Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say

time.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 417 posts

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

#81

Post by gruez »

tablespoon wrote: post #41
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…

> Effective Altruism is just a modern iteration of a thing that's been around for a very long time. Which you think is what, exactly? I'm under the impression that thing is warmed-over utilitarianism. > The fundamental idea is sound. I do not believe utilitarianism is sound, because its logic can be easily used to justify some obviously horrible things. However the framework appeals very strongly to "rationalist" typ…

>I do not believe utilitarianism is sound, because its logic can be easily used to justify some obviously horrible things.

Right, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't care about consequences at all. There's a pretty big gap between "given that we have scarce resources, we should maximize the impact of our use of it" and "committing this atrocity is fine because the utility calculations work out".

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

#82

Post by dkqmduems »

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".

It's called science.

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

#83

Post by LarryMullins »

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.

If it works for those orgs, then those orgs don't need his money anyway.

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

#84

Post by xhkkffbf »

xchip wrote: post #65

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.

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!

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

#85

Post by gruez »

freejazz wrote: post #71
gruez wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not that that bothers me so much as the fact that many effective altruists do it so badly. [...] But effective altruists are as likely to talk about colonizing Mars as they are to talk about global warming. Are they doing it badly, or are you not understanding their arguments? AFAIK effective altruists want to colonize mars on x-risk grounds, which would explain why they want to prioritize that over global warm…

>Are they doing it badly, or are you not understanding their arguments? Do YOU not understand their arguments? They are facially stupid. The notion that we should be colonizing mars because of global warming is the stupidest thing I've ever read or heard.

>The notion that we should be colonizing mars because of global warming is the stupidest thing I've ever read or heard.

Yeah, because that's a strawman you imagined in your head. I'm not sure what gave you the impression that the two were related (other than that they're competing options) based on my previous comment.

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

#86

Post by teraflop »

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…

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...

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

#87

Post by ketzo »

willcipriano wrote: post #5

Back 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 a lot more human lives -- billions or trillions more -- than basically anything we could do today.

So the logic becomes -- why would I spend time/money on mosquito nets when we need to be securing the literal future of the human race?

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

#88

Post by freejazz »

gruez wrote: post #85
freejazz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are they doing it badly, or are you not understanding their arguments? Do YOU not understand their arguments? They are facially stupid. The notion that we should be colonizing mars because of global warming is the stupidest thing I've ever read or heard.

>The notion that we should be colonizing mars because of global warming is the stupidest thing I've ever read or heard. Yeah, because that's a strawman you imagined in your head. I'm not sure what gave you the impression that the two were related (other than that they're competing options) based on my previous comment.

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.

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

#89

Post by LarryMullins »

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?

The EA "philosophy" is strongly tied up in libertarian utilitarian ways of thinking, and such people are able to talk themselves into believing that it's rational to defer to people smarter/richer than themselves. They get money, intelligence and virtue all mixed up and confused with each other. Being intelligent gets you money, money buys virtue, those who are smartest will become richest and those who are richest will be able to buy the most virtue.

Power structures emerge naturally from this.

Post reply on HN