If you can share (publicly or privately) strong evidence contradicting “claims [...] that wildly distort the true story” (emphasis mine), I pre-commit to signal boosting.
For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be surprised if you do have strong counter-evidence to some claims (given the number of claims made, the ease with which things can be lost in translation, your writing this email, etc.). But, as of right now, I would be surprised if my understanding of the important stuff—roughly, the items covered in Ben’s epistemic state and the crossing of red lines—was wildly distorted. I hope that it is.
[EDIT, Nov 13: it sounds like the Nonlinear reply might be in the 100s of pages. This might be the right move from their point of view, but reading 3-figure pages stretches my pre-commitment above further than I would have intended at the time. I’d like to amend the commitment to “engaging with the >=20 pages-equivalent that seems most relevant to me or Nonlinear, or skimming >=50 pages-equivalent.” If people think this is breaking the spirit of my earlier commitment, I’ll seriously consider standing by the literal wording of that commitment (engaging with ~everything). Feel free to message about this.]
I’d also be pleased to find out that my understanding is wrong!
I don’t think they’re in a position to show that a lot of hurt didn’t accrue to the employees, but maybe they can show some ways in which they clearly signaled that they wouldn’t try to ruin their employees or intimidate them, such as
Texts where they told Alice/Chloe “I understand that you had a horrible experience here, and it’s totally fine for you to tell other people that this working/living environment was awful and you’ve been really hurt by it, and also here’s a way in which I’m going to make sure you’re better off for having interacted with us”
Any writing where Emerson says “I have used vicious and aggressive business tactics in the past, but to be clear if this work-slash-family situation really burns you, I will not come after you with these tactics even if I strongly disagree with your interpretations of what happened”
Or generally some “philosophy of how to behave with allies” doc written by Emerson that says something like “Here are the 48 Laws of Power, and here is my explanation why you should never use these tactics if you want to be trustworthy, and here’s why we would never use them in an EA/x-risk/etc context”
Then that could change my mind on the intimidation aspect a bunch. I think in general intimidation/fear is often indirect and implicit, so it’s going to be hard to disprove, but if there was clear evidence about why that wouldn’t happen here, then I could come to believe that Alice/Chloe/others had managed to trick themselves into being more worried than they needed to be.
If you can share (publicly or privately) strong evidence contradicting “claims [...] that wildly distort the true story” (emphasis mine), I pre-commit to signal boosting.
For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be surprised if you do have strong counter-evidence to some claims (given the number of claims made, the ease with which things can be lost in translation, your writing this email, etc.). But, as of right now, I would be surprised if my understanding of the important stuff—roughly, the items covered in Ben’s epistemic state and the crossing of red lines—was wildly distorted. I hope that it is.
[EDIT, Nov 13: it sounds like the Nonlinear reply might be in the 100s of pages. This might be the right move from their point of view, but reading 3-figure pages stretches my pre-commitment above further than I would have intended at the time. I’d like to amend the commitment to “engaging with the >=20 pages-equivalent that seems most relevant to me or Nonlinear, or skimming >=50 pages-equivalent.” If people think this is breaking the spirit of my earlier commitment, I’ll seriously consider standing by the literal wording of that commitment (engaging with ~everything). Feel free to message about this.]
I’d also be pleased to find out that my understanding is wrong!
I don’t think they’re in a position to show that a lot of hurt didn’t accrue to the employees, but maybe they can show some ways in which they clearly signaled that they wouldn’t try to ruin their employees or intimidate them, such as
Texts where they told Alice/Chloe “I understand that you had a horrible experience here, and it’s totally fine for you to tell other people that this working/living environment was awful and you’ve been really hurt by it, and also here’s a way in which I’m going to make sure you’re better off for having interacted with us”
Any writing where Emerson says “I have used vicious and aggressive business tactics in the past, but to be clear if this work-slash-family situation really burns you, I will not come after you with these tactics even if I strongly disagree with your interpretations of what happened”
Or generally some “philosophy of how to behave with allies” doc written by Emerson that says something like “Here are the 48 Laws of Power, and here is my explanation why you should never use these tactics if you want to be trustworthy, and here’s why we would never use them in an EA/x-risk/etc context”
Then that could change my mind on the intimidation aspect a bunch. I think in general intimidation/fear is often indirect and implicit, so it’s going to be hard to disprove, but if there was clear evidence about why that wouldn’t happen here, then I could come to believe that Alice/Chloe/others had managed to trick themselves into being more worried than they needed to be.