I agree, and find the ratio of agree/disagreement on your comment really disheartening in terms of what lesson this community has learned from all this.
I get that people find it too “retaliatory” and bad-faith. Maybe it would have been cleaner if it wasn’t about Ben, though I don’t think a hypothetical person would have made the lesson as clear, and if Ben wasn’t fair game for having written that article, I don’t know who would be. Unless people believe Kat is just making up accusations entirely, they must believe those accusations deserve just as much to be aired in public as Alice and Chloe’s, or else acknowledge that in both cases there are problems with one-sided grievance sharing.
To me the presumption of motive just doesn’t matter: the point Kat makes with that section is absolutely true, and it doesn’t become less true even if it was motivated by retaliation.
To emphasize that section’s point, again: basically any organization or individual can be made to look like a monster if presented a certain way. This is doubly true of EA organizations in particular, given how generally weird we are.
Personally, I like Ben. What Ben did no doubt took a lot of work and time and effort, and I trust Ben to have been well intentioned throughout it, even if I disagree with decisions he made. I would be pretty sad to learn that he has skeletons in his closet.
But I am not updating on Kat’s section in any meaningful way because I know ~everyone has things in their closets that would look like a skeleton in bad light, and until I get better light I’m not going to live my life jumping at shadows.
It’s clear to me, however, that many people in the community do not have the same attitude or instincts against knee-jerk or vibes-based updates on people from hearsay. Which is fair enough, since I developed mine in part from years of working as a family therapist and mediator. But it’s still a problem for the community if this sort of thing happens again.
I totally sympathize with wanting to just ignore all this and go back to doing meaningful work, and encourage anyone who can do that to do that. But for people who also care about the community’s health, we need a better system than what we’ve got so far for dealing with situations like this.
Maybe it would have been cleaner if it wasn’t about Ben, though I don’t think a hypothetical person would have made the lesson as clear, and if Ben wasn’t fair game for having written that article, I don’t know who would be.
Thanks! This line in particular changed my mind about whether it was retributive, I genuinely can’t think of anyone else it would be appropriate to do this for
The obvious thing to do is finding a friend or other ally who’s willing to consent to do this. Rather than spring it on someone else out of the blue.
Normally you could also volunteer yourself, but of course it’s not exactly viable in this case.
EDIT: I’m happy to volunteer myself for these 1-3 hypothetical experiments going forwards. But please warn me first! And I only want to run this experiment 1-3 times to start with.
I agree, and find the ratio of agree/disagreement on your comment really disheartening in terms of what lesson this community has learned from all this.
I get that people find it too “retaliatory” and bad-faith. Maybe it would have been cleaner if it wasn’t about Ben, though I don’t think a hypothetical person would have made the lesson as clear, and if Ben wasn’t fair game for having written that article, I don’t know who would be. Unless people believe Kat is just making up accusations entirely, they must believe those accusations deserve just as much to be aired in public as Alice and Chloe’s, or else acknowledge that in both cases there are problems with one-sided grievance sharing.
To me the presumption of motive just doesn’t matter: the point Kat makes with that section is absolutely true, and it doesn’t become less true even if it was motivated by retaliation.
To emphasize that section’s point, again: basically any organization or individual can be made to look like a monster if presented a certain way. This is doubly true of EA organizations in particular, given how generally weird we are.
Personally, I like Ben. What Ben did no doubt took a lot of work and time and effort, and I trust Ben to have been well intentioned throughout it, even if I disagree with decisions he made. I would be pretty sad to learn that he has skeletons in his closet.
But I am not updating on Kat’s section in any meaningful way because I know ~everyone has things in their closets that would look like a skeleton in bad light, and until I get better light I’m not going to live my life jumping at shadows.
It’s clear to me, however, that many people in the community do not have the same attitude or instincts against knee-jerk or vibes-based updates on people from hearsay. Which is fair enough, since I developed mine in part from years of working as a family therapist and mediator. But it’s still a problem for the community if this sort of thing happens again.
I totally sympathize with wanting to just ignore all this and go back to doing meaningful work, and encourage anyone who can do that to do that. But for people who also care about the community’s health, we need a better system than what we’ve got so far for dealing with situations like this.
Thanks! This line in particular changed my mind about whether it was retributive, I genuinely can’t think of anyone else it would be appropriate to do this for
The obvious thing to do is finding a friend or other ally who’s willing to consent to do this. Rather than spring it on someone else out of the blue.
Normally you could also volunteer yourself, but of course it’s not exactly viable in this case.
EDIT: I’m happy to volunteer myself for these 1-3 hypothetical experiments going forwards. But please warn me first! And I only want to run this experiment 1-3 times to start with.