I agree and disagree. I agree that making false claims is serious and people should take great care to avoid it. And your ultimate conclusion that we should reserve final judgment until we see counter evidence sounds right to me.
But I disagree with holding all misconduct reports to incredibly high standards, such that in a report with as many allegations as this, people feel the report is basically wrong if it includes a few misinterpretations.
In an ideal world, yes, all summaries of patterns of misconduct would not contain any errors. But in reality, I’ve found that almost all allegations of behaviors that turn out to be—for all intents and purposes—true, contain some level of mistakes, misattributions, specific allegations that are overstated.
People who allege misconduct are under intense scrutiny. And absolutely, scrutiny is warranted. But as someone who has reported misconduct and spoken to other people that report misconduct, the expectation of perfection is, to put it mildly, chilling. It means people do not come forward, it means people who do come forward are further traumatized, it means allegations that are 80% truthful are dismissed outright.
Does a third or more of what Ben wrote comport with your general understanding? If so, these allegations are still concerning to me.
And on the Kat screenshots/food question, I do not think they delegitimize what Ben wrote here. At worst, Ben somewhat overstated the food situation. But, my overall impression from those screenshots was what Alice said was basically true. Kat’s framing of what the screenshots say make me doubt Kat’s account more, not less.
I’ll also say as someone who has experienced harassment, that people really underestimate how much bias they have towards their friends accused of misconduct. Friends of the harasser would say things to defend their friend that to most people would seem pretty obviously wrong, like “he probably wasn’t going to follow through on the threat, so him making the threat is not really an issue.”
Thanks Tiresias for your thoughtful comments. I agree with much of what you say but I seemingly have a few important differences of opinion:
“I disagree with holding all misconduct reports to incredibly high standards, such that in a report with as many allegations as this, people feel the report is basically wrong if it includes a few misinterpretations. In an ideal world, yes, all summaries of patterns of misconduct would not contain any errors. But in reality, I’ve found that almost all allegations of behaviors that turn out to be—for all intents and purposes—true, contain some level of mistakes, misattributions, specific allegations that are overstated.”
I agree. I don’t think I was holding the report to an incredibly high standard though. When I read it I was immediately chagrined by the amount and severity of false information (i.e., false as far as I can tell based on the evidence I have access to). I was also distressed that Ben was not seeking out evidence he could have easily gotten from nonlinear.
“People who allege misconduct are under intense scrutiny. And absolutely, scrutiny is warranted. But as someone who has reported misconduct and spoken to other people that report misconduct, the expectation of perfection is, to put it mildly, chilling. It means people do not come forward, it means people who do come forward are further traumatized, it means allegations that are 80% truthful are dismissed outright.”
Good point. I would differentiate between the standard for people privately reporting bad behavior (where I think the bar should be way lower) and large scale investigations that are made public (where I think the bar should be much higher for the claims made—e.g., that the investigator should be very careful not to credulously include damaging false information).
“Does a third or more of what Ben wrote comport with your general understanding? If so, these allegations are still concerning to me.”
I think this framing doesn’t quite work because the post contains some very minor concerns and some very major ones, and I think it’s much more important whether the major concerns are accurate than that the minor concerns are accurate, so counting up the number of inaccuracies doesn’t, I think, reflect what’s important. But based on the evidence I’ve seen, some of the damning claims in his original post seemed to me to be false or missing critical context that make them very misleading.
“And on the Kat screenshots/food question, I do not think they delegitimize what Ben wrote here. At worst, Ben somewhat overstated the food situation. But, my overall impression from those screenshots was what Alice said was basically true. Kat’s framing of what the screenshots say make me doubt Kat’s account more, not less.”
I think people should decide for themselves what they think is true about this after reviewing the evidence. Here is a side-by-side comparison of what Ben says and what Kat says:
Ben: “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.”
Kat: “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 did pick up vegan food for her.”
“I’ll also say as someone who has experienced harassment, that people really underestimate how much bias they have towards their friends accused of misconduct.”
Absolutely agreed, this is a significant issue to watch out for.
I agree and disagree. I agree that making false claims is serious and people should take great care to avoid it. And your ultimate conclusion that we should reserve final judgment until we see counter evidence sounds right to me.
But I disagree with holding all misconduct reports to incredibly high standards, such that in a report with as many allegations as this, people feel the report is basically wrong if it includes a few misinterpretations.
In an ideal world, yes, all summaries of patterns of misconduct would not contain any errors. But in reality, I’ve found that almost all allegations of behaviors that turn out to be—for all intents and purposes—true, contain some level of mistakes, misattributions, specific allegations that are overstated.
People who allege misconduct are under intense scrutiny. And absolutely, scrutiny is warranted. But as someone who has reported misconduct and spoken to other people that report misconduct, the expectation of perfection is, to put it mildly, chilling. It means people do not come forward, it means people who do come forward are further traumatized, it means allegations that are 80% truthful are dismissed outright.
Does a third or more of what Ben wrote comport with your general understanding? If so, these allegations are still concerning to me.
And on the Kat screenshots/food question, I do not think they delegitimize what Ben wrote here. At worst, Ben somewhat overstated the food situation. But, my overall impression from those screenshots was what Alice said was basically true. Kat’s framing of what the screenshots say make me doubt Kat’s account more, not less.
I’ll also say as someone who has experienced harassment, that people really underestimate how much bias they have towards their friends accused of misconduct. Friends of the harasser would say things to defend their friend that to most people would seem pretty obviously wrong, like “he probably wasn’t going to follow through on the threat, so him making the threat is not really an issue.”
Thanks Tiresias for your thoughtful comments. I agree with much of what you say but I seemingly have a few important differences of opinion:
I agree. I don’t think I was holding the report to an incredibly high standard though. When I read it I was immediately chagrined by the amount and severity of false information (i.e., false as far as I can tell based on the evidence I have access to). I was also distressed that Ben was not seeking out evidence he could have easily gotten from nonlinear.
Good point. I would differentiate between the standard for people privately reporting bad behavior (where I think the bar should be way lower) and large scale investigations that are made public (where I think the bar should be much higher for the claims made—e.g., that the investigator should be very careful not to credulously include damaging false information).
I think this framing doesn’t quite work because the post contains some very minor concerns and some very major ones, and I think it’s much more important whether the major concerns are accurate than that the minor concerns are accurate, so counting up the number of inaccuracies doesn’t, I think, reflect what’s important. But based on the evidence I’ve seen, some of the damning claims in his original post seemed to me to be false or missing critical context that make them very misleading.
I think people should decide for themselves what they think is true about this after reviewing the evidence. Here is a side-by-side comparison of what Ben says and what Kat says:
Ben: “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.”
Kat: “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 did pick up vegan food for her.”
And here are the screenshots Kat provided to back up her account: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5pksH3SbQzaniX96b/a-quick-update-from-nonlinear
Absolutely agreed, this is a significant issue to watch out for.