Get rid of the community section, and maybe have no comments allowed link posts posted by your team to things like the TIME article to make it clear that you aren’t trying to hide such things.
End the discussion about what EA should be. Pick a direction and let people either walk with you, or decide they want to go elsewhere.
I don’t think Owen did anything that requires more than a private apology and a suggestion from friends to be less of an idiot, and even that is only necessary because the people around him are idiots in a different way.
However, I accept that some people think that what he did was awful and reprehensible, and I agree with them that a tendency to behaviors of that sort is likely to be common.
Also, the phrase ‘sexual harassment’ is not a clear symbol pointing to a concept cluster that is structured the same in everyone’s mind, but in fact a muddy and politically contested thing that probably links to a different set of things in my head than yours.
Hence the request elsewhere in the comments for CEA to give a more precise definition of ‘sexual harassment’
I don’t think you disagree with the community. You disagree with a smallish number of people who are active on the forums, and who on average are younger and more newly entered the community.
‘the community’ as a whole does not have an opinion of this, but due to fear of being seen as defending bad behavior, I think there is a strong tendency to self censor on only one side of this discussion. At the very least I know I self censor.
This isn’t a story about ‘sexual harassment’ because there was none / ‘sexual harassment’ is in fact widely and deeply rooted, as shown by this incident of ‘sexual harassment’.
I think we might be attaching different concepts to the same words here.
When you say that one incident could indicate there is a problem, are you including the way the surrounding community reacts in what you mean by the ‘incident’, or does the ‘incident’ only include the fact that one individual who was part of the community acted that way?
Sure, I think we agree, with the caveat that if the media says anything whatsoever is dangerous, without showing the statistics to establish that it is scarier than driving to work every day, I automatically disbelieve them.
So first, the story in time is stripped of context—it is impossible to judge from that story being told by a journalist how serious it is, because I know the journalist stripped out any information that would make it seem less bad.
Second, that one individual in a group of thousands did something is never, ever, ever enough to judge the whole group—though the official reaction to that individual of course might be. I think that you are referring to Owen not being banned from all community positions immediately after this was reported to the community team by the anonymous woman. If you judge that as a reason to say the whole movement yas a problem, and I see it as totally reasonable, we disagree.
But yes: That some priests sexually abuse children is irrelevant. There are tens of thousands. That a reporter claims that covering this up is a systematic issue is something that I will only believe if the reporter does the work to prove it. My extremely uninformed impression was that this had been proven in that case, but you correctly have pointed out to me that I should lower my confidence in the view that the catholic church pre 2010 or so had a real problem with sexual abuse.
Thank you
“Given that, I think the article does a good job of showing that women EAs in the Bay Area were repeatedly made uncomfortable by men’s behavior towards them.”
Even this isn’t really established in an interesting way. If out of thousands of women in a group dozens feel this way, it is probably actually a really safe place, while if half of them feel that way there is an issue that probably should be addressed.
And I seriously don’t know which is going on (and sampling women who stay in the EA community about how they feel creates a survivorship bias, because they are the ones who aren’t offended enough to leave).
But the TIME article is weak evidence in either direction, because the reporter is simply not trying to establish base rates.
I mean, sometimes we just dont have very good information about a topic we’d like to know about.
Perhaps we need to accept that a garbage information source can be worse than nothing, even though it is the only source we have—I suspect there is not really any way for me to know if there is a serious sex abuse problem in the LDS.
Maybe adversarial attacks are useful though: if there was a really bad issue in the bay area EA scene, the TIME article ought to have found juicier stories than what I’ve seen.
“The better strategy is to get some more communities!”
Does this really work for most people?
I think my life over the past year or so has been substantially enriched as I’ve gone from seeing my rationalist group friends in my city from once a month or so to 1-2 times a week, but at the same time, as a reasonably introverted and Aspie person, who also has a three month old who always wants to be carried, this has close to maxed out my social meter. I don’t think normal people can maintain having more than one or two real space communities that they are really deeply involved in.
Though, I do have a group of friends outside of the rationalist group, and I’m connected through my wife to other communities, so I suppose I’m not failing to follow your advice of having other social groups.
Again, BDSM is not about sex. You are not inviting someone to have sex with you, or with anyone else. You are inviting them to be come to a party, where they can talk to people who they seem to share a general interest with, and have a chance to meet partners to explore a set of behaviors they want to learn about their own interest in.
Again: Inviting someone to a BDSM party is not inviting them to have sex with you. And it is not inviting the person to be part of a BDSM scene with you.
With regards to the idea that lots of casual sex in an organization is bad: I want to again note, we are not talking about norms around sex within an organization, we are talking about norms around sex within a social movement.
I didn’t claim anything of that sort. Neither of us work for an EA org. My wife strongly does not identify as EA. I’m not even BDSM. I just claim my wife would consider inviting an interested coworker to a munch or a party as a totally reasonable thing to do if it naturally came up.
BDSM is not primarily about sex, and sex mostly does not happen at BDSM parties, at least not the ones that I’ve been at. A sex party is a different thing. The impression I get from your comment is that you are not very familiar with the BDSM scene—though I might be wrong. There isn’t any tell in it that shows that you definitely are ignorant about a basic fact, it is just a vibe I’m feeling.
In either case, as far as I know, neither of us work at an EA org, and from your comment it seems like you imagine that what happens at these parties is very different from what I imagine happens at them (which is not to say I’m correct, they probably occur in the Bay Area or London, where the scene is very different, and vastly bigger than where I live).
Also, I think we have a different set of priors here about sex, relationships and careers.
And again, I am self employed, and have been for the entire time I’ve earned meaningful money, and I’m male, so my intuitive pov is likely missing important things. And also, my resistance to changing norms in EA around sex is not about thinking that there shouldn’t be a norm where managers don’t sleep with subordinates in EA orgs -- there probably should be a norm against that, though I think even here the other side of the cost benefit ledger is systematically ignored because it sounds bad to talk about benefits of something that has been decided to be socially condemned.
My view here is mostly about creating norms against people who are not in employment relationships with each other dating within the community, and my anger is about trying to define community boundaries to make openly poly, bdsm, or generally weird people feel less welcome and allowed to be who they are.
If you have an office with a laid-back culture (ie the sort of place that you’d want to work at anyways), and it is a topic of conversation that came up naturally, and the coworker actually seems interested, why not invite them to a beginner friendly thing related to one of your main hobbies?
So why do you think dating within a church, or an university community, or maybe a high school, for example, works fine? Or is the argument that my impression that these things are fine is incorrect?
More to the point: It seems like the minimalist approach to dealing with issues of dating other people in a group house is to encourage group houses to form specific rules around that, and not to change the general culture of the community.
This also still isn’t a clear attempt to look at the downsides of making it very clear to everyone that you should not ask anyone out at an EAGx event, and that it is very bad juju if you even think that sleeping with the professional partner you just met at one of them would be a nice thing to do. Phrased in better corporate speak, of course.
Also telling local community organizers to make sure they regularly announce at groups that we don’t want anyone who meets someone here to date someone else here. That would be bad, and Time Magazine might someday find the worst thing that ever happened in such a situation and write about it, and we are now optimizing to avoid that.
I mean I organize a LW/ACX meetup, and if I was told that, I’d ignore it, possibly rename my group to add ‘unofficial’ to the title, and be seriously annoyed with the meetup meta organizer person. And this is despite the point that there is only one woman who regularly shows up at the events.
And if that is not what you think should be done, then what is the specific set of policy changes we are proposing? Or is it just giving people a cultural vibe that dating people who you might interact with professionally can have serious downsides? I mean sure, and we’ve made a general cultural attempt to make a big chunk of the individual upsides illegal at the same time because they are seen as being bad systemically.
But this is completely irrelevant to me, since I have no expectations of being professionally involved with people who I might date in the community.
I suppose what I’m really asking is this: Can you, or someone who agrees with you, tell an expected value story about how a concrete set of changes would really create a positive impact on the bottom line of doing good, all things considered?
Quick side note: I think part of the general difference in priors might be driven by me seeing SBF as evidence that embracing poly people who mix sex with work will do more good and increase total community resources more than pushing them away. Most people seem to have the opposite interpretation.
I don’t know. Reading the post from the burner account that wants to get rid of weird people, and who thinks my wife is a poisonous creep because she views inviting coworkers to BDSM parties is a completely reasonable thing to do made me actually understand for the first time the emotions that underly parts of cancel culture.
This both makes me think that my instinct that he shouldn’t be hired for anything should be taken less seriously, and makes me think that I took cancel culture style concerns about simply not wanting to work near a person who has certain attitudes about the sort of person that you are actually should be taken at least somewhat seriously.
It probably was wise for him to go anonymous before saying that weird people like me are generally bad actors who do not deserve an assumption that we are speaking in good faith (I know that is not what he actually said. That is what it feels like he said, and I suspect if I ever was in a position where I knew who he was, and was deciding whether he should get it, I would not be able to ignore my sense that he is attacking me personally and my right to exist, and assess him in the way that I would look at other candidates—and this is despite knowing that my reading of what he said is uncharitable).
The upside is huge for a lot of people. And EA is the social life, not professional for a lot of us.
Have you actually tried to quantify either the downside or the upside here, or are you saying that one is small and the other is big based on a general intuition?
As someone who thinks banning dating in EA would be bad, I really, really want to see people on the other side of this issue try harder to make their argument as rigorous as possible.
Is that what you expected after accounting for a Chinese Robber effect, and that the journalist is actively looking for the worst stories they could find, and then framing them in the worst way they can manage?
Lol, and now I’m wondering how much I do of that as someone over six foot/ 185cm
Here’s two simple and linked cases: Weird aspie poly people are central to what the community has so far done. Also libertarian anti woke people. A sharp cultural change like the one proposed here will drive us out. Losing my part of the community will probably reduce its ability to act more than losing the part of the community that wants these changes.
The impact on the global portfolio of charitable action is much less clear, because people like me will coalesce elsewhere in communities that try to be actively cringe and have a bit of a right wing reputation to avoid new comers who want to drive us out. But we’ll probably still be worrying about ai, utilitarianism, and trying to make ethical concerns into real world changes.
The same thing will also happen if my group stays in/ regains control of ea culture. The people who bounce or leave will end up doing good things elsewhere in communities that match their preferences better.
EA is a way, not the way, and changes to the culture should be judged in utilitarian terms by how they influence the global portfolio of action, not by how they change the level of useful work directly done through EA.
Second: As a poly EA, I’m more likely to bother to show up for things if I think I might get laid. It increases engagement and community cohesion. A group that is a good place to meet interesting opposite gender people is going to have an intrinsic advantage in pulling in casually interested people over one where that is strictly banned.
The claim that functional groups tend to ban dating within the group seems to me to be simply untrue in general and across cultures.
Of course the bouncing because hit on too often issue points in the other direction. But I don’t think anyone has actually tried to measure the relative magnitudes of these effects. There is just a completely non rigorous statement that clearly the expected value calculation points against making poly people happy.