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[1], have developed norms against sleeping around within the group. We obviously don’t want to simply unquestionably accept all of society’s norms,[2] 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[3] 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.[4] 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,[5] raising the stakes a bunch. Fifth, the moralising[6] 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,[7] I think that’s 100% fine and does not raise the sorts of concerns that sleeping around in EA does.
- ^
This is true even when there’s no blood relation and the connection is weak. Would you have a casual hookup with your cousin’s wife's sister? My guess is probably not, and if you did you’d probably recognize that this could cause a lot of harm to the family, maybe even causing a lasting rift. On the other hand, if you had met her separately without realising the connection and started to seriously date, I think people generally would find that acceptable.
- ^
Historic stigmatisation of LGBT people and relationships is one example of why not
- ^
For clarity, I’m talking about cases where you pursue someone sexually and they rebuff your advances. I’m not referring to sexual assault/attempted rape, which is obviously a much more serious issue.
- ^
If your response is “I would never get pissed at someone for rebuffing my advances” then they don’t know that. It’s very common for someone to act all nice while pursuing someone and then become very angry after it’s clear that sex won’t happen. Also, even if you won’t outwardly express irritation for being rebuffed, I think you probably generally do feel at least somewhat irritated when you’re rebuffed. It is a perfectly normal human emotion to feel irritated when you learn that you won’t get something that you want and which you thought you might get. Even if you hide this irritation, it could still sour your opinion of the other person and may lead to you badmouthing them (even if unintentional). And again, even if you never would do that, the other person doesn’t know that. The person you’re pursuing isn’t stupid, they know all this is a risk if they rebuff you.
- ^
This is its own can of worms, but seems true for a significant enough portion of EA that, at least for the time being, we should factor this into our decisions.
- ^
I don’t mean this in a bad way, but I can’t think of a similar word with a more neutral or positive tone
- ^
I recognize the barrier between “is an EA” and “is not an EA” isn’t always super clear. I think for pursuing people who are EA-adjacent, the concerns raised here apply somewhat but in a weakened form. But the vast majority of people in the world are clearly not EA and not EA-adjacent.
My personal reaction: I know you are scared and emotional, I am too. This post however, crossed my boundary.
I'm a woman, I'm in my late 20s and I'm going to do what you call sleeping around in the community if it's consensual from both sides. Obviously, I'm going to do my absolute best to be mature in my behaviors and choices in every way. I also believe that as the community we should do better job in protecting people from unwanted sexual behavior and abuse. But I will not be a part of community which treats conscious and consensual behavior of adult people as their business, because it hell smells like purity culture for me. And it won't do the job in protecting anybody.
I'm super stressed by this statement.
I don't think I'm scared and I don't think I'm particularly emotional about this issue. I do think that if more people in the community followed the points in this piece then the community as a whole would be more functional and more welcoming (though I admit there are some people who would find it less welcoming). My feelings on this issue are not recent, and I've been feeling this way since long before the TIME's article, though recent revelations regarding Owen are what tipped me over into actually writing a post about this.
I basically agree with Jeff's points here and here.
I understand that these are very personal issues, which is why my suggestion was for people to “consider avoiding” certain behaviours (factoring in potential negative second order effects they may not be focused on) instead of saying people should simply “avoid” these behaviours or that we should ban them outright. I notice your comment focuses on consent and abuse, so that makes me think you might think I’m placing “sleeping around” in a similar category to things like sexual assault. I absolutely do not think this (if I did, I would not have suggested that it’s fine for people to sleep around as m... (read more)
I may be reading you overly literally, but I think you're saying that we should not as a community, strongly discourage, say, grantmakers from sleeping with grantees. As long as its consensual and they're thoughtful about the power dynamics it's just their decision, right? But this ignores issues like:
Other grantees would then feel pressured to sleep with grantmakers, leading to bad interactions (even ones where all the signals that the grantmaker receives are that the grantee wants this).
The funders behind the grantmaker may reasonably worry that the grantmaker's judgement is clouded by their otherwise positive views towards this grantee or that there was quid pro quo.
People may choose to become grantmakers with poor intentions because a norm of "it's ok to sleep with grantees" is very vulnerable to abuse.
If you think we should draw lines excluding this, however, and I hope you do, then we should be thinking about what lines we want as a community, not insisting that we refuse to be bound by any lines.
I'd feel a lot more comfortable about this post if it were "EAs having ~casual relationships with other EAs is a good thing generally but here's how we can limit the worse spillover effects" than like, "please be less horny"
I'm not saying that age/power/money/any other differences should be ignored when it comes to consent. I believe we should, as a general rule in the community, discourage grantmakers sleeping with grantees. This post, however, doesn't stop there, at least to my understanding. And this is what I disagree with.
If you think we should discourage grantmakers from sleeping with grantees but no further, what about managers and reports, highly senior and junior staff at an org who don't share a management chain, senior researchers and junior researchers in the same field, or community builders and people just joining the community? -- Possibly you were trying to say this with your first sentence; not sure?
What I'm trying to get at here is that determining what sorts of interactions the community should discourage is complex, and asserting strong generic dating rights makes it harder to muddle out.
Yes, I was saying it in my first sentence. Everything which goes beyond that is crossing personal boundaries (at least of mine). This post in my opinion doesn't talk about the examples you've mentioned above. It talks about two people who have no professional connection, but happen to be EA, at least to my understanding.
Is my position clear to you now? If not, please let me know, I'll try to explain it better.
Thanks! I understand your view a lot better than I did initially!
Thanks for the honesty of expressing something vulnerable.
In this situation, under this post, and given your voting pool, it is not half as vulnerable as it could be if I was a man, especially a "socially not skilled" one (often = non - neurotypical) . So I could pretty easily write it, as in this particular position I felt in a position of power.
uh, not quite a guy but I credit the more sexually relaxed parts of the community for solving ~most of my "socially inept around this" problems in a way I think is not easily replaceable, so I'm personally also pretty defensive about this
So honestly I meant the boundaries triggering thing.
But yes, you can make that argument much more cheaply than me.
It's a shame we use such clear language in this forum. I think "than my cowardly ass" would have been much funnier.
Yup, I understand that it was most probably the intention, but this post doesn't do a good job stressing it enough in my opinion. It says that those are people who should consider not doing that in particular, but it's not directed only to them.
Plus, even if this post is directed only towards "not socially skilled men in a high position of power" asking them not to sleep around violates the same boundary- not mine, but it's still against my values. Consensual relationship between adult people, as long as one of them is not a supervisor/senior/grant-maker of another, is none of community's business, unless we are in church.
But isn't this sort of relationship exactly the one that OCB had with an anonymous woman which people one thread over are saying they're feeling shocked, betrayed and undermined by?
There's no suggestion that there was a violation of consent, only that there was an exchange between two friends who had a very frank relationship, and that OCB said something rather crude (for which he apologised). He at the time wasn't a supervisor/grant-maker of the woman in question.
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... (read more)
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?
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.
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.
I also think there should be particular care when it comes to newcomers to the movement. I think there should be a strong norm against regular members hitting on/asking out new members before they have enough time to settle into the community.
I'm betting there have been many people who showed up once or twice to an EA event, got hit on a bunch of times, and immediately left the movement in annoyance.
I feel like there's some implicit claim that only a subset of people (socially awkward men?) aren't romantically perceptive, but my understanding is that basically everyone is bad at this and if you are going to flirt with someone you should expect that you are probably unable to tell whether they want it.[1]
An example paper largely chosen at random says:
I.e. people reciprocate flirting essentially independent of whether they are actually attracted to the other person, and the other person is essentially unable to distinguish "real" from "fake" flirting.
Furthermore, that paper had two "independent, trained raters" who watched recordings and marked if the person involved was flirting. These raters had interrater reliability of α=.68 which isn't terrible, but isn't amazing either.[2]
tl;dr: my guess is that most people should 1) not assume that they can reliably identify flirting and 2) even if they can, should not assume that they can ... (read more)
Surprised at the amount of upvotes on the main post, versus the highly upvoted comments talking about being scared, judged, frustrated, etc.
Personally I agree strongly with this post and think it’s a more than reasonable proposal. Also, just seems like common sense. I’d imagine there are quite a few people who feel similarly based on the vote count.
It seems that an extremely large proportion of EAF users are die hard proponents of casual sex and polyamory, which makes this conversation fraught. I’ll also be honest - I get the sense than many defenders of these non-traditional norms within the EA community argue from a stance of emotion and don’t really engage with the idea that promoting polyamory could massively reduce our overall utility as a movement.
Using language and framing like “what if you replace poly with gay” or “personally this makes me feel…” is not compatible with calculating the utility of a norm in EA. As stated elsewhere our goal is to better the world, not make ourselves happy or help EAs find life partners.
I understand this is a deeply personal topic but I would appreciate someone laying out a strong case for why polyamory and casual sex in the EA community actually leads to higher utility overall.
[This comment has been heavily edited since it got a response]
[So, I'm responding to a comment asking for the utility case about casual sex and poly. But I realized I focused exclusively on consensual casual sex within the community because that is the only piece I view as possibly worth engaging with, and it is what the post is about. I don't have notable-feelings about in-company relations or COI relations so I wouldn't go out of my way to defend them, and I do NOT think anti-poly-feelings hold water so I'm not wasting my time on that. There is no reason to feel the need to defend polyamory on ethical grounds. It's as ethical as monogamy, period. That said, I will push back on the lumping together of poly and casual sex in the first place. In my mind, the people who have the most casual sex historically have been like... college kids and people between relationships. These are both groups who will probably end up in monogamous relationships for life. I really don't get why people conflate casual sex and poly. Casual sex and open relationships? Sure, that's kind of their thing. Casual sex and single people (both mono and poly)? Sure, that's how a lot of modern dating gets started ... (read more)
So as a poly/poly-adjacent EA of many years I'll start by saying I strong upvoted your post and that insofar as a vision for a better tomorrow is concerned, your comment was poetry to my ears. I am very much aligned. Beautiful stuff.
However, this little nugget just keeps coming back to me and it irks me:
"On the other hand, we do poly and flexible sexual connections and those of us who are engaged in those things will even try and help you figure out if it's for you. Poly is fun. Sex is fun. Play and curiosity are fun. These are some of the major fun things our community does have going for it when comes to hedonism [and utopian way of life, over the rest of society.]"
I think you're making the poly-part of the community sound way more accessible than it actually is. You possibly have a blindspot here because you don't know what it is like to be on the outside trying to get in (?).
So here's the thing. If poly for you in the community is this fantastically amazing, then it is a tragedy of a vastly worse degree than many EAs might even realize that they can't be part of it.
I'm reminded of some study I read about years ago that showed that the mental health of people in third world coun... (read more)
Strongly agree with you on everything you wrote.
Fun-fact: even though I've been in multi-year poly relationships even I don't know if poly is right for me. I nominally identify as polyskeptic. This loosely means I believe more people than not are trying to be poly without realising that poly is sub-optimal for reaching their goals (whatever their goals are). I acknowledge I might be projecting here, because my dating life really only "took off" the way I wanted after I stopped trying to be poly and was nothing else other than "single."
That said, I do also have some empirical backing for my belief: I've spoken or know of at least 2-3 long-time poly EAs (i.e. poly for most of their dating life) that have since gone mono. I think the interesting thing was one of them saying they were shocked by how much more fulfilling mono was than they expected it would be given "poly-metaphysics" is what they strongly subscribed to before.
Which also speaks to a broader point: if you're poly you're interesting and get invited to speak on the Clearer Thinking podcasts etc etc. You gain status just due to your private relationship preference in EA, or such is my perception. Nobody cares if you're mono.
But, this is getting to a point where I need to go to work and I'd like to talk with you over video chat instead to continue - perhaps on EA Gather.town to make it public. DM'd you :)
These discussions are quite enlightening. I had a gut feeling this is how things are but seeing it clearly verbalized confirms my intuition.
and
To retain competent people you need to sustain a competitive atmosphere. If success is not just a function of impact / work but also a function of sexual liaisons / sexuality, it calls for a toxic culture because one feels compelled to sleep around to get ahead. Even if you're not doing it, your peers are.
Do you realize how many competent women will be driven out of EA if they are not open to have sexual liaisons? They're not offered a seat on the fast boats, not because they're not smart/hard working but because they're rejecting sex/ have different relationship preference.
How is that equality of opportunity? How is that inclusive?
"They're not offered a seat on the fast boats, not because they're not smart/hard working but because they're rejecting sex/ have different relationship preference. "
I think you've completely misunderstood what Ivy means by "fast boats." She is talking about fulfillment through intimate human connection. Not fulfillment through professional success. Makes more sense? By boats being "sped up" Ivy means that sexual positivity is allowing many people to experience a level of fulfilling human connection much sooner in their life than they otherwise might have. Ivy isn't talking about money and professional power here at all.
^ Moved this paragraph to top of comment because I thought it more important than the rest of my comment below:
I think you have a much higher burden of proof you haven't met yet to show your comment isn't a slippery slope fallacy you're invoking. I can go into why I think this looks like a slippery slope if you like or can you see why I'd see it that way?
"If success is not just a function of impact / work but also a function of sexual liaisons / sexuality"
Success and status are not synonymous. You can be high social status with everyone wanting to hear about your interesting polyamorous life, but at the same time you can be completely unsuccessful professionally. I can think of at least one EA woman off the top of my head who has been poly with multiple prominent EAs, who has social status because of this, and whose professional career hasn't benefited at all. If anything it hindered her professional life's growth because God knows being polyamorous means being an unpaid therapist to multiple people, which takes time and energy away from other endeavors.
Just because someone gains social status from something in some group that said group thinks is cool doesn't mean that this increased status translates into easier professional success in any meaningful way we need to be worried about.
People gain status in LGBTQ social circles if they come out as gay, especially if the coming out story makes for a compelling story (hell, in any social setting where you can tell a compelling story you gain status). I don't think this means we need to be worried that - for sake of argument - queer theatre productions are preferentially hiring actors with compelling stories to tell about their own private sexual history instead of hiring the most competent actors. They'll hire the most competent actors - they have tickets to sell. The EA community will hire the most competent women - they have a world to save.
I don't think we're anywhere close to needing to be concerned that the social status some in EA gain from talking about poly in a compelling way leads to preferential career treatment.
Because social status and professional success aren't synonymous and one isn't causally linked to the other, and because you appear to have misunderstood what is meant by "fast boats" I think all the chain of connections you've drawn aren't connected to anything I or Ivy have said at all.
Again begs the question, why status in a community oriented around “doing good” has anything to do with sexuality and is not uniformly distributed across all sexualities. Status in EA should be a function of doing good and should be sexuality-neutral, period.
I think you’re reframing on a technicality. Status and success are fairly related in many ways in the real world, because status opens doors and signals greater opportunity.
EA might want to hire competent women but competent women might not want to stick around if they're lower status due to factors outside of their control such as sexuality/race/etc.
I fully agree with this point, but I have a hard time drawing the line from what my and Ivy's topic of conversation is and this. What I think you're talking about is a problem where power dynamics is involved including mentor/mentee relationships and coworkers etc etc. This is a separate topic from the social status increase and feeling-dejected by it that Ivy and I are talking about.
I'll try an illustrate why with an example:
When I was at an EA party the other night a woman I had just met brought up the topic of orgies. I immediately found her more interesting and it opened the span of conversation to many other varied topics not even related to sexuality. She didn't break any norms, she didn't try to make people feel uncomfortable, she brought the topic up in a funny socially intelligent way. Her social status in the group in this setting increased. EAs trend towards being open-minded enough to talk about anything. Nothing wrong with this. Another pertinent example: When I met one of my closest EA-adjacent friends in the world for the first time: within 5 minutes we were both talking about the topic of suicide and our own personal struggles. Naturally I also immediately found her more interesting and it opened the span of conversation to many other varied topics not even related to suicide. Her openness increased her social status at said party where people were EAs and EA-adjacent open-minded types.
If these women had been at a conservative catholic social gathering their social status would have decreased with this behaviour. And there is nothing wrong with a different social setting having different status hierarchies.
I bring up this example because your comment begs the question: do you think it is problematic these women brought up these topics and that status hierarchies should be different in EA as a community, as a whole? Because we don't allow this kind of talk at EA conferences and it has finally come down (as it should) that where power dynamics are concerned this kind of talk between coworkers is likely to be problematic. But if what you're saying is that absent any professional setting, absent any coworker or mentee/mentor relationship, people who identify as "EAs" should still not grant anyone any social status for being interesting when the topic of sexuality is brought up... what you're effectively demanding is for thousands of people around the world to change their personality and become less sexually liberal and less open-minded.
Now mind you, when I was in my early twenties, I would have felt left out and dejected at these EA parties where people are freely talking about said sexual topics where I don't have any status because of factors outside of my control. I certainly would have felt like my dating life is some sort of proxy for not being good enough to be part of EA and that it was locking opportunities away from me. But how I feel and how things are are two different things.
It would have been wrong for me to make the leap from "I feel like I'm not high status and not good enough at this EA party" to "EAs wont hire me because I'm not high status enough and sexually liberal enough at their EA parties." I think this is the mistake you are making when you say "Status and success are fairly related in many ways in the real world, because status opens doors and signals greater opportunity." This is an obviously true statement in some contexts (e.g. mentor/mentee or grant/grantee relationships etc) and an obviously false statement in the context that Ivy and I are talking about.
That said, an obvious crux here that would convince me that we have a problem that requires action is if the number of women in EA does indeed dwindle or show a downward trend. I don't see that happening.
If anything the EA Community's gendar ratio over the years (including at EA casual socials) is trending towards becoming more women-heavy suggesting to me that women are feeling more comfortable as a whole in the movement rather than less so.
This doesn't mean that there haven't been incidents that have made some women feel unwelcome or unsafe. These are serious and need to be dealt with. But I'm unconvinced this is indicative of a larger trend. I talk about this view of mine more in this comment on a post by Maya saying they are sad, disappointed and scared of the EA community.
And guess what: she updated her initial negative view towards the EA community after considering the full context of things as you can see in her comment here:
Final quick point:
I believe sexuality can be a means of doing good. I think healthy sexuality and specifically talking about it has liberated thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, across history. It's as valid something to talk about as mental health as an EA cause area. If some are better at talking about it - even if it makes me feel uncomfortable and left out - it's ok for them to get social status for it.
This is not really entirely different from how when EAs talk about AI Alignment and get status for it that I also feel uncomfortable and left out for not being smart enough. Let their social status increase. It's my problem for feeling insecure, not theirs.
Likewise it is my problem for feeling like I "need to be better at being poly to be EA." This is something I genuinely feel. But I know I don't have to be poly to be fully welcome and I know the feeling is my own problem, not something that is a provably strong indictment against the EA community.
You're using the word sexually liberal / open-minded /interesting interchangeably. Catholic nuns can be interesting, monogamous people can be open minded. Private sexual preferences have nothing to do with interestingness or open minded ness.
I am not just talking about professional relationships. I'm also talking about what the community should value. Treating women differently as higher/lower status based on their sexuality is simply wrong. A lot of people are intentionally monogamous ( like me). Assigning them default lower status due to their private relationship preference is an awful practice that shouldn't be adopted community wide.
May be you're struggling to understand my point, so let me try to demonstrate why this sort of language is troubling. If you substitute the word "poly" with "white" ( ethnicity)/"male" (gender)/ "homosexual"(orientation) or other equivalents, this sentence sounds so wrong. I don't think that my choice / programming of sexuality is something that needs work, I love being monogamous, just like how I don't feel lesser because of my gender or ethnicity. All other things being equal, I want to be given equal status as someone else with a different sexuality, just like how I want the same status as a man / white person / a person of different nationality. That's all.
I am sorry you feel this way.
This is actually status working the right way. Status can be used as an incentive to promote behaviors we want from people because humans are great incentive maximizers. We want alignment researchers to gain status by producing high quality alignment work, because EA thinks this work is of high impact. Conversely, we want more people to aspire to become alignment researchers because this work is highly regarded / high status in EA. Unlike promoting certain type of technical AI work over others in EA, the community should not promote a certain type of sexuality over others. Let EA be about doing good alone, and decoupled from sexuality / race / ethnicity / orientation.
A valuable point I am glad you brought up so I can clarify that of course I believe Catholic nuns can be interesting and open minded and even sexually liberal in beliefs without practising. I'd hate to make anyone feel otherwise. I'm not using them interchangeably. I said "sexually liberal and less open-minded" indicating two separate things, not two synonymous things. Private sexual preferences can totally be related to someone's interestingness, sexually liberal mindset and open-mindedness and there is nothing wrong with that. Some things correlate and this is hardly controversial. And just because I acknowledge they correlate for me (interestingness is subjective after all) does not mean I'm saying other groups cannot be interesting, sexually liberal or open-minded. Likewise poly people can be dull and closed-minded as well.
People just aren't black-and-white enough to be easily categorized.
I kinda also just want to stop here and point out that it is a private relationship preferences, not sexual preferences. A lot of polyamorous people aren't even sexual. There are poly people that just sleep together cuddling, yet have full blown loving relationship polycules complete with horrendously messy breakups like any monogamous relationship.
I met a a poly man this year that - to my shock - is asexual. Mostly shocking because he presented to me as interested in sex like me but when I talked to one of the (many) women he is or has dated I found out he doesn't care much for sex.
And there is nothing wrong with me being more interested in this asexual poly man with multiple girlfriends (some of said girlfriends whom I might add are interested in sex) as a direct consequence of his relationship dynamics. Me assigning him more status in my social circles is no more a moral problem than traditionally monogamous people giving status to people who are traditionally married. Different social groups have different social status hierarchies. Both are as valid as any preference you might have where everyone is consenting to be a part of a social dynamic.
You cannot police people's preferences when nobody is being harmed. That is wrong. If there are zero problematic power dynamics (e.g. no professional relationships), consenting adults can do as they please. A woman, just like any man, has every right to assign status to different people based on whatever reasons they choose. We all do this instinctively and automatically. The problem is not that that treating women differently as higher/lower status based on whatever preference you might have is wrong - it is that doing so insensitively can hurt someone and that hurting others is wrong.
In eras long forgotten I've had brief but magical "poly-heaven" moments where I'm dating multiple people and everyone is happy and it is sheer bliss, but I don't go loudly proclaiming it all to all my friends who aren't happy with their dating lives. That would be incredibly insensitive of me. Just because someone is lower status on some subjective metric doesn't mean I want them to viscerally feel it. We should all be kindly helping lift each other up.
So I'll start by saying it is absolutely awful you feel like the EA community is assigning you lower status for being a monogamous woman. I have to ask though, isn't this something where you can look at the individuals who were this insensitive towards you and call them assholes without calling the EA community as a whole asshole-ish?
When I, as a poly person, hang out with my more conservative mono friends, they don't make me feel lower status. I'm their friend. However, I am lower status around them relative to their status hierarchy, especially when it comes to my viability as a mate. I accept and respect that I'm lower status around them.
A perhaps better example ("more conservative mono" is a bit too vague) is that when I a hang out with my death metal friends who have crazy tats and know everything about metal music and playing instruments I likewise have lower relative social status. And perhaps an illustrative example here is that yes, some in the death metal community do put more status on tattoos while some do not - which, like polyamory to EA, is wholly separate from what the core of the community is actually focused on, namely death metal music. I accept and respect that to some people within the metal community I'm lower status due to not having tattoos. They aren't being mean to me by assigning me lower status.
However, if a particular strictly monogamous person or death metal friend went out of their way to highlight or was insensitive about my relative low status, I'd call them an asshole. I would not however call the death metal community as a whole asshole-ish for assigning me lower status due to my private preference of not wanting to have tattoos. And I wouldn't say they are wrong to value tattoos and should only appraise my social status based on my love of death metal.
Assigning people status based on their private relationship preference is not something that is adopted community-wide in EA. Assigning status based on your tattoos is not something adopted community-wide in the death metal community. In both cases though there might be an epiphenomenon where the people you hang out within the EA/Death Metal community just happen to also be into polyamory/tattoos, but that doesn't mean their personal preference and the status hierarchies you experience because of those preferences are a community-wide practice.
You might immediately want to counter-argue that "the sum aggregate of statuses being assigned is what takes something from individuals practising it to it being a community-wide practice." In anticipating this counter-argument, let's look at my death metal analogy and see how it can come crashing down:
Let's assume that women with tattoos disproportionately find themselves in favourable career positions in the death metal community which is not relative to their actual career skill. Women without tattoos do not see this advantage. Let's assume this is a result of increased professional networking opportunities afforded to women with tattoos as a direct result of many high in power and status in the death metal community disproportionately giving social status to women with tattoos (And it is only due to this and NOT due to problematic romantic relationships with problematic power dynamics). Consequently we enter vicious feedback loop of women without tattoos feeling dis-empowered and unfair pressure to get tattoos to get ahead. And those that wont put up with this obvious bullshit just decide to leave the Death Metal Community altogether despite their talent.
I think we are now looking dead in the eye at something much more like what you're afraid of is happening in the EA community. You're saying that even absent problematic power dynamics and the appearance of nobody is being harmed, actually women are still being harmed.
So I think there are a few further steps we need to take before we start calling out the entire Death Metal community:
If things were true, however, we are no longer talking about individuals who are assholes but an entire community that has a deep rot.
But for sub-points I added I don't think any of them hold for the EA community.
Ergo, I think the correct response is to call out individuals. Which has happened in the EA community a bunch of times leading to said individuals being banned from the EA community (or other punishments that make sense)
Thank you for trying to make your point clearer. I appreciate this a lot. I'm beginning to think we have an unusually high inferential distance between us, but actually at the object-level we don't disagree on a lot at all.
So, actually, all those do occur and frequently. Certain black (ethnicity), women (gendar), homosexual (orientation) people have interesting stories to tell because of their experience tied to their ethnicity/gendar/orientation and get invited to podcasts because of it. So the sentence doesn't strike me as "wrong" per se. It strikes me as feeling wrong.
But, if it isn't just because of some protected characteristic, it is totally ok for people to assign others more social status, in part, because of protected characteristics. People assign people who are women/black/homosexual <insert-reason-here> more status because their experience as a <insert-category-here> is essential to whatever they have to share - e.g. it is something where they are oppressed
Likewise, polyamory is quite stigmatised and we don't really have many role-models or representation. So, when someone is speaking for us and they do so eloquently, it is only natural that we assign this person more status because they can do so - and doing so is intricately tied to their identity in being poly. Someone who isn't poly that can still "talk as well" wouldn't get the status. This would be problematic for the same reason that we don't assign status to a white man who can "talk as well" about the experience of being black as someone who is black.
I guess the question then is, if you possibly don't feel it wrong to assign a women more social status for being a good role-model for women as a woman, why do you feel uncomfortable when poly people are assigned more status for being a good role-model for poly people as a poly person themselves? This, like AI Alignment in the EA community, is status working in the right way and incentivising good and worthwhile behaviour in the poly community.
I might feel bad or left out due to this, but that is not really that different from a woman feeling bad and left out when they compare themselves to other women who have gained social status in part for sharing their experiences as women.
Also I just want to explicitly state I didn't mean for anything I wrote to imply I think your programming of sexuality is something that needs work. I'll also add, in case you're worrying whether you've offended me, nothing you've written thus far has made me feel like you think my programming of sexuality is something I need to work on.
And some people want to meet more people who have cool tattoos or more people who are polyamorous. Humans are going to throw out incentives to get what they want. The answer is not to quash it, it is to teach people to do so maturely, tactfully and with kindness. I like big-tent EA so people with near any preference might also like doing EA stuff. They might even be EA leaders. But we shouldn't let their preferences automatically lead us to conclude that is the preference of the community as a whole.
And maybe I'm too woke but I'd caution against trying to decouple doing good from sexuality / race / ethnicity / orientation completely. A full understanding of people's identities, I think, is important to doing good better. A sex-race-ethnic-orientation blind approach might invalidate people's experiences, especially those that are marginalized.
For anyone that actually read this whole damn comment, if you are in the Bay Area for the next month I'd love to meet you at the EA Taco Tuesday meetup and give you an appreciative high five, lol, even if you disagree with me. I'll be highly talkative excitable guy in the panda hat.
Nice of you, but I do not accept or respect having lower status in EA due to being monogamous. They are being mean to me and thousands of monogamous women they're recruiting / want to recruit / who are dedicated EAs by assigning us lower status. I am not willing to participate in a community where I have lower status due to factors I didn't choose (race/gender/sexuality), and I'd think many self respecting others will also not put up with what you're calling "relative lower status". No fuck that. We want equality, equal respect, equal opportunity.
I am not calling the whole EA community asshole-ish, but it is big problem here because there are many such individuals. There's no push back against these people that I'm seeing widely either. I'm also confused you think individuals who assign me lower status are assholes after saying above yourself that may be I should be ok with being assigned lower status like you're ok being lower status elsewhere.
I'm sorry but the death metal-tattoo analogy got lost on me. You can get a tattoo if you chose to, many people can't change their sexual preference, so it's a false comparison. It's like you're saying white people have higher status and you should be ok with that, but I can't paint my face white and become a white person if I wanted to. Secondly tattoos are nothing like sex. Sex involves two people ( often) and conveys a relationship where you can benefit a higher status individual. Your getting a tattoo is not pleasurable to high status men. I do not want to get into the frame of arguing based on this analogy because the analogy doesn't model many complications.
If you recruit more women than you hurt and if you drive out and silence the ones who speak up, number of women will grow but that doesn't mean concerns of women are taken seriously. I'm not saying this is happening but your logic is flawed in many ways. Your implied casuality, ie, evidence that women's numbers are growing means concerns of women are taken seriously, is false.
Bay area EA has around 60% poly, so I'd say monogamists are the minority here.
Your original statement said "if you're poly you're interesting and would be invited to speak on podcasts" so matter-of-factly. That is very different from "if you're a good role-model for poly people as a poly person...". Good role models should get status, I agree, but that's not what you said. The equivalent of what you initially said would be " if you're a man you're interesting and would be invited to speak on clearer thinking podcast etc".
Inverted casual reasoning. But if we look carefully at your first quote the order of events is being poly gets status that converts into the opportunity to speak on podcasts. But in your justification, sharing experiences gets status. Sharing experiences should get more status, but just being poly/mono shouldn't. Being a good role model for monogamous people and sharing that experience should also get higher status, but tell me dear friend, are they getting invited to podcasts? I am amazing at monogamy, the absolute best, do get me an invite. Or are these opportunities gate-kept?
Have you heard of the netflix quote "The actual company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go." Almost all top rationalists are poly, many top EAs are as well. >50% of bay area EA is poly while base population rate is 15% or less. Tell me this is not a preference of the community once again :) Tell me what monogamous people need to do to rise the ranks.
To push back on this slightly, I do think the [replace poly with gay] intuition pump works though I think I'll talk about [replace poly with Christian] so as to use a less contentious example. Imagine we found out that Christian EAs might be worse? Would we ask for a community-wide norm against them? I think the idea makes me pretty queasy.
My norm here is that to infringe upon people's liberty, you need to be much more certain than other kinds of proposals, perhaps that the benefits 5 - 10x the harms.
I am not sure of that in this case, and I don't think anyone other than @HaydenW has attempted a quantification of this. I don't think we know what women in EA want, let alone EAs in general.
And likewise I think I could make a utility case, that we are trying to think clearly about things and that we are going to run into culture war concerns eventually and that we should learn to think well about them. I'm open to being wrong her, but while "politics is the mindkiller" if you get big enough, you need to engage with politics and at that point, having engaged positively with mindkilling topics might be positive.
All this said I'm pretty open to the idea that we should insitute such a norm (against kinds of casual sex) but I think we should be much more confident than we are and I'd like to see some number and what a representative sample of EAs/possible EAs think.
Is anyone suggesting a "community-wide norm against" any particular group of people?
The original post's recommendation has a disparate impact on different groups, which is relevant but not the same as a group-targeted norm.
Strongly agree
Like you say it seems like many people draw a line when it comes to utility between parts of our life that can seem deeply personal (relationships), and aspects of our life that seem less personal (What job I should do, where I should give my money, what cause is best). Perhaps this is a reasonable distinction and we should be drawing that line, but I would like to see it better articulated rather than assumed.
I appreciated @Nathan Young's comment above which perhaps articulates some of this difficulty. "I feel sad/judged/ frustrated reading this, though that's not to say it's wrong."
i feel like the "what if you replace poly with gay" thing is saying, like
empirically something (some kind of instinctual conservatism towards sexual norms) caused people to say the same things about gay people.
so something like instinctual-conservatism-towards-sexual-norms when it's ~adults doing consensual things is a heuristic that failed in the past and is probably not reliable
if you want to interfere with my private life to that extent there's a very strong burden of proof upon you
also happier EAs are EAs that are better at doing EA work, generally speaking
I feel sad/judged/ frustrated reading this, though that's not to say it's wrong.
Some thoughts
adding things if I think of them
I strongly disagree with this. I've dated ~ 10 people in my life. I have also been sexually assaulted (not by someone in the community). I would quickly and without hesitation take a trade to experience 1 rape like the one I experienced (non-violent) in return to keep any of my happy relationships I've had in my life (about half of which I think wouldn't have formed absent what the author is calling "sleeping around"). For my best relationship (which initially formed via "sleeping around" and I don't think could easily have done so otherwise, and is now the love of my life), I would trade dozens of rape, easily, for the joy and love my partner brings me.
For sexual harassment, the ratio is even more skewed (obviously). Maybe I'm unusual, but this doesn't feel personally like a hard trade at all on the current margin.
tbh I suspect that "stuck in a long term abusive relationship" is a more important tail risk than sexual assault and "sleeping around" helps people defend against it (by developing reasonable expectations of what relationships should be like)
I feel by those numbers EAs shouldn't be dating each other at all?
And possibly with those numbers humans shouldn't be dating in general, ignoring EA?
yeah
I mean, empirically women do choose to go on dates, so I'm going to trust the revealed preferences here...
Surely it makes more sense to compare the upside-- someone forming a long lasting and loving relationship.
Maybe that's extreme, but taking a balance of outcomes I doubt it would be 1/100.
Also strange that you chose to say 1/100 and also 100x as many people-- surely if you have high confidence in those numbers then that would balance out by definition? Or is the somewhere where you think this sort of scale insensitivity is valid?
HaydenW, thank you.
Firstly, for trying to be a good feminist - I honestly think you should get points for trying.
Secondly, for making it plain how ridiculous these arguments are. I've seen a lot of reasoning on this forum recently that goes:
more sex = more harassment & assault therefore polyamory and "sleeping around" and friends with benefits and any other form of sexual relationship I think I can get away with policing in 2023 = bad (...but obviously sex before marriage and serial monogamy and any other form of serious, "proper" sexual relationship especially marriage - you know, the ones that actually count because they don't just make people happy they're just good you know? = good)
Convenient how the numbers keep working out only in favour of socially sanctioned forms of relationship.
"Sex is between one person and one other person when both people are working towards marriage and not having sex with other people in between" is a lot better than "Sex can only happen within marriage which is between one man and one woman for life," but there's still some way to go.
What is EA coming to when I feel even more slut-shamed here than I do with my family lol.
The irony is that it seems to mostly be coming from the political left.
It's certainly true that "Failed attempts at sleeping with someone can often lead to awkwardness or uncomfortability." However, this is also true of successful attempts. "No attempts" isn't a reasonable solution.
If there is a taboo the EA community would benefit from breaking it's the notion that something being awkward/uncomfortable is evidence, in and of itself, that something that has transpired is bad, or someone did something wrong. Well intentioned people acting in good faith can often lead to awkward situations even when nobody did anything explicitly wrong.
There's obviously a continuum of behaviors from very benign to potentially very serious, it's very difficult to escape nuance in these cases. Life isn't always so simple.
I am opposed to any norm that asks different behavior of men than women.
Some EA parties (including some EA Global afterparties) involve cuddle puddles or hot tubs. The post made me wonder if that is also problematic. I've never heard anyone say that but some people might feel pressure to comply in order to fit in and possibly make important connections. It also probably increases the probability of various problems like touching without consent. Such things might also repulse some new commers from EA, especially after all the scandals. Perhaps people should consider whether such things are appropriate for a given gathering a bit more?
Since some people here have shared their personal relevant experience and mine has been different to any of the ones I’ve read, I thought I’d share mine.
I have been in EA as a local group organizer and on-again-off-again student for 7 years. I’ve been to 5 in person conferences and many adjacent social events (after parties etc.) I’m a young woman, and am pretty used to attention from guys. Before creating a dating doc I had been asked out by EA guys four times. Three were very nice and respectful, and were in no position of social or professional status over me. One was in a position of social status and pressured me into making out after I had already turned him down—I certainly doubt he was the kind who would have refrained from doing this if there were a norm against sleeping around in EA, since he was a real Transgressor of Norms. (he’s since lost his status and demoted himself to EA-adjacent, in part because of other harassment allegations).
After I created a dating doc I was approached by someone who I had long admired greatly and who I absolutely considered high status. This was for the purpose of perhaps forming a serious relationship which certainly could not have been po... (read more)
I've felt quite saddened and distressed by this post. I deeply agree that it is right and beneficial to be more careful, restrained and generally err on the side of caution in romancing/dating, when there are work or power imbalance considerations.
But at the same time (in section "What I mean by sleeping around"), this post presents views that are in line with contemporary mainstream norms of sex-negativity and soft poliphobia . To quote the post itself:
And I think presenting romancing/sex as something negative or potentially negative, unless it happens in a monogamous and serious relationship (or in setting intentioned for leading to one) is unfortunately similar way of stigmatisation.
I'm sorry you feel that way. For clarity's sake, I don't think sex is "bad", but instead that it is often "messy", and that there are costs with messiness within the community. I think at the very least, more people should consider the potential messiness here in their personal decisions. And while I think there can be large messiness involved in being polyamorous with multiple people from within the same tight-knight community, I don't think the post is as harsh towards polyamory/nonmonogamy as your comment suggests.
tbh I'm not exactly sure you ... understand poly culture here?
like it feels like you have primary relationships filed under "serious" relationships and secondary relationships filed under "unserious" which like ... doesn't really get it imo
for me "good friends and people who i'd like to be friends with" is pretty closely correlated with "people i'd go out of my way to hook up with" and it feels like you have decided that a for me is an normal human way to show affection is off limits or inadvisable?
i think there's a third thing that's kind of reasonable to object to which is guys in EA hitting on women in EA for no more reason than that they are women in EA, which is fair enough.
Is it true that other successful institutions generally have norms against dating within them? (I don't want to use the term "sleeping around", which feels derogatory in this particular context). My company only prohibits dating people in your chain of command, and I am certainly aware of relationships within the company that have not caused any objections or issues that I know of. Though my company is tens of thousands of people, with thousands in my building, so maybe it doesn't qualify as tight-nit. I also haven't perceived any of my friend groups as having a norm against dating. Family seems obviously different, because there is that incest norm, and that impossibility of stepping away on the off chance that things go really badly. Though again, maybe you have a family with different dynamics - to the best of my knowledge, I've never met a cousin's spouse's anything. Anyway, point is, I don't think it's actually true that the rest of society operates this way.
Varies by context and institution. In my experience, I don't perceive any norms against "serious dating" of people of roughly equal rank, but a lot of casual sex with officemates would cause some people to question your judgment. Activities with someone outside of the legal department (I'm a lawyer) wouldn't raise any norm issues unless the other person was very senior.
You think that dating a coworker or whatever without sleeping with them is less likely to cause problems than the reverse? That does not ring true to me at all. It does ring of Christian purity culture, which I would not have expected to encounter in EA.
Thank you for posting this Patrick Sue Domin. I agree wholeheartedly that at the very least, sleeping around in the community under the circumstances stated should be seen as something that is outside of a norm and therefore necessary to do only with great caution. I’m a woman who has in the past enjoyed sleeping around and would have potentially been saddened to have slightly fewer options in the EA community (my own initiation notwithstanding). However, I think it’s important to note that I think that this loss is worth it to alleviate some of the discomfort that women can feel in this community, which applies even more to younger and more vulnerable women than me.
I also want to note the importance of age, which wasn’t discussed explicitly in the post. If you have more than a 6 year age gap (depending on your age group of course) or are in different stages of life (undergrads and college graduates come to mind) then you are in a position of power over that person. When I was in my early 20s and younger, I had several interactions with people where I didn’t realize that they were hitting on me because they seemed like kind, reasonable people and the power differential was ve... (read more)
Wanted to comment that, as a woman quite involved in EA, I relate to your post. I didn't initially find being hit on that demoralizing, but as time progressed I've been feeling more and more like many men in EA are simplifying a good chunk of my existence to my appearance, and this has severely harmed my view of myself. I have consciously stepped back from the community so I can remind myself that my value is not in my sexual appeal, and build my self-esteem back up. Ironically, in some ways, being involved in the community (as opposed to holding EA ideals from afar) has made me less focused on impact and more focused on sexuality. I still find the community valuable and want to continue engaging in it, but I can also absolutely see why many women would completely cut themselves off after the experiences I have had.
Thanks for your perspective! I agree with OP that unfortunately many people similar to yourself either engage shallowly with EA or bounce off after they realize they’re being hit on a bunch. I’ve talked to a couple of people in my personal life who have expressed that exact issue when I tried to get them to join our local group.
I’m surprised by the amount of people in the forum who basically react “too bad” to this idea. I hope we can get better and find a happy medium for people.
Note that aggressively seeking a serious monogamous relationship within EA is also problematic. For example, it might be a bad idea to ask out every other EA woman you had a nice 30 minute conversation with (e.g., see this comment).
I feel like there's an implicit prediction of something like [communities with intelligent people which have lots of causal sex are going to be worse at dealing with sexual assualt/harrassment] and I kind of want to note my reaction being 'given my personal experience i dont really believe this and all else equal I would feel safer in such communities'
like, if i had to point to an exact mechanism:
- you only really have so many dumb mistakes to make and I would prefer it if, unlike Owen, people could get these out of their system while young and not yet in leadership positions.
-there's a benefit of like, better gossip networks and more accumulated wisdom that could be passed on to the next generation, so they can make fewer dumb mistakes.
but mostly I'm going off empirical experience
I'll agree that there are tough problems around seniority (maybe err on the side of, the less senior person should initiate) and gender balance (this seems hard to me, although I think poly-within-the-community helps on the margin?)
I don't have many strong opinions on this topic, but one I do have and think should be standard practice is recusing oneself from decisions involving current or former romantic partners.
That means not being involved in hiring processes and grantmaking decisions involving them, and not giving them references without noting the conflict of interest. This is very standard in professional organisations for good reason.
I would like a proper poll of EAs and what they want here. In particular how they trade off sexual freedom and being harmed. I am very uncertain what this poll would show.
Agree. I would also want a poll of EA-adjacent people of their view of EA here or people who went to one EA meetup and never came back, if it could be done, since I think the community right now may have a selection effect inflating support for sleeping around.
One set says: OCB overstepped the mark severely, he should have known better, I am devastated, this is a huge problem that needs to be solved promptly at a community level. We need to kill our darlings, like polyamory and sleeping around in the community as a norm.
Another set says: I refuse to accept any sort of restriction on who I flirt with/sleep with/date in the EA community, even a restriction that would have prevented OCB from having a flirty relationship with the woman in question.
(I could be reading it all wrong; tell me what you see.)
I think you're misstating what the post actually says, but
seems wrong. The one poll shows overwhelming support for the recommendation.
I think the side that doesn't want to give up sleeping around is being louder in the comments but if you look at agreevotes of the more prominent comments on each side, the side that's agreeing with this post is seeing much more support than the side that's against it.
I upvoted the post because I like that it tries to tackle power dynamics and sources of problems related to sex, which the community clearly has.
That said, I don't actually agree. I don't think policing people's relationship choices (including casual ones) is necessary - or productive - for preventing harassment etc.
Perhaps the most important point is that out of the sample of comments I've read so far, most were written by men - and I'm much more interested to hear what women in EA think here.
Poll - Agreevote to agree
Do you agree with this recommendation?
"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."
Feels like that depends on the person. I imagine for some it might reduce by like 20x filor others almost none.
I know this is quite a cold way to talk about something so intimate but it feels relevant. I feel scared doing it though
Realistically, I think many EAs have a much easier time sleeping around in EA than outside of EA. Unfortunately, this is probably particularly true for people that are high status in EA or socially clumsy.
I feel happy you wrote this.
I worry that this is not very incentive compatible however. It would presumably create strong incentives for men to identify as only EA-adjacent, not work for EA orgs, not publicly donate to effective charities, so as to exempt themselves from the rule.
It also seems like it could worsen selection pressures. If more well behaved males abide by such a rule, this would make things easier for less moral guys by reducing competition.
https://slate.com/culture/1996/07/more-sex-is-safer-sex.html
Traditionally this incentive issue has been partially solved by stigmatizing those who violate the norm, but that doesn't work as well if the violators are not part of the community. The other part of the traditional solution is the stigmatization of women who accept such approaches, because each one who does so imposes negative externalities on other women by encouraging cadish behavior.
Yes, although historically groups like villages, churches and ethnic groups have been keen to encourage members to date and marry each other.
I agree with you here. I didn’t realize how dearly people held the ability to sleep around within the community. I do worry that this setup creates bad incentives where people who want casual sex are far more highly motivated to go out to in person events, which means a disproportionate number of any local groups may have quite a few people seeking casual sex.
This is a very bad state of affairs for trying to grow the movement, especially if we want more “normal” people or women.
Being able to have the kind of valuable interpersonal connections that are good for me (i.e. poly relationships) is just more important to me than EA is. It's just one of my hobbies, and I'm not interested in subordinating my life to norms within them interfere with good parts of my life. EA does select for people who are unusually value-aligned with me along some axes, which is important to me romantically, but if it becomes less accepting of poly / more conventionally conservative, I'll be less aligned with the resulting community and will likely leave and focus on other interests.
I feel like I want to comment, for people that know me, that this wasn't me (same first name, the auhtor's description could probably be me, it's the type of thing I'd say (this isn't me necessarily endorsing the post)).
That only holds if these people aren't going to sexually harass anyway. Buy if they are just having sex outside EA instead then the harms have just been shifted and the question is more about people wanting to be a part of the movement.
What would your suggestion to minimise harms but maximise benefits be. And it seems worth considering even quite onerous things because I imagine the people in Austin might be willing to sacrifice a lot.
What about a way that people can opt in to bring hit on.
Many things that would be problems between EAs would not be with other people you might hook up with. Especially, the ability to recommend people for EA jobs or funding is irrelevant to almost everyone in the world but very important to many EAs.
I wrote some thoughts on this + the whole related conversation here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4towuFeBfbGn8hJGs/amber-dawn-s-shortform?commentId=bHmWcHYnQkaGWjbcQ
I wrote some thoughts on this + the whole related conversation here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4towuFeBfbGn8hJGs/amber-dawn-s-shortform?commentId=bHmWcHYnQkaGWjbcQ