On Demandingness, Polyamory, and Effective Altruism
Sorry about EA Forum drama everyone
There’s a saying I’ve seen going around in the discussion of sexual norms in the effective altruist community: “the purpose of the effective altruism community is not to make effective altruists happy or to get them relationships, it’s to improve the world as much as possible.”
As stated, of course, this is true.
But it has a sort of implicit corollary: “…and therefore you shouldn’t ask out other effective altruists unless you’re looking to seriously date”, “…and therefore you shouldn’t be polyamorous”, “…and therefore you shouldn’t have sex with other effective altruists”, “…and therefore you should stop cuddling people at parties to which other effective altruists are invited”, “..and therefore the effective altruism movement gets a veto over your sex life.”
And here we have a problem.
The purpose of the effective altruism community is not to make effective altruists happy or to get them relationships, and by the same token the purpose of my personal life is not to improve the health or public relations of the effective altruism movement.
The default is not that I’m celibate and then the effective altruism movement may graciously allow me a sexual relationship if it thinks it increases my net productivity. The default is that I can have sex with any consenting adults I please.
The effective altruism community is very demanding. It has a say over how I spend my money (10% to the All Grants Fund this year). It has a say over my career choices (saving a shrimp near you). It has a say over my diet (which I grieve any time I smell non-vegan cookies at a bakery). Heck, it has a say over my discourse norms (you have no idea how many fun blog posts got ruined by fact-checking). But for this reason I am very very reluctant to give effective altruism more say over things.
There’s an enormous circle labeled “my choices about whom I’m friends with and what activities I do with them”, and another enormous circle labeled “what I do with my genitals.” Effective altruism does not get a say about the contents of either of these circles unless and until (a) inviting people I dislike to my LARPs will inspire them to end malaria forever or (b) my genitals contain the source code to a friendly AI.
Let me be clear about what I am and am not saying. I of course believe that effective altruists should follow common-sense sexual ethics, which includes not hitting on people in your chain of command, avoiding any pressure into sex, and being careful about relationships with coworkers, with people much younger than you, and people you have power over. I support a norm of no cuddle piles or flirting at effective altruist retreats, meetups, events, or afterparties; effective altruism can certainly set the norms at official EA events, and it makes sense to me that these should be asexual spaces. I agree that certain people, by virtue of their position, grant the effective altruism movement more say in their romantic lives. A grantmaker, a charity founder or executive, or a community organizer1 should take great care to make sure they don’t have sex with anyone they might wind up with power over. But if they quit their job, they give up the responsibility. Similarly, if you work in certain jobs in animal advocacy, you may have to move to India. But that is very different from the effective altruist movement saying that everyone should move to India in order to strengthen the farmed-animal advocacy movement there.
However, “effective altruist party” fails to distinguish between “an officially branded effective altruist event” and “my house party, to which I have invited my friends, many of whom are effective altruists.” The effective altruist movement does not get a say in which activities I plan for my parties, even if I have invited effective altruists to them. It doesn’t get to veto me playing Diplomacy on the grounds that it will harm community cohesion, and it doesn’t get to veto me having cuddle piles because someone else might find out about them and think effective altruists are weird.
Further, the effective altruism community doesn’t get to tell me to break up with my girlfriend? I feel kind of flabbergasted that this is coming up, and I can only imagine that people aren’t really thinking through what “don’t sleep around in effective altruism” or “effective altruists should stop being poly” mean.
I’m feeling as I write this a temptation to say “Do you really think that it’s unwelcoming to women that I have a geologist girlfriend who has taken the Giving What We Can pledge and whom I met discussing gay romance novels?” or “Okay, but my enbyfriend became an effective altruist due to my good influence, would that mean I have to break up with them? That’s a hell of an incentive not to be an effective altruist.”
But that’s not the point.
The point is that it is bad for people for every aspect of their lives to be optimizing for making the world a better place. People need private lives. A totalizing movement that dictates everything about its members’ choices is a cult. And if your sex life isn’t something that you can make decisions about without going “but does this make the effective altruism movement look weird?” or “what if some hypothetical woman who isn’t even here is put off?”—God, what is?
Seriously, apply this logic to other things:
Effective altruism is about making the world a better place, not about making effective altruists happy or letting them have kids, so we’re not going to offer paid parental leave and we’re going to shut down the Parents in EA Facebook group. Stop wasting energy on having children, the movement needs you.
Effective altruism is about making the world a better place, not about making effective altruists happy or letting them feel okay in their bodies, so we’re going to misgender trans people. It’s a cognitive burden to remember your pronouns and a lot of people are transphobic so you make us look bad.
Effective altruism is about making the world a better place, not about making people happy or comfortable. Stop wasting so much top effective altruist energy talking about sexual harassment. If someone makes a comment that makes you uncomfortable remember how much good work they’re doing for the movement and shut up.
Effective altruism is about making the world a better place, not about making effective altruists happy or increasing the number of funny jokes, so we’re going to create a social norm against shitposts on Twitter. Shitposts cause people to have an inaccurate understanding of key EA ideas and make us look like weirdos.
People say “oh, that’s not the same” but why aren’t they the same? I think the reason is unexamined sex-negativity. Parenthood, transition, not being sexually harassed, even having a personal Twitter—these are things we agree are important. Sex is frivolous. Oh, sure, we agree that your marriage is the most important relationship in your life. But surely polyamory isn’t loadbearing for you. Surely you don’t get any companionship or sense of meaning or love from your secondary romantic/sexual relationships. Surely casual sex is easy to give up and can be readily replaced with ice dancing. All of these are sort of trivial things. So if you say “effective altruists shouldn’t do them” it’s not like asking them to donate 10% of their income or switch careers or give up fish and eggs. It’s like asking them not to say the fuck word on the Effective Altruism Forum.
That’s… wrong, though. Not for everyone, but for a lot of people. It’s demanding to ask people to give up a bunch of relationships of ten years’ standing. It’s demanding to ask a lonely person not to seek a relationship with an interested person. It’s demanding—yes, it is—to ask people to give up on a sexual behavior that enriches their lives and directly harms no one. These proposed norms are demanding and invasive and the effective altruism community should stand against them.
Not a complete list.
I don't live in the Bay; I don't go to EA events where I _do_ Iive; I'm not polyamorous. If I did go to Bay EA events I don't think I'd be likely to hit on women often (if for no other reason than I doubt there'd be many potential partners.)
My reaction to this discourse is nevertheless a rather enormous *fuck you, you don't get to tell me anything*, because if you are a straight guy--in particular if you're a high-scrupulousity straight guy with low-status hobbies/characteristics, i.e. nerds--you will hear an endless series of lectures about how it's unconscionable for you to hit on women at X for...pretty much any X? I've heard that claim about work, about hobby groups, about the park, the bus, dancing, the gym, workout groups, the internet, RPs, hiking, and--no joke--bars. I've never heard anyone say it's evil to hit on girls on Tinder, but I mean, wouldn't be surprised at this point.
Most of these lectures about how you're awful come with a side of "of course, I'm not claiming you can't want to hit on women--but can't you do it in the appropriate places?" But somehow no place actually is appropriate, if you listen to all of these lectures. And yet, it also is empirically true that many men hit on women at any and all of these places and get away with it. Now, I do have a lot of sympathy with women feeling overwhelmed, and practically speaking I very rarely hit on women at all, because, well, it's hard and risky and difficult to find opportunities. But somehow the rules seem impractical to follow and deeply against my interest.
So I look with deep suspicion on, at this point, all of these claims, because I have an extremely strong prior that anyone who says this sort of thing actually thinks--consciously or not--that my sexual interest is fundamentally disallowed. If I listened to all such people I would literally die alone, and, uh, fuck that and fuck you if you want it?
> Sorry about EA Forum drama everyone
Personally, I'm here for the forum drama (or at least for your commentary), and for the casual anthropology!
I'm a monogamous person who has hung out with quite a few poly friends over the years. There's a certain kind of geeky community that's partly poly/kinky/queer. I'm very fond of these groups. They tend to encourage people to explore different ideas about relationships and gender, and to ultimately pursue something that seems like a good fit. They're one of the very few social groups that accepts bi guys without blinking. And they tend to have slightly more colorful gossip. A key part of what makes them work is that probably only a minority of people are any one of poly, or kinky, or queer. But probably 2/3rds of the group is probably at least one of those. This creates an equilibrium where it's totally OK to be monogamous or vanilla or cis het.
But these are all social groups, not work groups. I honestly don't want to hear about sex parties or relationship drama at work. In fact, the only sorts of relationship stuff I want to hear from most of my coworkers is "My kids need to be picked up early today" or "I'm going skiing with my partners this weekend!" If I actually socialize with a coworker outside of work, I'll eventually learn more, and that's fine.
I agree that the EA community should not be telling people to break up with their partners. That sets off my "danger! totalizing cult!" immune system in a major way. A better set of social norms might be: Don't hit on people at professional events. Don't conduct business at sex parties. (I am not familiar with sex party ettiquette, but disucssing grant-writing seems like it might be poor form.) Be careful about conflicts of interest. Frankly, it's not of my business how many people my professional colleagues date, unless they're RVSPing for an event and I need to plan for a few +2s, etc.
This probably gets more difficult for certain communities, like queer activists in small enough cities, where the total dateable population may be small enough that everyone knows everyone. In which case, eh, do your best.