I would be just as angry about it if Spartz had instead threatened to sue a subreddit moderator on a subreddit I used, or someone who sent a spicy email to a mailing list, or tweeted about Spartz. This is an civil-society-wide norm, not a LW-only thing: arguments get arguments, not lawsuits. And when someone publishes some stuff about you that you don’t like, and you choose to break that norm by lawsuits.
I don’t think that’s the civil-society-wide norm? Using the threat of defamation lawsuits to keep people from saying true things, especially when the person threatening is richer or otherwise more powerful, that I agree there’s a norm against. But using the threat to keep someone from doing something they’re already not supposed to be doing [1], that I don’t see a norm against? This looks to me like a threat to bring in the legal system to keep the dispute within bounds.
(I was initially really negative on NL for threatening a suit, but I’ve reversed on this after coming to understand the situation better.)
[1] In this case, saying damaging things some of which they expect will be shown to be false. He published after saying to NL that “I do expect you’ll be able to show a bunch of the things you said.” And should have expected to be publishing some false claims just based on how many claims there were and how little time he allocated to checking the final claims with NL.
In this case, saying damaging things some of which they expect will be shown to be false. He published after saying to NL that “I do expect you’ll be able to show a bunch of the things you said.”
I don’t think this means very much without specifying which things, and how relevant to the overall question they are. I would say this both in worlds where I expect something substantial or something minor to be inaccurate. I also don’t expect Ben would have said something different if he had waited longer for adversarial fact-checking. Reaching an epistemic status of “I don’t expect you’ll be able to show any of the things you said” seems extremely hard and unlikely.
I think it’s reasonable to criticize not waiting longer. But I object to using a sentence like this as really any evidence about the degree to which that was a mistake, or about the degree to which there are material errors in the post. Of course in any post like this, in a situation as adversarial like this, will there be some things that the post gets wrong. That’s true in any domain of this complexity. I think admitting to potential error helps in situations like this and interpreting things as adversarially as this undermines people’s ability to be honest and open to new evidence in situations like this.
I included Ben’s quote because it seems relevant, but I think I’d be saying pretty much the same thing without it (or if it turned out NL used Ben’s quote out of context). The “should have expected to be publishing some false claims just based on how many claims there were and how little time he allocated to checking the final claims with NL” is sufficient.
I don’t think that’s the civil-society-wide norm? Using the threat of defamation lawsuits to keep people from saying true things, especially when the person threatening is richer or otherwise more powerful, that I agree there’s a norm against. But using the threat to keep someone from doing something they’re already not supposed to be doing [1], that I don’t see a norm against? This looks to me like a threat to bring in the legal system to keep the dispute within bounds.
(I was initially really negative on NL for threatening a suit, but I’ve reversed on this after coming to understand the situation better.)
[1] In this case, saying damaging things some of which they expect will be shown to be false. He published after saying to NL that “I do expect you’ll be able to show a bunch of the things you said.” And should have expected to be publishing some false claims just based on how many claims there were and how little time he allocated to checking the final claims with NL.
I don’t think this means very much without specifying which things, and how relevant to the overall question they are. I would say this both in worlds where I expect something substantial or something minor to be inaccurate. I also don’t expect Ben would have said something different if he had waited longer for adversarial fact-checking. Reaching an epistemic status of “I don’t expect you’ll be able to show any of the things you said” seems extremely hard and unlikely.
I think it’s reasonable to criticize not waiting longer. But I object to using a sentence like this as really any evidence about the degree to which that was a mistake, or about the degree to which there are material errors in the post. Of course in any post like this, in a situation as adversarial like this, will there be some things that the post gets wrong. That’s true in any domain of this complexity. I think admitting to potential error helps in situations like this and interpreting things as adversarially as this undermines people’s ability to be honest and open to new evidence in situations like this.
I included Ben’s quote because it seems relevant, but I think I’d be saying pretty much the same thing without it (or if it turned out NL used Ben’s quote out of context). The “should have expected to be publishing some false claims just based on how many claims there were and how little time he allocated to checking the final claims with NL” is sufficient.