I vaguely remember Eliezer saying that something is on topic at LessWrong if it improves the chances of a positive singularity (but a quick Google search couldn't locate that). I would assume that this applies to meetups, and metadiscussions of meetups. So I would appeal to everyone to put into place policies that would help the SIAI, whatever those may be. If minimizing "creepy" behavior maximizes the chance that the SIAI is successful in its mission, then I want policies that minimize incidence of creepy behavior, even if this is simply an excuse to exclude low status persons. If not minimizing "creepy" behavior maximizes the chance that the SIAI is successful in its mission, then I don't want policies that minimize creepy behavior, even if this results in unpleasant situations for some persons.
The positive utility from FAI dominates any short-term local gains from {treating low status males fairly, ensuring that females feel welcome}. I don't know exactly how one would argue either way, but people aren't even addressing the consequentialist point. My immediate naive idea would be to calculate whether ( ) is greater or less than ( ), but I have no idea how to even estimate some of those variables, nor am I sure if solving said inequality is the right frame to think in.
How might a lack of women affect the ability to compute CEV?
One of the lessons highlighted in the thread "Less Wrong NYC: Case Study of a Successful Rationalist Chapter" is Gender ratio matters.
There have recently been a number of articles addressing one social skills issue that might be affecting this, from the perspective of a geeky/sciencefiction community with similar attributes to LessWrong, and I want to link to these, not just so the people potentially causing problems get to read them, but also so everyone else knows the resource is there and has a name for the problem, which may facilitate wider discussion and make it easier for others to know when to point towards the resources those who would benefit by them.
However before I do, in the light of RedRobot's comment in the "Of Gender and Rationality" thread, I'd like to echo a sentiment from one of the articles, that people exhibiting this behaviour may be of any gender and may victimise upon any gender. And so, while it may be correlated with a particular gender, it is the behaviour that should be focused upon, and turning this thread into bashing of one gender (or defensiveness against perceived bashing) would be unhelpful.
Ok, disclaimers out of the way, here are the links:
Some of those raise deeper issues about rape culture and audience as enabler, but the TLDR summary is:
EDITED TO ADD:
Despite the way some of the links are framed as being addressed to creepers, this post is aimed at least as much at the community as a whole, intended to trigger a discussion on how the community should best go about handling such a problem once identified, with the TLDR being "set of restraints to place on someone who is burning the commons", rather that a complete description that guarantees that anyone who doesn't meet it isn't creepy. (Thank you to jsteinhardt for clearly verbalising the misinterpretation - for discussion see his reply to this post)