Builds web apps (eg viewpoints.xyz) and makes forecasts. Currently I have spare capacity.
Nathan Young
Karma: 17,738
I find it hard to engage with the full sweep of your messages. The choice for me feels like its between long slightly bitter responses and ungaged surface-level ones. I tried to avoid that by picking specific points last time, but you’re right that I didn’t really engage. I may not be capable of doing so. But let me see if this works.
On “people aren’t saying EA is uniquely bad, they’re invested” if that were the central thing, I’d expect critical comments here to open with “yes, you’re probably right about the comparable-communities point, but I think you’re missing the deeper thing.” Almost none do. (Some straightforwardly disagree, which is a different thing) Most spend their words on what I got wrong, and only when pressed do they acknowledge agreeing with the empirical claim. To me it feels like the piece has struck a nerve. Does mere investment explain why this post provokes that response?
On “I think this whole post would’ve gone over differently” — I spent about ten hours on it. I could spend another ten and I don’t think it would change the response. The methodological criticisms raised so far would lift the numbers by less than 10x on my read, which is still inside the bounds of the estimate. When I’ve pushed back on those criticisms, people have given way or stopped responding. I don’t think they are the crux.
As for if you could write a post that would be more accepted. Of course you could. I’m not debating that. But I don’t think it implies much either. We are different people, with different histories from different EA sub communities and I am mediocre at reading social cues.You’re right that I’m defensive. I am. Part of why is that this comment section feels deeply defensive to me—unwilling to give an inch on the central claim, unwilling to back up criticisms when challenged, willing to imply things about motives. To me, most of these comments feel defensive, including my own.
But I would like us to move to a bette mode of communication. I have at times been defensive and unengaged. Here is a new attempt to engage more fully.
No, they thought it was controversial, but I took on board many suggestions to soften it.
Separately if it’s a useful data point, reading these comments made me not wish to engage with this piece at the object level, at least at the moment.
So in your view I’m being defensive/unpleasant in the comments? Or at least significantly more so?
Okay :)
And what about EA compared to typical workplaces/ university spaces?
In my epistemic norms if someone makes 5 points, I’ll respond to whichever one I choose, if they make one point, i’ll respond to that. Perhaps we have different norms.
If you have specific criticisms I’m happy to respond to them.
Thank you.
The discussion in the comments so far focuses on two claims:
We can’t easily tell from this data whether EA is better or worse than baseline
I agree, though I do think it’s some evidence we’re not much worse.
Why does it even matter whether EA is better or worse than baseline? Community members are welcome to hold EA to a much higher-than-baseline standard, if they want to.
Yes this seems right and hope it’s a thing people will take forward.
You’re right. My bad. I retract it.
I have comments, if you’re interested.
Yeah I think I disagree. I think that this post by virtue of not being a persons experiences can allow more pushback and hopefully something more resembling open discussion.
I appreciate the straightforwardness of this comment. Feels clear that we actually disagree.
I feel like I see comments as a natural bid to discuss things, but maybe you don’t.
I guess there are some things that we could discuss but that I’m not gonna bid for here.
“Importantly, I have reported zero of these instances to the community health team; there are several reasons for this, including some standard ones”
“if these kinds of behaviors had happened at a non-EA conference, I would’ve immediately known they weren’t allowed”
“he definitions and measures of harassment differ across the data sources you cite, charting them on the same axis (“annual rate”) constitutes bad analysis.”
Were we to chat, I think the area I’d like to start is here “I do think that things have improved in recent years”. So even with this improvement you think that EA is still significantly worse than other communities?
Possible yes. This seems like it would be worthy of investigation to understand. Right?
I think my main point is that we don’t talk accurately about this issue. There isn’t lots of evidence and yet many comments seem to me to imply that EA is unusually bad. That seems bad to me.
I also think that’s why there are so many critical comments, because if you’d simply asked a specific comparative question whilst being perfectly clear about your aims and what you meant, I don’t think there would be any such comments, or at least far fewer of them. (I may be wrong; that’s just my current view.)
I don’t think I’m capable of raising this issue in a way that didn’t get critical comments. Personally I think that’s an EA problem. But perhaps it’s a me problem. Suffice it to say that I spent a reasonable amount of time, rewrote it several times, looked for more data, showed it to friends. To me it seems like a pretty uncontroversial piece.
If someone wrote a piece about a charity and this was the response—ill-defined methodological criticisms which aren’t followed up but are then repeatedly referenced, requests for the piece to be presented differently, implications about the author’s intent, multiple disagreeing viewpoints on why the piece is bad, claims that the piece is both wrong and that the central point is anodyne—do you think you’d think that was the fault of the author, or would you think there was something else going on.
This seems kind of fatalist to me. I guess we can improve on how we discuss this issue.
Your reply raises about 5 points. I responded to the ones I choose to. It seems unlikely I’m going to be able to engage with all of them. Is there one that you would particularly like me to engage with?
But to talk a little more, yeah it’s hard to argue this stuff well. To me it feels like a pretty anodyne point. People make claims (which I’ve listed) and they seem different to the data. In response we have ~30 comments, mainly critical. Many contain long blocks of text that it would be hard to respond to in full. Yeah I expect to do a mediocre job here.
And as for us, Frances, we don’t really get on. So I guess I’m discussing this pretty defensively. With respect, I think you are too. I think if I were better I’d find a way around that, but I do think this is importnat to us, so I think it’s worth discussing well even if not perfectly. If you have suggestions, I’m happy to take them.
I think there are posts which question the marginal decision on donations and veganism.
@AppliedDivinityStudies writes a red team against the impact of small donations
@Elizabeth wrote a post suggesting EA veganism was a bad norm which if I remember caused a huge argument at the time.
Now perhaps you will object that these articles don’t have much discussion of baselines. To me it’s implicit in them that EA has a higher baseline interest in small donations and veganism than typical communities. If not, why would these articles be written?
As an aside, did you ever learn what comparable rates of harassment were at events similar to those you ran? How did they compare?
If that’s the case, the easiest way to achieve it is to entirely disband EA. If the acceptable amount is 0, then why risk anything else?
Thanks. I think it’s a good thing to get into the open. I appreciate your willingness to discuss it too.
I agree.
To clear up a few general points.
On missing moods. I agree this is horrible. As I’ve said, I don’t think I’m the best person to say this. But if an issue is important, I think it’s important to discuss accurately. I wish I were a more gracious, more empathetic, more concise, communicator.
Methodology:
John Salter originally claimed the numbers were perhaps 300x off. After discussion (if I understand correctly) he thinks it’s more like 2-20x
Liv Gorton thinks the denominator may be too low and the numerator too large, though I don’t currently know by how much
AbsurdlyMax has methodological concerns
If people wish to come up with their own numbers, I’ll happily look at them. Though since my current EA numbers are 20 − 50x lower than top US schools the argument still holds.
It might seem like I am banging on about base rates, but they are in my view, a generally useful tool. It seems important to understand how bad this problem is compared to other places. Then we can decide how easy we expect it to be to fix.
I remain confused on the overall discussion. It feels (to me) like people are disagreeing with me about something. Some people say that commenters don’t think EA is unusually bad, some argue that my methodology is wrong, some think that comparison isn’t the right tool here. I don’t think it can be all of these things at once. This feels to me like there should be more internal conflict than there is. Sexual harassment cannot be as bad as other communities, much worse, and not comparable, all at the same time, that’s not how things work.
Do you think it would be better for us to talk about this more accurately if we could avoid the pitfalls you see. Like we could acknowledge the specific areas where things are worse but also some where it’s better?
And would it be good to compare that against other communities to give some sense of perspective and what might and might not work?
Meh, you can comment further if you wish. I am choosing to engage here and it’s not that costly to me. This has felt like a pretty positive interaction at least at the end.
I appreciate your points. And to your first point I agree that people care about this a lot and feel invested in it. I can empathise with a desire to reduce sexual harassment, I mean, don’t most of us want to feel safe and comfortable?
Thanks for your time.