After the
Time
article on sexual harassment and abuse within Effective Altruism
and
Owen
Cotton-Barratt's resignation there's been a lot of discussion
around the extent to which EA culture did or didn't contribute. This
has included proposals that EA try to be
more
conventional, such as discouraging
polyamory
or
hookups
within the community. At which point others naturally
bristle: what happens between consenting adults is no one else's
business, and it's wrong to try and influence others here. For
example:
I don't see any way you could meaningfully "address" the work/social
overlap without trying to get people not to date, live with or
befriend people they otherwise would have dated, lived with, or
befriended. And if you put it in those terms, it seems messed up,
right?
Or:
I will not be a part of community which treats conscious and
consensual behavior of adult people as their business.
Or:
Perhaps consider minding your own business about whether or not
consenting adults sleep together.
Now, the people who wrote these have more nuanced views than these
quotes suggest, and I think we don't actually disagree much when it
comes to views on detailed situations. Still, I think it's worth
getting some of that nuance out there.
Specifically, consent isn't always enough. Even consent plus a mature
awareness of power
dynamics isn't always enough. Consider a case of someone whose
job it is to direct funding for a foundation sleeping with one of the
people who runs an organization they might recommend
funding. And let's further imagine that the grantmaker and grantee
both have a sophisticated understanding of power dynamics, great
communication, solid introspection, strong self-confidence, and the
best of intentions. Even then, this has corrosive effects on the
community, including:
Other grantees would then feel pressure to sleep with grantmakers,
leading to bad interactions, including 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 with unsavory intentions may choose to become
grantmakers because a norm of "it's ok to sleep with grantees" is very
vulnerable to abuse.
These are harmful enough that we can't leave it to the couple to
determine whether their roles as grantmaker/grantee and lovers are
compatible. That sometimes someone's role conflicts with a
relationship they would like to have is unfortunate, but not always
avoidable and not unique to this case: other examples of romantic
relationships with similar issues include ones between managers and
their reports or professors and their students.
Organizations handle these conflicts in a range of ways, often
depending on how they think about the effects of these relationships
on others and whether they can satisfactorily mitigate the
professional consequences of a particular relationship. For example:
A university might consider the initiation of any relationships
between students and professors to have a harmful effect on their
culture, and that students should be able to trust that professors are
interested in them only academically. If they prohibit them, a professor would need to choose between avoiding such
relationships and resigning their post.
A large funder might require disclosure and recusal: when a
relationship relevant to a grantmaker's work comes up they work with
their manager to transfer responsibilities so that the grantmaker is
no longer influencing outcomes for the grantee. This is also how
larger organizations usually handle employee relationships that
interact with formal power.
A small funder might not be able to do this, perhaps
because they only have one grantmaker in an area. Options for
handling this could include committing not to fund the relevant
organization, the grantmaker leaving, or the grantmaker passing up the
relationship. All of these have significant downsides. Smaller
organizations, or specialized departments within larger organizations,
can have similar issues that would keep them from being able to
mitigate the effects of an employee relationship.
There are also other areas where we accept people have a valid
interest in discouraging some kinds of consensual interpersonal
behavior, where power dynamics and conflicts of interest are not the
concerns. For example, norms against cheating in relationships,
sleeping with your bandmates, or hookups within a military unit.
As I wrote above, I don't think this is especially controversial. But
it shows that the question is what norms we should have and not
whether it is legitimate to have norms beyond consent. This is the approach
we need when considering the actually controversial cases.
On the more specific question of what norms to have, I don't know.
This requires weighing harms like the departure of people frustrated
by excessive romantic attention, abuse of ambiguous power, loving
relationships that don't happen, exclusion of unconventional thinkers,
and delay in ejecting jerks. I think the discussion has shown both
that we didn't have much agreement on what norms we'd been
operating under and that we have a wide range of opinion on what's
reasonable behavior. I'm hoping we can get closer to figuring out what
sort of norms would best make a thriving community that supports all
of us in making the world better.
Disclosure: my wife is on the Community
Health Team at the Centre for Effective Altruism. I haven't run
this post by her and don't know her views.
I think I found the crux.
I treat EA as a community. And by "community" I mean "a group of friends who have common interests". In the same time, I treat some parts of EA as "companies". "Companies" have hierarchy, structure, money and very obvious power dynamics. I separate the two.
I'm not willing to be a part of community, which treats conscious and consensual behavior of adult people as their business (as stated under the other post). In the same time, I'd be more than happy to work for a company which has such norms. I actually prefer it this way, as long as they are reasonable and not i.e. sexist, polyphobic and so on.
I think a tricky part is, EA is quite complex with this regard. I don't think the same rules should apply to interest groups, grant-makers, companies. I think a power dynamic between grant-maker and grantee is quite different from the one which applies to university EA group leader and group's member. I believe, that the community should function as a group of friends, and companies/interest groups should create their own, internal rules. But maybe it won't work for the EA. Happy to update here, I, however, want to mention that for a lot of people EA is their whole life and the main social group. I would be very careful while setting the general norms.
(When it comes to "EA celebrities", I think it's a separate discussion, so I'm not mentioning them here as I would like to focus on community/workplace differences and definitions first. )
EA is my community, most of my friends are in EA, and it is so much fun. But if I had to choose between EA as "professional" or "fun," I would choose professional in a heart beat. What has brought us together is a commitment to doing good, and doing good in the world, not personal enjoyment, should be the guiding star for choices we make in regard to the EA community.
If a norm is important for a professional community to have, even if it means that community might end up being less fun for me, we should absolutely institute that norm.
Just wanted to clarify, I don't think that the resistance to the stricter norms is only about "wanting to have more fun". I agree with your comment. Yet, I think you are missing at least couple of important aspects of the situation.
Can you share more about what important aspects you think I'm missing? My best guess is you're reading my use of the word "fun" narrowly (which is probably poor word choice on my part), thinking I mean something like sex/parties/drugs. So to clarify, what I mean is "personal enjoyment" which can include things like meaningful relationships. I obviously like personal enjoyment and want more of it for myself and others. But when, on a community level, we find personal enjoyment in conflict with doing good in the world, I want the community to choose doing good.
But that might not be what you're saying I'm missing.
Hm, I understand now. I, however think that things like meaningful relationships are not a matter of personal enjoyment but mental health. So for me the price of what you call "the norms which diminish fun" would be much higher and may actually minimize community's impact in the long term. We already have the issue with burnouts.
Hm, I also struggle with mental health and I know it's hard. I absolutely do not want to suggest that your mental health is not important. I do want to know more about what you view as the primary purpose of the community. While improving mental health is a value of mine, I do not see EA's primary function as a place to improve one's mental health. I think that can often be a benefit of EA, and I think EA has a duty to not worsen people's mental health. But the main purpose of EA is not to improve the mental health of the community members. If that makes sense.
Friends and meaningful relationships are absolutely important to have in one's life, and I derive so much value from the meaningful relationships I have within EA. But there are many ways to both (1) develop meaningful relationships within EA that don't violate any of the norms people have suggested and (2) develop meaningful relationships with people outside of EA. It might mean some people have to change some of their behavior, but not in a way that would ruin their life. It might limit the number of potential romantic options, but it doesn't preclude you from romance altogether. If we see the primary purpose of EA as doing good, and not as a place to develop meaningful relationships, setting norms that limit certain types of conduct is reasonable.
I didn't take your comment personally :). I think it will be very hard for many EA people to find meaningful relationship outside the crowd for many various reasons, pretty unusual worldview being one of them. As for meaningful relationships who don't violate the norms - sure. They will do it also . But who people fall in love or desire with is not guided by "community norms" but biology ect. Yeah, we can control ourselves - but to the certain extent. So too strict or unskillfully placed norms don't solve the issue but end up in shame, frustration and lying. Which does everything but contributes to mental health and effectiveness. So I am pro loose norms and constant work on emotional maturity, communication and systemic, flexible and adjustable intervention systems.
In my oppinion - a very attractive compromise which many other cultures adopt is to keep everythign you love about the deep relationships except for the sex. People having sex with each other is uniquely prone to causing harm+drama+conflict.
I don't think we'll ever see a TIME article exposing the problem that someone in EA had too many people offer to help them move house, or that community events were filled with too much warmth and laughter, or that people offered too much emotional support to someone when they lost a parent.
More friendship and loyalty and support and love and fun and shared moments of vulnerability is fine! Just leave out the sex part!
I don't think this fixes all of it. For example, imagine someone describing being expected to load their boss' personal belongings into a moving truck, on a weekend, with pizza and beer for compensation.
Also, many people will want to participate in EA professionally but not socially, and the stronger the community is socially the harder that will be.
Which isn't to say that we should avoid doing nice things for each other and having fun together, but it doesn't free us from thinking about how people might feel pressured.
Agreed, but there is something -- if not uniquely, then at least particularly -- problematic with respect to people feeling pressured with respect to sexuality. Both that sexuality is pretty central to personal self-determination and that the harms from sexuality pressure are more concentrated on a minority-within-EA population.
We should be careful to avoid dismissing a simple easy solution to a real problem because it might fail to solve an imaginary one. Do you really think the community currently has a problem with bosses pressuring their direct reports to help them move house?
How do you know we don't live in a world where >90% of the problem is specifically due to people having sex / trying to have sex with each other? What would convince you that sex is the culprit, rather than interpersonal relationships in general?
If you take this as your point of departure, I think that’s worth highlighting that the boundaries between community and organizations can become very blurry in EA. Projects pop up all the time and innocuous situations might turn controversial over time. I think those examples with second-order partners of polyamorous relationships being (more or less directly) involved in funding decisions are a prime example. There is probably no intent or planning behind this but conflicts of interest are bound to arise if the community is tight knit and highly “interconnected”.
While I think that you have a good starting point for a discussion here, I would expect the whole situation to be not as clear cut and easy as your argument suggests. So, I really agree with the post that getting to a state most people are happy with will require some muddling through.
Yeah, totally agreed that it's not that clear and easy. My comment was meant to be a starting point. I purposefully kept it pretty short and focused on one, easy conclusion, as the whole issue is super complex, I don't have it well-thought through and I'm probably missing a lot of information and context.
I think however, that the whole discussion is over-focused on sex and polyamory, and not focused enough on other interpersonal connotations which for sure happen in a community like that (friendships? living together? Ex-partners?).
Agree that the discussion has been overfocused on polyamory. However, I think sex in general has an element than friendship or platonically living together generally lack. I don't think we have seen many, if any, stories about power differentials contributing to significantly problematic situations in those areas in the same way we've heard about problematic situations involving sex. So while I think all of these interactions can cause conflict of interest, the harassment risk seems much higher with sex.
What problematic situations involved sex? Or do you mean "sexuality" ?
Somewhat related, I really liked these two posts:
Also (though I'm not sure I fully agree): https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/on-demandingness-polyamory-and-effective
I mostly like and agree with Ozy's post (thanks for linking!) though it's a bit unclear which norm proposals it is objecting to. For example, if it's the "don't be poly" norm then totally, but the "sleep around less within the EA community on the margin" then it's less convincing. (Still may be right in this case, but it would help to address it specifically.)
Yeah, broadly agree (and feel confused about how much I feel like it applies to me personally - like, I feel reasonably comfortable making personal sacrifices in how I organize my personal life for EA reasons, and I imagine others do, too, including with the frame of personal obligation. I just think it's can also be quite healthy for people to have a more protective attitude towards their private life - noting that Ozy points to a lot of constraints on people's personal behaviors they are with and also that depending on what Ozy means I'm not necessarily in full agreement with the piece).
I feel like there's also an ambiguity in the term "community" being used to both mean:
A lot of the posts about EA community issues seems to be implicitly about the stereotypical "people who go to Bay Area house parties" community. Which is not representative of the wider community of people who might attend EA conferences, work/volunteer in EA orgs or donate.
Good point! I'm trying to talk about the second category here, though that does include the first to some extent.
A bit of side topic here, but thank you very much Jeff for writing this post and making an effort to understand everyone, structure this discussion and come to some agreement/conclusions. I see a lot of value in it. Plus, it was very comforting for me personally, as some previous talks left me quite upset.
I don't think that's fair as a general rule. EA group leaders have access to opportunities that they can deny to group members, such as recommending who attends paid retreats with EA funders, or who has leadership opportunities in coming years. They may not actually abuse the power, and I expect such abuse to be rare, even if subconscious bias is very likely - but either way, it's impossible for the group leaders to fairly evaluate the perception of other members or potential members. It's also probably not the right place to have 21 year old students make judgement calls.
So what should the rules be? Banning relationships? Requiring people to leave leadership positions? Disclosure? And before I answer, I want to ask how it feels for these to be proposed.
I think that the reflection is a critical issue. Because my answer is that any of these would go much too far. I suspect that simply adding a few cautions to handbooks and ensuring that everyone has access to an external ombudsman to register concerns would be enough. But I worry that instead of viewing it as a tradeoff, where discussion of rules is warranted, and and instead of seeing relationships as a place where we need caution and norms, it's instead viewed from a lens of meddling versus personal freedom, and so it feels unreasonable to have any rules about what consenting adults should do. But that lens seems far worse for community health than openly acknowledging that consent is only one part of the question.
To me, at least, the current suggestions (in top level posts) do feel more like 'meddling' than like reasonable norms. This is because they are on the one hand very broad, ignoring many details and differences - and on the other hand don't seem to me like they'll solve our problems.
For example, I almost agree with you regarding relationships between uni group leaders and members - I think disclosure (to whom?) might be reasonable, but anything beyond that wouldn't be. On the other hand, I think the main factor here, which these suggestions ignore, isn't just the difference in power that comes from the hierarchy, but rather the difference in seniority. I'm much more worried about people who have an established place in the community starting relationships with newcomers, because it seems much easier to cause harm there.
I don't think there were suggestions, really. From what the post actually said, "Organizations handle these conflicts in a range of ways... On the more specific question of what norms to have, I don't know."
But in defense of rules, I think it's fine to make rules to deal with the normal cases, and then you tell people you expect them to use their judgement otherwise. Because clearly power differentials are more complex than whether someone has an established place, or is older, or is more senior in an organization. For example, when I was working for 1DaySooner, I was technically junior to a number of people who worked there, but I still had much more community influence than they did. I've also been in plenty of situations where people significantly younger than me were in more senior roles. Rules that try to capture all the complexity would be stupid, but so would having no rules at all.
I read Guy as talking about the top level posts Consider not sleeping around within the community and EA's weirdness makes it unusually susceptible to bad behavior but, yes, if he's talking about me I haven't actually gotten far enough to figure out what sort of suggestions I might make.