This is my limited experience and only my experience.
Last year I spent an extended period in the Bay Area for job interviews. Since I am a long time lesswrong reader I decided I would take an opportunity to visit with rationalist events while I was in town.
What did I think I would find at rationalist events?
I might have guessed discussions about using monte carlo methods for estimating probabilities in complex situations. Maybe discussions about adjusting policy to behave in more logically consistent ways. Perhaps reviews of neat research in behavioral economics and even gossip about dangerous machine intelligence ◔_◔.
But, in my experience, this is not what these meetups were for. These things presumably get discussed sometimes but only off in corners with those few who were really interested.
A sampling of headlines from regular rationalist events includes:
My experience is that out there ‘rationalist’ appears to be primarily a social identity for (aspiring) wealthy young sexually-liberal intellectuals.
There is little discussion about Rationality seemingly because there is not much for community participants to do and say that advances a coherent cause in a way that an ‘environmental’ group might. But if some participants had substantial experience in statistics, game theory, or formal decision making I did not see it.
REACH is a meeting space for rationalists in Berkeley (lovely except it smells like a well used college dorm). The only seating available there is a set of sad couches which can only take five or so without stacking. We were forced to stack.
Other events were crammed into tiny bay area homes and apartments.
Because of this it is impossible to participate in these venues without being forced into awkward physical contact with others and without overhearing highly personal gossip.
Public displays of affection were common at events I attended, so were all manner of other highly intimate and unprofessional behavior including passing people around to sit on each others laps, massages, frequent hugging, dress adjusting, hand-holding, “head scratching”, lewd comments, and touching my hair. At one get together it appeared that some guests left to go have sex elsewhere in the house during the event. At least they did not ask me to come with :-P but I did not feel like it would have been scandalous if they had.
I doubt it is an accident these meetup activities feel like recommended activities for casual dates. Reading, needlepoint, gardening, and couponing would be just fun as off-topic ‘church events’, but would not work so well for dates. One event had a intro section of intensely personal questions which probably came from some speed-dating site.
These meetups seem to largely act as a hookup scouting venue for the majority polyamorious intellectuals and their friends. “Rat adjacent”, wonderful dog-whistle. What I thought was just an odd fringe of online rationality turns out to be central to in-person rationality.
(Polyamorious mostly appeared to be code for polygynous because the predominant power relationship appeared to be a tech employed male and multiple much younger economically dependent women.)
At these meetups “polyamorious by default” seems to have undermined the normal social structures which separate sexual relationships from professional and hobby interest. Letting it be known I was married did not seem to discourage them from (politely) hitting on me, embarking on an unwanted monologue about the advantages of polyamory, or inviting me to live with them while my partner looked for employment remotely (wow!). These advances, which also included unsolicited physical contact were flattering (but unwelcome) and I was not traumatized by them or afraid for my safety. But they resulted in an awkward conversation with my spouse which I would have rather not had. Nor was this behavior confined to a few “bad apples” (nor ‘autism’) but was highly normalized, witnessed by others and not remarked on. People I met universally seemed friendly and interesting (if somewhat amusingly naive). But they also seemed to have no personal boundaries, awareness, and odd expectations about acceptable conduct. Although everyone (?) in attendance was technically an adult (ignoring some participants’ young kids) yet there appeared to be no “adult supervision”. I assume everyone uninterested in these activities has quickly run away unless they were completely oblivious.
I would not have been surprised and made to feel so uncomfortable by the conduct if my visit was to a group for “rationalist singles”.
After reflection I do not believe this is focus dilution from community growth. The few names in the rationalist community I recognized also participated in/lead the same activities. I think if they want to discuss rationality the best place to do it is online. At physical meetups their main interest is finding interesting persons to physically contact (ahem).
This prevalence of nominal polyamory creates an environment were everyone is assumed to be available and where I found it challenging to deflect interest without constant effort and risk of insult. I also felt an undertone of “anyone in a committed relationship is in need of ‘help’ to improve their rationality”. It felt gross, not cute.
In my experience their events were largely a relationship-finding group substantially populated by a very sexually progressive (to state it politely) population, but they were operated under a banner of meeting for purposes unrelated to relationships and sex.
This mismatch of expectations generates drama.
I can not imagine this community becoming more about either instrumental or epistemological rationality because few participants seemed to have much interest in either, except rather shallowly (“Gosh wasn’t that an interesting article?” “You betcha”). Nor can I imagine it changing to adopt more honest labeling since even in the open minded Bay Area thinking we are spending our evenings with “our singles/swinging group” will not make us feel very high status compared to “our rationality meetup”.
It’s interesting how rationalists everywhere seem to be creepy in the exact same way. I’m not even on the same continent as the Bay Area, and some behaviors I have experienced from IRL lesswrongers include aggressive sexual advances, nonconsensual touching and kissing, and weird sexual oversharing (literally struck up conversation with a dude I’ve never met before and the first thing he tells me is that he got whipped last week). They were also all polyamorous, and all men were straight, while all women were assumed to be bisexual or straight—but—flexible. A friend from that community told me once that he wonders why there was plenty of bi women, but no lesbians or gay/bi men in longterm relationships with people in their polycule, and I really wanted to tell him that maybe they’d want to stay there if all of their parties and meetups weren’t centered around men/their girlfriends trying to ‘recruit’ young women. He thought it was related to genetics somehow.
This was also my experience as well, the pressure to be polyamorous is really intense. I don’t know how many times people recommended Sex at Dawn to me but it was A LOT. Polyamory sounds great (though I am not interested myself) and I have many lovely polyamorous friends, but I think at this point most people in cities know what it is and recruiting is unnecessary and irritating.
Also these people are “liberal” as in they like NPR but don’t make them uncomfortable by criticism their icons like Sheryl Sandberg or implying that it’s even possible they might be racist. They are like the dad in Get Out.
I doubt they’ll listen to me, but my advice for cleaning these groups up:
This actually worked for a group I was in, which still has plenty of poly and kinky people, but signficantly less (hopefully zero) abuse and general creepiness.
This scans, except for
Nnno, the predators actively using gaslighting and “logic” to cover their own asses generates “drama”. It’s not a mistake that Davis Aurini, Eron Gjoni, and Wes Fenza are all “rationalist adjacent”.
Boundaries are for normies and outgroupers, don’t you know. Why are you being so mean by having boundaries?
tl;dr: it’s a sex cult hiding behind pretensions of intellectualism?
I guess that honestly doesn’t surprise me, it’s certainly not the first time something like this has cropped up. I am sorry that you had to deal with all this, though; even if you didn’t necessarily find the experience traumatic, it certainly seems extremely unpleasant.
It doesn’t really surprise me that such a degree of boundarylessness was present – I had many (substantially more benign) experiences in highschool and college of how this sort of group culture normalization can lead to all sorts of alien(ating) weirdness when it intersects with people not “in” on it.
It’s a little eerie, how well this description applies to my close encounter of the rationalist kind, albeit in a different country.
Some points of similarity:
Idk what my big takeaway thesis is, other than “glad it’s not just me who noticed.”
If you strain your ears, you can probably hear me vomiting from the other side of the planet.
The “hey lemme just build a harem” crowd gives polyamory a bad name imo.
I don’t really get what you mean by this tbh.
Oof
Thanks for writing this. My personal favorite/cringiest line was:
Are rationalists all 17 year olds attending parties behind their parents’ backs? What is this?
Anyway, there’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask for a while: I recently came across this old sneerclub comment, which says:
I think this comment may be the most horrifying allegation I’ve seen made against the rationalist community^([1]). Women sitting on the floor while men sit in chairs? And this is acceptable/normal?
So what I’ve been meaning to ask is: is that actually a thing? Did it happen more than once? Has anyone else also seen this? To any ex-rationalists here, can you confirm or disconfirm? (Also for rationalists reading this, free to PM me to confirm/disconfirm if you don’t want to post on sneerclub or are banned from doing so.)
^([1] Excluding allegations against specific people in the rationalist community, of course - some are literal rapists - but for allegations against specific people the community can at least claim they are an exception.)
This sounds like the perfect place for a sexual predator to hang out. Based off your experience, it’s not at all surprising that there are so many accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assault, and I am inclined to believe them. I like SSC and LW, but I would avoid these people like the plague. The whole thing just sounds really weird, but it fits with my prior experience with poly people.
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A reaction to these issues; https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wmEcNP3KFEGPZaFJk/the-craft-and-the-community-a-post-mortem-and-resurrection
This reminds me of that thread where two REACH staff people tried to defend their cult from the reality of their cultishness, but in the end only really managed to reveal even more about how fucked-up their thinking is.
How does that work with the gender ratio among rationalists ?
Can you explain what you mean by lack of boundaries ?
honestly I’m increasingly convinced that the only way to fix the silicon valley problem is with a wave of hot and cleansing fire
Oh god I recognize so much of this you’ve just described in a group I’m sort of loosely participating in, based in Amsterdam. But I’m facing a different set of issues because these people, though educated and with their own notable achievements, are clearly oblivious to the fact that free love does not mean free of consequences. They’re like children who’ve just disregarded basic ethics, and expect everything to run smoothly regardless of what their members do among each other.
Let’s just say, many just don’t seem to understand the value of not shitting where they eat.
You might have a better time with goal-focused meetups, like EA stuff. “Rationalists” is pretty explicitly a social group rather than a project; they share common interests but those interests don’t lend themselves to a casual/volunteering approach, so they are not seriously pursued at meetups.
I have no idea what I’m talking about, but inviting people to stay over could just be a reaction to bay area rents. Despite the sprinkling of rich people most rationalists don’t have a lot of money if only because of all the young people and academics.
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What’s your sex and orientation? Is the hitting on worse for women?