So, I like this, and also I’m going to use this space to make a complaint about how winter solstice went, which has some bearing on how much I’ll want to go to summer solstice insofar as I’m worried about it having the same problem.
Namely: 1) I felt like the atmosphere of winter solstice really wanted to be nice-Thanksgiving-dinner-with-people-I-know-and-like, but in fact I did not know and/or like a lot of the people there so the whole experience felt tonally dissonant to me, 2) in addition to the tone at large, in the specific there were several specific people there (all men) who creeped me out, who I expected creeped out other people there, and who I have never seen at a rationalist event before or since, and this seems really bad.
I don’t know by what process, if any, guests were filtered, but if the answer is “basically none” I think this is basically incompatible with wanting a Thanksgiving-dinner-ish vibe.
I kind of wish it were simple to just go “hm, can you identify these people to me so that I can make my own judgement?” But there are probably several reasons that’s impractical including (I expect) that you don’t know them by name.
It seems surprising to me that, in such a large crowd, there could be multiple people managing to make you uncomfortable (as opposed to, by contrast, managing to make someone somewhere uncomfortable, but not all the same someone, if that makes sense.) I am definitely wondering whether I didn’t encounter them, or encountered them and they didn’t have the same impact on me. I’m curious if you are able to describe the behaviors you saw, and also if you have a sense of broader context of like, do you think they were having this effect on lots of people? Do you feel like other rationalist events have similar issues or is this something unique to this one (maybe because it’s advertised more widely? Did you have a sense of where they came from?)
I don’t know their names or anything else about who they were. One of them just seemed really remarkably clueless (I’m honestly just confused, he looked 25 or something but talked like he was maybe 15?), but he had a friend who said he was party-hopping or something and hit on a woman I knew in a way that I expect creeped her out based on my read of her body language, but I didn’t actually check with her afterwards. Neither of them seemed like rationalists to me at all, and this isn’t an issue I’ve encountered at other rationalist events. I have no idea where they came from.
Yikes, ok. “Party-hopping” makes it sound like they didn’t actually buy tickets or know what the event was, but just came in off the street. Perhaps this is a case for ticket enforcement / bouncers? I’m reluctant to suggest a remedy based on a single example, since it sounds like the people you’re talking about arrived together, and so arguably constitute a single datapoint among them. But having someone designated to deal with “problem people” is arguably a good idea even from zero datapoints—usually this is the sort of thing a code of conduct might spell out, but I think the most basic step is having a person with extra cycles who knows it’s their responsibility to deal with this kind of thing (and who knows they have the full authority to eject people, with right of appeal if the organizers want to take those, but without having to involve a committee.)
Agree there’s a tradeoff between inclusiveness and coziness, but for large communitywide events I very much thing we should strongly prioritize inclusiveness.
I’m not sure if “nobody is being creepy” is sufficient for a good vibe, but it’s probably necessary (where “being creepy” means basically “making more than one person uncomfortable in ways that could be avoided and that those people feel should be”). So how do you make sure nobody is being creepy? I think the logical options are: pre-filter people; actively filter people on the spot; and discourage creepiness on the spot. I suspect that there’s a place for all three of these tactics. I have nothing more to say about how to do tactics 1 and 3.
But on tactic 2: if you want active on-the-spot filtering to be viable, I’d suggest that you should get people to pre-commit to leaving without a fuss if certain conditions are met. For instance, you must leave if asked to leave by two people; or possibly, by two of the people pre-selected by the community for this job; or by 1 person selected for this job, who has gotten two anonymous complaints; or something like that. Obviously that wouldn’t solve all possible issues but it would at least allow strong, unanimous social pressure against on-the-spot special pleading, which is absolutely going to spoil the mood if it can’t be nipped in the bud.
So, I like this, and also I’m going to use this space to make a complaint about how winter solstice went, which has some bearing on how much I’ll want to go to summer solstice insofar as I’m worried about it having the same problem.
Namely: 1) I felt like the atmosphere of winter solstice really wanted to be nice-Thanksgiving-dinner-with-people-I-know-and-like, but in fact I did not know and/or like a lot of the people there so the whole experience felt tonally dissonant to me, 2) in addition to the tone at large, in the specific there were several specific people there (all men) who creeped me out, who I expected creeped out other people there, and who I have never seen at a rationalist event before or since, and this seems really bad.
I don’t know by what process, if any, guests were filtered, but if the answer is “basically none” I think this is basically incompatible with wanting a Thanksgiving-dinner-ish vibe.
I kind of wish it were simple to just go “hm, can you identify these people to me so that I can make my own judgement?” But there are probably several reasons that’s impractical including (I expect) that you don’t know them by name.
It seems surprising to me that, in such a large crowd, there could be multiple people managing to make you uncomfortable (as opposed to, by contrast, managing to make someone somewhere uncomfortable, but not all the same someone, if that makes sense.) I am definitely wondering whether I didn’t encounter them, or encountered them and they didn’t have the same impact on me. I’m curious if you are able to describe the behaviors you saw, and also if you have a sense of broader context of like, do you think they were having this effect on lots of people? Do you feel like other rationalist events have similar issues or is this something unique to this one (maybe because it’s advertised more widely? Did you have a sense of where they came from?)
I don’t know their names or anything else about who they were. One of them just seemed really remarkably clueless (I’m honestly just confused, he looked 25 or something but talked like he was maybe 15?), but he had a friend who said he was party-hopping or something and hit on a woman I knew in a way that I expect creeped her out based on my read of her body language, but I didn’t actually check with her afterwards. Neither of them seemed like rationalists to me at all, and this isn’t an issue I’ve encountered at other rationalist events. I have no idea where they came from.
Yikes, ok. “Party-hopping” makes it sound like they didn’t actually buy tickets or know what the event was, but just came in off the street. Perhaps this is a case for ticket enforcement / bouncers? I’m reluctant to suggest a remedy based on a single example, since it sounds like the people you’re talking about arrived together, and so arguably constitute a single datapoint among them. But having someone designated to deal with “problem people” is arguably a good idea even from zero datapoints—usually this is the sort of thing a code of conduct might spell out, but I think the most basic step is having a person with extra cycles who knows it’s their responsibility to deal with this kind of thing (and who knows they have the full authority to eject people, with right of appeal if the organizers want to take those, but without having to involve a committee.)
(We actually had ticket enforcement this time, though it’s definitely still plausible someone slipped through)
Agree there’s a tradeoff between inclusiveness and coziness, but for large communitywide events I very much thing we should strongly prioritize inclusiveness.
I’m not sure if “nobody is being creepy” is sufficient for a good vibe, but it’s probably necessary (where “being creepy” means basically “making more than one person uncomfortable in ways that could be avoided and that those people feel should be”). So how do you make sure nobody is being creepy? I think the logical options are: pre-filter people; actively filter people on the spot; and discourage creepiness on the spot. I suspect that there’s a place for all three of these tactics. I have nothing more to say about how to do tactics 1 and 3.
But on tactic 2: if you want active on-the-spot filtering to be viable, I’d suggest that you should get people to pre-commit to leaving without a fuss if certain conditions are met. For instance, you must leave if asked to leave by two people; or possibly, by two of the people pre-selected by the community for this job; or by 1 person selected for this job, who has gotten two anonymous complaints; or something like that. Obviously that wouldn’t solve all possible issues but it would at least allow strong, unanimous social pressure against on-the-spot special pleading, which is absolutely going to spoil the mood if it can’t be nipped in the bud.