The sad state of Rationality Zürich - Effective Altruism Zürich included

Hi! I'm Michael aka Rai, one of the organizers involved. Here's my take.

Roland creeps me out in a S1 way. I am not comfortable holding conversations (especially about personal things) around him. One day, I realized that I am not the only person feeling uncomfortable about Roland.

One of my chief aims as the current de-facto organizer of Rationality Zurich is to have a social group which is pleasant for the people involved, and I have come to believe that Roland's presence at the meetups is net negative, especially (but not exclusively) for the kinds of things which I would like to do more of at Rationality Zurich. Circling is a good example of those things.

I think there are ways Roland could change that would make me feel less creeped out, and maybe reverse the decision (mine was to ban Roland from meetups I organize) - roughly, more social intelligence or empathy. But fixing that is not my responsibility.

As one of the multiple people creeped out by Roland in person, I'd like to say that I endorse a norm in which community members and organizers don't have to justify themselves or submit to dispute moderation here.

I support teaching better behavior to people who are imposing externalities on others, but what is the maximum value of n, where n is the number of people who have left your group because of someone's bad/creepy behavior, which you're willing to trade in order to teach an individual how to control their behavior?

I'm not going to respond to any responses here, because my view is that this should be a closed case, and isn't worth the time.

I want to give the organisers the benefit of the doubt. As an organiser I would find it hard to respond to this with care. At the same time I don't always get along with everyone. And there is no expert skill process to solve that problem. In an ideal world everything would just work. We could resolve our differences, and we could move forward. We don't live in that world.

It's unfortunate that you didn't fit the group socially. As the external community it would be wrong of us to pressure a local friend group to do anything.

I understand your disappointment here. The frustrations of probably what you think is someone not trying to make it work. My advice to you is that if you want to live in a better world - be a better person. Demonstrate by example. Be inclusive, start a group. Organise events. I know of more than one city with multiple streams of meetups with different cultures, attendees and flavours. You can do that.

This is Marko. First I want to say that everything Roland says here is either correct or plausible to me, except for one misunderstanding: I am indeed an EA, just not an organizer of EA Zurich, and I don’t tell EA Zurich what to do.

Roland, you seem to be confused about who the „instigator“ is. The answer is, each one of us three has preferred you not to be at meetups for some time, each for his own reasons, it just took a while for that to become common knowledge. Noone had to persuade anyone.

As Roland notes, a lot of our reasons for the decision to exclude him are social/emotional. But even if we were just „task groups“ I think he would be a net negative contributor to both LW and EA.

Roland’s views are often very categorical: „Effective Altruists are the new hippies“, „Christianity is a death cult“, etc. This simplistic thinking makes it hard to learn from him and for him to learn from others.

Roland has some pet topics such as 9/11 truth and Thai prostitutes that he brings up frequently and that derail and degrade the quality of discussion.

Roland is generally hostile towards altruism and advocates against current EA endeavors, without constructively offering improvements or alternatives.

I also expect (low confidence) that the number of people who do not come to meetups because Roland was there is higher than 1.

I wholeheartedly agree with Elo’s advice. I am not interested in mediation, but would reluctantly agree to it if other community members think that's a good idea.

We’re only getting one side of the story here; and also—taking your account of the facts as the unvarnished truth, for argument’s sake—I can easily see multiple plausible interpretations of the events you describe. Some of them reflect quite negative indeed on the organizers of the mentioned events/groups. Others, likewise, reflect quite negatively on you, and leave the named people largely blameless. I have nowhere near enough information to favor either type of interpretation—though let me say that, on priors, and given my experiences, I don’t find either sort of interpretation to be any more or less plausible than the other.

But there are two comments I’d like to make, that do not depend on which interpretation of your account is the true one.

First: thank you for posting this. We should have more accounts like this. There is far too much insularity and secrecy in and among our “rationalist communities”; more openness would benefit everyone (except those who deserve to be harmed by it).

Second: this is another in a long series of things I have both witnessed and have been told about, over the span of many years, which increasingly convinces me that the idea of “rationalist communities” is, and always has been, fundamentally misguided and detrimental. What is on display in this account are the consequences of conflating social groups (i.e., groups of friends/acquaintances, who enjoy each other’s company and like to engage in general-purpose social activities together) with task groups (i.e., organizations, formally constituted for some purpose, whose membership and activities are subordinate to that purpose). (Note that this characterization does not depend on which interpretation of the OP’s account we favor; it holds in any event short of him making the entire thing up from whole cloth!)

Dear Roland,

thank you for sharing.

Full disclaimer: My name is Florian and I'm a somewhat regular attendee of the Zurich meetups and know everyone involved. I just met Roland in person as I decided he needed it most at this moment. I want to talk to everyone else involved – full confidentiality ensured by the gods of signaling – and then decide if this event was a feature or a bug of the community in question and take things from there, based on that decision. Of course, again, with the full consent of everyone involved.

(I am sure there is some kind of bug involved as I heard about this issue here as opposed to elsewhere more locally, but it may as well lie with me as with anybody else.)

If I get enough upvotes (hint, hint!) , I may be able to share my progress in a separate post within four weeks.

(edit one: clarified to say I just met Roland in person as opposed to I just got to know him )

I'm one of the organisers mentioned in the post, and for now I would like to say that we are still in the process of clarifying this whole issue, I will react to this post by Roland as soon as I have a clearer picture of what is going on and how we could resolve this.

Interesting. I don't really know enough to respond beyond to say it sounds like there is more going on that is not being disclosed.

1. I don't know the facts of the matter and have not heard the other side of the story. Hence, I cannot determine whether the group was justified in excluding you or not. I think the same goes for most people here.
2. If you feel a group associated with EA/LW has acted unfairly towards you, you have a right to air your grievances.
3. I'd say publicly naming groups and decisions you believe, rightly or wrongly, to be unjust is good. Events like this happen far too often behind closed doors. Transparency is something we should strive for.
4. Ultimately, the Zurich EA group is not an official organisation representing EA. They are just a bunch of people who decide to meet up once in a while. They can choose who they do and do not allow into their group, regardless of how good/bad their reasons, criteria or disciplinary procedures are.

Perhaps we should try to find a respected member of the Less Wrong community to offer to mediate in this dispute, but if the organisers aren't interested in mediation, there isn't really anything that can be done.

Copied from the Heterodox Effective Altruism facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1449282541750667/):

Giego Caleiro I've read the comments and now speak as me, not as Admin:
It sems to me that the Zurich people were right to exclude Roland from their events. Let me lay out the reasons I have, based on extremely partial information:

1) IF Roland brings back topics that are not EA, such as 9/11 and Thai prostitutes, it is his burden to both be clear and to justify why those topics deserve to be there.

2) The politeness of EAs is in great part the reason that some SJWs managed to infiltrate it. Having regulations and rules that determine who can be kicked out is bad, because it is a weapon that the SJWs have been known to wield with great care and precision. That is, I much prefer a group where people are kicked out without justification than one in which reason is given (I say this as someone who was kicked out of at least 2 physical spaces related to EA, so it does not come lightly). Competition drives out SJWs, so I would recommend to Roland to create a new meeting that is more valuable than it's predecessor, and attract people to it. (this community was created by me, with me as an admin, precisely for those reasons. I believed that I could legitimately help generate more valuable debate than previous EA groups, including the one that I myself created, but feared would be taken over by more SJWish types. This one is protected).

3) Another reason to be pro-kicking out: I and Tartre run a facebook chat group where I make a point of never explaining kicking anyone out. As far as I can tell, it has the best density of interesting topics of any facebook chat related to rationalists and EAs. It is necessary to be selective.

4) That said: Being excluded from social groups is horrible, it feels like dying to a lot of people, and it makes others fear it happening to them like the plague. So it allows for the kind of pernicious coordination in (DeScioli 2013) and full blown Girardian Scapegoating. There's a balance that needs to be struck to avoid SJWs from taking little bureocracies, then mobbing people out, thus tyrannizing others into condescention with whatever is their current day flavour of acceptable speech.

5) Because being excluded from social groups is horrible, HEAs need to create a welcoming network of warmth and kindness towards those who are excluded or accused. We don't want people to feel like they are dying, we don't want they hyppocampi compromised and their serotonin levels lowered. Why? Because this happens to a LOT of people when they transition from being politically left leaning to being politically right leaning (or when they take the sexual strategy Red Pill). If we, HEAs, side with the accusers, the scapegoaters, the mob, we will be one more member of the Ochlocracy. This is both anti-utilitarian, as the harm to the excluded party is nearly unbearable, and anti-heterodox, as in all likelihood at least in part a person was excluded for not sharing a belief or behavioral pattern with those who are doing the excluding. So I highly recommend that, on priors, HEAs come forth in favor of the person.

During my own little scapegoating event, Divia Caroline Eden was nice enough to give me a call and inquire about psychological health, make sure I wasn't going to kill myself and that sort of thing (people literally do that, if you have never been scapegoated, you cannot fathom what it is like, it cannot be expressed in words) and maybe 4 other people messaged me online showing equal niceness and appreciation.

Show that to Roland now, and maybe he'll return the favor when and if it happens to you. As an HEA, you are already in the group of risk.