This article is similar to much other mainstream coverage of EA/rationality and paints the community in an unfairly negative light.
The specific claims in the article have been previously addressed.
There is no good evidence that the LW / rationalist community has higher than average levels of abuse.
It is worthwhile putting effort into finding out if the community has higher than average levels of abuse, which it does not seem has been done by people in the community. Given the gender imbalance, our prior should be that higher than average levels of abuse are somewhat likely.
We can and should have much lower than average levels of abuse.
This community strives to exceed the rest of society in many domains. It is anomalous that people are quite uninterested in optimizing this as it seems clearly important.
To be clear, I’m not at all confident that all of the empirical claims above are true. But it seems that people are using the earlier points as an excuse to ignore the later ones.
Agreed. I think while we’re at it, we should also investigate the DNC for child sex trafficking. After all:
There is no good evidence that DNC staffers abuse children at any higher-than-average rate, but:
We can and should lower average levels of child sexual abuse.
It is worthwhile putting effort into finding out if a community has higher than average levels of child sexual abuse, which does not seem to have been done by DNC staffers.
The DNC strives to exceed the rest of society in many domains. It’s anomalous that such people seem quite disinterested in optimizing this problem, as preventing child sexual abuse is clearly important.
I don’t think there is grounds for a high profile external investigation into the rationalist community.
But yes, we should try to be better than the rest of society in every way. I think the risk of sexual abuse is high enough that this would be a profitable use of resources whereas my prior is that the risk of child abuse (at least child sex trafficking) does not merit spending effort to investigate.
Idk anything about the DNC so I don’t know what it’s worth their effort to do.
I think you are suggesting that I am committing the fallacy of privileging the hypothesis, but I think the stories in the article and associated comment sections are sufficient to raise this to our attention.
I think you are suggesting that I am committing the fallacy of privileging the hypothesis...
No, I am accusing you of falling for a naked political trap. Internet accusations of pedophilia by DNC staffers are not made in good faith, and in fact the content of the accusation (dems tend to be pedophiles) is selected to be maximally f(hard to disprove, disturbing). If the DNC took those reports seriously and started to “allocate resources toward the problem”, it would first be a waste of resources, but second (and more importantly) it would lend credibility to the initial accusations no matter what their internal investigation found or what safeguards they put in place. There’s no basic reason to believe the DNC contains a higher number of sexual predators than e.g. a chess club, so the review itself is unwarranted and is an example of selective requirements.
In the DNC’s case, no one actually expects them to be stupid enough to litigate the claim in public by going over ever time someone connected to the DNC touched a child and debating whether or not it’s a fair example. I think that’s a plausible outcome for rationalists, though, who are not as famously sensible as DNC staffers.
You don’t think that picture ought to change in the hypothetical parallel scenario of multiple children independently saying that they were sex trafficked by DNC staffers, and also notably saying that they were given reasons for why this was normal and unfixable and in fact probably an average and hence acceptable rate of sex trafficking, reasons and arguments that were directly derived from Democratic positions?
This is not a random outside accusation to frame the rationalist community. It comes from people drawn to the community for the promise of rationality and ethics, and then horribly disillusioned. Who are referencing not just abuse, but abuse specifically related to rationalist content. The girl who committed suicide because she had literally been led to believe that this community was the only place to be rational, and that being repeatedly sexually assaulted in it in ways that she found unbearable was utterly inevitable, was horrifying. She wasn’t just assaulted, she was convinced that it was irrational to expect humane treatment as a woman, to a degree where she might as well commit suicide if she was committed to rationality. That speaks to a tremendous systematic problem. How can the first response to that be “I bet it is this bad in other communities, too, so we needn’t do anything, not even investigate if it actually is equally bad elsewhere or if that is just a poor justification for doing nothing”?
It is anomalous that people are quite uninterested in optimizing this as it seems clearly important.
I have the opposite sense. Many people seem very interested in this.
“This community” is a nebulous thing and this site is very different than any of the ‘in-person communities’.
But I don’t think there’s strong evidence that the ‘communities’ don’t already “have much lower than average levels of abuse”. I have an impression that, among the very-interested-in-this people, any abuse is too much.
Several things can be true simultaneously:
This article is similar to much other mainstream coverage of EA/rationality and paints the community in an unfairly negative light.
The specific claims in the article have been previously addressed.
There is no good evidence that the LW / rationalist community has higher than average levels of abuse.
It is worthwhile putting effort into finding out if the community has higher than average levels of abuse, which it does not seem has been done by people in the community. Given the gender imbalance, our prior should be that higher than average levels of abuse are somewhat likely.
We can and should have much lower than average levels of abuse.
This community strives to exceed the rest of society in many domains. It is anomalous that people are quite uninterested in optimizing this as it seems clearly important.
To be clear, I’m not at all confident that all of the empirical claims above are true. But it seems that people are using the earlier points as an excuse to ignore the later ones.
Agreed. I think while we’re at it, we should also investigate the DNC for child sex trafficking. After all:
There is no good evidence that DNC staffers abuse children at any higher-than-average rate, but:
We can and should lower average levels of child sexual abuse.
It is worthwhile putting effort into finding out if a community has higher than average levels of child sexual abuse, which does not seem to have been done by DNC staffers.
The DNC strives to exceed the rest of society in many domains. It’s anomalous that such people seem quite disinterested in optimizing this problem, as preventing child sexual abuse is clearly important.
I don’t think there is grounds for a high profile external investigation into the rationalist community.
But yes, we should try to be better than the rest of society in every way. I think the risk of sexual abuse is high enough that this would be a profitable use of resources whereas my prior is that the risk of child abuse (at least child sex trafficking) does not merit spending effort to investigate.
Idk anything about the DNC so I don’t know what it’s worth their effort to do.
I think you are suggesting that I am committing the fallacy of privileging the hypothesis, but I think the stories in the article and associated comment sections are sufficient to raise this to our attention.
No, I am accusing you of falling for a naked political trap. Internet accusations of pedophilia by DNC staffers are not made in good faith, and in fact the content of the accusation (dems tend to be pedophiles) is selected to be maximally f(hard to disprove, disturbing). If the DNC took those reports seriously and started to “allocate resources toward the problem”, it would first be a waste of resources, but second (and more importantly) it would lend credibility to the initial accusations no matter what their internal investigation found or what safeguards they put in place. There’s no basic reason to believe the DNC contains a higher number of sexual predators than e.g. a chess club, so the review itself is unwarranted and is an example of selective requirements.
In the DNC’s case, no one actually expects them to be stupid enough to litigate the claim in public by going over ever time someone connected to the DNC touched a child and debating whether or not it’s a fair example. I think that’s a plausible outcome for rationalists, though, who are not as famously sensible as DNC staffers.
You don’t think that picture ought to change in the hypothetical parallel scenario of multiple children independently saying that they were sex trafficked by DNC staffers, and also notably saying that they were given reasons for why this was normal and unfixable and in fact probably an average and hence acceptable rate of sex trafficking, reasons and arguments that were directly derived from Democratic positions?
This is not a random outside accusation to frame the rationalist community. It comes from people drawn to the community for the promise of rationality and ethics, and then horribly disillusioned. Who are referencing not just abuse, but abuse specifically related to rationalist content. The girl who committed suicide because she had literally been led to believe that this community was the only place to be rational, and that being repeatedly sexually assaulted in it in ways that she found unbearable was utterly inevitable, was horrifying. She wasn’t just assaulted, she was convinced that it was irrational to expect humane treatment as a woman, to a degree where she might as well commit suicide if she was committed to rationality. That speaks to a tremendous systematic problem. How can the first response to that be “I bet it is this bad in other communities, too, so we needn’t do anything, not even investigate if it actually is equally bad elsewhere or if that is just a poor justification for doing nothing”?
Oh okay, I misunderstood. I forgot about that whole DNC scandal.
I agree that a public investigation would probably hurt the rationalist’s reputation.
However reputation is only one consideration and the key disanalogy is still the level of evidence. Also a discreet investigation may be possible.
I have the opposite sense. Many people seem very interested in this.
“This community” is a nebulous thing and this site is very different than any of the ‘in-person communities’.
But I don’t think there’s strong evidence that the ‘communities’ don’t already “have much lower than average levels of abuse”. I have an impression that, among the very-interested-in-this people, any abuse is too much.