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Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say

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Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say

#101

Post by gruez »

mistermann wrote: post #70
gruez wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but how does this translate into actionable advice? Nobody sets out to intentionally deceive themselves. Telling people that "we should not deceive ourselves" is basically as helpful as "don't be wrong".

How about this: in swinger communities, they have safe words that they can use to transcend the playtime aspect of reality - how about we develop something similar for internet arguments, a term that is mutually agreed upon in advance , and when uttered by a participant it kicks off a well documented (and agreed upon) protocol where all participants downgrade System 1 thinking to zero and upgrade System 2 thinking to…

Wouldn't this devolve into name calling almost immediately? On internet arguments it's already implied that you're bringing forth logical points and not just spouting off what you feel in the heat of the moment. Invoking the safe word is basically a thinly veiled attempt at calling the other party irrational and emotional.

Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say

#102

Post by ben_w »

jfengel wrote: post #12

The worst thing about being smart is how easy it is to talk yourself into believing just about anything. After all, you make really good arguments. EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who is perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they're always right about everything. And from there, you can justify all kinds of terrible things. Once that happens, it can easily spiral out from there. Peopl…

> EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who is perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they're always right about everything. And from there, you can justify all kinds of terrible things.

Yup.

Which is super-ironic given the association with big-R Rationality, Less Wrong, Overcoming Bias, all of which quote Feynman saying "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."

Now I have the mental image of the scene in The Life of Brian where the crowd mindlessly parrots Brian's call for them to think for themselves.

Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say

#103

Post by WalterBright »

walleeee wrote: post #95
yamtaddle wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've yet to see an argument for colonizing Mars for this purpose, that wouldn't be a better argument if the goal were instead "build robust, distributed bunkers on earth, and pay families to live in them part-time so there's always someone there". Cheaper, and more effective. Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far easier to live on than Mars. The remaining threats that wouldn't also be pretty likely to t…

> Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far easier to live on than Mars. thank you how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a sustainable long-term civilization here Earth is easy mode compared to Mars

> how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a sustainable long-term civilization here

Because we can afford to make big mistakes in terraforming a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet.

Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say

#104

Post by yamtaddle »

walleeee wrote: post #95
yamtaddle wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've yet to see an argument for colonizing Mars for this purpose, that wouldn't be a better argument if the goal were instead "build robust, distributed bunkers on earth, and pay families to live in them part-time so there's always someone there". Cheaper, and more effective. Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far easier to live on than Mars. The remaining threats that wouldn't also be pretty likely to t…

> Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far easier to live on than Mars. thank you how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a sustainable long-term civilization here Earth is easy mode compared to Mars

Right—living on Mars is like living on Earth if it ambient surface radiation levels were significantly higher, nothing would grow in the soil anywhere without a ton of preparation, and you couldn't leave your house without a pressure suit. And there's no surface water. And the gravity's fucked up. And the temperatures suck for basically anything life-related. And none of the geological and chemical processes that keep our biosphere viable existed, at all.

So... like Earth if several apocalypses happened at once, including a few nigh-impossible ones. Except it starts that way. And it's actually even worse than that. Sure, maybe we could slam some comets into it and do a ton of other sci-fi shit over a few centuries and it'd eventually get better, sorta, a little—but c'mon, seriously?

Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say

#106

Post by gruez »

lbwtaylor wrote: post #67
Sakos wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's bizarre EA seems to be a movement with power structures. I always just thought EA was a philosophy and based on that I felt it was an interesting idea. I don't have to worry about sexual harassment when I'm considering Plato or Stoicism. Why is it a thing with EA?

When there is a lot of money moving around, it seems inevitable that power structures will form around it.

That might be true, but there isn't exactly an "Effective Altruism Foundation" that all the donations funnel through. You basically have a bunch of random people that are donating to charities that are well regarded, with a few philanthropists here and there setting up foundations. You might be able to hijack organizations like givewell (ie. organizations that tell people which charities they should donate to), but trying to monetize that is tricky. At the end of the day you don't really control anything, because you're still reliant on individuals following your advice. So if you try to funnel money to your own foundation (for embezzling purposes), you will easily burn any goodwill that you've built up.

Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say

#107

Post by LarryMullins »

WalterBright wrote: post #103
walleeee wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far easier to live on than Mars. thank you how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a sustainable long-term civilization here Earth is easy mode compared to Mars

> how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a sustainable long-term civilization here Because we can afford to make big mistakes in terraforming a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet.

A few microscopic fungal-like spore things could throw a wrench in that. Now the planet is a nature reserve.

Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say

#109

Post by scarmig »

teraflop wrote: post #86
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who is perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they're always right about everything. And from there, you can justify all kinds of terrible things. I came to the same conclusion after a group of my friends got involved with the local rationalist and EA community, though for a different reason: Their drug habits. They believed themselves to have a better…

I'm reminded of a fascinating series of Reddit threads, starting back in 2009, from somebody who convinced himself he "could handle anything once" and decided to try heroin, only to rapidly spiral out of control: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/wef6...

The issue with Reddit is that the story is as likely as not to be fake. Particularly, here, I don't think people are at risk of serious withdrawal after only two weeks of heroin use.

Though heroin use is obviously one of the dumbest things anyone can do.

Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say

#110

Post by bena »

ketzo wrote: post #87
willcipriano wrote: post #5

Back in my day effective altruism was mainly about finding charities that aren't essentially scams (way harder than it looks). Scene has apparently moved on to other things since I followed it a decade or so ago.

This is a super-simplified summary, but I think it's generally accurate. The basic thesis of EA is "it is your duty to improve/save as many human lives as you can." At some point, a lot of EAs realized that there were many more future humans than present humans. Once you widen your scope in that way, you start realizing that long-term, catastrophic risks (climate change, nuclear disaster, misaligned AI) would affect…

Because we do that with mosquito nets.

EA seems like a way to achieve nothing while looking like you're doing everything. No one expects you to fly to Mars tomorrow. And that's true every single day. It's true today. It'll be true tomorrow. It was true yesterday. It was true 10 years ago. It will be true 10 years from now.

So if no one really expects you to fully achieve your goal, all you have to do is kinda look like you're trying and that will be good enough for most people.

EA takes a good, hard look at all these good intentions and says, "Fuck, this would make a baller ass road".

However, if we solve malaria. That's another thing not killing us. Another problem checked off. Like polio. Or smallpox. Colonize Mars? Fucking how? We can't even get the environment on Earth under control. How the living fuck are we going to create an environment on another fucking planet. Much less even get there.

So how about we figure out a way to get the garbage out the ocean. On how to scrub the air of CO2. How to manufacture and produce without so many polluting side effects. We keep doing all these smaller things. Put in the work, and one day, we will save all those trillions of potential lives. But it requires putting in the work.

Edit: Not saying you believe it. But presenting the counter-argument to EA.

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