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Notes -
Update to @Quantumfreakonomics 's post about EA Drama downthread.
For context:
Basically, a major EA figure was outed as having sexually harassed at least five women, some he had plausible professional power over. The community health team in EA knew about it and essentially did nothing until the TIME article outed it.
Even now, he's getting the kid glove treatment - temporarily resigning and not taking on new mentorships, but continuing all his other duties. Realistically he'll probably still function as an informal board member.
In addition there have been two other major updates, and I cannot overstate the importance here. Both of the heads of the two biggest EA organizations, Holden Karnofsky at Open Philanthropy and Max Dalton at the Centre for Effective Altruism are stepping down. In Holden's case, temporarily to work on AI risk.
Max Dalton at CEA
Holden at Open Phil
If you haven't been following Effective Altruism this may just seem like another set of scandals - it's not. The past 6 months or so have been a constant barrage of issues, starting with SBF's massive fraud and the collapse of FTX, the issues with Nick Bostrom being outed as a racist/HBD enthusiast, the TIME article mentioned above, and finally both of these central figures resigning. There have been many more petty dramas playing out as well.
This is the crucible, the defining moment for Effective Altruism. Whether the movement lives or dies will likely be determined in the next year.
Whoever takes over the reigns of the movement, it's clear that shifts are happening and power is up for grabs. With AGI likely around the corner, this realignment of power in the EA sphere has the potential to determine the singleton who controls the future.
Expect a bloodbath either way.
Is the whole point of Effective Altruism to be a place for nerds to meet women? I’ll be honest, I never really “got” EA, but once I applied the “rationalist nerd dating scene” lens, everything suddenly made sense. No one actually cares about the mental wellbeing of shrimp. It’s just an excuse to show girls how nice and empathetic and smart and well-connected you are. The tone of this comments section is very much, “you’ll have to pry the polyamory from my cold dead hands.” Empirically, I see lots and lots of married couples and casual sex, but very little global improvement. By their fruits you shall know them etc.
Based on many of the frothing defendants of polyamory on the EA forum - seems like that is a major driver. Check out this comment where a relatively connected EA directly says:
This dude got a grant for tens of thousands of dollars to write a fantasy book for EA. Go figure.
I have been involved in EA for a while outside of the Bay Area / UK sections, and damn I had no idea the rot went this deep. It's wild to see these poly folks mask off.
So what exactly is the problem here? He says that he is motivated to engage socially by opportunities to get laid (which I suspect is true for many people, even as it is generally considered very antisocial to admit), and arguing that a community is strengthened by providing the opportunity (which is hardly a new or outlandish viewpoint; trads say basically as much about trad church-centered communities too). This does not imply that it is the point; both positions are consistent with the point of EA, and even most people in it, being exactly what it is claimed to be.
What does the "frothing" add here, apart from conveying your own anger (which you could have done in more detached terms) and aggrieving any reader who might imagine themselves as being targeted by the description?
I'm at best neutral towards poly (and manifestly not pro-A, E or otherwise; I find globally-oriented altruism to be a deleterious meme that breeds moral imperialism and personal misery), but seeing them come under this sort of ostentatious attack just makes me want to make a show of donating some money, both in order to defend the ability of these people to live under a different set of norms and to penalize the attempt to shame them for it with vague "can you believe this?" pointing.
The problem is that the entire point of EA is to stop making decisions using base human impulses and think for a second or two about what's actually going to do the most good. Hence bednets, hence deworming, hence "I care about the suffering of shrimp", hence "annihilate all existence so there's no possibility of suffering", etc. This is a movement that via memes such as "80,000 hours", "the giving what we can pledge", and "earning to give" asks people to redirect nontrivial chunks of their lifetime earning capacity, which those people could have instead used to improve their own lives, or the lives of their families, friends and local communities.
Any redirection of the movement away from this mission is waste by its own definition. That its elites have decided to screw around with polyamory instead of doing the maximally-effective thing in the world reminds me more of a new-age religious sex cult than a movement genuinely interested in improving the world.
Needs a website not a movement. And maybe stop before the annihilate everybody bit.
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Yeah, but ordinary people can see the benefit of bednets or deworming programmes, while worrying about the mental agonies of the shrimp equivalent of Camus is too out there.
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I'm not sure the two are as in tension as you say here.
You need psychological levers to get people to do things. If a poly EA makes himself more datable by supporting the mission of the organization, then isn't that a good thing for the mission?
It's a bit unsurprising to me that humans are not 100% rational utility-maximizers. Of course we didn't evolve that way, so at best you're throwing the goals of utility maximization on top of a bunch of pre-programmed survival and reproduction protocols.
Maybe it's a little sad if EA doesn't function on the backs of enlightened utilitarian saints, but if it's fulfilling its mission, getting money and resources where they need to go on the backs of nerdy, horny guys trying to show how virtuous they are, I don't actually see that as a dramatic take down of the movement. Many people in this thread seem to have a weird assumption that if people are trying to get laid, the actual work isn't getting done, but if the social structure is based around showing proof or good work, conscientiousness and lives saved/changed then I don't see how the two goals are in tension at all. Guys do good, get laid, and everyone is happy, right?
The only problem is the optics at that point.
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There is a certain irony in "deny base human impulses: apply rationality" quickly falling into "have as much sex as possible," which is probably the most base human impulse. But then again I've long recommended that actions be constantly scrutinized against lofty, if laudable, mission statements. Individual humans, even in groups, are quite fallible creatures, which is something that I respect religion for recognizing: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
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As Eric Cartman put it in a slightly different context: "Hippies! They're everywhere! They wanna save Earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad."
Hippies, at least, had no problem endorsing sex. Even heterosexual sex. With people who smell bad and perhaps weren't in the best physical condition.
Ironically, I suppose Charles Manson would be a dark example of someone who lured followers of a cause in with the promise of sex and then managed to leverage them towards a non-sex goal. Maybe it's not such a bad thing that EA ended up being the opposite.
SBF needs to get a peace sign tattooed on the back of his head in prison, for symmetry.
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