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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

#391

Post by hnfong »

benj111 wrote: post #384
hnfong wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The English (no pun intended) speaking population is more likely to be from the US than the global population. Disclaimer: Not English. Not American.

I would say that the us accounts for less than half of English speaking netizens. UK, Australia, new zealand Canada already add up to a sizeable chunk of the US's population. Then add in 1% of India, or China (I assume some proportion has access outside the great firewall) and you've got a population bigger than the US.

If you add up the numbers of the countries you mentioned (together with 1% of India or China), you'll realize that it's smaller than the US population...

US: 331.9 million

UK: 67.33 million AU: 25.69 million CA: 38.25 million NZ: 5.123 million IN: 1.408 billion * 0.01 = 14m

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

#392

Post by gverrilla »

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…

What a whole bunch of bullshit.

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

#393

Post by n4r9 »

gruez wrote: post #166
n4r9 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Centre for Effective Altruism has a turnover in the tens of millions. Surely there are people with greater and lesser decision making abilities within that institution?

>The Centre for Effective Altruism has a turnover in the tens of millions Google says that their annual budget is $6M, so I think you're overestimating how much money can be siphoned off. Moreover, given how trendy effective altruism is with young professionals from elite universities, getting a high position will be difficult. Sure, an ivy league graduate could fight tooth and nail to get a position at the CEA that…

Perhaps I'm misled, but Wikipedia says the annual budget for 2021 was $28 million:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Effective_Altruis...

I see the conversation has gotten ahead of me, but the Wytham Abbey purchase is absolutely an example of my concerns. The justification wasn't much more than "I like going to conferences in big posh buildings and some other people I've talked to do as well".

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

#394

Post by PartiallyTyped »

danaris wrote: post #340
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 competit…

> in which case, I wholeheartedly agree

That is exactly what I had in mind as I was writing it.

As for the rest, I haven't met such people as my circle is mostly academic and Scandinavian, however, evidence supports it. Evidence being how certain very prominent figures seem to enjoy the company of sycophants and yes-people.

It's a shame really.

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

#396

Post by gjm11 »

astrange wrote: post #235
gjm11 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GiveWell's recommended charities are all doing health interventions in poor countries. The largest category in Good Ventures's grants, by more than 2x, is "global health and development". Malaria nets and the like are, in fact, most of what EAs are doing.

Those things are less controversial and exciting to talk about than (say) whether there's a real danger of AI wrecking the world, so if you focus on what's talked about in the EA Forum or something then you will get a misleading impression.

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

#397

Post by JohnFen »

tptacek wrote: post #165
JohnFen wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, that's the point. It's a necessary self-protective stance. Before I adopted that rule (and the secrecy rule), giving money resulted in me being hounded incessantly for money from every other group under the sun. I think I got it worse than many because I tend to give large amounts. It was a nightmare. I'll never make that mistake again.

Another writer I like, discussing exactly this problem, referred to it as "the quantum unit of sacrifice". It is annoying. Very annoying! But like, that's all it is.

It was more than just annoying. It cost me time and energy.

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

#398

Post by mistermann »

naasking wrote: post #274
mistermann wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 11 This used to be Godwin's law. Except by the time that's triggered, your System 2 thinking dialed you to 11 almost always…

> This used to be Godwin's law.

Hmmm, let's see:

"Godwin's law, short for Godwin's law (or rule) of Nazi analogies,[1] is an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.[2]"

"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 11"

I see very little similarity between these two things.

> Except by the time that's triggered, your System 2 thinking dialed you to 11 almost always tells everyone it's time to leave that discussion.

From my other comment: "if 95% of people simply cannot cut it, I don't see this as a major problem. Cream is valuable, milk is more trouble than it's worth."

Lots of people will leave, but there will be some who remain. It's a similar principle to quality standards when joining various organizations, or any other process that involves targeted selection.

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

#399

Post by stephenbez »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #357
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…

> But I don't have any reason to trust them My favorite aspect of EA is the transparency. Givewell and open phil publish white papers that go into excruciating detail about how they reached their conclusions. You don't have to trust them. Read what they publish and make your own conclusions about how to do good most effectively. I've also enjoyed the writing of Julia Galef, especially The Scout Mindset, which many in…

I’ve looked into EA / GiveWell charity recommendations, but then when I’ve independently looked into IRS Form 990 returns the charities they recommend often seem tiny and have spending of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands per year.

It’s always seemed to me there is likely to be more oversight in larger organizations. I’ve been meaning to ask about this but never had time.

Also if you read their recommendations, a lot of times their source is “personal conversations with the leader of the charity”

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

#400

Post by HWR_14 »

JohnFen wrote: post #175
HWR_14 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never give to any group that asks me for money. I get how this would keep you personally from being annoyed, but it seems to incentivize in worse outcomes. "Let's collect all the money we can, we never know if we'll get more. Let's grow that reserve" vs. "In a bad month we can get our usual donors/JohnFen to give us his annual donation a little early".

Perhaps, although I haven't seen that. But I also have to deal with the limits of what I can tolerate. That rule make it possible for me to give money. Without it, I wouldn't. I experienced what it was like without that protection, and it's beyond what I could put up with.

It's both possible that the rule both is required for you to give and forces charities into suboptimal strategies. It makes sense to protect your sanity, but not if your intent was to filter charities by need/administration.
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