KatWoods

• KatWoodsSep 8, 2023, 4:53 PM

  4 points

  2

  in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: A quick up­date from Nonlinear

  I did go out to get the potatoes. When I was sick myself.

  It was very hard to find vegan food in the area, and I read through all of the different products in the store, looking to make sure they didn’t have any sneaky non-vegan ingredients, like whey.

• KatWoodsSep 8, 2023, 7:27 AM

  5 points

  2

  in reply to: mayleaf’s comment on: A quick up­date from Nonlinear

  She said “nobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan food”, but you can see that

  1. There was vegan food in the house. We offered her oatmeal, quinoa, peanuts, almonds, prunes, tomatoes, cereal, and an orange, which were in the house.

  2. I picked her up mashed potatoes and cooked it for her on that day. Despite the fact that I was also sick (eventually found out it was covid).

  In the conversation with Drew, she says it’s fine, because she has mashed potatoes.

  She said that we didn’t bring her vegan food and we did. The text messages show that.

  Where are we disagreeing?

A quick up­date from Nonlinear

• KatWoodsSep 7, 2023, 9:24 PM

  28 points

  25

  in reply to: KPier’s comment on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  Crossposted from the EA Forum:

  We definitely did not fail to get her food, so I think there has been a misunderstanding—it says in the texts below that Alice told Drew not to worry about getting food because I went and got her mashed potatoes. Ben mentioned the mashed potatoes in the main post, but we forgot to mention it again in our comment—which has been updated

  The texts involved on 12/​15/​21:

  

  I also offered to cook the vegan food we had in the house for her.

  I think that there’s a big difference between telling everyone “I didn’t get the food I wanted, but they did get/​offer to cook me vegan food, and I told them it was ok!” and “they refused to get me vegan food and I barely ate for 2 days”.
  
  Also, re: “because of this professional/​personal entanglement”—at this point, Alice was just a friend traveling with us. There were no professional entanglements.

• KatWoodsSep 7, 2023, 7:46 PM

  96 points

  24

  on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  One example of the evidence we’re gathering

  We are working hard on a point-by-point response to Ben’s article, but wanted to provide a quick example of the sort of evidence we are preparing to share:

  Her claim: “Alice claims she was sick with covid in a foreign country, with only the three Nonlinear cofounders around, but nobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan food, so she barely ate for 2 days.”

  
  The truth (see screenshots below):

  1. There was vegan food in the house (oatmeal, quinoa, mixed nuts, prunes, peanuts, tomatoes, cereal, oranges) which we offered to cook for her.

  2. We picked up vegan food for her.

  Months later, after our relationship deteriorated, she went around telling many people that we starved her. She included details that depicted us in a maximally damaging light—what could be more abusive than refusing to care for a sick girl, alone in a foreign country? And if someone told you that, you’d probably believe them, because who would make something like that up?

  Evidence

  • The screenshots below show Kat offering Alice the vegan food in the house (oatmeal, quinoa, cereal, etc), on the first day she was sick. Then, when she wasn’t interested in us bringing/​preparing those, I told her to ask Drew to go pick up food, and Drew said yes.
    

  

  

  

  

  

  • See more screenshots here of Drew’s conversations with her, saying that I got her mashed potatoes. I did this while I was sick, and went out and checked everything at the store, checking for sneaky non-vegan ingredients, like whey.

  Initially, we heard she was telling people that she “didn’t eat for days,” but she seems to have adjusted her claim to “barely ate” for “2 days”.

  It’s important to note that Alice didn’t lie about something small and unimportant. She accused of us a deeply unethical act—the kind that most people would hear and instantly think you must be a horrible human—and was caught lying.

  We believe many people in EA heard this lie and updated unfavorably towards us. A single false rumor like this can unfairly damage someone’s ability to do good, and this is just one among many she told.

  We chose this example not because it’s the most important (although it certainly paints us in a very negative and misleading light) but simply because it was the fastest claim to explain where we had extremely clear evidence without having to add a lot of context, explanation, find more evidence, etc.

  Even so, it took us hours to put together and share. Both because we had to track down all of the old conversations, make sure we weren’t getting anything wrong, anonymize Alice, format the screenshots (they kept getting blurry), and importantly, write it up.

  We also had to spend time dealing with all of the other comments while trying to pull this together. My inbox is completely swamped.

  This claim was a few sentences in Ben’s article but took us hours to refute. Ben’s article is over 10,000 words and we’re working as fast as we can to respond to every point he made.

  Again, we are not asking for the community to believe us unconditionally. We want to show everybody all of the evidence and also take responsibility for the mistakes that we did make.

  We’re just asking that you not overupdate on hearing just one side, and keep an open mind for the evidence we’ll be sharing as soon as we can.

• KatWoodsSep 7, 2023, 10:24 AM

  6 points

  7

  in reply to: lberglund’s comment on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  Yes, we intend to. But given that our comments just asking for people to withhold judgment are getting downvoted, that doesn’t bode well for future posts getting enough upvotes to be seen.

  It’s going to take us at least a week to gather all the evidence, then it will take a decent amount of time to write up.

  In the meantime, people have heard terrible things about us and nobody’s a perfect rationalist who will simply update. Once you’ve made up your mind about somebody, it can be really hard to change.

  Additionally, once things are on the internet, they’re usually there for good. Now it might be that the first thing people find when looking up Nonlinear is this post, even if we do disprove the claims.

  A post that would most likely have been substantially different if he’d seen all of our evidence first. He already made multiple updates to the post based on the things we shared, and he would have made far more if he had given us the chance to actually present our evidence.

  Not to mention that now that he’s published this and sent them money, it’s psychologically difficult for him to update.

• KatWoodsSep 7, 2023, 8:50 AM

  50 points

  19

  in reply to: Simon Berens’s comment on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  Yes, Ben took Emerson’s full email out of context, implying that Emerson was fully satisfied when in actuality, Emerson was saying, no, there is more to discuss—so much that we’d need a week to organize it.

  

  He got multiple extremely key things wrong in that summary and was also missing key points we discussed on the call, but we figured there would be no reason he wouldn’t give us a week to clear everything up. Especially since he had been working on it for months.

• KatWoodsSep 7, 2023, 7:54 AM

  8 points

  −75

  on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  This is a short response while I write up something more substantial.

  The true story is very different than the one you just read.

  Ben Pace purposefully posted this without seeing our evidence first, which I believe is unethical and violates important epistemic norms.

  He said “I don’t believe I am beholden to give you time to prepare”

  We told him we have incontrovertible proof that many of the important claims were false or extremely misleading. We told him that we were working full-time on gathering the evidence to send him.

  We told him we needed a week to get it all together because there is a lot of it. Work contracts, receipts, chat histories, transcripts, etc.

  Instead of waiting to see the evidence, he published. I feel like this indicates his lack of interest in truth.

  He did this despite there being no time sensitivity to this question and working on it for months. Despite him saying that he would look at the evidence.

  I’m having to deal with one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me. Somebody who I used to care about is telling lies about me to my professional and social community that make me seem like a monster. And I have clear evidence to show that they’re lies.

  Please, if you’re reading this, before signal boosting, I beg you to please reserve judgment until we have had a chance to present our evidence.

• KatWoodsAug 10, 2023, 9:47 AM

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: MondSemmel’s comment on: How and why to turn ev­ery­thing into audio

  Yes, it has improved a lot! Due to laziness I haven’t really switched, but Speechify seems like a winner compared to Natural Reader on a laptop. But I almost never read with my ears when I’m at my laptop, so can’t say for sure.

  Inspired by this comment trying Speechify on my phone for a book and it’s taking ages to “process” it, so I might give up. I do have bad internet right now, but also, I often have bad internet, so I can’t work with something that requires good internet all the time. Also opened the epub in such a way where I can’t seem to click on the word and then skip to that section. Or at least, I can, but it’s super glitchy and selects a massive chunk.

  Bear in mind, could also be that it just takes some getting used to. Evie is also a pain in the ass in many ways, but I’m just used to it now :P

• KatWoodsJul 31, 2023, 10:39 AM

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: dorothy’s comment on: Med­i­ta­tion course claims 65% en­light­en­ment rate: my review

  Love that you followed up!

  Cool that you feel like it helped you. Totally get how many confounding factors there can be.

  Btw, might want to check out my article on getting rid of impostor syndrome. Just got the study results back from the class and it had a huge effect (d=1.3 on confidence scores!). Will write up some more on it soon.

  Bring it up because it could be good for you to try it when you’re still in the habit of doing an hour a day.

• KatWoodsJul 15, 2023, 9:27 AM

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: DirectedEvolution’s comment on: How to use ChatGPT to get bet­ter book & movie recommendations

  Not sure I follow the question? I think it’s mostly coming from the ability to

  1. Give really specific criteria and

  2. It being able to explain why it meets that really specific criteria.

  So like, I discovered Friendship is Optimal via ChatGPT when I gave it a prompt along the lines of “I want a sci fi about superintelligent take-over where the ending is considered good for humanity”.

  There might be lists online for books about superintelligences, but not superintelligence + positive. This becomes more true the more criteria you add, and I probably have like, ~100 in my spreadsheet of things I like.

  The second aspect, of it explaining why it meets the criteria, is also really helpful. Basically leads to it making a super catered “trailer” for you. For example, with FiO, I had had it recommended before, but I was put off by the ponies thing. But the description ChatGPT gave made me realize it was totally my jam.

  I think that if you don’t have a good sense of why you like books or movies, it won’t give you very good reccs.

How to use ChatGPT to get bet­ter book & movie recommendations

• KatWoodsApr 30, 2023, 3:54 PM

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: Casey_’s comment on: In­tro­duc­ing Align­men­tSearch: An AI Align­ment-In­formed Con­ver­sional Agent

  Looks like there’s some technical difficulties. I’ve reached out to the creators. It’s up and running again, but zoomed in weirdly when I open it.

• KatWoodsApr 14, 2023, 1:02 AM

  11 points

  8

  in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: Ap­ply to >30 AI safety fun­ders in one ap­pli­ca­tion with the Non­lin­ear Network

  Thanks for updating! LessWrong at it’s best :)

  I went through and added up all of the reviews from when Emerson was in charge and the org averaged a 3.9 rating. You can check my math if you’d like (5+3+5+4+1+4+5+5+5+5+5+5+5+1+5+5+3+5+5+5+3+1+2+4+5+3+1)/​27

  For reference, Meta has a 4 star rating on GlassDoor and has won one of their prizes for Best Place to Work for 12 years straight. (2022 (#47), 2021 (#11), 2020 (#23), 2019 (#7), 2018 (#1), 2017 (#2), 2016 (#5), 2015 (#13), 2014 (#5), 2013 (#1), 2012 (#3), 2011 (#1))

  Not diving into it super thoroughly, but when I google “what’s the average glassdoor rating”, the first three results I see are: 3.5, 3.3, and 3.3. So I think this counts as being above average on Glassdoor.

  For the reviews of the CEO, it seems they added that feature after Emerson was CEO. There’s only one CEO approval rating before 2017. If however you read the qualitative reviews and look at the overall rating of the org, you’ll find it’s above average.

  What links here?

  • Manya's comment on Non­lin­ear’s Ev­i­dence: De­bunk­ing False and Mislead­ing Claims by Kat Woods (EA Forum; Dec 13, 2023, 11:28 PM; 91 points)

Ap­ply to >30 AI safety fun­ders in one ap­pli­ca­tion with the Non­lin­ear Network

• KatWoodsApr 2, 2023, 5:55 PM

  6 points

  1

  in reply to: Chris_Leong’s comment on: In­tro­duc­ing Align­men­tSearch: An AI Align­ment-In­formed Con­ver­sional Agent

  I’d also add it to the AI safety map: https://​​aisafety.world/​​map/​​

• KatWoodsApr 2, 2023, 5:53 PM

  5 points

  4

  on: In­tro­duc­ing Align­men­tSearch: An AI Align­ment-In­formed Con­ver­sional Agent

  Just yesterday I was wishing that this existed. Thank you for making it!

• KatWoods 28 Mar 2023 22:17 UTC

  6 points

  0

  on: Men­tal Health and the Align­ment Prob­lem: A Com­pila­tion of Re­sources (up­dated April 2023)

  A couple other resources that have come out since this was originally posted:

  • A way to be okay: essentially, attach your happiness to the process, not the outcomes

  • Another way to be okay

  And separately, what works best for me during acute phases of freakout is doing cardio (usually running or jump rope) + listening to The Obstacle is the Way (book about stoicism).

  Sometimes you can try to reason your way out of something, but sometimes what works best is changing your physiology and listening to a pep talk.

  Also, thanks for writing this! I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve shared it with.

• KatWoods 19 Mar 2023 17:14 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: dorothy’s comment on: Med­i­ta­tion course claims 65% en­light­en­ment rate: my review

  Can’t wait to hear how it goes!

• KatWoods 19 Mar 2023 17:14 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: Andy Nguyen’s comment on: Med­i­ta­tion course claims 65% en­light­en­ment rate: my review

  Depends on your financial situation, but I’d say if you have anything like a regular first world income, yes.

  I also think that the cost makes you actually follow through and do it.

  Of note, if you work full-time in longtermism and make less than $100,000 per year, you will most likely qualify for the Nonlinear Support Fund to pay for it.