I dipped my toe into openly commenting last week, and immediately received an email that made it more difficult to maintain anonymity—I was told “Geoff has previously speculated to me that you are ‘throwaway’, the author of the 2018 basic facts post”.
Leverage Research hosted a virtual open house and AMA a couple weeks ago for their relaunch as a new kind of organization that has been percolating for the last couple years. I attended. One subject Geoff and I talked about was the debacle that was the article in The New York Times (NYT) on Scott Alexander from several months ago. I expressed my opinion that:
Scott Alexander could have managed his online presence much better than he did on and off for a number of years.
Scott Alexander and the rationality community in general could have handled the situation much better than they did.
Those are parts of this whole affair that too few in the rationality community have been willing to face, acknowledge or discuss about what can be learned from mistakes made.
Nonetheless, NYT was the instigating party in whatever of the situation constituted a conflict between NYT, and Scott Alexander and his supporters, and NYT is the party that should be held more accountable and is more blameworthy if anyone wants to make it about blame.
Geoff nodded, mostly in agreement, and shared his own perspective on the matter that I won’t share. Yet if Geoff considers NYT to have done one or more things wrong in that case,
You yourself, Ryan, never made any mistake of posting your comments online in a way that might make it easier for someone else to de-anonymize you. If you made any mistake, it’s that you didn’t anticipate how adeptly Geoff would apparently infer or discern your identity. I expect why it wouldn’t be so hard for Geoff to have figured it out it was you because you would have shared information about the internal activities at Leverage Research you are one of only a small number of people would have had access to.
Yet that’s not something you should not have had to anticipate. A presumption of good faith in a community or organization entails a common assumption that nobody would do that to their other peers. Whatever Geoff himself has been thinking about you as the author of those posts, he understands exactly the way in which to de-anonymize you or whoever would also be considered a serious violation of a commonly respected norm.
Based on how you wrote your comment, it seems that the email you received may have come across as intimidating. Obviously I don’t expect you to disclose anything else about it, and would respect and understand if you don’t, but it seems the email may have been meant to provide you with a well-intended warning. If so, there is also a chance Geoff had discerned that you were the account-holder for ‘throwaway’ (at least at the time of the posts in question) but hasn’t even considered the possibility of de-anonymizing you, at least in more than a private setting. Yet either way, Geoff has begun responding in a way that if he were to act upon enough would only have become more disrespectful to you, your privacy and your anonymity.
Of course, if it’s not already obvious to anyone, neither am I someone who has an impersonal relationship with Leverage Research as an organization. I’m writing this comment with the anticipation that Geoff may read it himself or may not be comfortable with what I’ve disclosed above. Yet what I’ve shared was not from a particularly private conversation. It was during an AMA Leverage Research hosted that was open to the public. I’ve already explained above as well that in this comment I could have disclosed more, like what Geoff himself personally said, but I haven’t. I mention that to also show that I am trying to come at this with good faith toward Geoff as well.
During the Leverage AMA, I also asked a question that Geoff called the kind of ‘hard-hitting journalistic’ question he wanted more people to have asked. If that’s something he respected during the AMA, I expect this comment is one he would be willing to accept being in public as well.
Based on how you wrote your comment, it seems that the email you received may have come across as intimidating.
I think the important information here is how did Geoff / Leverage Research handle similar criticism in the past. (I have no idea. I assume both you and Ryan probably know more about this.) As they say, past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. The wording of the e-mail is not so important.
I previously have not been as aware that this is a pattern of how so many people have experienced responses to criticism from Geoff and Leverage in the past.
Leverage Research hosted a virtual open house and AMA a couple weeks ago for their relaunch as a new kind of organization that has been percolating for the last couple years. I attended. One subject Geoff and I talked about was the debacle that was the article in The New York Times (NYT) on Scott Alexander from several months ago. I expressed my opinion that:
Scott Alexander could have managed his online presence much better than he did on and off for a number of years.
Scott Alexander and the rationality community in general could have handled the situation much better than they did.
Those are parts of this whole affair that too few in the rationality community have been willing to face, acknowledge or discuss about what can be learned from mistakes made.
Nonetheless, NYT was the instigating party in whatever of the situation constituted a conflict between NYT, and Scott Alexander and his supporters, and NYT is the party that should be held more accountable and is more blameworthy if anyone wants to make it about blame.
Geoff nodded, mostly in agreement, and shared his own perspective on the matter that I won’t share. Yet if Geoff considers NYT to have done one or more things wrong in that case,
You yourself, Ryan, never made any mistake of posting your comments online in a way that might make it easier for someone else to de-anonymize you. If you made any mistake, it’s that you didn’t anticipate how adeptly Geoff would apparently infer or discern your identity. I expect why it wouldn’t be so hard for Geoff to have figured it out it was you because you would have shared information about the internal activities at Leverage Research you are one of only a small number of people would have had access to.
Yet that’s not something you should not have had to anticipate. A presumption of good faith in a community or organization entails a common assumption that nobody would do that to their other peers. Whatever Geoff himself has been thinking about you as the author of those posts, he understands exactly the way in which to de-anonymize you or whoever would also be considered a serious violation of a commonly respected norm.
Based on how you wrote your comment, it seems that the email you received may have come across as intimidating. Obviously I don’t expect you to disclose anything else about it, and would respect and understand if you don’t, but it seems the email may have been meant to provide you with a well-intended warning. If so, there is also a chance Geoff had discerned that you were the account-holder for ‘throwaway’ (at least at the time of the posts in question) but hasn’t even considered the possibility of de-anonymizing you, at least in more than a private setting. Yet either way, Geoff has begun responding in a way that if he were to act upon enough would only have become more disrespectful to you, your privacy and your anonymity.
Of course, if it’s not already obvious to anyone, neither am I someone who has an impersonal relationship with Leverage Research as an organization. I’m writing this comment with the anticipation that Geoff may read it himself or may not be comfortable with what I’ve disclosed above. Yet what I’ve shared was not from a particularly private conversation. It was during an AMA Leverage Research hosted that was open to the public. I’ve already explained above as well that in this comment I could have disclosed more, like what Geoff himself personally said, but I haven’t. I mention that to also show that I am trying to come at this with good faith toward Geoff as well.
During the Leverage AMA, I also asked a question that Geoff called the kind of ‘hard-hitting journalistic’ question he wanted more people to have asked. If that’s something he respected during the AMA, I expect this comment is one he would be willing to accept being in public as well.
I think the important information here is how did Geoff / Leverage Research handle similar criticism in the past. (I have no idea. I assume both you and Ryan probably know more about this.) As they say, past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. The wording of the e-mail is not so important.
I previously have not been as aware that this is a pattern of how so many people have experienced responses to criticism from Geoff and Leverage in the past.