This is one of those situations where I'd prefer to see the gender and background of the commenter before reading the comment so I can understand and adjust for their bias.
Because that's what allows you to really estimate the epistemic status of the commentary, and not what seems to be logic/rationality behind it. I imagine it's not that you used to think but I think that's how confirmation bias works in cases like this.
So: I am a woman, I had experience of abuse of power dynamics and manipulation of the ideas of saving the world + exploitation by high-status men within the rational and EA community. Watched it from the inside (not in the Bay Area even), I can confirm most of the general points in their dynamics.
Society and its set of dynamics are so varied that you simply cannot make enough adjustments (if you really want to maintain the status quo).
I see a different power dynamic than you (by you I mean some commenters who say the article is exaggerating) and it's not about a few individual black sheeps, it's about rotten toxic institutions in general that you are doomed to reproduce over and over again until you are completely transparent about your motives, respect the person and her happiness, and start your efforts to save the world more modestly, without a bullshit about the heroic responsibility that turns people into functions. Only from an excess of internal resources, interest and prosperity, we will save the world so that it does not turn into another hell that is not worth saving.
This is one of those situations where I'd prefer to see the gender and background of the commenter before reading the comment so I can understand and adjust for their bias.
Because that's what allows you to really estimate the epistemic status of the commentary, and not what seems to be logic/rationality behind it. I imagine it's not that you used to think but I think that's how confirmation bias works in cases like this.
So: I am a woman, I had experience of abuse of power dynamics and manipulation of the ideas of saving the world + exploitation by high-status men within the rational and EA community. Watched it from the inside (not in the Bay Area even), I can confirm most of the general points in their dynamics.
Society and its set of dynamics are so varied that you simply cannot make enough adjustments (if you really want to maintain the status quo).
I see a different power dynamic than you (by you I mean some commenters who say the article is exaggerating) and it's not about a few individual black sheeps, it's about rotten toxic institutions in general that you are doomed to reproduce over and over again until you are completely transparent about your motives, respect the person and her happiness, and start your efforts to save the world more modestly, without a bullshit about the heroic responsibility that turns people into functions. Only from an excess of internal resources, interest and prosperity, we will save the world so that it does not turn into another hell that is not worth saving.