to be in and I hope that their friends are reaching out to them and sending them comfort and funny gifs.
I personally don’t hold anything against them, because I think it’s really hard to do things like this and ethics is complicated and fundamentally unsolved.
I hope they can find some solace in this situation: if people are going to critcize you no matter what you do, you can simply make the decision you think is right instead of trying to please the public, which are fundamentally unpleasable, because there’s too many of us.
Owen says in his response
My understanding is that I always followed the letter of policy on when to recuse.
I’m curious to hear whether the OP disagree with this. Do they think that he broke the rules on conflict of interest? Or do they think that he did indeed follow the rules, but there were some instances where there were unspoken rules or hard to make judgment calls that he didn’t realize?
I assumed it’s obvious to everyone that it’s a bad idea to make [things that are perceived as] unwanted romantic or sexual advances towards people, and that serious action should be taken if someone receives repeated complaints about that.
@lyra Can you clarify what you mean by this?
It reads like you’re saying that if you ask somebody out and they say no (aka unwanted romantic advances), that this is obviously bad and that serious action should be taken against you? This seems clearly wrong, because it would mean that virtually all people who’ve ever asked somebody out should have serious actions taken against them.
Or is it saying only to take serious actions if somebody makes repeated romantic advances despite the person saying they’re not interested?
If the latter, only one anonymous woman claims this happened to her (“In at least one case, Owen did not stop making repeated unwanted attempts at contact after being asked to do so”) and Owen says that he has written evidence that this didn’t happen (see the “On feedback” section).
Given that he’s been very forthcoming about everything else, so doesn’t seem to be hiding anything, that he says he has written evidence to the contrary, and it seems to go against most people who know him’s priors, I’m inclined to believe him until further evidence is provided.
concerning inconsistent recognition (and thus, management) of conflicts of interest
In the same article they say that Julia Wise also did this and had troubles managing conflicts of interest. Should she be banished for 2 years?
There are plenty of EA leaders who’ve had this problem (managing COIs is hard and not straightforward!) and they are not being banished.
It seems that the more likely explanation is that there was a big blow up for EA’s reputation with that Time magazine article, and EV is trying to protect themselves by making a public example of somebody.
it was difficult for the women to avoid interacting with Owen while the inappropriate actions were taking place, e.g. with a woman staying at Owen’s house.
Is this cruxy for anybody? If people found out that he’d expressed romantic interest in somebody at his house, would people think that’s an bannishable offense?
frequency and the content of the advances contributed to the women’s feelings.
If somebody doesn’t express disinterest in the romantic interest, why is frequency a problem? There is only one claimed case where a person says he didn’t stop when she said no, and he says he has written evidence against that.
For “content”, this could be reframed as saying “don’t ask people out in the wrong way” which seems like a vague and impossible standard. There is no right or wrong way to ask somebody out (of course, I’m sure there are edge cases).
In at least one case, Owen did not stop making repeated unwanted attempts at contact after being asked to do so[2].
I’m surprised and confused as to why the EV Board did not include that Owen says that he has written evidence showing that this isn’t true. (See the “On feedback” section here)
Did the investigators look at the evidence and disagree that the evidence was exculpatory? Or did they not look at the evidence at all and just post anyways, despite Owen telling them he had evidence (great article here about why this is suboptimal)?
Given that Owen has been more than forthcoming about everything so far, so it’s unlikely he’s hiding anything, and he says he has written evidence to the contrary, I am inclined to believe that this accusation is false or misleading until I get more evidence to the contrary.
I would appreciate if @EV UK Board @EV US Board shared more information about what they did in this case, since it seems like a very cruxy accusation.
If the only thing he did was express romantic interest in people who weren’t as influential as him, I think that is a much less bad thing (even not bad at all), and the 2 year banishment seems unwarranted.
Another consequentialist argument for it not being unethical to express romantic/sexual interest in somebody, even if there’s a power difference: it’s always uncomfortable to reject a guy.
It seems like a lot of the argument relies on the idea that the women were upset or felt uncomfortable when he expressed interest. See “Multiple women expressed being upset by Owen’s advances.”
Speaking as a woman who’s had to turn down many guys in my time and as somebody who’s more comfortable saying no than probably 99% of women, I can assure you—it’s always upsetting to reject somebody’s advances.
At least for me, there’s always the compassion, thinking that I’m hurting their feelings. I’m also worried that it might make our friendship weird in the future (which sometimes does happen but usually doesn’t). Many people are worried that the guy will respond with hostility, which is never fun. And tons of people find it really uncomfortable to say no in general.
So using as an argument that they felt upset rejecting his advances would mean that anybody who’s ever asked somebody out and been rejected has behaved unethically and should be exiled from EV events for 2 years. This proves too much.
We can feel compassion for people who feel upset rejecting advances, but that doesn’t mean that then we should just stop all advances, unless we’re absolutely certain they’re reciprocated (which is impossible). This is a standard that, if equally applied, would mean that virtually no EA men could attend EAGs.
This addresses just one argument against just one accusation. I cover other aspects of the accusations and other counterarguments here and here
There seems to be two main accusations here:
“Owen expressed sexual and / or romantic interest in women who were younger and less influential than he was.”
“In at least one case, Owen did not stop making repeated unwanted attempts at contact after being asked to do so”
I’ll address 1 here and 2 in another comment.
For 1, why is expressing romantic or sexual interest unethical? Why is this worthy of a two-year ban?
I imagine that the power difference is an important thing to the OP. I imagine, given that this is a common argument, that it’s because they felt uncomfortable saying no because he was powerful and if they said no, he could then harm them with his power.
I’d first like to say that this particular dynamic, let’s call it the Scorned Powerful Lover dynamic, totally does happen, and we should figure out ways to prevent it.
However, never expressing romantic or sexual interest if there’s a power difference seems like a poor solution. Lots of people would like to date somebody who has more power than them (e.g. wouldn’t it have been horrible for the world if Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz or Bill and Melinda Gates couldn’t have dated because there was a power difference?).
Also, it will lead to essentially classism. Lower power people are going to be scared to ask the higher power person out because of exactly the same fears. Higher power people can’t ask people out for the above described reasons. This will then lead to not being able to date outside of your class. Poor people can’t date rich people. Less successful people can’t date more successful people. This seems bad.
I don’t know the particular solution, but the current solution of banning people who’ve asked out somebody with less power and didn’t exhibit any Scorned Powerful Lover dynamics seems suboptimal. I think we can find something better.
Especially given that in this particular case, nobody is claiming that Owen was retaliatory. So that’s direct evidence that he didn’t do the Scorned Powerful Lover dynamic, so there was nothing bad, consequentially, that happened.
I’ll write another argument about this in a separate comment so people can vote on particular arguments instead of the whole package. I wrote other reasons for believing that expressing romantic interest is not unethical, even if there’s a power difference, here and here
Seems like a good place to remind people of the Nonlinear Network, where donors can see a ton of AI safety projects with room for funding, see what experts think of different applications, sort by votes and intervention, etc.