This is horrifying, Fran, and I wish I could say I was surprised. Thank you for coming forward.
ozymandias
Karma: 1,830
AI risk is not a Pascal’s wager
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I think it’s obviously inappropriate to ask someone out at a work retreat (and obviously inappropriate for people to date people in their chain of command, etc.). But I don’t think that colleagues asking each other out is always unprofessional, if they know each other outside of work and if a “no” is respected. For a reducto ad absurdam, Google employees don’t have to avoid dating all 180,000 other Google employees. Clearly, in a smaller organization, asking people out is more fraught and often wise to avoid. But I don’t think it’s wrong 100% of the time. I have dated work colleagues before without a problem.
(TBC I don’t mean to defend Riley’s behavior here, which clearly crosses a line.)
Altruism Survey
American effective altruists should consider political donations
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I don’t understand why you’re assuming that biodiversity is bad for wild-animal welfare. Biodiversity and population size are conceptually distinct: you can have a population of a single species that is much larger than the total population of five different species. Indeed, the most biodiverse regions (such as the Amazon) get that way not just because they’re very productive but because they have numerous low-population species. Biodiversity loss is disproportionately concentrated among low-population species, as they are the most likely to go extinct.
Similarly, while I haven’t been following the field closely for many years, my understanding is that we are certainly reducing arthropod biodiversity, but may or may not be reducing populations—a 75% reduction in biodiversity is absolutely not the same thing as a 75% reduction in insect populations!
I think (assuming net suffering in nature) biodiversity is probably neutral for animal well-being, and potentially valuable for other reasons such as scientific research.
Yes, of course!