There is a reason courtrooms give both sides equal chances to make their case before they ask the jury to decide.
It is very difficult for people to change their minds later, and most people assume that if you’re on trial, you must be guilty, which is why judges remind juries about “innocent before proven guilty”.
This is one of the foundations of our legal system, something we learned over thousands of years of trying to get better at justice. You’re just assuming I’m guilty and saying that justifies not giving me a chance to present my evidence.
Also, if we post another comment thread a week later, who will see it? EAF/LW don’t have sufficient ways to resurface old but important content.
Re: “my guess is Ben’s sources have received dozens of calls”—well, your guess is wrong, and you can ask them to confirm this.
You also took my email strategically out of context to fit the Emerson-is-a-horned-CEO-villain narrative. Here’s the full one:
It is very difficult for people to change their minds later, and most people assume that if you’re on trial, you must be guilty, which is why judges remind juries about “innocent before proven guilty”.
This is one of the foundations of our legal system, something we learned over thousands of years of trying to get better at justice. You’re just assuming I’m guilty and saying that justifies not giving me a chance to present my evidence.
Trials are public as well. Indeed our justice system generally doesn’t have secret courts, so I am not sure what argument you are trying to make here. In as much as you want to make an analogue to the legal system, you now also have the ability to present your evidence, in front of an audience of your peers. The “jury” has not decided anything (and neither have I, at least regarding the dynamics and accusations listed in the post).
I am not assuming you are guilty. My current best guess is that you have done some pretty bad things, but yeah, I haven’t heard your side very much, and I will update and signal boost your evidence if you provide me with evidence that the core points of this post are wrong.
Also, if we post another comment thread a week later, who will see it? EAF/LW don’t have sufficient ways to resurface old but important content.
You could make a new top-level post. I expect it would get plenty of engagement. The EAF/LW seems really quite capable of resurfacing various types of community conflict, and making it the center of attention for a long time.
You also took my email strategically out of context to fit the Emerson-is-a-horned-CEO-villain narrative. Here’s the full one:
I shared the part that seemed relevant to me, since sharing the whole email seemed excessive. I don’t think the rest of the email changes the context of the libel suit threat you made, though readers can decide that for themselves.
Just a quick note that my read of the full email does not really change the context of the libel suit threat, or Habryka’s claims, especially given much of the missing information from the email was already in a public comment by Kat.
I also agree that if Nonlinear provided substantive evidence in a top-level post that dramatically changed the narrative of this story, e.g. change my personal credence of each of these claims to <15%, it would receive significant attention, such as staying on the front page on the community tab for at least 1 week, gain >150 karma etc.
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.
There is a reason courtrooms give both sides equal chances to make their case before they ask the jury to decide.
It is very difficult for people to change their minds later, and most people assume that if you’re on trial, you must be guilty, which is why judges remind juries about “innocent before proven guilty”.
This is one of the foundations of our legal system, something we learned over thousands of years of trying to get better at justice. You’re just assuming I’m guilty and saying that justifies not giving me a chance to present my evidence.
Also, if we post another comment thread a week later, who will see it? EAF/LW don’t have sufficient ways to resurface old but important content.
Re: “my guess is Ben’s sources have received dozens of calls”—well, your guess is wrong, and you can ask them to confirm this.
You also took my email strategically out of context to fit the Emerson-is-a-horned-CEO-villain narrative. Here’s the full one:
Trials are public as well. Indeed our justice system generally doesn’t have secret courts, so I am not sure what argument you are trying to make here. In as much as you want to make an analogue to the legal system, you now also have the ability to present your evidence, in front of an audience of your peers. The “jury” has not decided anything (and neither have I, at least regarding the dynamics and accusations listed in the post).
I am not assuming you are guilty. My current best guess is that you have done some pretty bad things, but yeah, I haven’t heard your side very much, and I will update and signal boost your evidence if you provide me with evidence that the core points of this post are wrong.
You could make a new top-level post. I expect it would get plenty of engagement. The EAF/LW seems really quite capable of resurfacing various types of community conflict, and making it the center of attention for a long time.
I shared the part that seemed relevant to me, since sharing the whole email seemed excessive. I don’t think the rest of the email changes the context of the libel suit threat you made, though readers can decide that for themselves.
Just a quick note that my read of the full email does not really change the context of the libel suit threat, or Habryka’s claims, especially given much of the missing information from the email was already in a public comment by Kat.
I also agree that if Nonlinear provided substantive evidence in a top-level post that dramatically changed the narrative of this story, e.g. change my personal credence of each of these claims to <15%, it would receive significant attention, such as staying on the front page on the community tab for at least 1 week, gain >150 karma etc.
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.
For me personally, the full email appears worse in full than summarized.