I can see how the article might be frustrating for people who know the additional context that the article leaves out (where some of the additional context is simply having been in this community for a long time and having more insight into how it deals with abuse). From the outside though, it does feel like some factors would make abuse more likely in this community: how salient “status” feels, mixing of social and professional lives, gender ratios, conflicts of interests everywhere due to the community being small, sex positivity and acceptance of weirdness and edginess (which I think are great overall!). There are also factors pushing in the other direction of course.
I say this because it seems very reasonable for someone who is new to the community to read the article and the tone in the responses here and feel uncomfortable interacting with the community in the future. A couple of women in the past have mentioned to me that they haven’t engaged much with the in-person rationalist community because they expect the culture to be overly tolerant of bad behaviour, which seems sad because I expect them to enjoy hanging out in the community.
I can see the reasons behind not wanting to give the article more attention if it seems like a very inaccurate portrayal of things. But it does feel like that makes this community feel more unwelcoming to some newer people (especially women) who would otherwise like to be here and who don’t have the information about how the things mentioned in the article were responded to in the past.
Yeah, I might want to write a post that tries to actually outline the history of abuse that I am aware of, without doing weird rhetorical tricks or omitting information. I’ve recently been on a bit of a “let’s just put everything out there in public” spree, and I would definitely much prefer for new people to be able to get an accurate sense of the risk of abuse and harm, which, to be clear, is definitely not zero and feels substantial enough that people should care about it.
I do think the primary reason why people haven’t written up stuff in the past is exactly because they are worried their statements will get ripped out of context and used as ammunition in hit pieces like this, so I actually think articles like this make the problem worse, not better, though I am not confident of this, and the chain of indirect effects is reasonably long here.
I would be appreciative if you do end up writing such a post.
Sad that sometimes the things that seem good for creating a better, more honest, more accountable community for the people in it also give outsiders ammunition. My intuitions point strongly in the direction of doing things in this category anyway.
I can see how the article might be frustrating for people who know the additional context that the article leaves out (where some of the additional context is simply having been in this community for a long time and having more insight into how it deals with abuse). From the outside though, it does feel like some factors would make abuse more likely in this community: how salient “status” feels, mixing of social and professional lives, gender ratios, conflicts of interests everywhere due to the community being small, sex positivity and acceptance of weirdness and edginess (which I think are great overall!). There are also factors pushing in the other direction of course.
I say this because it seems very reasonable for someone who is new to the community to read the article and the tone in the responses here and feel uncomfortable interacting with the community in the future. A couple of women in the past have mentioned to me that they haven’t engaged much with the in-person rationalist community because they expect the culture to be overly tolerant of bad behaviour, which seems sad because I expect them to enjoy hanging out in the community.
I can see the reasons behind not wanting to give the article more attention if it seems like a very inaccurate portrayal of things. But it does feel like that makes this community feel more unwelcoming to some newer people (especially women) who would otherwise like to be here and who don’t have the information about how the things mentioned in the article were responded to in the past.
Yeah, I might want to write a post that tries to actually outline the history of abuse that I am aware of, without doing weird rhetorical tricks or omitting information. I’ve recently been on a bit of a “let’s just put everything out there in public” spree, and I would definitely much prefer for new people to be able to get an accurate sense of the risk of abuse and harm, which, to be clear, is definitely not zero and feels substantial enough that people should care about it.
I do think the primary reason why people haven’t written up stuff in the past is exactly because they are worried their statements will get ripped out of context and used as ammunition in hit pieces like this, so I actually think articles like this make the problem worse, not better, though I am not confident of this, and the chain of indirect effects is reasonably long here.
I would be appreciative if you do end up writing such a post.
Sad that sometimes the things that seem good for creating a better, more honest, more accountable community for the people in it also give outsiders ammunition. My intuitions point strongly in the direction of doing things in this category anyway.