I don’t see any way you could meaningfully “address” the work/social overlap without trying to get people not to date, live with or befriend people they otherwise would have dated, lived with, or befriended. And if you put it in those terms, it seems messed up, right?

I don't actually think that's necessarily messed up? That sometimes your role conflicts with a relationship you'd like to have is unfortunate, but not really avoidable:

• A company telling its managers that they can't date their reports .

• A person telling their partner that they can't date other people.

• A person telling their partner that they can't date a specific other person.

• A school telling professors they can't date their students.

• A charity telling their donor services staff that they can't date major donors.

The person has the option of giving up their role (the manager and report can work with HR to see if either can change roles to remove the conflict, the poly partner can dump the mono one, etc.) but the role's gatekeeper saying you both can't keep the role and date the person seems fine in many cases?

The harm isn’t in the harshness or softness of the punishment - it’s friendships nipped in the bud, beautiful relationships that can never even get started. I think people should think harder about the sacrifices that in practice people would have to make, and about how important social relationships are.

In agreement there!

Most of my comments have been trying to say "we should evaluate both sides of these tradeoffs". Too much of the discussion has been "X has downsides" or "X has upsides" as if these are decisive.

Thanks for writing this Amber. I pretty firmly disagree, but I'm upvoting it anyway because I think we need to discuss these issues in the open, and you've put across your point of view in a measured, reasonable way. I hope to draft a response soon with some alternative suggestions.

(Also, as usual, @Peter Wildeford has made most of my points in his comment.)

I think my main disagreement is that this is taking on a straw man argument. I'm not aware of anyone suggesting that we should "prevent people from forming relationships with whom they want", at least not in the strong sense of "banning" relationships. Indeed, I've spoken recently to a couple of people with experience of managing these issues, and they all say "people are free to date whomever they want" (provided the usual caveats about it being fully consensual etc.).

What is being suggested is that there should be clear policies for how these relationships will be handled, to ensure a) the safety of those involved, especially the partner(s) with less power; and b) the safety of the community as whole. Those then give all parties the chance to make informed decisions about whom they form relationships with, and to give informed consent.

Accordingly, I think all EA orgs should adopt a clear "relationships at work" policy (and I hope to release a template for this soon). This wouldn't say "you can't date anyone from work". But it would say:

1. If you have a nonprofessional relationship with someone at/directly related to work, we will actively manage any conflicts of interest, by doing X, Y and Z
2. If you have a nonprofessional relationship with someone at/directly related to work, you have to tell the relevant organisation(s) promptly so they can achieve (1)
3. You can't use work time to advance your romantic interests, in particular by e.g. propositioning people
4. If you date someone at/related to work and there is a power imbalance, you have a particular duty to think very carefully about this, per @Peter Wildeford 's comment
5. Even when you aren't on work time, we reserve the right for your actions to have professional consequences if they are plausibly harmful (e.g. if someone comes into work on a Monday and says you sexually harassed them on a Friday night, that's not 'off limits' for professional consequences) 

Part 1 would involve things like recusing anyone who has a nonprofessional relationship with someone else from any decision about their pay, promotions, disciplinary processes etc., to avoid the obvious conflict of interest here (I commented elsewhere that I am concerned by you saying you would only "probably" find someone a new manager if their current manager starts dating them, although I don't want to focus in too hard on a single word).

It also involves removing them from decisions about funding, hiring etc. for indirect work relationships.

Part 5 might seem like the most draconian but is based on real examples of people who repeatedly sexually harassed colleagues, but because it happened 'after hours' it was never acknowledged or dealt with.

If orgs adopted a policy like this from the get-go, it would give everyone involved the chance to give informed consent - that is, they can understand exactly the consequences of their actions in advance and decide what works best for them. This isn't "preventing people from forming relationships" - it's allowing them to form relationships in an informed way.

You are right, of course, that this might lead to people not starting a relationship that they otherwise would have, but that's just tough, I'm afraid - as other commentators have pointed out, this happens all the time in professional settings. Alternatively, they might choose to start the relationship anyway, and then they can choose whether to live with how that is managed or one or other person can seek a job elsewhere, in a different team etc..

Anyway, in sum, I think this is the steelman position, and I think its harms (maybe people have fewer relationships/less sex with people they work with) are greatly outweighed by its benefits (a healthier and safer workplace and community, which conforms to wider workplace norms).

I would like to emphasize that when we discuss community norms in EA, we should remember the ultimate goal of this community is to improve the world / humanity's future as much as possible, not to make our lives as enjoyable as possible. Increasing the wellbeing of EAs is instrumentally useful for increased productivity and attracting more people to make sacrifices like "donate tens of thousands of dollars" or "change your career plan to work on this problem", but ultimately the point isn't to create a jolly in-group of ambitious nerds. For example, if the meshing of polyamorous and professional relationships causes less qualified candidates to earn positions in EA organizations, this may be net negative, even if the polyamorous relationships make people really happy.

I think I've recently got a reputation as one of the people really against personal and professional mixing, so I wanted to clarify more about how I think about this.

I definitely think it's ok (beautiful even) for EAs to date other EAs. There's nothing wrong with this. I think where it goes wrong is how it is handled. It needs to be handled with a lot of thought and care.

Essentially, a few things:

• I think we as a community need to make clearer differentiations between personal and professional spaces and then avoid asking people out in professional spaces. EA Global is a professional space and I'm glad we now have a "Swapcard is not for dating" rule. Other events, like EA Global afterparties, that feel more ambiguous should probably do more to clearly set expectations upfront so attendees know what they're getting into.

• We shouldn't be able to make decisions of power (e.g., grants, hiring decisions, management, performance reviews) to people we are dating. That is a clear conflict of interest. Any grantmaking body or organization has to have some sort of system to handle this. For example, if you date someone on the EA Infrastructure Fund, you still should apply, but someone else other than the person you are dating should review the application and your relationship to the grantee should be disclosed confidentially to the Fund when relevant.

• EAs who are in positions of power (e.g., CEOs of research organizations, grantmakers at OP) need to be extra careful and extra thoughtful about how they go about their relationships.

• People should be able to engage fully within the professional aspects of EA without having to give up their personal life too. EA needs to be structured to allow this. I think we've made a lot of progress on this.

All of these things apply equally well to any community or professional group, not just EA. There's nothing EA-specific about how to navigate conflicts of interest.

I think "Power dynamics in EA" was a really thoughtful post that captures a lot of the relevant trade-offs here.

I kind of skimmed this post, so hopefully I am not making of fool pf myself but I think you didn’t really address a key point which is raised by „critics“ and that are the challenges associated with the tendency for centralization in EA.

There are basically two to three handful of people who control massive amounts of wealth, many of which are interweaved in a web of difficult to untangle relationships ranging from friendly to romantic. The denser this web is, the more difficult it is for people to understand what is going on. Are rejections or grants based on emotion or merit? It’s simply difficult to say the more complex the interactions are.

I think having friendships and relationships is great if the people involved are happy but we have to develop appropriate means for dealing with the complexity of it all. For instance, in cooperatives relationships are often very highly valued and central to the whole experience of being part of the cooperative. There are formalized mechanisms in place to afford systematic discussion of relationships and negotiation of mutually acceptable forms of organization. In EA, we are lacking this kind of structure. While some participatory islands might exist, there are often streamlined but opaque processes in place that allow a few people to make huge decisions affecting countless people with very limited involvement from the community at large (or the people affected for that matter). This becomes pretty tricky to justify as “EA” if you cannot demonstrate that the decisions being made are “above reproach” and not influenced by romantic relationships, in-group favoritism or the like.

In sum, I think I broadly agree that having friendly or even romantic relationships within the EA community can also have a good side but I am very skeptical that our current ways of organizing can handle all the complexity that is entailed by strong versions of this. If we want deeper and more relationships within the community, we should adapt our spaces and institutions to be ready for that. We owe it to ourselves and others to figure out how we can behave responsibly in this context.

People choose whom they date and befriend - no-one is forcing EAs to date each other, live together, or be friends. EAs associate socially because they share values and character traits.

To an extent, but this doesn't engage with the second counterpoint you mentioned: 

2. The work/social overlap means that people who are engaged with EA professionally, but not part of the social community, may miss out on opportunities.

I think it would be more accurate to say that, there are subtle pressures that do heavily encourage EAs to date each other, live together, and be friends (I removed the word 'force' because 'force' feels a bit strong here). For example, as you mentioned, people working/wanting to work in AI safety are aware that moving to the Bay Area will open up opportunities. Some of these opportunities are quite likely to come from living in an EA house, socialising with other EAs, and, in some cases, dating other EAs. For many people in the community, this creates 'invisible glass ceilings,' as Sonia Joseph put it. For example, a woman is likely to be more put-off by the prospect of living in an EA house with 9 men than another man would be (and for good reasons, as we saw in the Times article). It is not necessarily the case that everyone's preference is living in an EA house, but that some people feel they will miss opportunities if they don't.  Likewise, this creates barriers for people who, for religious/cultural reasons, can't or don't want to have roommates who aren't the same gender, people who struggle with social anxiety/sensory overload, or people who just don't want to share a big house with people that they also work and socialise with. 

If you're going to talk about the benefits of these practices, you also need to engage with the downfalls that affect people who, for whatever reason, choose not to become a part of the tight-knit community. I think this will disproportionately be people who don't look like the existing community. 

I appreciate this post. But one mistake this post makes, which I think is an extremely common mistake, is assuming that there can exist a community without (soft) norms.

Every community has norms. It is impossible to get out of having norms. And so I don't think we should be averse to trying to consciously choose them.

For example, in American society it is a norm to eat meat. Sometimes this is in fact because people actively are trying to get you to eat meat. But mostly, nobody is telling other people what to eat  -- people are allowed to exercise their free choice (though animals aren't). But this norm, while freeing for some, is constricting for others. If I go to a restaurant in many places, there won't be much good vegetarian food. In some places, there is a norm to have vegetarian food. But there is no place where there is no norm: in some places, there is a norm to have it, and in others, there is a norm not to have it. The norms can be stronger or weaker but there is no place without norms.

Currently, there is the non-coercive but "soft" norm in EA that young people interested in AI safety research will go to Berkeley. The post you link is an example of that. People are being actively encouraged to go to Berkeley. They are being paid specifically to go to Berkeley in some cases. For the reasons you give, this could potentially be really good, but the comments on that post also give reasons why it might not be!

You gave the following reason why norms are often not so good:

they prevent people from doing harmless things that they want to do.

This is true. But one could just as easily say of other norms:

they encourage people to do slightly harmful things they wouldn't otherwise want to do.

Or perhaps:

they fail to discourage people from doing harmful things that they want to do.

The "default norm" is what the community happened to settle on. But it is a norm as much as any other. And it isn't necessarily the best one.

It's worth noting that some people (like me)! don't join the in person EA community at all because the norms are so off-putting.

I expect they are particularly off-putting to monogamous mid career/late career professionals. And it seems to me that it would be good for EA if they had more experienced people around - stuff around risk management would probably improve.

I also think that power dynamics are the source of the biggest problems in the work/social overlap, so a flatter power structure might be a good way of avoiding some of the pitfalls and abuses of the work/social overlap.

Do you think that in abstract that professional/social overlap is less of a problem when the power structure is flatter, or that having a flatter power structure is something that EA could actually achieve?

I'm curious because, to deal with potential abuse of power, I would prefer a more explicit power structure (which sounds like an opposite conclusion to your suggestion).

My first assumption is that power structures are an unavoidable fact in any group of people. I assume that trying to enact a flatter power structure might actually cash out as pretending the power structure doesn't exist [this might be where we disagree!].

Pretending that power structures are flat leads to plausibly permissable abuse of the actual underlying power structure. However strictly acknowledging a power structure means one is forced to acknowledge the power dynamic.

So to encourage healthy relationships, I would have called for making power structures explicit, in EA or any group.

If you want to get rid of something, you should first try to make sure that it’s not importantly load-bearing first;

I'd be interested in trying to figure this out (maybe through a survey).

What value do different groups in the community get from various kinds of experiences in EA spaces?

For example, I'm curious how most women would weigh being in an EA space (including EAGs, local EA events, EA houses, EA camps and training events etc)

a) that lets them access healthy professional networks free from the tensions of inappropriate* sexual/romantic advances

against

b) being in an EA space where they are able to date EAs.

(There is a tradeoff here.)

I am also curious if men in the community have an opposing view - if so, it might be important to think about how  the existing state of the community  (that may have been shaped by the views of the majority gender) may make it less attractive to women currently in or considering joining the community.

(This example is obviously hypothetical but I do have a suspicion that a greater percentage of women would weigh a) higher than b) )

Similarly, I am also curious about how different locations/EA organizations/cause area sub groups weigh these choices.

*example of inappropriate - young EA job seekers being propositioned by potential bosses/seniors in their field after making it clear to them that they were looking for job opportunities/contacts/mentoring in that field.

I think it's worth keeping in mind that every functioning culture includes a vast list of taboos which people enforce on others. In both regular Western culture, and EA culture, all of the following are considered inappropriate:

- Making sexist jokes
- Not being sympathetic when someone else experiences a personal tragedy
- Nuidity in the workplace
- Answering somebody else's phone
- Smoking weed in the office
- Bragging about money
- Chewing with your mouth open
- Refusing to shake somebody's hand when you're introduced
- Making prolonged, intense eye contact with people
- Not saying "pardon me" after farting or burping loudly
- Over-sharing personal information with someone you don't know very well
- Asking an employee to carry out a duty that is far outside their normal role (e.g. "For the second half of your shift, can you please go to my parent's house and change the bedsheets")
- Giving people unsolicited gifts which are too expensive
- Swearing 
- Having sex with somebody much younger than you even if they're above legal age of consent
- Offering to buy somebody's pet from them

Some of these taboos are hard to justify on the spot, but very few people seriously want to eliminate them all.

Perhaps we want EA culture to lean slightly more towards personal autonomy than normal Western culture does, but there's never going to be a cohesive collection of humans who can productively interact together without  seriously regulating each other's behaviour.
 

Thanks for the post - I really appreciated hearing a perspective in favour of this overlap! 

I just wanted to elaborate a bit on how "conflict of interest", "missing opportunities" and "all eggs in one basket" can come together to make the experience especially harmful.

In particular, if you face interpersonal issues (or worse e.g. harassment etc.) from someone who is in the same social graph (professionally and socially) as you, you're put in a very tricky spot. As you acknowledge, it is in fact how it works that if you aren't plugged into the social community, you will miss out on opportunities. It is also the case that many of your friends will be in the same social graph.

Thus you may be put in a position where you have to trade-off having less impact and not attending social events which all of your friends attend, versus your personal happiness and safety. While I think this possibility is very much implicit in your comments, I thought it might be useful to highlight it, because I think in practice this pressure to associate socially is very strong and therefore can be very damaging in the especially egregious cases of interpersonal issues within the community.

Well written, thanks!

If the head of the NIH had had a romantic relationship with the head of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, would that have been reasonable?

People choose whom they date and befriend - no-one is forcing EAs to date each other, live together, or be friends.

I don't think the issue is once of explicit 'force'. It is one of implicit expectation, social pressure from 'soft norms'.

Ordinary workplaces do team-building exercises because they recognise that there are productivity and morale benefits when colleagues trust each other, respect each other, and have fun together. If you work with friends - or befriend your coworkers, e.g. by regularly hanging out with them outside of work, or sharing a group house together - you get these benefits for free.

IMO there is a lot of difference between team building exercises vs encouraging (including 'soft norm' pressure) living with and dating your co-workers.

There is a lot more exposure to risks, especially to vulnerable groups from the latter.

Ordinary workplaces err on the side of workplace romance policies that limit risks to their employees and the reputation of the workplace. I don't think we can reasonable argue that EA organizations/workplaces/professional spaces are immune from these risks. 

'Ordinary workplaces' have learnt how some behaviors increase discrimination and harm towards vulnerable groups the hard way (after decades of harmful behavior towards vulnerable groups). For example, going to a strip club is no longer an acceptable form of team building exercise. I believe there is a lot to be learnt from conventional workplaces that have spent a very long time harming these groups and limiting their access to workplaces. The last thing we would want to do is repeat these mistakes because of biased beliefs that we are too good or too smart to make them.

Why not document the relationships between people in EA orgs? That might at least clarify things for people who are less central.

You can also document potential conflicts of interest (e.g. where someone hires someone they are in a relationship with), and write down the justifications for doing so.