To be clear, from what it looks like this newspaper (that I have not looked at) looks like it has platformed what looks like neo-Nazi views. If Max knew that and held an intention to fund it before deciding against, I find that stupid and harmful that he would even consider it. Neo-Nazism is bad.
because you offer support without conditionalising on how bad the misdeeds are (“however questionable” they are).
I think I may be giving a wrong impression here. I don’t offer unconditional support for someone who’s, say, funneling millions of dollars to neo-Nazis. Max clearly has not done that, and given the evidence at hand, I support him standing up for himself. That means I am conditioning on having some sense of the evidence, which contradicts my wording. I meant to hedge my words by saying something to the effect of, ‘well I’m offering this support even though I don’t know very much of the specifics, so don’t like judge me if this turns out to be really horrible’. But this is a bit cowardly given that, well, my support is somewhat conditional on having read some about this and seeing his comment, and reflects some anticipation that he has a good chance (50%?) of having not been really in the wrong. That said, yes I think something wrong or really wrong may have happened here, and don’t want to be construed as not allowing for that reality.
This is a technicality, but “seeking answers” is describable as inquisitiveness and inquisitional, so I stand by my wording, in that I think it both technically true and carries the vibe I want it to convey, even if it’s actually justified on people’s part to ask those questions. I meant it to have that double-meaning. Given the karma amounts going on, I don’t consider the connotative usage at all hyperbolic, and I’m not including social media discourse that almost certainly exists but which I have not seen.
noun 1. a period of prolonged and intensive questioning or investigation.
I think people’s questioning is very valid in this circumstance. I also think Max has a right to stand up for himself if he believes he hasn’t done wrong. The fact that he didn’t pay out money after investigating seems pretty important to me. But I don’t know what that process was with the paperwork and some letter I forget the exact name of, because I am unvirtuously not looking at the actual empirical details very closely. I think Max will provide more details of his intentions, and questioning is a process that will help with that. The fact that his brother was involved strikes me as a conflict-of-interest that should provide pause, though I also know there are many conflicts-of-interest in EA-land. I would guess that it would be pretty hard for someone investigating the newspaper to not catch some whiff that it was problematic early on, if they hadn’t heard of the newspaper already (I don’t know how well-known it is there). That determines whether a “positive initial impression” on his part would make sense or not, as that’s the only wrong thing I have seen so far based on what he said, an initial mistake in doing due diligence fast enough. I think a crux we maybe have here is that I’m basically taking him at his word on that, and assuming he doesn’t have like corrupt ties or fascist leanings, which for all I know could be false. My best guess is that the latter is not the case (I hear something about him being center-left?) and that leaves the problem of maybe his brother came pleading to him to save this newspaper and that they would do some longtermist programming in exchange for saving it, I don’t know!
It seems as if you find outrage in response to misdeeds more offensive than the misdeeds themselves
If FLI loses hundreds of thousands in funding, or more, for what turns out to have been a mistake in due diligence, that would indeed be a sad consequence to me. Though I agree that it’s more important to question institutions if they are acting out of integrity than what the results are (see more below).
“depending on how bad the actions were, FLI should apologise or not apologise, and we should criticise or punish them in proportion to how bad they were”
I agree. I think it’s not obvious to me yet that they have besides fucking up on due diligence speed. Again, I will hedge by saying I am not combing carefully over the evidence like others are.
“I would far prefer a world in which people feel entitled to do that, than one where it’s discouraged. When I imagine the alternative, I imagine a world in which we automatically assume good intent on the part of any authority figure alleged to have done something bad, or one in which people are too polite or timid to speak out, etc.”
Given what happened with SBF, and the extent to which this type of questioning might have uncovered that sooner, I simply have to agree, even if the results make me uncomfortable. It is extremely important we do more of this (in a sustainable way?).
Edit 1: I really like harfe’s questions for Max, and I should also add my original comment was not referring to any specific comments that were made in response to Max’s top-level comment, since mine was the first response afaik, though I think I was anticipating him receiving a ton of skepticism, and wanted to express support for what looks like someone in a really hard place right now who likely had mostly good intentions going into this.
To be clear, from what it looks like this newspaper (that I have not looked at) looks like it has platformed what looks like neo-Nazi views. If Max knew that and held an intention to fund it before deciding against, I find that stupid and harmful that he would even consider it. Neo-Nazism is bad.
I think I may be giving a wrong impression here. I don’t offer unconditional support for someone who’s, say, funneling millions of dollars to neo-Nazis. Max clearly has not done that, and given the evidence at hand, I support him standing up for himself. That means I am conditioning on having some sense of the evidence, which contradicts my wording. I meant to hedge my words by saying something to the effect of, ‘well I’m offering this support even though I don’t know very much of the specifics, so don’t like judge me if this turns out to be really horrible’. But this is a bit cowardly given that, well, my support is somewhat conditional on having read some about this and seeing his comment, and reflects some anticipation that he has a good chance (50%?) of having not been really in the wrong. That said, yes I think something wrong or really wrong may have happened here, and don’t want to be construed as not allowing for that reality.
This is a technicality, but “seeking answers” is describable as inquisitiveness and inquisitional, so I stand by my wording, in that I think it both technically true and carries the vibe I want it to convey, even if it’s actually justified on people’s part to ask those questions. I meant it to have that double-meaning. Given the karma amounts going on, I don’t consider the connotative usage at all hyperbolic, and I’m not including social media discourse that almost certainly exists but which I have not seen.
I think people’s questioning is very valid in this circumstance. I also think Max has a right to stand up for himself if he believes he hasn’t done wrong. The fact that he didn’t pay out money after investigating seems pretty important to me. But I don’t know what that process was with the paperwork and some letter I forget the exact name of, because I am unvirtuously not looking at the actual empirical details very closely. I think Max will provide more details of his intentions, and questioning is a process that will help with that. The fact that his brother was involved strikes me as a conflict-of-interest that should provide pause, though I also know there are many conflicts-of-interest in EA-land. I would guess that it would be pretty hard for someone investigating the newspaper to not catch some whiff that it was problematic early on, if they hadn’t heard of the newspaper already (I don’t know how well-known it is there). That determines whether a “positive initial impression” on his part would make sense or not, as that’s the only wrong thing I have seen so far based on what he said, an initial mistake in doing due diligence fast enough. I think a crux we maybe have here is that I’m basically taking him at his word on that, and assuming he doesn’t have like corrupt ties or fascist leanings, which for all I know could be false. My best guess is that the latter is not the case (I hear something about him being center-left?) and that leaves the problem of maybe his brother came pleading to him to save this newspaper and that they would do some longtermist programming in exchange for saving it, I don’t know!
If FLI loses hundreds of thousands in funding, or more, for what turns out to have been a mistake in due diligence, that would indeed be a sad consequence to me. Though I agree that it’s more important to question institutions if they are acting out of integrity than what the results are (see more below).
I agree. I think it’s not obvious to me yet that they have besides fucking up on due diligence speed. Again, I will hedge by saying I am not combing carefully over the evidence like others are.
Given what happened with SBF, and the extent to which this type of questioning might have uncovered that sooner, I simply have to agree, even if the results make me uncomfortable. It is extremely important we do more of this (in a sustainable way?).
Edit 1: I really like harfe’s questions for Max, and I should also add my original comment was not referring to any specific comments that were made in response to Max’s top-level comment, since mine was the first response afaik, though I think I was anticipating him receiving a ton of skepticism, and wanted to express support for what looks like someone in a really hard place right now who likely had mostly good intentions going into this.