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Elevatorgate: Effective Altruism version?Effective Altruism Promises to Do Good Better. These Women Say It Has a Toxic Culture Of Sexual Harassment and Abuse
Does anyone remember Elevatorgate? Long story short: the atheist "movement" had gotten going, many books were published and cons were attended. At one a figure in the community "Skepchick"- Rebecca Watson- was propositioned by a man who'd attended her talk in an elevator and made a video stating - in understated tones given the conflagration it started tbh - that she didn't like it and it made her feel unsafe.
Because this was pre-#MeToo and the Great Awokening and atheists at the time kind of prided themselves on being
assholestruth-tellers , figures like Dawkins jumped in, criticizing or mocking her for complaining about such an anodyne event. Dawkins wrote a notorious letter titled "Dear Muslima", mockingly comparing the suffering of a hypothetical circumcised Muslim woman with Watson in the sort of move that wouldn't even begin to fly today.Well...that led to an absolute shitstorm that split the atheist community with some using it to create "Atheism+": basically atheism that was sufficiently woke, after insisting atheism had a racism/sexism/whatever problem. As foreshadowing for a now pervasive social tendency, it then ate itself with circular firing squads and purity spirals.
At the time, there was enough pushback that Watson and her defenders didn't outright win but she probably won the moral victory. Years down the line most of the leftover "100% atheist" communities were pretty woke, see the banning of RationalityRules for arguing against trans-identified males in women's sports.
Now...
...
...
I'm torn.
On the one hand, I recognize the same tactics (and, tbh, it doesn't escape my notice that the first victim seems to have social competition with males for funding on her mind) that ripped the Atheist community apart. I also find most of the examples of harassment to be of the all-too-common nebulous and vague variety that allow people to claim victimhood. I honestly don't know if people are this fragile nowadays, or are exaggerating their fragility for points, but it is a bit absurd. If you're an adult, I don't want to hear about you being groomed. A "22f-44m" relationship is one where one party is twice as old but it'd be absurd to act like one party didn't have agency.
A lot of the complaints also seem to be that alleged rationalists and effective altruists - for some reason - don't just take people at their word.
On the other hand: some of these (e.g. the final one I quoted, the one about a male jumping into a woman's bed at night) are more egregious and the quokka point is well-applied here for those "good" EAs who still encouraged people not to go to the cops. It's exactly the sort of problematic math I can see some people doing. Hell, people did it all the time in churches, schools and so on. It's not a particular foible of EAs.
Also:
I have to say I find this funny. People discovering that looser social and sexual norms allow bad actors - or merely "people with more status than me who don't want to treat me as I think I deserve" - to accrue sexual and social benefits and blur the lines. Quelle surprise.
There's an idea that I've seen a lot in these kind of articles that I find quite odd. It's the idea that attempting to convince someone that they should date you (or otherwise change their sexual preference/behavior) is inherently wrong and abusive.
Note that what is absent from this anecdote is any sort of actual coercion. It seems that, "casting monogamy as a lifestyle governed by jealousy, and polyamory as a more enlightened and rational approach," is interpreted as "shame" or "pressure". Now, I don't agree with that argument in favor of polyamory, but it's a perfectly valid argument one can make. If, as Gopalakrishnan and TIME seem to think, that no flirting or discussion of sexuality should be allowed at even informal gatherings, it begs the question, where and how should people try to meet partners? I'm not going to take the establishment media perspective on sexual ethics seriously until it answers that basic question.
I think the criticism of the "professional incestuousness" of EA is spot-on, though; wasn't that part of the problem with FTX? They all knew each other out of the little bubble of the Bay Area, they'd all been in college together or met via work or rationalist/EA groups, and they all lived together and dated/had been dating each other. There was no outside oversight, it was Sam and his gang. And that spilled over into the types of things they were funding, the people they interacted with in the broader EA movement, and so on, how he was able to trade on his reputation as 'one of them' who knew the same people and said the right things and believed in what Will MacAskill was doing etc. (even working for CFAR). So whether or not there were or should have been alarm bells ringing, nobody in EA would hear them because he was 'one of them'.
So there very definitely is an entire set of "taking in one another's washing" vibes in EA.
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Can't their parents arrange a meeting?
More seriously, I think the idea is either (a) you already know someone, (b) your mutual friends set you up, or (c) "Of course we all hate online dating, but I suppose it's the only option?"
Unless your value and pedigree are pre-established you must submit your bid in the most dehumanizing and easily disregarded possible way.
And yet in cultures with arranged marriages we successfully manage to pair people to their equals and have long lasting, happier than westerners and stable marriages. Westerners destroyed their own system and now get to reap the fruits. I've had white friends of mine who by all measures should be an absolute catch (6ft, degree from elite university, good job, recently purchased their own house on a single income) -very nerdy though- ask me whether they too could somehow get an arranged qt3.14 (his words, not mine) to marry them. Unfortunately it's very difficult to do this unless the man is Muslim (no self respecting Muslim father will let his daughter marry a non-Muslim man, for good reason) so alas no luck there for him, he's currently having minimal luck finding a wife quality woman on Tinder. But hey, he likes gaming and got the new PS5 very soon after release so at least he's happy.
I hope he manages to find someone suitable, but after seeing the modern state of the western dating market I just feel sorry for him and extreme relief at the fact that I don't have to go through this shit.
Which is why it's going to be tough to find someone who wants to be a wife and mother. She's evaluating "will this guy be a good husband and father, or will he be holed up in his room playing games while I'm left to handle running the house and raising the kids and dealing with real life?" Unless he can communicate that he will step up to the plate when necessary, all he's left with is women who are in the same boat of "I'm young, I want to have fun and enjoy my life before settling down" and aren't looking for anything long-term so okay, he likes gaming and is a huge nerd? That's tolerable for a short-term fling.
I mean, look at this guy. He's very young (only 21 or 22) so it's understandable, but does he sound ready to be a husband and eventual father? He had to hire a nanny to make sure he would do his work. Indeed, five nannies. And when he stopped the experiment, he slid right back into his unproductive ways. What's he going to be like at 25? 30? Will he be someone dependable in an adult relationship, or will his wife have to be his mother as well?
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As a guy who also holes himself up to play games regularly getting ready to be married, I think a less cynical interpretation may be "this guy has lots of free time, perfect to be put towards helping me rear children" which at least in my case is the truth. I'm sure there are plenty of guys who wouldn't convert their time spent gaming to time spent child rearing but those guys also wouldn't convert their time spent doing outside of the house hobbies to child rearing either.
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My parents are in an arranged marriage and it's been pretty heartbreaking. My father is psycho but my mother feels that the crushing weight of extended family makes getting divorced impossible. So color me skeptical by anecdata.
Are we sure that we're not mistaking long lasting and happier with trapped and miserable?
And my parents and uncles/aunts all had arranged marriages and they're all going pretty damn well. The only one which is (from external appearances) going less well (and where she has to work because he doesn't earn enough to support a family on his own) is the one where my grandparents were reluctant on the match initially but eventually gave in to her protestations. Our anecdata clashes, now what?
The real point is that marraiges are very varied and come in happy/unhappy variants in all systems. A ton of western marriages are also unhappy. The percentage of unhappy marriages in all systems is so high that anecdata is pretty much useless and you need to look at generalised statistics.
The data on arranged marriage happiness is sparse (this is an area no modern day sociologist wishing to stay in the good graces of Woke Inc. will touch with a 10 ft barge pole) but from the few studies out there results either show increased long term happiness (10+ years down the line) in arranged marriages or no difference. None of the studies are particularly high quality, but they all seem to find an effect in the same direction (arranged is better) when they find an effect For instance here's one I just found right now by Googling: https://twu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/11274/11516/KAZEMI-MOHAMMADI-DISSERTATION-2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
It's some dude's PhD thesis where he shows that on average arranged marriages long term have higher levels of intimacy, passion and commitment, then tests arranged vs free choice marriages on MSI-R (an inventory of marriage stability) and finds that on most counts arranged marriages are more stable, with the only exception being sexual dissatisfaction (higher in arranged marraiges), but this is 1 item vs 10 other items that all show no difference or worse outcomes in free choice marriages. It's not particularly high quality (n=180 and the couples are all from the subcontinent/middle east basically) but it's weak evidence in that direction, and pretty much all the evidence there is currently on this quesiton is either saying no difference or pointing this way, there's almost nothing saying free choice marriages are long term better.
I'll check out the PhD thesis but still color me skeptical. My mother would tell anyone who asked that she was happily married.
Additionally, the way I know of arranged marriages is in a cultural context that includes a high degree of honor violence. So I have kneejerk disgust feelings around the whole part and parcel.
There are probably confounders out the ass here as well. Is it that the arranged marriages are higher quality, or the fact that people who practice them are a close knit tribe / large extended family with high support / super gung ho religious together / not poor and closer to dynastically wealthy?
I'll come back with an EDIT if the thesis updates me.
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It only has to be better than what we have for his argument to work.
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Sure, but not if it's being used in the service of "You absolutely should sleep with me because otherwise you're a prude" when someone has said "Thanks but no thanks" beforehand.
"Want to sleep with me?"
"No"
"But here are six arguments about why it's the rational thing to do!"
"Still not interested"
"Hm - are you morally deficient in some way? After all, monogamy is governed by jealousy and poly is more enlightened and rational, so only a less moral and enlightened person would refuse this offer"
Yes, insults and shaming are the way to get women to sleep with you, friend. 🙄
Is that what happened? Or is the article about the creepy EAs who had the nerve to say polyamory exists and they do it and believe it's not bad and wrong?
If you're not into poly, it may well sound creepy. If a guy tries to recruit you for his harem and you say no and he keeps pushing you, that is creepy.
Right, I'm asking if the "keeps pushing you" part actually happened, or if the person was so weirded out by the whole concept that they felt creeped on simply because someone dared to offer.
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The idea usually at least implied is that there is a time and place for that sort of behavior and a time and place for everything else, and never shall those meet. This is in fact entirely bogus, and even if you accept that it holds true in the special case of the workplace, it certainly doesn't hold in all the situations it's applied to, such as social events attached (formally or even informally) to academic and professional conferences, or even other purely social occasions (I've seen it applied to dances and to women sitting at a bar). I don't think, however, that this is the real objection; the real objection is that women don't want men who fail the SNL test ("Be handsome, be attractive, don't be unattractive") hitting on them, and this is a way to do it.
I mean. It might be good or valuable to occasionally roast the living shit out of guys for what are essentially minor awkwardnesses in courtship. It serves as a warning to the ugly, or the unpopular, or the awkward: If you try to have a relationship, you are playing by different rules. It can extend as far as expecting an individual to be celibate for life and never express interest in sex or relationships, if you're disabled. This doesn't just go for guys...women that are very unattractive or disabled get this treatment as well.
Didn't someone take him aside when he was 19 and tell him that he can't do things like other men can? That it was basically understood that he would never have a partner, and that people would be grossed out at him for wanting one?
This smells like trolling. Either that, or you are laying on the sarcasm way too thick and failing to speak clearly.
Don't do this.
Not trolling or sarcastic; I've seen things like this happen IRL. Hell, something like that happened to me around that age.
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Great post. The men who who aren't attractive or high status produce a very uncomfortable capture avoidance instinct from the women, and the women need to come up with BS PC rationalizations to pretend it's not just discrimination. One thing this discussion often misses, is that if the male still succeeds in gaining sexual contact after the woman puts the additional test in place by trying to evade him, she can still fall for him. Women will fall for some ugly mfers.
I don't know, guys, how open would you be if you were in a relationship and the woman tried to convince you that "polyamory exists and she wants to do it and believes it's not bad and wrong"? Would you go "Of course, darling, you have convinced me in a non-abusive way that I should change my sexual preferences/behaviour" or would you go "There's the door, you cheating bitch"?
You all seem to be very sure that the women here are in the wrong but you're not considering what if it happened the other way round to you.
Adding the clause that you're already in a relationship with this person seems to dominate the indignation of the cheating accusation and removing it diffuses the whole metaphor. Men, by and large, are not offended at being offered the role of bull in some random woman's love life.
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I think that can be a reasonable interpretation. Depending on what kind of autist you are, you might not relate to this, but theres a state where people believe that they have lost an argument, really lost and not just because of some stupid tactical error that they can fix, but also not believe they were wrong. They will agree that youre right, and that they should do X, but also obviously not want to do X, and not really do it. In that case, if you keep bringing up the argument to them, that is generally considered bad manners and a kind of social pressure. Basically its a bit as if ordering them.
Now you can propably see why the rationalists wouldnt like this kind of norm, and I grant them that theyre propably consistent in not applying it, but it does take some protection away from people.
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The Effective Altruism crowd might be more ambitious such that their careers are their passions and so there doesn't seem a clear demarcation between personal life and work life. Most people might think "meet people outside of work."
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I don't understand in which situation it would be right either.
There is a mating dance: flirting. Either party can gracefully back off. Usually, "attempt to convince" sounds a bit wrong kind off approach, no room for graceful exit or positive atmosphere afterwards. I suppose you can have a playful argument with flirtatious undertone, but it sounds a bit too much like a thing that works in a TV script but not in a real life. People can become distracted by the argument. (Big romantic gestures are a bit similar. Maybe one could pull it off, but one should be aware that attempting to initiate a 19th century courtship dance in a different time and place where likely nobody knows how to respond, it just might not work.)
In most situations, person doing the convincing would usually make a fool of themselves. If they appear to hold some leverage (social, professional or otherwise), or person being convinced is a bit too meek, it can become quite creepy and manipulative.
A nugget of wisdom from the old PUA sphere was that you cannot logically argue a girl into sleeping with you. You can convince by displaying your attractiveness, being discreet etc, but 'A Beautiful Mind' style rationalizations are almost certainly doomed to fail.
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The actual argument, that isn't actually made because it's...well...ugly, but I actually do think it's the argument being made a lot of the time in these cases, is that men should know their Sexual Marketplace Value and act accordingly. And actually, just to be safe, men should probably underestimate significantly their SMV.
The problem is that basically makes it a world for narcissists, really.
I mean, the disability theorists have been talking about the special case where you are literally Quasimodo for at least what, 20 years? Quasimodo and his equally-ugly sister don't get to openly want sex or relationships. Otherwise, they're gross and transgressive and at least Quasimodo is creepy. Usually this is dealt with by discreetly taking young Quasimodo aside and explaining what is going on, if he's not socially apt enough to figure things out for himself.
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I believe their answer to ‘how should people meet partners’ is ‘at contexts specifically designed for that’, by which they mean nightclubs, dating apps, that sort of thing.
The fact that this idea has obvious drawbacks doesn’t mean they don’t have one.
And, tbh, ‘attempting to convince women to change their boundaries and entire lifestyle in order to sleep with you’ is maybe not the sort of thing that should be illegal, but it’s a very central example of the sort of thing that should come with the label of ‘pushy and kind of a creep’.
I mean, that's kind of what dating/flirting is. Going from single to living together, having intimate emotional connections, having regular sex, starting a family together, ect. is very much a radical change in boundaries and lifestyle. There's no polite way to ask for that which is compliant with any standard HR policy. Yet it is a bedrock assumption of our social policy that you can just put men and women in the same society and they will spontaneously rearrange themselves from "single" to "married"(or whatever the PC equivalent with minor variations is).
But this is in the context of polyamory. It's not Guy A flirting with Girl B and wanting to date and maybe have a relationship in the conventional sense, it's Guy A wanting to date and maybe have a relationship within the context of "oh and I'm poly and in a relationship with three other people".
If Girl B is not interested in being a side-piece, keeping on insisting that poly is the superior rationalist thing instead of monogamy which is yucky is creepy. Guys A, C and D may well have believed that they could present the Superior Rationalist argument for poly and have Girl B be immediately convinced because she too is a rationalist, but it's entirely possible for Girl B to go "Yes, your argument is good but I still prefer monogamy so I'm not going to join your polycule".
And if Girl B has to have the same song-and-dance with guys C and D after guy A, can you see why she finds it more and more like some kind of creepy cult rather than "I thought we were here to discuss ways of helping the world?"
This is probably the right analysis in regards to polyamory in 99% of normal situations. The curveball is that this is an effective altruism event, and the whole point of effective altruism is to apply rationality and scientific argument to charity in order to maximize happiness and minimize suffering.
So some guy comes along and says, "You know what generates a lot of happiness? sex. Yet most people don't have nearly as much sex as they could be having. If more people were poly and didn't let jealousy or embarrassment get in the way of having more sex, then there would be much more happiness in the world." This is a very basic utilitarian argument. The kind of argument that EA is full of.
Now, our heroine has three options here. She can:
Accept the argument, become poly, and have easy sex.
Have a principled consequentialist reason why the above argument isn't valid, or at the very least does not apply to her.
Say, "Yes, your argument is good but I still prefer monogamy so I'm not going to join your polycule".
Options 1 or 2 are acceptable. Option 3 simply doesn't fit in an EA framework. You're surrounded by people who dedicate their lives, pick jobs based on EA criteria, or become vegetarian even though they love eating meat, and yet you are admitting to selfishly leaving utility on the ground.
Frankly, the argument isn't that hard to refute. I'd argue that anyone that doesn't accept it who can't (or doesn't want to) refute it should not have any decision-making power at any EA organization at all. The bar needs to be higher than that.
Being nasty here, there's also Option 4:
"Yes, your argument is good, people don't have as much sex as they could be having, and if I were poly and didn't let jealousy or embarassment get in the way of having more sex then I would be happier. So I will now go and offer to be poly with that hot, rich, high-status guy over there, thanks for convincing me!"
If she ain't into you, bro, all the rational argument in the world won't convince her. As to leaving utility on the ground, the counter-argument is weighing up the utility, if any, of having sex with Polycule Guy versus not having sex with him and having it with someone else, and if the utility of "someone else" seems higher, then not joining his polycule is the right decision. Which is better: a quarter share in him or the whole of a different relationship? Is he that hot, clever, rich and high-status that being one of a harem is better than being the monogamous partner of someone else? Is sex that important to her that it does make her happier than some other activity? Would sex with Polycule Guy make her happier?
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"The happiness I gain from exclusivity far outweighs the happiness I gain from lots of crap sex."?
Because that's... all it is, isn't it?
I take it that's what he was getting at with the last paragraph, the one starting "Frankly, the argument isn't that hard to refute".
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Or just "You don't appeal to me sexually, and since your argument would equally apply to me having random sex with any person at all I met on the street, and I do not agree that would make me happier, then I reject your premises".
'yes more sex might make me happier but only if it's with someone I find attractive and I don't find you attractive' is, I think, the underlying reason and why the guys tried arguing her into being poly, because nobody wants to think they're not attractive.
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Isn't it valid to say "I get jealous and it makes me feel bad and I don't think it's something I need to work on. Thanks"?
No, because then you're opening yourself up to needling and further evangelising about why feeling jealousy is sub-optimal and blah blah blah.
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Rephrase option 3 as "Sorry, I'm narrowmantic." Now it sounds logical and scientific and pushing further would make you a bigot.
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I suppose if you’re a turbo autist, yes it is.
In reality being pushy towards a woman who is not interested in the kind of relationship on offer, and who has made that clear, is quite a bit different from a date request to a woman who’s looking for one. More analogous to pursuing a married woman.
Being pushy is just traditional and courtship. That’s not “autistic”. Being pushy is just part of every romcom ever made.
Like in yougotmail for example Meg Ryan hated Tom Hanks in person but he realized she was his pen pal they both got along with. He spent months courting her with the today awful secret ambition of boning her and having kids and living happily ever after. Or Mathew Mcconaughey chasing down his girl on his motercycle going to the airport in how to lose a guy.
Basically every romcom plays some story of guy realizes he loves girl then stubbornly pursues her because she’s his special little snowflake.
So I don’t understand how that is autistic when it’s the plot of every moving I ever saw growing up on how a guy should pursue a girl.
I also, and that's a large part of why I thought that was absolutely horrible. She said "no", why are you trying to force her to do something? It's like okay, you love jazz so you want her to like jazz too and if she says she doesn't like jazz you keep pursuing her and playing jazz at her and trying to make her give in. Nobody would tolerate that!
Movies are a terrible way to get the information of what the world is like, but that's how most of us do get it - and then we eventually run our faces into the wall of "movies and TV are not real, they're fiction, and the real world is not like that".
Every woman says "no". That's the most basic of shit tests. In order for a man to become romantically/sexually successful, he needs to learn to differentiate between a fake "no" and a real "no" and power through the former.
If people actually took the feminist line about how "no means no" seriously, nobody would ever have sex, because that is simply not how women work.
I've definitely gone all the way without ever hearing "no". (Sometimes it's "yes yes yes" all the time haha.)
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The line is far less distinct then you're letting on. What one person sees as too pushy is often times completely effective and other times will make a woman quite uncomfortable or even angry. It's difficult to know which is which until you try, and the threshold is actually far below the aforementioned case of trying to get some women to join what amounts to a harem.
Exactly, the threshold is far below trying to talk some woman into joining a harem after she's said she wants nothing to do with the whole thing.
Just because someone is a degenerate weirdo in silicon valley doesn't mean that dating norms, or the stated (but entirely ignored) norms set out by HR departments and oversocialized libs are valid either. Nor is being a silicon valley degenerate weirdo particularly a big deal. People don't have a right to social comfort beyond the option of just getting up to leave. This is a case of hysterics in the face of someone who is maybe slightly out of line.
And the point was that the threshold for discomfort can be lower. Again, a person doesn't have a right to total social comfort. The moral question of polygamy is a whole other thing which really isn't done justice by any leftist lenses.
Agreed that the question of whether polygamy/amory is OK is ancillary to the question of whether or not the specific behavior in question is OK.
Disagree that this is only slightly out of line(at least if true; I will very much allow for the possibility that the story is greatly exaggerated). This is worse than more central examples of being aggressive and pushy because the woman has demonstrated a previous opposition to the lifestyle in question. It's very much the equivalent of badgering a conservative Christian woman into a friends with benefits situation, or a happily married woman into cheating.
And, realistically, this is the problem with live and let live liberalism more broadly- it only seems to go in one direction(that is, in favor of degenerate sex weirdos and drug addicts). You see the same thing with lesbians getting pressured into sleeping with intact biologically male transwomen, or the constant odor of marijuana smoke in major American cities, or that Colorado baker that's been sued so many times that if I put out a number it'll have to be edited right after I hit "comment". And yes, some of those examples are sympathetic to me, but some of them aren't. I have no illusions that these women trying to join up in EA spaces are going to follow socially conservative norms otherwise, but that doesn't mean it's OK to try to pressure them into joining a harem over their own objections to such an arrangement. It shouldn't be #metoo level to say that. SJW's writing a set of ridiculous norms about dating doesn't mean they're wrong in every particular just like gun control advocates saying ridiculously false things about AR-15's doesn't mean I'm not going to leave if I see a skinny teenaged boy open carrying one in a Walmart.
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Just for emphasis:
And if you don't know - if you don't know until you're trying - you're gonna have to git gud and try it anywhere that isn't in bed net-slinging charity circles. This is a painful lesson for turbo autists like you and I, but it's not really unfair on the part of normal people who consider this so obvious that only a child would fail to realise it.
I'm not a turbo autist, and to prove it, I won't brag about my sexual exploits on an internet forum.
I think if anything, only a turbo autist would think the line is clear, because they wouldn't have the experience to realize otherwise. You can often guess how a woman will react to a certain kind of advance, but you often can't as well. Also a non autist will also realize that making a women a little uncomfortable is also not the end of the world if you're otherwise passably social.
Of course, there are also just people who are too afraid to make explicit advances, but I don't think that's """autism""", but something else entirely.
I'm not saying the line is clear, I'm saying that the reported behavior is quite obviously on one side of a fuzzy line between legitimate flirting/pursuit and creepy.
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Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link