Did he interview them about the specific claims he was making, and give them the opportunity to present counter-evidence? That’s the issue.
A generic interview, without the Nonlinear people knowing the details of his allegations, isn’t relevant, and doesn’t count as ‘fact-checking’. (If that’s what he did)
It was not remotely enough time to actually rebut all of the false claims and we told him so. We assumed that would be the first of many calls—it would take at least a week to clear things up—and then he just surprised us by posting.
My guess is it was enough time to say which claims you objected to and sketch out the kind of evidence you planned to bring. And Ben judged that your response didn’t indicate you were going to bring anything that would change his mind enough that the info he had was worth sharing. E.g. you seemed to focus on showing that Alice couldn’t be trusted, but Ben felt that this would not refute enough of the other info he had collected / the kinds of refutation (e.g. only a $50 for driving without a license, she brought back illegal substances anyway) were not compelling enough to change that the info was worth sharing.
I do think one can make judgments from the meta info, and 3 hours is enough to get a lot of that.
I consider something of a missing mood on your part to be quite damning. From what I hear and see (Ben’s report of your call with him, how you’re responding public, threat to Lightcone/Ben), you are overwhelmingly concerned with defending yourself and don’t seem contrite at all that people you employed feel so extremely hurt by their time with you. I haven’t heard you dispute their claims of hurt (do you think those are lies for some reason?), instead focusing on the veracity of reasons for being hurt. But do you think you’re causally entangled with them feeling hurt? If so, where is the apology or contrition and horror at yourself that they think being with you resulted in the worst months of their lives?
I’d understand a lack of that if your position was “they’re definitely lying about how they felt probably for motivation X, give us time and can prove that”, but this hasn’t been the nature of your response.
I actually would expect more “competent” uncompassionate people concerned only with their own reputation to have acted contrite, because it’d make the audience more sympathetic, suggesting that you all aren’t very good at modeling people. Which makes it more likely you weren’t modeling your employees experience very well either, perhaps resulting in a lot of harm from negligence more than malice (which still warrants sharing this info about you).
Judging from the email in this comment, it seems like you were aware that Ben intended to post some time before the post appeared on the Forum and LW, which seemingly contradicts what you are saying here.
Did he interview them about the specific claims he was making, and give them the opportunity to present counter-evidence? That’s the issue.
A generic interview, without the Nonlinear people knowing the details of his allegations, isn’t relevant, and doesn’t count as ‘fact-checking’. (If that’s what he did)
Yes, he did, as part of a three hour call which he describes in his post
It was not remotely enough time to actually rebut all of the false claims and we told him so. We assumed that would be the first of many calls—it would take at least a week to clear things up—and then he just surprised us by posting.
My guess is it was enough time to say which claims you objected to and sketch out the kind of evidence you planned to bring. And Ben judged that your response didn’t indicate you were going to bring anything that would change his mind enough that the info he had was worth sharing. E.g. you seemed to focus on showing that Alice couldn’t be trusted, but Ben felt that this would not refute enough of the other info he had collected / the kinds of refutation (e.g. only a $50 for driving without a license, she brought back illegal substances anyway) were not compelling enough to change that the info was worth sharing.
I do think one can make judgments from the meta info, and 3 hours is enough to get a lot of that.
I consider something of a missing mood on your part to be quite damning. From what I hear and see (Ben’s report of your call with him, how you’re responding public, threat to Lightcone/Ben), you are overwhelmingly concerned with defending yourself and don’t seem contrite at all that people you employed feel so extremely hurt by their time with you. I haven’t heard you dispute their claims of hurt (do you think those are lies for some reason?), instead focusing on the veracity of reasons for being hurt. But do you think you’re causally entangled with them feeling hurt? If so, where is the apology or contrition and horror at yourself that they think being with you resulted in the worst months of their lives?
I’d understand a lack of that if your position was “they’re definitely lying about how they felt probably for motivation X, give us time and can prove that”, but this hasn’t been the nature of your response.
I actually would expect more “competent” uncompassionate people concerned only with their own reputation to have acted contrite, because it’d make the audience more sympathetic, suggesting that you all aren’t very good at modeling people. Which makes it more likely you weren’t modeling your employees experience very well either, perhaps resulting in a lot of harm from negligence more than malice (which still warrants sharing this info about you).
Judging from the email in this comment, it seems like you were aware that Ben intended to post some time before the post appeared on the Forum and LW, which seemingly contradicts what you are saying here.