Re:Effective Altruism Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassme...
by staunton on Saturday February 04, 2023 @06:12AM
(#34653553)
I guess this has to do with people trying for (in any sense) "higher standards" being perceived as hypocrites when they fail to meet them. Whenever you have a movement that claims to be "trying to make things better", you will be attacked for having any problems even if everyone else also has those problems.
In some sense, I think this idea is even valid. "You're trying to be better so why are you not better at this particular thing?" seems like a reasonable question. It's just sad when this is used as a general argument against trying to improve things.
Effective altruism the ideal is very easy to defend - it is blindingly obvious that economic advancement has outperformed all attempts at charity by orders of magnitude. Asian countries keep using work-hard-and-save with jaw dropping outcomes. The success rate of capitalist entrepreneurs at driving social improvements dwarfs the attempts of charities too.
The Effective Altruist community however is probably going to devolve into something rather unimpressive. There isn't much difference between a high performing effective altruist and a successful capitalist, so the community is on shaky ground. They don't have obvious rituals or demographic pressures to keep the community congealed.
Although this headline confuses me. Don't all communities with men in them have a sexual harassment problem? I'm not recalling a community that I'm eligible to join that hasn't been labelled as having sexual harassment problems.