I also don’t want to turn this into “and now Aella hijacks this issue to talk about personal social drama where she picks through the details of every rumor in order to convince you she’s not a terrible person”. But still, it’s hard to convey exactly how this works without examples, and specific instances of this happening to me are what have so strongly updated my views, so I’m going to pick just a few.
I appreciate your taking care here, and concreteness is valuable in conversations like this. Even so, I’m not sure what I can take away with respect to EA from this middle half of your post. I don’t know you apart from your two prior comments on this forum. It’s hard to distinguish your account here from what I’d expect to read from a verbally skilled actor who’s fluent in the strategic use of bright lines to avoid getting pinned down. Narrative may be the best remaining means to warn against such an actor, and by construction that narrative can just as well be framed as mere insinuation or hostile framing. So it’s hard to treat statements like yours as evidence without a foundation of trust in involved individuals or even just familiarity with their community. Separately, the specifics of your analysis of statements about you seem to me at best tenuously related to coverage of EA, even in your transition back to discussing it.
I’m left feeling that this wasn’t an appropriate forum for that section of your post. (I don’t object to your defending yourself—I doubt I’d have commented if you’d left this section at the link to your original response to your friend’s statements. Similarly, I’m happy to encourage critical reading.) I seem to be in the minority—you do say you’re “mini-famous”, so maybe more in-the-loop readers have more to go on—but I do wonder if others have thoughts along or outright against these lines.
Aella is a leader in the rationalist community. As such, she’s interacted with us frequently outside the forum and a lot of EAs have developed a lot of trust in her over a long period of time. I can see how this post wouldn’t be as persuasive for someone who didn’t know of her through that.
What do you mean by “leader in the rationalist community”? I neither know aella well nor the rationalist community well and am unsure where the “EAs have developed a lot of trust in her over a long period of time” comes from. Obviously not saying she’s untrustworthy!
In many areas, the EA community and rationalist community overlap a lot (for example, in the San Francisco Bay Area where I socialize , and in the AI alignment cause area where I have some experience). I realize this isn’t true in a lot of parts of EA.
The part of the post this comment is objecting to relies on that prior trust and familiarity with the rationalist community. If you’re not its’ target audience, I wasn’t objecting to you not getting anything useful out if it. I was just trying to provide some helpful context for why so many people have upvoted this post despite Aella’s sparse and recent presence on the forum.
I disagreed but didn’t downvote. I mostly just found the word “leader” to be extremely strong. It might be the case that this is true in the SF scene (but I wouldn’t know given I have no exposure to that) but I had never heard of aella prior to this post and would guess this is likely true for many people who live outside of SF. Also, leader usually implies some level of giving directions, having power, commanding, etc which I found pretty unlikely given what I know of EA organizational structure and helped the fact I had never heard of this person.
I also disagreevoted for similar reasons. I’m familiar with Aella, but I would call her well known rather than a leader, such that similar to the top level comment here I don’t really know how much to update on her description of events.
I didn’t downvote/disagreevote either comment, but clearly if one disagrees that Aella is a leader then they may disagreevote. similarly, if they think the merits of this post stands independently of who Aella is as a leader and is based on the idea that she is famous, then they might also disagree with the last sentence.
I disagree. This section of the post would presumably be useful to people who lack awareness of the extent of the problem, either because they have not famous and have not ever been the main character on social media, because they are extremely young, or because they are autistic. I am not such a person, but I do think it exposes the nature of the problem vividly and persuasively, in a way that helps you empathise with the victims of such defamation—or “quasi-defamation”, as we might call defamation through innuendo and ethereal claims lacking all specificity or falsifiability. If you are not such a person either, it’s something you could have just skipped over when reading the post.
I appreciate your taking care here, and concreteness is valuable in conversations like this. Even so, I’m not sure what I can take away with respect to EA from this middle half of your post. I don’t know you apart from your two prior comments on this forum. It’s hard to distinguish your account here from what I’d expect to read from a verbally skilled actor who’s fluent in the strategic use of bright lines to avoid getting pinned down. Narrative may be the best remaining means to warn against such an actor, and by construction that narrative can just as well be framed as mere insinuation or hostile framing. So it’s hard to treat statements like yours as evidence without a foundation of trust in involved individuals or even just familiarity with their community. Separately, the specifics of your analysis of statements about you seem to me at best tenuously related to coverage of EA, even in your transition back to discussing it.
I’m left feeling that this wasn’t an appropriate forum for that section of your post. (I don’t object to your defending yourself—I doubt I’d have commented if you’d left this section at the link to your original response to your friend’s statements. Similarly, I’m happy to encourage critical reading.) I seem to be in the minority—you do say you’re “mini-famous”, so maybe more in-the-loop readers have more to go on—but I do wonder if others have thoughts along or outright against these lines.
Aella is a leader in the rationalist community. As such, she’s interacted with us frequently outside the forum and a lot of EAs have developed a lot of trust in her over a long period of time. I can see how this post wouldn’t be as persuasive for someone who didn’t know of her through that.
What do you mean by “leader in the rationalist community”? I neither know aella well nor the rationalist community well and am unsure where the “EAs have developed a lot of trust in her over a long period of time” comes from. Obviously not saying she’s untrustworthy!
In many areas, the EA community and rationalist community overlap a lot (for example, in the San Francisco Bay Area where I socialize , and in the AI alignment cause area where I have some experience). I realize this isn’t true in a lot of parts of EA.
The part of the post this comment is objecting to relies on that prior trust and familiarity with the rationalist community. If you’re not its’ target audience, I wasn’t objecting to you not getting anything useful out if it. I was just trying to provide some helpful context for why so many people have upvoted this post despite Aella’s sparse and recent presence on the forum.
Can someone who downvoted my replies explain why they chose to? I didn’t think I was saying anything controversial, so I’m confused.
I disagreed but didn’t downvote. I mostly just found the word “leader” to be extremely strong. It might be the case that this is true in the SF scene (but I wouldn’t know given I have no exposure to that) but I had never heard of aella prior to this post and would guess this is likely true for many people who live outside of SF. Also, leader usually implies some level of giving directions, having power, commanding, etc which I found pretty unlikely given what I know of EA organizational structure and helped the fact I had never heard of this person.
I also disagreevoted for similar reasons. I’m familiar with Aella, but I would call her well known rather than a leader, such that similar to the top level comment here I don’t really know how much to update on her description of events.
(I’m also confused about it and the disagreement votes in your „ Aella is a leader in…“ comment.)
I didn’t downvote/disagreevote either comment, but clearly if one disagrees that Aella is a leader then they may disagreevote. similarly, if they think the merits of this post stands independently of who Aella is as a leader and is based on the idea that she is famous, then they might also disagree with the last sentence.
Thanks for explaining!
I disagree. This section of the post would presumably be useful to people who lack awareness of the extent of the problem, either because they have not famous and have not ever been the main character on social media, because they are extremely young, or because they are autistic. I am not such a person, but I do think it exposes the nature of the problem vividly and persuasively, in a way that helps you empathise with the victims of such defamation—or “quasi-defamation”, as we might call defamation through innuendo and ethereal claims lacking all specificity or falsifiability. If you are not such a person either, it’s something you could have just skipped over when reading the post.