People initially downvoted the post because “Eugenics-Adjacent” is Émile Torres’ account, and they typically don’t engage in an intellectually honest way. Sure enough, Émile tweeted a screenshot of this post and highlighted that the byline was scandalously named “Eugenics-Adjacent” even though Émile is the one who gave it that name: https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1682449905363701774
There’s nothing wrong with the content of the original post, except that Émile refers to “us,” as if Eugenics-Adjacentis an EA who is concerned about negative public perception of EA rather than someone who is in fact banking their career on a negative public perception of EA.
Do you have additional evidence that this was specifically Torres, and not someone else who dislikes EA?
I was initially skeptical of the claim, thinking it was one of Torres followers, but looking at the timestamps, it seems that the OP here was posted 20 minutes before Torres tweeted about the article. And I know Torres has used sock-puppets before, so it at least seems plausible that it’s another one.
However, It could have also been that Torres saw the post here and decided to tweet about it, or that eugenics-adjacent is a different person who posted here and then tipped off Torres about the article, or they both by chance saw the article at around the same time. I don’t think there is enough information to make a confident accusation here.
If “Eugenics-Adjacent” is not Torres but tipped off Torres about the article, that also seems like a good reason for downvoting the post, since it indicates that the username was chosen to cause damage to EA rather than to stimulate an honest discussion.
I’m concerned about downvoting posts containing news information solely on a belief that they were posted by a sockpuppet. It was appropriate for there to be a post on this news development, and downvoting based on a belief about the poster’s identity has the unintended effect of burying the adverse news story (and the appearance of doing so).
Conditional on this being Torres, all those downvotes just played into their hands. If this post were truly objectionable, someone should have put the news information in a separate post so that sockpuppet defense doesn’t imperil visibility of news information.
I thought it was pretty obvious that “Eugenics-Adjacent” would likely be a critic.
I thought it was pretty obvious that “Eugenics-Adjacent” would likely be a critic.
Torres’ tweet and commentators don’t appear to think so, but I often have trouble teasing apart the difference between performative outrage and genuine ignorance, especially from strangers.
People initially downvoted the post because “Eugenics-Adjacent” is Émile Torres’ account, and they typically don’t engage in an intellectually honest way. Sure enough, Émile tweeted a screenshot of this post and highlighted that the byline was scandalously named “Eugenics-Adjacent” even though Émile is the one who gave it that name: https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1682449905363701774
There’s nothing wrong with the content of the original post, except that Émile refers to “us,” as if Eugenics-Adjacent is an EA who is concerned about negative public perception of EA rather than someone who is in fact banking their career on a negative public perception of EA.
Do you have additional evidence that this was specifically Torres, and not someone else who dislikes EA?
I was initially skeptical of the claim, thinking it was one of Torres followers, but looking at the timestamps, it seems that the OP here was posted 20 minutes before Torres tweeted about the article. And I know Torres has used sock-puppets before, so it at least seems plausible that it’s another one.
However, It could have also been that Torres saw the post here and decided to tweet about it, or that eugenics-adjacent is a different person who posted here and then tipped off Torres about the article, or they both by chance saw the article at around the same time. I don’t think there is enough information to make a confident accusation here.
If “Eugenics-Adjacent” is not Torres but tipped off Torres about the article, that also seems like a good reason for downvoting the post, since it indicates that the username was chosen to cause damage to EA rather than to stimulate an honest discussion.
I’m concerned about downvoting posts containing news information solely on a belief that they were posted by a sockpuppet. It was appropriate for there to be a post on this news development, and downvoting based on a belief about the poster’s identity has the unintended effect of burying the adverse news story (and the appearance of doing so).
Conditional on this being Torres, all those downvotes just played into their hands. If this post were truly objectionable, someone should have put the news information in a separate post so that sockpuppet defense doesn’t imperil visibility of news information.
I thought it was pretty obvious that “Eugenics-Adjacent” would likely be a critic.
Torres’ tweet and commentators don’t appear to think so, but I often have trouble teasing apart the difference between performative outrage and genuine ignorance, especially from strangers.