I think I am also more skeptical than you about how much Nonlinear’s counterclaims exonerate them
I mention this in the post and realize this is a frustrating frame for the Lightcone people who worked hard on this story, but I really just don’t care a ton about Nonlinear qua Nonlinear. It’s a small charity org with an unconventional structure working in a general area (AI safety) a lot of rationalists see as important and I have ambiguous feelings on in terms of the efficacy of charity work. I don’t have a lot of weight as to where people should land on whether their claims “exonerate” them in a true sense, particularly because the stakes feel a lot more like “roommate drama” stakes than “FTX” ones to me.
What I do care very much about is that the rationalist/EA community not fall into the same callout/dogpiling/”cancel” cultural traps I’ve seen repeat in so many other subcultures. Spending six months to gather only negative information about someone—particularly someone in your own community, where your opinion will carry a lot of weight—before presenting it in public is bad, full stop. It works in a courtroom because there is a judge there, but the court of public opinion demands different norms.
Doing so and then being in such a hurry to present it that you won’t even pause when someone not under investigation brings in hard evidence against one of your claims and tells you you’re making a mistake? That only compounds the issue.
the risks of the adversarial slowdown, or threatening/pressuring witnesses into silence
Part of this feels like a byproduct of having spent six months gathering negative information about them. You all were in an extraordinarily adversarial frame towards them, where my sense is that you all (at least Ben) emotionally felt they were something akin to monsters wearing human skinsuits, some sort of caricature of cartoon villains. From my own outside-community view, you all seem like decent, flawed people with the same broadly praiseworthy, somewhat flawed philosophy.
More than that, though: the witnesses were already not silent. They’d spent a year being anything but silent. They’d spent the better part of six months feeding information to Ben, who had it and could do what he felt he ought with it independent of Nonlinear’s actions. “Please give us a week to present evidence” paired with reassurance that they’re not trying to stop you from publishing altogether contains a clear hard deadline with a clear request and gives no reason to indicate an indefinite delay.
I push towards publication a lot of things a lot of people would really rather we not publish (on BARPod). I don’t have quite the proximity to them you guys had to Nonlinear (which goes both ways—you were more reachable by whatever their response was, but you also shared a great deal of context and had a lot more room for cooperation). They can’t do anything to indefinitely delay publication. When we’re satisfied with the story, we put it up. It is not in their control. When it comes to the publication of your own piece on your own site, you hold all the cards.
So I have more objections to some of this, but I maybe want to take a moment to say:
I do really appreciate that you are here trying to push for good epistemic standards. I definitely think each of the considerations you’re raising are really important. I don’t feel that confident that we made the right call, and I think each of the points you’re making should be a pretty strong default that you need a really good reason to deviate from.
I think you’re wrong about specific points like “Nonlinear couldn’t do anything to indefinitely delay publication” and “Ben had the info and could do what he felt he ought independent of Nonlinear’s actions.”
But, mostly right now it feels like you have one really strong/clear frame of how to do truthseeking. I think “investigative journalism ethics” is one particular frame, but neither the only frame for collective truthseeking nor for “figuring out how a community can/should protect itself from manipulative people.”
I can totally buy deciding, in a few weeks, that, yep, Ben fucked up here. And fwiw I also don’t have any objection to you writing your post now rather than later (I thought that was a pretty weird objection on Habryka’s part, given the circumstances). But, I do wish you were putting more effort into asking “is my conception of truthseeking and set of tradeoffs actually right in all circumstances?”.
The fact that it’s not material to you what’s up with Nonlinear and whether they were bad, feels like it’s missing a major part of the conversation.
Right now tensions are already high and I’m not sure how achievable it is to have a real conversation about it in the immediate future. I’m also just pretty busy right now with unrelated stuff. But fwiw I’d be interested in doing a dialogue with you about that. (I do think that format is somehow better than comment sections at maintaining mutual truthseeking vibe)
I appreciate this response and would love to dive into it more. I’m only loosely familiar with the dialogue format on this site but am definitely game, though I’d request an asynchronous one since I prefer having time to gather my thoughts and maintaining a bit of flexibility around each of our schedules.
I mention this in the post and realize this is a frustrating frame for the Lightcone people who worked hard on this story, but I really just don’t care a ton about Nonlinear qua Nonlinear. It’s a small charity org with an unconventional structure working in a general area (AI safety) a lot of rationalists see as important and I have ambiguous feelings on in terms of the efficacy of charity work. I don’t have a lot of weight as to where people should land on whether their claims “exonerate” them in a true sense, particularly because the stakes feel a lot more like “roommate drama” stakes than “FTX” ones to me.
What I do care very much about is that the rationalist/EA community not fall into the same callout/dogpiling/”cancel” cultural traps I’ve seen repeat in so many other subcultures. Spending six months to gather only negative information about someone—particularly someone in your own community, where your opinion will carry a lot of weight—before presenting it in public is bad, full stop. It works in a courtroom because there is a judge there, but the court of public opinion demands different norms.
Doing so and then being in such a hurry to present it that you won’t even pause when someone not under investigation brings in hard evidence against one of your claims and tells you you’re making a mistake? That only compounds the issue.
Part of this feels like a byproduct of having spent six months gathering negative information about them. You all were in an extraordinarily adversarial frame towards them, where my sense is that you all (at least Ben) emotionally felt they were something akin to monsters wearing human skinsuits, some sort of caricature of cartoon villains. From my own outside-community view, you all seem like decent, flawed people with the same broadly praiseworthy, somewhat flawed philosophy.
More than that, though: the witnesses were already not silent. They’d spent a year being anything but silent. They’d spent the better part of six months feeding information to Ben, who had it and could do what he felt he ought with it independent of Nonlinear’s actions. “Please give us a week to present evidence” paired with reassurance that they’re not trying to stop you from publishing altogether contains a clear hard deadline with a clear request and gives no reason to indicate an indefinite delay.
I push towards publication a lot of things a lot of people would really rather we not publish (on BARPod). I don’t have quite the proximity to them you guys had to Nonlinear (which goes both ways—you were more reachable by whatever their response was, but you also shared a great deal of context and had a lot more room for cooperation). They can’t do anything to indefinitely delay publication. When we’re satisfied with the story, we put it up. It is not in their control. When it comes to the publication of your own piece on your own site, you hold all the cards.
So I have more objections to some of this, but I maybe want to take a moment to say:
I do really appreciate that you are here trying to push for good epistemic standards. I definitely think each of the considerations you’re raising are really important. I don’t feel that confident that we made the right call, and I think each of the points you’re making should be a pretty strong default that you need a really good reason to deviate from.
I think you’re wrong about specific points like “Nonlinear couldn’t do anything to indefinitely delay publication” and “Ben had the info and could do what he felt he ought independent of Nonlinear’s actions.”
But, mostly right now it feels like you have one really strong/clear frame of how to do truthseeking. I think “investigative journalism ethics” is one particular frame, but neither the only frame for collective truthseeking nor for “figuring out how a community can/should protect itself from manipulative people.”
I can totally buy deciding, in a few weeks, that, yep, Ben fucked up here. And fwiw I also don’t have any objection to you writing your post now rather than later (I thought that was a pretty weird objection on Habryka’s part, given the circumstances). But, I do wish you were putting more effort into asking “is my conception of truthseeking and set of tradeoffs actually right in all circumstances?”.
The fact that it’s not material to you what’s up with Nonlinear and whether they were bad, feels like it’s missing a major part of the conversation.
Right now tensions are already high and I’m not sure how achievable it is to have a real conversation about it in the immediate future. I’m also just pretty busy right now with unrelated stuff. But fwiw I’d be interested in doing a dialogue with you about that. (I do think that format is somehow better than comment sections at maintaining mutual truthseeking vibe)
I appreciate this response and would love to dive into it more. I’m only loosely familiar with the dialogue format on this site but am definitely game, though I’d request an asynchronous one since I prefer having time to gather my thoughts and maintaining a bit of flexibility around each of our schedules.
Yep reasonable. I’m busy this week but if it still feels promising next week can followup then.