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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

#61

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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 grasp on human nature and behavior than the average person, and therefore believed they were better at controlling themselves. They also had a deep contrarian bias, which turned into a belief that drugs weren’t actually as bad as the system wanted us to believe.

Combine these two factors and they convinced themselves that they could harness recreational opioid use to improve their lives, but avoid the negative consequences that “normies” suffered by doing it wrong. I remember being at a party where several of them were explaining that they were on opioids right now and tried to use the fact that nothing terrible was happening as proof that they were performing rational drug use.

Long story short, the realities of recreational opioid use caught up with them and they were blind to the warning signs due to their hubris. I intentionally drifted away from that group around that time, so I don’t know what happened to them.

I will never forget how confident they were that addiction is something that only happens to other people, not rationalists like them.

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

#62

Post by zozbot234 »

tptacek wrote: post #54
JohnFen wrote: post #16

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. 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…

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 public distorts incentives within these charities and makes them less likely to be highly effective on average. If so, we're better off when the job of publicly raising charitable donations is spun off to separate organizations, such as GiveWell or more generally the EA movement itself.

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

#64

Post by DaveExeter »

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…

>recreational opioid use

Horse? Were they shooting horse?

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

#65

Post by xchip »

This is a free article, and for the same reason in Photography Books, on the cover there is usually a naked lady, in these free articles the story is also always about sex or something that appeals to your instincts.

Chances are this story was exaggerated up to a point to make it call your attention so you subscribe.

If something is free, you are the product.

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

#66

Post by ketzo »

supersour wrote: post #48

> EA is diffuse and deliberately amorphous; anybody who wants to can call themselves an EA... But with no official leadership structure, no roster of who is and isn’t in the movement, and no formal process for dealing with complaints, Wise argues, it’s hard to gauge how common such issues are within EA compared to broader society. This passage reminded me of this article: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm…

I see that essay linked every six months or so, and I swear every time I read it, a new element of it rings true to me. Really timeless, invaluable writing on the way groups of humans work.

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

#67

Post by lbwtaylor »

Sakos wrote: post #51
supersour wrote: post #48

> EA is diffuse and deliberately amorphous; anybody who wants to can call themselves an EA... But with no official leadership structure, no roster of who is and isn’t in the movement, and no formal process for dealing with complaints, Wise argues, it’s hard to gauge how common such issues are within EA compared to broader society. This passage reminded me of this article: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm…

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.

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

#69

Post by Dylan16807 »

travisjungroth wrote: post #56
zozbot234 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Mars though? Why not colonize the Gebi Desert first?

x-risk is existential risk, as in humans get wiped out. Some big ones are meteor impact, nuclear war and disease. The risk of those things ending all of humanity are greatly reduced with a second planet. They're not reduced with a desert colony.

> The risk of those things ending all of humanity are greatly reduced with a second planet.

I can imagine a situation where that's true. But right now, for almost any situation, a series of super-bunkers is orders of magnitude cheaper and more effective. A lot of ridiculously destructive things can happen to Earth and it will still be a better place to live than Mars.

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

#70

Post by mistermann »

gruez wrote: post #50
tablespoon wrote: post #45

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. > Should we not talk ourselves into believing into stuff? Should smart people specifically avoid changing their beliefs out of fear of "justify all kinds of terrible things"? The GP is talking about self-de…

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 11...and, all participants carefully monitor each other to ensure that people are executing the agreed upon plan successfully?

This general approach works quite well (with practice) in many other domains, maybe it would also work for arguments/beliefs.

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