Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by skissane » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:17 PM UTC

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #173

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 can't imagine what benefits they were looking for in opioid use/abuse. Like, most drugs have a very distinct use, ranging from "directly beneficial" like using stimulants to increase productivity, to "socially useful" like using alcohol or MDMA as a social lubricant. Opiates don't really fall into any of those boxes. They're not mechanistically useful: If you want euphoria, there are better drugs like MDMA or ketam…

> And they're not really socially useful either

A relative of mine-who used to be a heavy marijuana user-told me how he once tried heroin-and he really didn’t like how it made him behave socially-he says it made him smug, arrogant, and an asshole who felt superior to everyone else. I don’t know if that’s some kind of idiosyncratic reaction to it or a common one, but he told me it was enough to convince him to not try it again, and just stick to marijuana and alcohol, which didn’t have the same effect on him

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

#332

Post by steveBK123 » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:17 PM UTC

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #268

steveBK123 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aren't these all, at their root, postmodern re-implementations of religion? with all the related problems & benefits.

Yes, this is perspicacious. If you reject the premises and practices of religion, you will eventually re-invent them all. Disestablishmentarianism by modern democracies means that without a centralized religion to arbitrate Truth, pseudo-religions will expand their power bases to fill in the blanks. Psychiatry, Social Security, shelters, soup kitchens, hospital and university systems. All were adequately handled by C…

I make this comment as I observe many of my friends attach meaning to politics that people use to attach to religion, and I find it both ironic & troubling as it comes with all the problems of intolerance & lack of compromise, us vs them, etc.

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

#333

Post by skissane » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:30 PM UTC

LarryMullins wrote: post #107

WalterBright wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Declaring Mars a “nature reserve” would be completely unenforceable. Suppose you convince US Congress to pass a law banning Americans from sending humans to Mars, due to the risk of contamination to native Martian microbes. What happens when China says “now is our chance to show the world we’ve eclipsed the US by sending humans to Mars when they won’t“? Even though such a Chinese mission isn’t feasible today (an American one arguably isn’t either), who can say what its feasibility will be in another 20 or 50 years? And if not China, then sooner or later somebody else. Sustained global consensus on this issue is unlikely, which makes Mars as a “nature reserve” meaningless in the long-term. On Earth, the vast majority of nature reserves only exist because some government has military control of the territory and hence can enforce that status.

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

#334

Post by epistemer » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:32 PM UTC

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #206

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…

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…

I was pretty into that level of skepticism but all it really showed me is that people are natural "believers".

We are ultimately story telling apes. To believe we are going to stop telling each other and ourselves fictional stories is the height of delusion. There is this highly negative aspect too when you start believing the fictional story is actually non-fiction. That opens up all kinds of additional problems that is actually solved at the society level by believing in fiction like religion.

I am a total atheist but it seems really stupid to me to not see the role fiction plays in coordinating society. That level of skepticism was overly focused on the individual with near disregard for collections of individuals at the level of society.

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

#335

Post by heavyset_go » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:32 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #61

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. 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…

You genuinely can't make this shit up. Normally, if someone told me that rationalists were Bayes-ing themselves into justifying their own opioid addictions, I'd say that attempt at satire's a little too on the nose. This is just absolutely incredible.

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

#336

Post by epistemer » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:34 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #96

dkqmduems wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called science.

That's the same problem as before. Outside of maybe fundamentalist religious people who think their religious text is the final word on everything, everybody agrees that "science" is the best way of finding out the truth. The trouble is that they disagree on what counts as science (ie. which scientists/institutions/studies to trust). When the disagreement is at that level, casually invoking "science" misses the point…

A big problem is we have gone from Feynman saying "science is the disbelief in experts" to "What experts say is true right now is the science".

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

#337

Post by skissane » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:39 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #141

freejazz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone posted it upthread. You can replace any catastrophic event with global warming and it's just as facially stupid. Literally like the thought process of a child. It's completely divorced from reality.

While I don't expect extinction from any particular given cause — and definitely not from any of global warming, nuclear war, loss of biodiversity, peak phosphorous, or the ozone layer — humans have a few massive failure modes: 1. We refuse to believe very bad scenarios until much too late. Doesn't need to be apocalyptic: The Titanic isn't sinking; all of Hiroshima must have gone silent because a telegraph cable was…

> what happens when two independent campaigns are started at the same time when both groups want to genocide everyone not in their group?

In the awful real-world history of genocide, I don’t think “we want to genocide everyone except for ourselves” has ever actually happened. Genocide is always targeted against certain groups, with others left alone. I remember someone here saying that “Nazis wanted to kill all minorities”-but that’s historically false, we all know how they sought to exterminate some minorities, what is far less well-known is how they actually promoted and even improved the rights of others, which they saw much more favourably-such as Frisians and Bretons. “Let’s genocide everyone except for ourselves” is the kind of policy which cartoon Nazis would adopt but no one in the real-world ever has. I suppose something genuinely new could happen, but it doesn’t seem particularly likely-far less likely than the sad near-inevitability of future genocides (of the targeted kind with which we are familiar)

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

#338

Post by danaris » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:47 PM UTC

travisjungroth wrote: post #219

goatlover wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those things would make Earth less hospitable than Mars. A desert colony would still be better off than trying to survive on Mars, particularly once Earth's resources are cutoff. Mars is far more hostile than anything likely to happen to Earth over the next hundred million years.

It's not about hospitable. It's about survivable. There are large enough meteor strikes where you'd be better off on a self-sustaining Mars colony than anywhere on Earth.

Unless you're personally in the strike zone, that's not true.

And one should also bear in mind that Mars is at no less risk of meteor impacts than Earth.

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

#339

Post by walleeee » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 2:54 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #272

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

> sustainable long-term civilization here Earth is easy mode compared to Mars Which is easier, building a colony on Mars or solving politics? I rest my case. Mars, here we come!

Do you imagine a Mars colony will not have its own politics? Politics is arguably motivated in large part by scarcity. On Mars resources are a lot harder to come by than on Earth.

You could make an argument that a shared struggle against extreme conditions would stabilize societies and make cooperation a necessity, but a Mars colony is going to need a lot of help from Earth to get on its feet, in which case we still need to solve terrestrial politics anyway.

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

#340

Post by danaris » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #283

ketzo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find it odd that longtermists dont see that the obvious solution to long term issues is throwing more brains at the problems which implies doing good now. Maybe i am missing part of the argument?

I'm assuming you mean that we should be trying to bring as many people as possible out of poverty and get them good educations (in which case, I wholeheartedly agree).

When you've built a lot of your identity on the idea that you are one of the smartest people in the room, it can be very hard to accept proposals that would challenge that. This would do so in 2 ways:

1) "Creating" more smart people means more competition for them—possibly even people who would end up being smarter than they are.

2) For a lot of them (at least from what I've come to understand), part of the "proof" that they are very intelligent is that they are very wealthy. If you start pushing the idea that intelligence doesn't automatically show itself and lead to wealth too hard, it's not very many steps from there to disproving the idea that wealth implies intelligence...and then how can they be so sure they're that intelligent after all?