I sense we are about to get a load of discourse about sex norms in AI safety. And I suspect a lot of people are going to privately dislike them but publicly feel unable to say so, until some kind of horrible "I always hated that" "It was the worst worst worst" moment.
I would prefer that rather than a dam breaking we could release the pressure more gradually. So I recommend saying so. Say to someone "I dislike the rationalist sex scene" or heck, "I dislike the veganism" or "I don't like how people leave multi-person conversations without saying so". It is okay to dislike things.
I cannot promise that no one will ever get annoyed at you over it, I cannot promise I will not be curt in response, but I would like to accept that kind of criticism and I hope that rationalists will too.
But I think the worse outcome is a resentment that builds from having to defend something or someone one is repulsed by. And I don't think that is sustainable to a community. And I don't think it will help good thinking about discourse as it happens.
I'm confused why this post got many downvotes. It seems completely inoffensive to me. Is it just the critique Tom Bry-Chevalier raised, or do people have other critiques? Would be curious to hear from anyone who downvoted it for other reasons. I'm not saying this with the goal of debating this (am very busy with school right now)—I'm just curious. So please don't hesitate because you don't have time for a big debate either. If someone replies to this comment and specifies that they don't have time for a big debate too, I encourage people who disagree with them to respect that (but feel free to go at it if you both want to).
I appreciate your initiative, Nathan. However, from what we’ve seen, it would appear that this isn’t just about sexual norms, but also about sexual abuse. And I’m afraid that the language you’re using tends to downplay what are potentially very serious issues.
But yes, it’s a subject that needs to be discussed. And as an EA member who is very far removed from Berkeley and its culture, several things I’ve read recently have made me question my allegiance to a movement in which I am involved for more than 10 years.
I'm a woman in the Berkeley EA scene, and am puzzled by your perspective.
My guess is that most of the trouble is that many women are shy, and find it stressful to say they are not interested in a topic of conversation or an event or when men politely proposition them etc. I remember having conversations on this topic on the EA forum 3 years ago. A lot of women argued that we should see ourselves as helpless in a way that deeply disturbed me. For example, they argued that, in general, if a man who is much more powerful in a woman's field than her flirts with her and she dislikes it, it is reasonable for her to flirt back instead of declining the advance, out of fear that he will retaliate against her professionally. But I am that woman! I'm an undergraduate, and I know exactly what happens when you critique leading men in your field in the Berkeley EA scene far more seriously than merely declining their polite advances. These men are so passionate about having good moral character that in all my 5 years in this scene I've never known one who I could picture retaliating against someone for declining their sexual or romantic advances. In fact, they are so clearly more respectful towards us than they are in the surrounding communities of similar demographics that dating outside this community is such a bigger relative risk that I no longer bother with it. It seems like there is a gargantuan gap between what many women think would happen if they spoke up about their preferences and what the world is really like, so I think Nathan's post was highly appropriate.
As with any community, sexual misconduct occasionally occurs, but I know that Nathan takes these cases very seriously. So do I. It does not seem to me that this post is downplaying them. It also doesn't seem that EA has worse sexual misconduct rates than other communities. That post does not discuss the Berkeley scene specifically, but knowing that it is so much safer than my alternatives makes me skeptical the numbers would be worse if the sample was limited to us instead of just being disproportionately us.
Men changing their behavior is not a solution if women being shy is the problem. If they are too shy to turn down sexual/romantic advances, sexual/romantic discomfort is likely the least of our worries—presumably it is also holding these women back from critiquing these men professionally, doing grave damage to their fields. This is something I'm aware of as a woman in a 90% male field. It is sometimes argued that one way of increasing female representation is speaking less intensely so that women who are intimidated can feel more comfortable speaking. But there is so much value in the intense way that we speak in male dominated fields. A more practical solution to me seems to be some sort of coaching for women who are shy so that they are able to speak up regardless of the intensity of the discussion and regardless of the power of who they are speaking to, like I am. This wasn't something that came naturally to me—I have very far below average self esteem. But I found that overcoming it enough to speak my mind anyway was beyond worth it. I'd rather have a world where other women like me go through such an empowering experience than corrupt our communication so they can remain trapped in insecurity. So far, the critiques I've seen of Berkeley EA sexual/romantic norms remind me a lot of the critiques of my field.
But this is just my personal experience. I am very open to being wrong. Please tell me what has caused you to develop your perspective. I was a victim of many years of sexual abuse when I was younger—if sexual abuse is in fact the main problem, it is very important to me that we address it.
Thanks for your reply, and for sharing something so personal. I'm sorry for what you went through.
You know the Berkeley scene far better than I do, and I don't doubt your experience. And of course I don't think women are helpless. My point is about power. When a man can influence your career, funding, or your place in a small community, saying no has a cost, even if he would never retaliate, because you can't know that in advance. Being smart and confident doesn't change that. A woman who flirts back with a powerful man instead of turning him down is making a rational choice to protect her career/place. The problem is that she has to make that choice at all. And the man, for his part, can't easily tell whether a yes is freely given.
For instance many universities now restrict relationships between supervisors and the students they supervise. Nobody thinks PhD students are helpless. But there's a long history of abuse in those relationships, so the rules put the responsibility on the person who holds the power. EA has similar asymmetries, even if they're informal: it's mostly male, and a small number of people control jobs, funding or simply are influential in a small community.
That's also why I'm uneasy with coaching as the main answer. I'm glad speaking up has been empowering for you. But coaching asks the people with the least power to carry the cost, which makes taking part in this community harder for women than for men. And it doesn't help when someone ignores a no.
You asked what shaped my view. Partlythe 2023 TIME investigation, in which several women described harassment, coercion and assault in EA circles. Some of them did say no. Some describe situations where they couldn't. Many spoke anonymously because they feared professional reprisals, and some say the community turned away from them after they spoke up. There have also been some alarming reports in the past few weeks. Some haven't been confirmed yet, but others seem well documented.
Even if EA were no worse than other communities, and I don't think the data can tell us that, I don't think it's the right bar. We're a movement built on doing more good than the default. I think that should also apply to how we treat each other and how we handle these cases.
A single article discussing ~6 cases, written 3 years ago, several of which have been disputed as being EA/rationalist group houses, one of which was (I think) Michael Vasser, who has been banned for years and the other taking place in the UK, does not seem a lot of evidence about current norms in Berkeley.
Thanks for sharing your counterarguments. I appreciate it. It sounds like we have fundamentally different views on the agency of women in my position. While I'm sure we could both learn a lot by going more in depth into this topic together, that's not something I have time to do with my current workload.
Before I leave it there I will say that I actually consider dating within one's profession to reduce instances of sexual misconduct, not increase them. In the Berkeley EA scene a man who treats his sexual/romantic partner poorly would risk not just his social reputation but generally his whole career. It is a powerful incentive to treat us well. I identify that as one of the main mechanisms that produces a much safer dating environment in the Berkeley EA scene than my alternatives. Happy for you to respond to this new argument if you would like.
I re-read the Time article in response to your comment. I remember it as being misleading at the time, but re-reading it, it's even worse than I remembered. I feel impatient with myself for being so intimidated by pressure to be woke that I gave it as much respect as I did three years ago. I came away motivated to not let our culture slip back into that again.
I don't have time to get into all the things that frustrated me about that article, but a central one was the expectation that we automatically side with the parties in the story who were women with sexual misconduct allegations. They rarely gave us enough information for us to make an informed decision about what actually happened for ourselves. I respect that some of this information has to be private, but less information means you have raise your uncertainty, not fill in the gap with assumptions. They instead relied on the #MeToo frame, which society has moved on from for good reasons. A woman doesn’t become some magical perfect being just because she makes a sexual misconduct allegation. She is only human like the rest of us. For example, we’re now learning that part of one of the current scandals was just an innocent miscommunication. In 2014 Scott Alexander tried to figure out what percent of rape allegations were false. As a lower bound, the near-provably false proportion seems to be 2% to 10%, depending on the study. As an upper bound, studies find that police consider 20% to 40% of rape allegations they get to be unfounded. To me that is too high to justify the assumptions the author made. All information is valuable. Just one instance of sexual misconduct is far too many. But we were illogical to blindly trust such a clearly biased article the way we did. Instead we should have applied the same rigor to addressing sexual misconduct problems that we apply to research on EA cause areas.
Can you say more about the alarming reports of the last few weeks? It sounds like you might have more information about that than I do.
I agree that we should be doing the best that we can to reduce sexual misconduct, not just settling for being as good as other communities. I mentioned that we don't seem to do worse than other communities because I thought you were arguing that we do. I'm glad I was mistaken.
Wow. This is so hostile. Can you read how you sound?
Is this what we've become? That if I don't use you preferred words, I am "downplay[ing]" "sexual abuse"? I expect this take to age poorly and, as usual for this forum and its comment section to seem deeply defensive and incapable of discussing these issues as we look back.
I'm a bit confused that this came across as hostile, because that really wasn't my intention. English isn't my first language, so I may not always get the tone right. If it sounded aggressive, I apologize.
On the substance, though, I don't think this is just about preferred words. Sex norms and sexual abuse are two different things. Norms are about how consenting adults choose to live: polyamory, dating within the community, how openly people talk about sex. You can like or dislike them, but they're not wrong in themselves. Abuse is about what is done to someone without their real consent, sometimes by people who have power over them, and it is wrong whatever the norms of the community are.
Given what has been reported, limiting the discussion to sex norms seems problematic to me, because the stakes are not the same. If the conversation becomes about whether people like or dislike the rationalist sex scene, the question of what happened to the people who were harmed, and what should be done about it, risks getting lost.
That's all I meant: I disagree with the framing, not with your wish to get people to speak more openly. Sorry again if it came across as hostile.
If that wasn't your intention, fair enough. Let's try to discuss substance.
What do you think has been reported?