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Notes -
Effective Altruism drama update:
You may remember a few weeks ago the article Effective Altruism Promises to Do Good Better. These Women Say It Has a Toxic Culture Of Sexual Harassment and Abuse was published in TIME (Motte discussion here).
It's been a hectic two weeks on the EA forum. Meta community posts have been consistently getting more engagement than object-level posts about actual charity. There is a palpable tension on the site between the hardcore rationalists and the mainstream liberals. Vote counts swing on an hourly basis depending on who has the upper hand, but overall the discussion has remained civil (mostly). A few days ago, the (in)famous Aella posted "People Will Sometimes Just Lie About You", a devastating screed against prudes, anonymous allegations, and haters of eccentric Bay Area parties. Eliezer himself even shows up, taking a break from doomscrolling to deliver a supporting bombardment against the mainstream press.
There's nothing EAs care about more than cute poly girls and AI. Once Aella and Eliezer weigh in, case closed right? WRONG.
A statement and an apology
EV UK board statement on Owen's resignation
One of the perpetrators from the article has been identified. So who wins?
Well, its too soon to say. This seems to be the first sexual misconduct allegation confirmed against an official EA leader, so you can't really call the TIME story which broke it to be a complete pile of journalistic garbage. It does seem like a pretty minor infraction though. After reading Owen's statement it seems like it could fall under the "weird nerds trying to date" umbrella, but maybe you can't use that excuse when you're a board member.
One aspect I haven't seen discussed is that this is the same guy who was behind the controversial decision to buy Wytham Abbey for 15 million pounds (see here). In light of current events, it sure looks to me like EA officials decided to blow millions on a luxury venue in Oxford in order to impress women.
I can understand how hearing that may seem creepy in that context, given that she just found out she would be staying with him, but in general, masturbating in a situation like this is a great idea. I have long though that men should masturbate before doing something important that involves women, sex, etc., to prevent their brain being overpowered by their penis.
It doesn't "seem" creepy. It is creepy. How would you feel if you walked into an office for an interview and your potential boss (male) said "Just be a sec, I gotta go jerk off"? There may possibly be some jobs where "oh hey here it's we're all guys together", but I think you might come away from that going "Hm, that was odd".
Fixed that for you.
This has happened to me, BTW, and it was totally unremarkable. A bro with whom I regularly discuss banging chicks referred me to a job. I visited him and he told me about how he's banging a cool rocker chick with big tits (or something like that, this was long back and I forget the details). The only difference here is that instead of being bros who bang hot chicks in a mainstream manner, it was weird nerds doing weird nerd stuff in a subculture that the establishment wants to attack.
But of course, I actually read the detailed statement and apology (linked in the OP) instead of just the hit piece: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QMee23Evryqzthcvn/a-statement-and-an-apology
He was not her potential boss or involved in the decisionmaking process.
The interaction did not happen in an office, and the implication that they only knew each other professionally is false. This was one interaction in a long personal relationship in which apparently many such interactions took place as part of a weird social experiment:
They do seem to be different cases. This is classic "he said, she said": he's saying "we were pals", she's saying "he's the guy interviewing me for a job".
And your bro was telling you about chicks he was hitting on/fucking. He wasn't going "Bro, you are so hot, hang on a mo, gotta go jerk off because that's the effect you have on me".
It isn't "he said, she said" because Time Magazine didn't say he was the interviewer or her prospective boss. Time Magazine did not say anything at all about the presence or absence of a preexisting relationship. They said:
"...an unsettling experience with an influential figure in EA whose role included picking out promising students and funneling them towards highly coveted jobs. After that leader arranged for her to be flown to the U.K. for a job interview, she recalls being surprised to discover that she was expected to stay in his home, not a hotel."
I can totally understand how you drew this (most likely false) conclusion, but technically Time Magazine did not lie.
They simply exploited the fact that you believe that they would have mentioned a preexisting weirdo rationalist relationship with odd social experiments if one existed, and that they would have mentioned the interview was with someone else entirely.
Also, I do not believe that the guy is lying about either a) being her interviewer or b) the preexisting relationship. These are both easy to prove one way or the other and if he were lying about such easily provable things, one would expect someone to call it out.
But I'm happy to be proven wrong: if the accuser claims he is lying and he doesn't dig up texts/FB messages/etc to prove they were friends before and after, I will consider her case to be proven. Similarly if the accuser claims he's lying and digs up an interview schedule listing him, I'll consider her case proven.
Yes, he was following a pattern for which there is a mainstream "script" so you can easily pattern match it. Other similar things he has said include "damn bro back that fine ass up let me get it on camera". Entirely work inappropriate and inappropriate for some friendships, but totally reasonable for him to say to me at the gym after filming my first successful 4 plate deadlift.
Weirdo rationalists are weirdos and making up their own script that you are unfamiliar with. Is anything non-mainstream fundamentally illegitimate and evil? One must not do it even with the full consent of all involved?
Are you sure you didn't miss out on a blossoming love to last the ages by thinking he was admiring your muscular prowess instead of delicately courting you? 😁
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Yeah, and they should not neglect to mention they did it. Loudly, and often. While making direct, and intense, eye contact.
It sounds completely retarded six years, a TIME article, and an external investigation later, but I can kind of see the bizarre horny logic. Letting her know that he just masturbated serves the function of letting her know that he’s interested, and that he’s perfectly safe to be around (since you know, he already took care of things).
For very good reasons, women base their sense of safety around men using those men's apparent respect for boundaries and customs, rather than whether those men are in a state of post-orgasmic non-arousal.
Of course, you could still be right - he might actually be that socially inept.
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No. That makes him sound even more unsafe to be around, since he can't control the horny as soon as he sees her. That's not reassuring. I know women and men have very differing views on this, but knowing a guy that you are barely acquainted with is using you as a porn fantasy when he's jerking off is not flattering and is concerning, if it seems like he may not be able to maintain any boundaries at all. He's already blown through a few, what is to stop him hitting on you, harassing you if you turn him down, or even turning nasty?
What's to stop him?
Err, the other social barriers?
Just because he steamrolled one doesn't reduce the resistance of the others to zero.
But it does tilt the balance in the direction of "the other barriers have been weakened".
I think this does reveal a genuine problem that the EA or Bay Areans need to deal with: the social attitudes of San Franciscan "flowers in your hair" liberality about sex and drugs and everything except meat-eating and being a square who harshes others' mellows, versus outsiders treating EA as a professional NGO do-gooding organisation. We're seeing these clash badly with damage on both sides.
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Yes, informing people about it is probably not a good idea. It would be weird even if she wasn't staying with him, if they were just meeting in an office or something.
In his statement he said he and she were doing some weird full-disclosure-of-everything kinda social experiment, with both parties explicit consent. But now, retroactively, it's decided there's some power dynamic caused by him being involved in a community she's also involved in that makes this bad.
I can believe it, because [insert rant about quokkas]. That does not mean that non-quokkas are playing along with your "but I thought you realised without me having to say it that we were conducting a radical honesty experiment?". I have opened my big dumb mouth and over-shared at times, but at least I've never mentioned about how I am dealing with my libidinal impulses, so to speak, to people. Any people, be they friends or not.
You seem to be making two entirely separate claims across your various comments here:
Claim 1: "Prominent EA types/the community as a statistical average have actually engaged in bad behavior in excess of base rates. This is harmful and morally wrong." (e.g. here: https://www.themotte.org/post/381/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/67827?context=8#context https://www.themotte.org/post/381/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/67831?context=8#context )
Claim 2: "Prominent EA types have followed a strategy which is suboptimal in the presence of hostile adversaries who wish to mislead the public about them without technically lying." (What I'm replying to right now.)
I think most people here disagree with (1) and agree with (2). For example in my comment above I'm disputing claim 1 and in reply you're asserting the truth of claim 2. That's pretty confusing, and I think if you want the conversation to be productive you should make it explicit which claim you are discussing.
(1) Reading up on the intra-community accounts from a couple years back (you might recall them yourself being low-key linked on various rationalist blogs) about the kinds of things people in the community got away with, without anyone doing more than some hand-wringing, inclines me to "heck yes, EA and the Rationalists have a sex creep problem and a lot of it is down to their community norms".
(2) By the same token, given the community norms, the weird/kinky/awkward/shy are encouraged to not be afraid and to let it all out. That then causes problems such as guy thinking "okay, we're friends, right? so it's perfectly normal for me to talk about jerking off in front of her" in relation to a woman who is not part of that particular community and does not know the norms.
The two are not contradictory. The problem, as others have pointed out, is that EA is now getting big enough and mainstream enough that the community norms of the Bay Area are butting up hard with the usual social norms of people not from that community, and things like TIME articles are the result.
I am aware of the occasional mentally unstable woman (e.g. Kathy Forth) making vague claims that plausibly mean very little. E.g. her only concrete claim is that someone touched her leg and her complaint about such resulted in his immediate expulsion. Keerthana Gopalakrishnan has similarly minor concrete claims (asked out 3x in a year) plus internal narratives ("felt unsafe").
I am not aware of anything that suggests rationalist communities have a problem worse than communities which are not considered problematic (e.g. cardiology, anti-moneylaundering, education, journalism). Perhaps if you want to make this claim you can provide evidence of it. The Time Magazine article and the various conclusions you drew (but which it did not actually say) are not such evidence.
No one claims this happened except you. Time Magazine does not. The guy who believes Time Magazine is referring to him says something entirely different happened. No one disputes him, and in the event of a dispute there is highly likely to be plenty of evidence.
I'll note you also claimed it happened during a job interview and he was her boss, which you seem to have retreated from. Why do you keep making claims such as these? Do you have some firsthand knowledge that the rest of us lack?
What did you mean when you said "I can believe it, because [insert rant about quokkas]"? I assumed it was referencing this which is entirely about my Claim 2 - that innocent rationalists will be harmed by evil and dangerous journalists/grifters/etc if they don't develop defense mechanisms. Did you mean something else?
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Wow. If thats the context then I have to agree with Hanania here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/richardhanania/p/why-ea-will-be-anti-woke-or-die
Any time I begin to think Hanania has half a point going on, then he goes and ruins it with shit like this:
"Sure, maybe you have a dumb 'icky!' reaction to the idea that we routinely round up, at intervals of about every two months, people named 'Richard' and put on an entertainment show in the arena where members of the public who want to show off their torture skills get to use them as test subjects. But that's a dumb intuition, and society is just pushing on through until you and the other holdouts get used to such disputed practices".
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This seems, to me at least, like incredibly important context that should be made extremely visible.
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That completely changes things. Without it, very creepy and no borders. With it, sure, betrayal of honesty experiment.
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