First, CEA definitely have access to legal counsel.
Second, I don’t think these issues are that relevant, after reading Ben’s posts.
Regardless of legal risk, the reasons for not making claims public are clear -
(A) It took Ben hundreds of hours to feel confident and clear enough to make a useful public statement while also balancing the potential harms to Alice and Chloe. This is not uncommon in such situations and I think people should not expect CH to be able to do this in most cases.
(B) CEA is not in charge of Nonlinear or most other EA orgs. Just like Ben tried to be responsible for behavior in his offices and ended up down a rabbit hole, CEA tries to be responsible for behavior at their events, and has to choose which rabbit holes to go down. As Ben has said, they are not the EA police.
I agree it would be good to be clear about what jobs they are not doing, but think it would absolutely be worse to have no people in EA paid to work on similar issues rather than 2-3 people who still cannot do all of the work people might ask of them.
First, CEA definitely have access to legal counsel.
Second, I don’t think these issues are that relevant, after reading Ben’s posts.
Regardless of legal risk, the reasons for not making claims public are clear -
(A) It took Ben hundreds of hours to feel confident and clear enough to make a useful public statement while also balancing the potential harms to Alice and Chloe. This is not uncommon in such situations and I think people should not expect CH to be able to do this in most cases.
(B) CEA is not in charge of Nonlinear or most other EA orgs. Just like Ben tried to be responsible for behavior in his offices and ended up down a rabbit hole, CEA tries to be responsible for behavior at their events, and has to choose which rabbit holes to go down. As Ben has said, they are not the EA police.
I agree it would be good to be clear about what jobs they are not doing, but think it would absolutely be worse to have no people in EA paid to work on similar issues rather than 2-3 people who still cannot do all of the work people might ask of them.