it seemed to me Alice and Chloe would be satisfied to share a post containing accusations that were received as credible.
This is a horrible constraint to put on an epistemic process. You cannot, ever, guarantee the reaction to these claims, right? Isn’t this a little like writing the bottom line first?
If it were me in this position, I would have been like:
Sorry Alice & Chloe, but the goal of an investigation like this is not to guarantee a positive reaction for your POV, from the public. The goal is to reveal what is actually true about the situation. And if you aren’t willing to share your story with the public in that case, then that is your choice, and I respect that. But know that this may have negative consequences as well, for instance, on future people who Nonlinear works with. But if it turns out that your side of the story is false or exaggerated or complicated by other factors (such as the quality of your character), then it would be best for everyone if I could make that clear as well. It would not serve the truth to go into this process by having already ‘chosen a winner’ or ‘trying to make sure people care enough’ or something like this.
There are basically three possible outcomes to Ben investigating the story of Alice and Chloe:
Ben concludes that the accusations against Nonlinear are true
Ben concludes that the accusations against Nonlinear are false
Ben decides that he doesn’t have enough evidence to make a conclusion (but can share the data)
You are talking about the first two options, but it seems quite clear to me that the third option is the thing Alice and Chloe actually worry about. (A&C know whether they are telling the truth or lying, but they can’t predict whether Ben will be sufficiently convinced by the evidence or not.) What they want is for Ben not to publish the story if the third option happens, because the predictable outcome is that Nonlinear would take revenge against them.
Ben also wants to avoid the third option, but he can’t really promise it. Maybe there simply is not enough evidence either way; or maybe there is, but collecting it would take more time than Ben is willing to spend.
if it turns out that your side of the story is false or exaggerated or complicated by other factors (such as the quality of your character), then it would be best for everyone if I could make that clear as well.
Certainly! I think I did do this. I mentioned that two people came away with a false impression of how much money Alice received, and that some people involved questioned her reliability a bunch. Sometimes I think the stories she’d share with me were a bit fuzzy and when I asked her for primary sources they were slightly out of line with her recollection (though overall roughly quite similar).
If I hold myself to satisfying A&C’s criterion here, I am basically:
a) strangleholding myself on how to share information about Nonlinear in public b) possibly overcommitting myself to a certain level of work that may not be worth it or desirable c) implicitly biasing the process towards coming out with a strong case against Nonlinear (with a lower-level quality of evidence, or evidence to the contrary, being biased against)
I would update if it turns out A&C was actually fine with Ben coming to the (open, public) conclusion that A&C’s claims were inaccurate, unfounded, or overblown, but it didn’t sound like that was okay with them based on the article above, and they weren’t open to that sort of conclusion. It sounded like they needed the outcome to be a pretty airtight case against Nonlinear.
Anyway that’s … probably all I will say on this point.
I am grateful for you, Ben, and the effort you put into this, as it shows your care, and I do think the community will benefit from the work. I am concerned about your well-being and health and time expenditure, but it seems like you have a sense for how to handle things going forward.
I am into setting firm boundaries and believe it’s a good skill to cultivate. I get that it is not always a popular option and may cause people to not like me. :P
I affirm that there was a bias toward the process coming out against Nonlinear. I think this would normally be unjustified and unfair but it was done here due to the IMO credible threat of retaliation — otherwise I would have just shared my info as I wanted to on day one. I have tried to be open about the algorithm I followed so that people can update on the filtering. Insofar as the concern about retaliation was essentially ungrounded then I think that doing this was wrong and I made a fairly serious mistake. I think it will be hard to know with certainty, given how much of the stuff was verbal, but overall I am quite confident that it was a justified concern.
To clarify, A&C didn’t ask me to make a “credible” post, I myself thought that was what I should do.
If I investigated and thought that the fears and harms were false, then my guess is that I would have shared a low-detail version of that. (“I have looked into these concerns about treatment of employees a fair bit and basically do not buy them.”) These accusations were having effects for Nonlinear and I would have wanted to counteract that.
This is a horrible constraint to put on an epistemic process. You cannot, ever, guarantee the reaction to these claims, right? Isn’t this a little like writing the bottom line first?
If it were me in this position, I would have been like:
Sorry Alice & Chloe, but the goal of an investigation like this is not to guarantee a positive reaction for your POV, from the public. The goal is to reveal what is actually true about the situation. And if you aren’t willing to share your story with the public in that case, then that is your choice, and I respect that. But know that this may have negative consequences as well, for instance, on future people who Nonlinear works with. But if it turns out that your side of the story is false or exaggerated or complicated by other factors (such as the quality of your character), then it would be best for everyone if I could make that clear as well. It would not serve the truth to go into this process by having already ‘chosen a winner’ or ‘trying to make sure people care enough’ or something like this.
There are basically three possible outcomes to Ben investigating the story of Alice and Chloe:
Ben concludes that the accusations against Nonlinear are true
Ben concludes that the accusations against Nonlinear are false
Ben decides that he doesn’t have enough evidence to make a conclusion (but can share the data)
You are talking about the first two options, but it seems quite clear to me that the third option is the thing Alice and Chloe actually worry about. (A&C know whether they are telling the truth or lying, but they can’t predict whether Ben will be sufficiently convinced by the evidence or not.) What they want is for Ben not to publish the story if the third option happens, because the predictable outcome is that Nonlinear would take revenge against them.
Ben also wants to avoid the third option, but he can’t really promise it. Maybe there simply is not enough evidence either way; or maybe there is, but collecting it would take more time than Ben is willing to spend.
Certainly! I think I did do this. I mentioned that two people came away with a false impression of how much money Alice received, and that some people involved questioned her reliability a bunch. Sometimes I think the stories she’d share with me were a bit fuzzy and when I asked her for primary sources they were slightly out of line with her recollection (though overall roughly quite similar).
I think the thing I’m attempting to point out is:
If I hold myself to satisfying A&C’s criterion here, I am basically:
a) strangleholding myself on how to share information about Nonlinear in public
b) possibly overcommitting myself to a certain level of work that may not be worth it or desirable
c) implicitly biasing the process towards coming out with a strong case against Nonlinear (with a lower-level quality of evidence, or evidence to the contrary, being biased against)
I would update if it turns out A&C was actually fine with Ben coming to the (open, public) conclusion that A&C’s claims were inaccurate, unfounded, or overblown, but it didn’t sound like that was okay with them based on the article above, and they weren’t open to that sort of conclusion. It sounded like they needed the outcome to be a pretty airtight case against Nonlinear.
Anyway that’s … probably all I will say on this point.
I am grateful for you, Ben, and the effort you put into this, as it shows your care, and I do think the community will benefit from the work. I am concerned about your well-being and health and time expenditure, but it seems like you have a sense for how to handle things going forward.
I am into setting firm boundaries and believe it’s a good skill to cultivate. I get that it is not always a popular option and may cause people to not like me. :P
I affirm that there was a bias toward the process coming out against Nonlinear. I think this would normally be unjustified and unfair but it was done here due to the IMO credible threat of retaliation — otherwise I would have just shared my info as I wanted to on day one. I have tried to be open about the algorithm I followed so that people can update on the filtering. Insofar as the concern about retaliation was essentially ungrounded then I think that doing this was wrong and I made a fairly serious mistake. I think it will be hard to know with certainty, given how much of the stuff was verbal, but overall I am quite confident that it was a justified concern.
To clarify, A&C didn’t ask me to make a “credible” post, I myself thought that was what I should do.
If I investigated and thought that the fears and harms were false, then my guess is that I would have shared a low-detail version of that. (“I have looked into these concerns about treatment of employees a fair bit and basically do not buy them.”) These accusations were having effects for Nonlinear and I would have wanted to counteract that.