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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

#291

Post by Wowfunhappy »

munificent wrote: post #193
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I distinctly remember signing up to give £5 a month to a charity on the condition that if they ever contacted me again asking me for more money I'd immediately cancel my Direct Debit. They didn't even get their second payment.

Honestly, the £5 a month you were giving them is probably less than the cost of special casing you in their largely automated donor marketing systems so this is a net win to both of you.

Yeah. By contrast if OP had donated 100K I would be interested in the outcome...

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

#292

Post by benj111 »

aj7 wrote: post #276
scarmig wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had serious withdrawal symptoms 24 hours after medicating myself with controlled doses of hydromorphone after surgery. It’s always been remarkable to me how many people confidently assert I wasn’t addicted.

Conversely I'm on long term anti depressants and I get withdrawal symptoms if I forget to take them, but no one is ever referred to as being addicted to anti depressants.

I suspect there are different (social) mechanisms at work here, but addiction is generally applied to one specific form of drug reliance.

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

#293

Post by benj111 »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #282
brnt wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

> The Netherlands is the only country in the world where alcohol consumption correlates positively with education level I'm reasonably sure this isn't true. It is also the case in the UK and the US. It is presumably also the case for many other countries, since it is hard to imagine what would make the UK, the US, and the Netherlands somehow unique in the world. UK: "Higher educational attainment is associated with i…

Middle class alcoholism is viewed very differently to lower class alcoholism. If you have X glasses of wine a night but otherwise have a functional life, that is 'ok'. Getting shitfaced on a Friday night isn't.

Although it's the middle classes that write the rules so make of that what you will.

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

#294

Post by seanhunter »

twblalock wrote: post #123
astrange wrote: post #119

Earlier 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…

It's really just utilitarianism, all over again.

Yes it's definitely utilitarianism. William McAskill (co-founder of the center for effective altrurism) for example wrote Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical Way to Make a Difference and also is a co-author of https://www.utilitarianism.net/ (an introductory online textbook on utilitarianism).

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

#295

Post by bloqs »

This is a problem as old as human beings.

People want sex. Sex happens most for those who are considered most socially valuable (for men anyway).

People look for socially popular things, select those that are accessible and adopt them to signal virtue and social value, to try and increase the likelihood they will appear as more sexually valuable.

However, this is risky. Discovery of deception of social value causes a much larger loss of social value than was gained from the deception in the first place, this is because it's commonly gamed for this very reason.

People who are more interested in things than people (mostly men) really struggle to grasp these interactive social properties in real time, and will often even be so unaware that they will not only openly admit to being deceptive, but get actually angry with the victim when the deception doesn't work.

These are called closed contracts, so when losers give gifts to someone in an unprompted fashion, this is not because they want to be altruistic, but because they think the altrusim can be used to present themselves as more sexually attractive. Resorting to trickery out of desperation.

These people are very common, and can often saturate movements like this.

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

#296

Post by benj111 »

fsckboy wrote: post #238
zozbot234 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ca…

>jibe

Or gibe. The problem is jibe has negative connotations, whereas 'to jive with' seems to me to be a metaphor to works, (I assume it's used in the dancing sense?).

I don't know of the meaning of the phrase has changed somewhat, 'to jibe with' suggests a sarcastic undertone to me, but in modern usage, no sarcasm is intended so maybe jive is the correct term for the current usage of the term 'to jX with'

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

#297

Post by renewiltord »

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...

After a motorcycle accident I spent a week on hydromorphone, a month on oxycodone, and occasional fentanyl. I have some oxycodone left over at home and, if I'm being honest, I don't feel the slightest desire to do it. I haven't for the 9 months so far I've had it and I doubt I ever will. I live in SF as well so fentanyl is easy to come by, should I so desire it.

Reading the literature, it appears that this is the experience for 9/10 people prescribed the drug. The problem, of course, is that 10% is a large number at scale.

Obviously, I've had no experience with heroin. But considering my experience with fentanyl, I can quite easily say that most of us are not susceptible.

This strikes me as yet another example of overstating risks. PTSD is the canonical case, of course, where the majority of people experiencing trauma won't get PTSD and even a third of people experiencing major trauma won't get PTSD.

The short version is that the average human is very resilient.

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

#298

Post by imtringued »

JohnFen wrote: post #16
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…

Effective Altruism is just a modern iteration of a thing that's been around for a very long time. The fundamental idea is sound. However, in practice, it all-too-easily devolves into something really terrible. Especially once people start down the path of thinking the needs of today aren't as important as the needs of a hypothetical future population. Personally, I started "tithing" when my first business was a succe…

The problem with the "sacrifice the present for the long term thinking" over ridiculous time scales beyond 100 years is the concept of diminishing returns.

Anything around 3% or more endless annual growth must invent faster than light travel within less than a millenium and then exclusively use it to colonize multiple galaxies.

What this tells you is that we are going to drown in capital within the next two thousand years and probably launch a few space missions toward neighboring solar systems but all of those things are closer to 0% annual growth than 3%.

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

#299

Post by jtode »

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…

I am out of the loop a bit, so I'll say that first. An acquaintance introduced me to the phrase effective altruism and talked about sending money to a place that's having problems rather than going there yourself, and I just thought, yah, that's a more effective way of being altruistic and went on with my day.

I'm just learning that they made it into a cult. Who thought that was a good idea? Just be an effective altruist FFS.

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

#300

Post by brnt »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #282
brnt wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

> The Netherlands is the only country in the world where alcohol consumption correlates positively with education level I'm reasonably sure this isn't true. It is also the case in the UK and the US. It is presumably also the case for many other countries, since it is hard to imagine what would make the UK, the US, and the Netherlands somehow unique in the world. UK: "Higher educational attainment is associated with i…

> UK, the US, and the Netherlands somehow unique in the world.

O actually there's a ton. These are solidly protestant cultures, with a history of hypocrisy.

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