Patrick Sue Domin

Karma: 342

Patrick Sue Domin 24 Feb 2023 23:44 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: agunning’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
I suspect most of the people who should be considering this will not
I think if you’re focused only on reducing sexual assault then your point makes sense (I don’t think an abuser will read my post and think “oh okay I won’t assault people then”), but I think if you’re focused on things like reducing the extent to which EAs feel pressured or creeped out by being subjected to certain behaviours then it’s still helpful for people who are not the “worst offenders” to avoid these behaviours. I think both are problem worth addressing and other mechanisms are needed to address sexual assault.

Patrick Sue Domin 24 Feb 2023 21:59 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: “EA is very open to some kinds of critique and very not open to others” and “Why do critical EAs have to use pseudonyms?”
I consider my recent critical post to be a deep criticism (it criticises an aspect of EA culture that is emotional/intimate and it could impact the relative statuses of people within EA including prominent figures) and I wrote it under pseudonym, so I’ll add my personal perspective. I don’t think this post captures why I wrote my post under pseudonym and I don’t think decentralising EA would have caused me to post it under my real name.
I’m also not sure exactly what message we should take from many people using pseudonyms. Here are some possibilities:
1. People are rightly worried about retaliation
2. People are wrongly worried about retaliation
3. The community is unusually open to criticism and will seriously consider criticisms made even under pseudonym, so people feel more comfortable using pseudonyms for various other reasons including personal ones
4. Other possibilities I haven’t thought of
There’s probably a combination but I don’t know how we could determine how much is of each. On a positive note I think most other communities would simply disregard deep criticisms made under pseudonym or would try to dox the authors of such pieces, which is not something I worry about here.

Patrick Sue Domin 24 Feb 2023 20:36 UTC
4 points
5 ∶ 1
in reply to: Alexander_Turok’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
I don’t think this is coming from either a leftwing or a rightwing angle. There are aspects that are more progressive and aspects that are more conservative, but the motivation is more pragmatic about how to improve the community than about trying to advance either “side”.

Patrick Sue Domin 24 Feb 2023 1:11 UTC
6 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: burner1’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
I’ll reiterate that I’m not saying being poly is bad or that you should have to stop being poly if you want to be in EA. The point is closer to “don’t dip your pen in the company ink” (though not that extreme) than “don’t dip your pen at all”.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 21:32 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: PatrickL’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
Yes, this is a different person. I chose a pseudonym with a different first name than my real first name for the obvious reason.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 21:30 UTC
−3 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: River’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
I think using “dating” as synonymous with “casually sleeping with” is not a great choice since there is the option of dating people while holding off on sleeping with them. I think companies tend to have prohibitions when there are direct conflicts of interests but there are usually also more informal norms against casually sleeping with coworkers outside of that, unless it’s a huge company that isn’t tight-knit at all.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 21:13 UTC
15 points
6 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jgray’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
I think you’re misstating what the post actually says, but
The overwhelming response is a resounding no
seems wrong. The one poll shows overwhelming support for the recommendation.
I think the side that doesn’t want to give up sleeping around is being louder in the comments but if you look at agreevotes of the more prominent comments on each side, the side that’s agreeing with this post is seeing much more support than the side that’s against it.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 20:59 UTC
6 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ben_West’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
I feel like there’s some implicit claim that only a subset of people (socially awkward men?) aren’t romantically perceptive
I don’t think that’s true and I think all the claims on the next list are much more likely true and more relevant to the argument:
1. On average men are more likely to be more assertive or aggressive when pursuing women than when the roles are reversed
2. On average women are more likely to be creeped out by being the target of unreciprocated sexual interest from a man than when the roles are reversed
3. On average women worry much more that rebuffing a man could lead to him getting angry and yelling at her than the other way around
4. On average women worry about being physically overpowered by a man much more than the other way around
5. On average if someone is trying to actively display uncomfortability with a situation in a subtle way, women are more likely to pick up on this than men are
6. On average women are more likely than men to find it very uncomfortable when subtle hints of uncomfortability are ignored
I’m less confident in 5 and 6 than 1-4, but I think the argument works even if those are ignored.
I also think the gender imbalance is important here. If men outnumber women in EA by around 5 to 2, then if everyone pursues X people of the opposite gender, the average man will be pursued by 2X/5 women and the average woman will be pursued by 5X/2 men. That’s the difference in being pursued by 2 people at the same time and being pursued by 12 or 13 people at the same time. Whatever harms there are are magnified very much for the women, in addition to each instance possibly causing more average harm when it’s towards the women due to points 1-6 above. Also simply being pursued by so many people in itself can be exhausting (I think breadthofdebate’s comment demonstrates this point). Even if there’s no “bad behaviour” and being pursued by one or two people is exciting and an ego boost, being pursued by a dozen might instead be demoralizing.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 19:59 UTC
4 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: agunning’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
if you want to interfere with my private life to that extent there’s a very strong burden of proof upon you
That’s why my advice was for people to consider it personally instead of suggesting a ban or something like that. For clarity’s sake I think a top down ban would be bad, and I don’t think anyone else is proposing a ban either.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 19:43 UTC
0 points
6 ∶ 3
in reply to: Jeff Kaufman’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
I think if more people followed the recommendations then the gender imbalance within the community would decrease. This might increase the number of primary relationships by more than the number of marginal relationships lost.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 1:22 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
Also “cannot have casual sex” is stronger than what I think. I don’t think there should be an explicit ban. I do think people should at least consider the negatives and possibly choose personally to avoid it. I’m somewhat uncertain about my views on a softer norm and I think that may depends more on the specifics.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 1:14 UTC
7 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
For clarity’s sake, I don’t think “socially clumsy” and “non-neurotypical” are identical. There are plenty of neurotypical people who are socially clumsy, and there are also some non-neurotypical people who are not socially clumsy. People also often change in their social clumsiness (typically from clumsy to not clumsy), and it can depend on context (perhaps two people who are socially clumsy in a similar way would actually find each other to be less socially clumsy). I won’t pretend there’s no correlation to neurotypicality, but I just thought I’d clarify this in case anyone thought I was trying to dog whistle.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 1:06 UTC
6 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
I think most of the problems I’m thinking of go away if it’s done outside of EA or a similar tight-knit group. If you go on a date with a stranger and clumsily proposition them or do something similar, they can just choose not to see you again and they also won’t generally worry about how that affects their career.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 0:45 UTC
16 points
6 ∶ 0
in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
Agree. I would also want a poll of EA-adjacent people of their view of EA here or people who went to one EA meetup and never came back, if it could be done, since I think the community right now may have a selection effect inflating support for sleeping around.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 0:42 UTC
4 points
3 ∶ 1
in reply to: agunning’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
I feel like there’s an implicit prediction of something like [communities with intelligent people which have lots of causal sex are going to be worse at dealing with sexual assualt/harrassment] and I kind of want to note my reaction being ‘given my personal experience i dont really believe this and all else equal I would feel safer in such communities’
I can see why you think that, but I actually wasn’t motivated in writing this post by concerns about sexual assault. Sexual assault is obviously a huge issue, but I don’t think of it as something like “a subset of sexual behaviour” or “sex gone wrong”, but instead something qualitatively different. Sexual harassment is somewhat trickier as it can be more grey (what’s appropriate flirting in one context can be sexual harassment in another), but the main things I was thinking of were more like people being creeped out/feeling uncomfortable or bad community dynamics as opposed to things like people being abused (I don’t know that my proposals would decrease abuse).
you only really have so many dumb mistakes to make and I would prefer it if, unlike Owen, people could get these out of their system while young and not yet in leadership positions
I would prefer it if people made more of their awkward mistakes outside of the community. You didn’t bring this up, but I’d especially prefer this if people are “practicing their dating skills” or similar (which is a thing some people do). I think online dating provides a place for people to make awkward mistakes with very low relative harms, as neither of you have to see each other again if it becomes awkward. This also brings up a point that the traits I mentioned aren’t essentialist, as someone who is socially clumsy now might not be socially clumsy anymore within a few years.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 0:16 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: saulius’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
Agree

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 0:15 UTC
4 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: breadthofdebate’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
Thank you for adding your perspective, I think it is valuable. I think there are probably many people who have similar views to you but who unfortunately quickly left EA, so I imagine this view is underrepresented on the forum.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 0:14 UTC
7 points
4 ∶ 1
in reply to: temporalis’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
Since this post is a call for people to voluntarily consider avoiding some personal behaviours, I don’t imagine it would cause people to stop identifying as EA as a workaround.
Even if there was a norm established along the lines here, it would presumably work on an informal level instead of based on whether people explicitly self-identify as EA, so I don’t think it would affect identifying as an EA anyway. I also have a really hard time imagining people who would avoid working at EA orgs or donating to effective charities in order to be able to sleep around within EA without judgment. Who cares that much about being able to sleep with EAs as opposed to sleeping with people outside the community, but doesn’t care about doing actual EA stuff? That sort of person sounds like they have an EA fetish. I suppose I could imagine a hypothetical person who is only in EA because the community gives them a source of people to hook up with and that they’d leave otherwise, but my honest view is if someone is actually in that boat then I’d probably want them to leave.
historically groups like villages, churches and ethnic groups have been keen to encourage members to date and marry each other
Right, and I don’t consider that to be “sleeping around”. I elaborate on my views on dating within EA here.

Patrick Sue Domin 23 Feb 2023 0:01 UTC
19 points
10 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jeff Kaufman’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
Realistically, I think many EAs have a much easier time sleeping around in EA than outside of EA. Unfortunately, this is probably particularly true for people that are high status in EA or socially clumsy.

Patrick Sue Domin 22 Feb 2023 23:56 UTC
4 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: allskies’s comment on: Consider not sleeping around within the community
Do hot tubs require weirdness points? Don’t most people just find them fun and relaxing?