JONATHAN M. VAJDA

Bongeunsa temple, Seoul, South Korea

Sonia Joseph began reading effective altruist blogs when she was 12. The vigorous online debates about how to have the most impact in the world provided a sense of community that she was missing as an Indian-American girl growing up in suburban Boston. But when she became old enough to join in-person EA gatherings in the Cambridge area, she noticed that many of the men she met seemed enamored with “pickup artistry,” a supposedly systematic approach to convincing women to sleep with them.
xxx/ellauri250.html on line 733: In 2018, as she was starting her career in AI research, Joseph recalls being introduced to a prominent man in the field connected to EA. Joseph was 22 and still in college; he was nearly twice her age. As they talked at a Japanese restaurant in New York City, she recalled, the man turned the conversation in a bizarre direction, arguing “that pedophilic relationships between very young women and older men was a good way to transfer knowledge,” Joseph says. “I had a sense that he was grooming me.” (Joseph says she told her roommate about the alleged incident. The roommate confirmed that conversation to TIME.)
xxx/ellauri250.html on line 735: Another woman, who dated the same man several years earlier in a polyamorous relationship, alleges that he had once attempted to put his penis in her mouth while she was sleeping. (TIME is not naming the man, like others in this story, due to the request of one or more women who made accusations against them, and who wanted to shield themselves from possible retaliation.)
xxx/ellauri250.html on line 737: Several of the women who spoke to TIME said that the popularity of polyamory within EA fosters an environment in which men—often men who control career opportunities–feel empowered to recruit younger women into uncomfortable sexual relationships. Many EAs embrace nontraditional living arrangements and question established taboos, and plenty of people, including many women, enthusiastically consent to sharing partners with others. There is no current data on the prevalence of polyamory in EA. One former EA data scientist says he estimates that about 30% of EA was polyamorous.
xxx/ellauri250.html on line 741: Several of the women who spoke to TIME said that EA’s polyamorous subculture was a key reason why the community had become a hostile environment for women. One woman told TIME she began dating a man who had held significant roles at two EA-aligned organizations while she was still an undergraduate. They met when he was speaking at an EA-affiliated conference, and he invited her out to dinner after she was one of the only students to get his math and probability questions right. He asked how old she was, she recalls, then quickly suggested she join his polyamorous relationship. Shortly after agreeing to date him, “He told me that ‘I could sleep with you on Monday,’ but on Tuesday I’m with this other girl,” she says. “It was this way of being a f—boy but having the moral high ground,” she added. “It’s not a hookup, it’s a poly relationship.” The woman began to feel “like I was being sucked into a cult,” she says.
xxx/ellauri250.html on line 743: Gopalakrishnan also described a cult-like dynamic that favored accused men over harassed women. After writing out her concerns about the sexual dynamics within the movement on the EA forum, Gopalakrishnan watched the responses pour in. Shaken, she removed her post. She felt exposed, she recalls, and didn’t feel like being a punching bag. Most of all, Gopalakrishnan was disturbed at the way the rational frameworks to which she had devoted her life could be used to undermine her own experiences. “You’re used to overriding these gut feelings because they’re not rational,” she says. “Under the guise of intellectuality, you can cover up a lot of injustice.”

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