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.)
ozymandias
Karma: 1,730
The joys of cash benchmarking
Altruism Survey
American effective altruists should consider political donations
The Effective Altruist Approach to Politics (Effective Altruism Definitions Sequence)
The Effective Altruist View of History (Effective Altruism Definitions Sequence)
Importance, Neglectedness, Tractability (Effective Altruism Definitions Sequence)
Ambition (Effective Altruism Definitions Series)
Rationalist Epistemics and Social Epistemology (Effective Altruist Definitions Sequence)
Rationalist Epistemics and the Sequences (Effective Altruism Definitions Sequence)
Taking Ideas Seriously (Effective Altruism Definitions Sequence)
Quantitative Mindset (Effective Altruism Definitions Sequence)
Moral Circle Expansionism (Effective Altruism Definitions Sequence)
Welfarist, Maximizing Consequentialism (Effective Altruism Definitions Sequence)
Effective Altruism: An Unmanifesto
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.
I have written a couple of times about my feelings about taking the GWWC pledge. (I don’t believe I’m signed up on the website, but I in fact have given 10% for my entire working life, except two years that were particularly bad financially.) I think the essence, for me, is a sense of empowerment.
The world is full of enormous problems that I can’t do anything about. I often feel weak and powerless and helpless. GWWC says to me that I do have power to positively affect the world, and always will. I don’t have to be exceptional: as long as I have money, I can donate to highly effective charities and save lives. I don’t have to worry about dying and leaving the world the same as it was when I entered it. Though I will never know their names, there are people who would be dead if not for me, and who are alive. And that means so much.
I tend to believe that SBF committed fraud for the same reasons that ordinary people commit fraud (both individual traits like overconfidence and systematic traits like the lack of controls in crypto to prevent fraud). Effective altruism might have motivated him to put himself in the sort of situation where he’d be tempted to commit fraud, but I really don’t see much evidence that SBF’s psychology is much different than e.g. Madoff’s.
My take was originally in my article but wound up being cut for flow—I wound up posting it on my blog.
This is horrifying, Fran, and I wish I could say I was surprised. Thank you for coming forward.