Posted under pseudonym for reasons I’d rather not get into. If it’s relevant, I’m pretty involved in EA. I’ve been to several EAGs and I do direct work.
tldr I think many more people in the community should consider refraining from sleeping around within the community. I especially think people should consider refraining from sleeping around within EA if they have two or more of the following traits- high status in EA, a man who sleeps with women, and socially clumsy.
I think the community would be a more welcoming place, with less sexual misconduct and less other sexually unwelcome behaviour, if more EAs chose to personally refrain from sleeping around within EA or attempting to do so. Most functional institutions outside of EA, from companies to friend groups to extended families, have developed norms against sleeping around within the group. We obviously don’t want to simply unquestionably accept all of society’s norms, but I think in this case those norms address real problems.
I worry that as a group, EAs run a risk of discarding valuable cultural practices that don’t immediately make sense in a first principles way, and that this tendency can have particularly high costs where sex is involved (Owen more or less admitted this was a factor in his behaviour in his statement/apology: “I was leaning into my own view-at-the-time about what good conduct looked like, and interested in experimenting to find ways to build a better culture than society-at-large has”).
Regarding sleeping around within a tight-knit community, I think this behaviour has risks whether the pursuer is successful or not. Failed attempts at sleeping with someone can very often lead to awkwardness or uncomfortability. In EA, where employment and funding may be front of mind, this uncomfortability may be increased a lot, and there may be no way for the person who was pursued to realistically avoid the pursuer in the future if they want to without major career repercussions. Successful attempts at sleeping around can obviously also cause all sorts of drama, either shortly after or down the road.
Personal factors that may increase risks
I think within EA, the risks of harm are increased greatly if the pursuer has any of the following three traits:
- High status within EA- this can create bad power dynamics and awkward social pressure. First, people generally don’t like pissing off high status people within their social circles as there may be social repercussions to doing so. Second, high status people within EA often control funding and employment decisions. Even if the pursuer isn’t in such a position now, they might wind up in one in the future. Third, high status EAs often talk to other high status EAs, so an unjustified bad reputation can spread to other figures in the movement who control funding or employment. Fourth, many EAs consider the community to be their one best shot at living the kind of ethical life they want, raising the stakes a bunch. Fifth, the moralising aspect of EA may make some people find it more uncomfortable to rebuff a high status EA.
- A man pursuing a woman (such as a heterosexual man or a bi-/pansexual man pursuing a woman)- this factor can sometimes be an elephant that people dance around in discussions, but I’ll just address it head on. On average men are more assertive, aggressive, and physically intimidating than women. On average women are more perceptive about subtle social cues and find it more awkward when those subtle social cues are ignored. My sense is these factors are pretty robust across cultures, but I don’t think it matters for this discussion what the cause of these average differences are. Add to all that, the EA community has a large gender imbalance, meaning there’s effectively a large multiplier on any unwelcome sexual advances coming from men and towards women.
- Socially clumsy- awkward advances are obviously more likely to lead to the other person feeling uncomfortable or disrespected. Poor ability to read social signals is also more likely to lead to further or more extreme unwanted behaviour. Even if this never reaches the line of assault or harassment proper, it can still be very uncomfortable.
For anyone who has at least 2 of the above traits (such as a heterosexual man who is high status in EA or is socially clumsy), I would strongly recommend considering refraining from sleeping around in the movement. (Edited to add: I personally consider myself to have two of these traits, so this advice would apply to me.)
While these factors exist somewhat on a spectrum, I think many EAs will underestimate how much factor 1 applies to them personally. Rampant imposter syndrome likely causes many EAs to underestimate their status in the movement. If you have basically any direct job, note that many people within the community will assume you’re somewhat high status, even if you don’t feel that way.
What I mean by sleeping around
As this post is a call for people to voluntarily consider adopting certain personal behaviours, I’m not sure having an explicit definition is needed. Having said that, I would generally consider all of the following hypothetical examples involving Bob and Alice sleeping together to be behaviour in line with Bob sleeping around. Assume for all examples that both Bob and Alice are EAs:
- Bob and Alice have a one night stand
- Bob and Alice are friends with benefits
- Bob is casually dating multiple people, including Alice, and he doesn’t consider his relationship with Alice to be particularly special
- Bob is dating Alice and no one else, but he doesn’t consider it a serious relationship AND he thinks it's very unlikely their relationship will develop into a serious relationship
- Bob is polyamorous with multiple people, including Alice, AND Alice is not his primary
On the other hand, I generally would NOT consider the following to be examples of Bob sleeping around within EA (again, for all examples assume both Bob and Alice are in EA and that the examples involve them sleeping with each other):
- Bob and Alice are in a monogamous, monogamish, or open relationship
- Bob is polyamorous with multiple people, including Alice, AND Alice is his primary (and none of the other people Bob is polyamorous with is an EA)
- Bob and Alice are dating casually AND Bob considers his relationship with Alice to be special and thinks there’s a realistic chance the relationship could develop into a serious relationship (either 1. or 2. above)
Of course, I recognize this isn’t all black and white. And of course the risks here increase the more extreme behaviour someone engages in, so I think someone could decrease risks by decreasing degree of behaviour.
And for clarity’s sake, nothing in this post should be taken as a criticism of promiscuity in general or of any relationship styles in general. If any EA decides to have a bunch of one night stands or threesomes or non-primary polyamorous relationships or whatever else with lots of different people outside the community, I think that’s 100% fine and does not raise the sorts of concerns that sleeping around in EA does.
I think this post is missing how many really positive relationships started with something casual, and how much the 'plausible deniability' of a casual start can remove pressure. If you turn flirting with someone from an "I'm open to seeing where this goes" into "I think you might the the one" that's a high bar. Which means despite the definition of 'sleeping around' you're using looking like it wouldn't reduce the number of EA marriages and primary relationships I expect it would. Since a lot of EAs in those relationships (hi!) are very happy with them (hi!), this is a cost worth explicitly weighing.
(Writing this despite mostly agreeing with the post and having upvoted it. And also as someone who's done very little dating and thought I was going to marry everyone I dated.)
I think there was a slight breakdown in communication and you're imagining I'm proposing more restriction than I am. Flirting can still have plausible deniability as it could be interpreted as any of “they’re just engaging in friendly banter”, “they’re flirting as flirting, but just for a spark”, “they’re feeling out whether or not they’re interested in me”, “they’re somewhat interested in me, but that could change”, “they’re secretly in love with me”, etc. If everyone in EA were to avoid sleeping around in the sense I’m using it, I think the only interpretation that would be taken away would be “they want to have sex with me but don’t want anything serious”.
I also think EAs can follow this and still casually date other EAs from the perspective of being open to seeing where it goes, though that might mean taking things a little slower physically. Personally, if I were to date someone outside of EA, I might have sex with them on the first or second date (thought process “I’m attracted to them so why not”), but if I were to date someone in EA I’d probably wait until something like the fourth or fifth date (thought process “oh wow, I’m excited by this person and I think there’s a chance we could develop into something serious”), though I could also imagine exceptions where things were clearer earlier and where I’d sleep with an EA on the first date (I’m definitely not trying to propose a community norm here of a certain specific number of dates before sex). This all also seems to be how people in most companies and other functional tight-knit communities generally approach dating within the group.
And by “serious” I didn’t mean “marriage or similar”, so I think “might be the one” is a much higher bar than I meant.
I'm not Jeff, but this example made me think you were calling for avoiding all but the most serious / "the one"-type relationships:
Avoiding this would prevent a lot of really good (and serious!) relationships in this community. Many secondary relationships are serious and strong and long-lasting, and some primary relationships start out as secondary relationships. Conflating "secondary relationships" with "sleeping around" seems really mistaken to me.
It's difficult to judge, but I doubt this would reduce healthy and compatable marriages and primary relationships. People who like each other within EA will still naturally spend time together. They will still become friends, and those friendships will still grow into more than platonic friendships. I don't see how the recommendations above would stop that?
Perhaps there might be a (potentially healthy) time delay that would kick in before those positive romantic relationships got started but I doubt many potentially wonderful relationships would be stymied if we followed the OPs thoughts. Perhaps the cost of lost relationships would be very minor or even negligible.
Perhaps this is just the hopeless romantic inside of me coming out tho...
I think you might be thinking about the typical case instead of the marginal case?
It's a really difficult counterfactual - would the amazing relationship have happened if more people chose to follow the OP's guidelines? I'm not sure what you mean by the marginal case exactly.
Sorry, I was too terse. There's a thing that happens where people are trying to imagine the effect of a change where they think about how that change would affect a central example. For example, if you were trying to guess what sort of effect charging slightly more for bread would have you might reason that people who buy bread generally like it a lot and a few cents either way is unlikely to change whether it is worth it for them to make the purchase. This kind of thinking reliably gets the wrong answer, because instead of typical bread consumers the ones whose purchasing behavior is most likely to change are the ones who are most on the fence about whether to buy bread. These cases are called, at least in economics, "marginal", and reasoning that explicitly focuses here is called "thinking on the margin".
So we need to think about the kind of relationships that would be most affected. For example, ones where the people were initially only in the same place together for a short time (ex: at a conference) and without moving somewhat quickly through stages of intimacy would have gone off in different directions before realizing how good a fit they are for each other.
Your comment described how the typical couple would still get together, and I don't disagree there. I'm not claiming that the rate would go to zero, just that it would decrease and we should think about how much it would go down and how bad that would be.
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.
Thanks for the explanation @Jeff Kaufman. My inclination is that under the 3 criteria laid out above, I'm not sure marginal cases would be very many at all. Most relationships could still move on unhindered, even after a short conference meeting. But it's quite a wild guess I could be way off in this estimation especially not having attended EA events to observe these things first hand. I'd probably trust your judgement above mine here.
Also interesting point Patrick maybe!
I wouldn't recommend that ;) I haven't been to an EAG since 2018 and don't have much personal experience with people trying to get together at events.
What do you think of my suggestion that it should instead be "don't initiate or escalate"? Feels like that removes most of the harm while leaving most of the benefit.
Would it leave most of the benefit? If men (the gender who, at this point in time, initiates the most) stop initiating, I imagine a number of good relationships will not be born at all.
As has been discussed quite commonly elsewhere on this topic, the goal of the effective altruism movement is to improve the world. Not to make effective altruists happy or get them laid/married etc.
Yes relationships can be good and help build social ties, but OP clearly isn’t saying people shouldn’t date at all, just that they shouldn’t casually date. I think a trade off of less relationships on the margin for less sexual harassment assault and more women In EA is a fine trade off to make.
On top of this it’s not healthy to have your entire social support system within EA, and this will help prevent that too.
You're reading more into my comment than I intended. I don't disagree with you - I was just correcting what I believed to be a wrong deduction. If we try to create new norms, it's good to make sure that we have accurate trade-offs in mind.
I feel the upvotes here are very unfair.
Currently in the poll comment I did, the balance of people think we should adopt the Original Poster's suggestion. Mine would still allow for a lot of sexual activity to take place. It is clearly less limiting. It's still a massive norm and I don't love it, but it's better than a ban. It feels unfair (and plain mistaken) that many people disagreed with my comment and then agree with your criticism even though my proposal is less onerous than OP's.
If you all hate my idea surely you must hate OP's more, so go disagreevote with it in the poll comment below.
If somehow you like OPs suggestion but hate mine, I'm confused.
Do you think people might simply not have seen your poll? (and don't understand that by "my suggestion" you're referring to an actual poll). We're replying to what is currently the top comment, that might give our comments more visibility.
I'll signal-boost your poll in my comment above - even if to be clear I disagree with both the poster's and your suggestions.
Edit: can't find the actual comment in which you have this particular poll, if you share the link with me I'm happy to add it to comment above
Oh that's because Jeff and I were talking before everyone else turned up
I disagreed with your comment (despite obviously agreeing with my own post), so let me explain why. First (as I describe here), I think your proposal may actually increase uncomfortability and awkwardness, which is what the post was largely written to address. Second (as I described to Jeff here), I think dating within EA doesn't necessarily involve the issues I'm concerned with, and I think your proposal would decrease dating within EA more than mine would. Third, I think your proposal would involve spending weirdness points, while mine would involve saving weirdness points.
Also, for clarity's sake to address the comment "it's better than a ban", I'm not proposing an externally imposed ban. I think an explicit ban would be harmful and I do not endorse one.
I think this is the sort of thing that might make sense in the abstract, but that in practice would probably lead to more awkwardness and uncomfortability for many people. Imagine if you’re used to being the person on the receptive end instead of the initiating end. In that case, you may find it uncomfortable to initiate and escalate. But your system may involve this person making the move at every single step. They’d have to be the first to flirt, to ask the other person out, to go for the first kiss, and so on. This feels like it could be compounding uncomfortability for a lot of people who aren’t used to making those sort of moves. I also think asking people to take on roles they’re not used to filling would increase the amount of missed signals, which would increase awkwardness. There might also be confusion about which party should be in which role (what if there's a higher-status woman and a lower-status man, or if there's two people who are socially clumsy in different ways).
I feel frustrated. Sign.
I think those who like this idea are suggesting a huge and powerful norm. And my pretty huge and pretty powerful norm is being rejected because it would be "awkward and uncomfortable". I think that misses the point that the original norm is even worse. Again, I sense that a poll of women in EA might reveal that even if we only consider their preferences they aren't pro "non-neurotypical and high status men in the community cannot have casual sex". But that's a guess I could be wrong.
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.
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.