"The Bay Area rationalist community can not escape sexual misconduct and drama."
https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/avu24t/the_bay_a...
Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say
231–240 of 417 posts
Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
2. They'd never eat all of it. Also, it the distribution of either form will never be even across the planet. There will be "islands" of one or the other. 3. Biologists are easily able to determine if they are new kingdoms are not. They're also able to estimate how long ago divergence from a common root happened. There are many, many examples of parallel evolution in terran biology, but none of them are confused with…
2) Localized sure, I wasn't arguing about the entire planet. But introduced life could drive the native life to a local extinction. And if it did so fast enough we would never know the local life had been there. 3) Yes, I know. While this isn't my specialty I work at an organization that does have people that specialize in this. The difficulty would be in definitively concluding whether this is a native divergence th…
2. We've found fossilized remnants of bacteria in rocks, haven't we? There's also ice on Mars. If life existed, we'd find it frozen in the ice.
3. A billion years of evolutionary divergence, with local alien adaptations, is going to be very hard to confuse with anything brought over by a probe.
Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say
#233Back 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…
The expansion of EA to from eliminating malaria to interplanetary exploration was a pure grift. Once EA organizations started to pull in serious money and started to purchase palatial estates in Oxford[1] you had to know the jig was up.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wytham_Abbey#/media/File:Wytha...
Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
I waded through many, many paragraphs to discover that some of the crimes included people making comments that made others feel uncomfortable. I was kind of expecting more. So, yes, it looks like I was the product here. It made me feel uncomfortable!
The readers discovered that EA is mixing sex with charity. It’s pretty weird.
It's weird, but the title isn't saying it's weird. The title is saying people are getting harassed.
Technically a cat call is harassment, that shouldn't make the news. This article has a click bait social justice title when in reality the title should comment about how EA is some sort of sexual cult.
Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Effective Altruism is just a modern iteration of a thing that's been around for a very long time. The fundamental idea is sound. It's largely a reinvention of a philosophical program called logical positivism, which the philosophers gave up on because it didn't work, so it's not sound. They just brought it back because it's the most STEMy kind of philosophy and they think anything with enough math must be right. (E…
Effective Altruism is not a reinvention of logical positivism. Perhaps you mean rationalism (in the internet-rationalist sense; there are others) which is closely associated with EA but not at all the same thing, and is somewhat like logical positivism.
I will believe people claiming these are different things when the EAs stop talking about AI ending the world and other things they read in SF novels and go back to malaria nets.
Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say
#236The 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. 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…
This sounds very familiar. The Netherlands is the only country in the world where alcohol consumption correlates positively with education level, and thus alcoholism and associated ills. It's nearly impossible to find people in these circles that think of alcohol as something to be careful with. Alcoholism only happens to 'others'.
Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say
#237For those who don’t click the link, this is a deeply researched piece of journalism. Not an opinion piece.
Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never give to any group that asks me for money. Far be it from me to second-guess anybody's giving (motes and beams and all that) but this rules out many of the most effective aid organizations, all of which are absolutely off-the-charts obnoxious about fundraising --- because it works.
> many of the most effective aid organizations, all of which are absolutely off-the-charts obnoxious about fundraising This doesn't seem to jive much with what's reported by charity evaluators like GiveWell, or with what kinds of charitable organizations get grants from more traditional but still high-impact philanthropies like the B&MGF. It's quite plausible that too much emphasis on fund raising among the general p…
> seem to jive
jibe. yes, words change and evolve, but I only mention it because to jive has another meaning, to BS somebody.
I agree with your overall point about "I won't give to groups who tell me they need money" is a pretty high bar to set. However, GP's comment is in keeping with something I've come to think, which is organizations will re-form themselves around your donations (I give large amounts because I can afford them) and they'll befriend you, and it beomes a difficult situation to extricate yourself from. I tend to do one-time gifts and then move on.
Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am an EA (in the sense that I believe in the importance of some general principles of the movement, like trying to do the most good, and use data when available -- I don't participate in any organization directly). What I think is the most promising feature of EA is openness to criticism and trying to improve the movement itself. I think SBF was a wake up call and many people in the movement should take note that t…
What’s wrong with fraud if it has positive expected utility? At least if you’re an avowed act utilitarian like SBF.
Second order effects; good luck raising money once your fraud is exposed.
Re: Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say
#240The 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…
About fifteen years ago I got involved with the Skepticism movement. It was great to meet so many seemingly rational people and there was excitement that the movement seemed on the verge of growing large enough to make a paradigm shift in how society acts. But after about a year, I started to really sour on it as I could see more and more things becoming rational by decree and thus beyond question. These were suppose…
There was an article a while back that the atheism+ movement vanished because it was integrated into the social justice movement.
What do you think of that? Is the atheism+ still around? What happened to its people?