I am not an effective altruist, but I am broadly adjacent and I work on stories about sensitive and complex situations with competing information from various parties regularly. I am coming to this fresh, not having heard of Nonlinear or Lightcone prior to yesterday.
Of all responses in this saga, I confess this is the one I’m least sympathetic to. Lawsuit threats are distinctly unfriendly. Here’s another thing that’s distinctly unfriendly: publishing libelous information likely to do irreparable damage to an organization without giving them the opportunity to proactively correct falsehoods. The legal system is a way of systematizing responses to that sort of unfriendliness; it is not kind, it is not pleasant, but it is a legitimate response to a calculated decision to inflict enormous reputational harm.
So you would have lost 40 hours of productive time? Respectfully: so what? You have sources actively claiming you are about to publish directly false information about them and asking for time to provide evidence that information is directly false. A lot of time, when people do that, they provide a different gloss on the same substantive information, and your original story can go ahead without serious issue. But it’s vital to at least see what they’re talking about!
As of right now, I am persuaded that at least some of the claims in the original article—claims, again, used to inflict serious reputational harm—were substantively false in a way that could and should have been corrected by checking the evidence provided by the accused parties. I am persuaded that you published those claims without due diligence, that those claims materially contributed to damaging the reputation of an organization in the community where its reputation mattered most, and that you received warning in advance that there was evidence available to indicate the falsehood of those claims.
I’m an outsider to this situation proceeding on the limited information in these two posts and comment sections, but given that information, I think the decision to publish potentially materially false information without waiting for available hard evidence to counter it was a poor one to which “threats of retaliation” (libel suits) were a proportionate response, not an unreasonable escalation.
So you would have lost 40 hours of productive time? Respectfully: so what? You have sources actively claiming you are about to publish directly false information about them and asking for time to provide evidence that information is directly false.
Also, I think it is worth Oli/Ben estimating how many productive hours were lost to the decision to not delay; it would not surprise me if much of the benefit here was illusory.
I think it’s a bit messy, but my guess is indeed the additional time cost of this has been greater. Though to be clear, I never argued anywhere that this was the primary reason for making this decision, and wouldn’t want someone to walk away with that impression (and don’t think anyone is claiming that here, but not sure).
I am not an effective altruist, but I am broadly adjacent and I work on stories about sensitive and complex situations with competing information from various parties regularly. I am coming to this fresh, not having heard of Nonlinear or Lightcone prior to yesterday.
Of all responses in this saga, I confess this is the one I’m least sympathetic to. Lawsuit threats are distinctly unfriendly. Here’s another thing that’s distinctly unfriendly: publishing libelous information likely to do irreparable damage to an organization without giving them the opportunity to proactively correct falsehoods. The legal system is a way of systematizing responses to that sort of unfriendliness; it is not kind, it is not pleasant, but it is a legitimate response to a calculated decision to inflict enormous reputational harm.
So you would have lost 40 hours of productive time? Respectfully: so what? You have sources actively claiming you are about to publish directly false information about them and asking for time to provide evidence that information is directly false. A lot of time, when people do that, they provide a different gloss on the same substantive information, and your original story can go ahead without serious issue. But it’s vital to at least see what they’re talking about!
As of right now, I am persuaded that at least some of the claims in the original article—claims, again, used to inflict serious reputational harm—were substantively false in a way that could and should have been corrected by checking the evidence provided by the accused parties. I am persuaded that you published those claims without due diligence, that those claims materially contributed to damaging the reputation of an organization in the community where its reputation mattered most, and that you received warning in advance that there was evidence available to indicate the falsehood of those claims.
I’m an outsider to this situation proceeding on the limited information in these two posts and comment sections, but given that information, I think the decision to publish potentially materially false information without waiting for available hard evidence to counter it was a poor one to which “threats of retaliation” (libel suits) were a proportionate response, not an unreasonable escalation.
Also, I think it is worth Oli/Ben estimating how many productive hours were lost to the decision to not delay; it would not surprise me if much of the benefit here was illusory.
I think it’s a bit messy, but my guess is indeed the additional time cost of this has been greater. Though to be clear, I never argued anywhere that this was the primary reason for making this decision, and wouldn’t want someone to walk away with that impression (and don’t think anyone is claiming that here, but not sure).