Another random spot check: page 115 of the Google Doc. (I generated a random number between 1 and 135.)
This page is split between two sections. The first starts on page 114:
Ben paints Emerson as a power-hungry villain when almost all of the last 4 years Emerson has been working part-time on EA things, gives his money away quietly, and is almost always behind the scenes, giving credit and decision-making power to others
The quote given in support of this is “I think Emerson is very ambitious and would like a powerful role in EA/X-risk/etc.” In my opinion, the quote and the paraphrase are very different things, especially since, as it happens, that quote is not even from the original post, it’s from a comment.
The Google Doc then goes on to describe the reasons Drew believes that Emerson is not ambitious for status within EA. This is ultimately a character judgement, and I don’t have a strong opinion about who is correct about Emerson’s character here. However, I do not think it’s actually important to the issue at hand, since the purported ambition was not in fact load-bearing to the original argument in any way.
The second section is longer, and goes on for several pages. It concerns Emerson’s previous company, Dose.
Specifically, in the original post, Ben quoted a couple very negative Glassdoor reviews about Dose and about Emerson specifically. He also noted there were “also far worse reviews about a hellish work place which are very worrying, but they’re from the period after Emerson’s LinkedIn says he left, so I’m not sure to what extent he is responsible he is for them.”
According to the Google Doc, Ben’s original post included those reviews and he only removed them after being prompted several times. If that’s true, that seems suboptimal but not horrible: that’s the point of sharing posts with people before sharing them publicly.
The link goes to a comment where Kat calculates that average. I double-checked the numbers by averaging all the Emerson-era reviews, and I got a slightly lower number, but probably that was because I did not know exactly when he left and included all of the 2017 reviews in the average. However. One of the reviews says:
All of these super positive reviews are being commissioned by upper management. That is the first thing you should know about Spartz, and I think that gives a pretty good idea of the company’s priorities.
and that seems important. Overall, the reviews, even the overall positive ones, appear to have a consensus that there was a huge amount of micromanagement, and a lot of confusion and lack of direction. Which is not a mortal sin, but seems worth keeping in mind.
Side note: the EA Forum, months later, found someone had been sockpuppeting the original Nonlinear-Bad-EA Forum thread based on Alice/Chloe’s lies—the sockpuppets created even more false consensus.
This claim has no links or sources, and by its nature, will not be in the original post, so I’m not sure how to fact-check it.
Habryka found that it was difficult to find particularly negative reviews, until finally he found one anonymous comment claiming “management commissioned positive reviews”… whatever that means.
This part has no links to sources, so I don’t know what exactly Habryka found or said about it, but in fact there are seven 1-star reviews from this period, out of a total of 35 reviews. (The comment mentioning commissioned reviews was actually not one of them.) Obviously Nonlinear is correct that one anonymous allegation of commissioning reviews is not conclusive, but in my subjective opinion, it seems broadly plausible.
This section also contains a great deal of anger at Ben for his perceived carelessness with Emerson’s reputation. I agree that the anger would be justified if he was in fact careless, but I do not in fact see all that much evidence of that carelessness in this section. Which makes the outrage ring somewhat hollow. It is difficult to take seriously accusations that Ben “frames it in the most outrage-inducing way” when, as far as I can tell, that is what the document I am reading is doing.
Overall, my impression is that the evidence is inconclusive about whether Emerson was a bad boss at Dose. It seems valid for Ben to have included the poor reviews in the original post, though I think he should have also included the fact that there were a bunch of positive reviews.
Another random spot check: page 115 of the Google Doc. (I generated a random number between 1 and 135.)
This page is split between two sections. The first starts on page 114:
The quote given in support of this is “I think Emerson is very ambitious and would like a powerful role in EA/X-risk/etc.” In my opinion, the quote and the paraphrase are very different things, especially since, as it happens, that quote is not even from the original post, it’s from a comment.
The Google Doc then goes on to describe the reasons Drew believes that Emerson is not ambitious for status within EA. This is ultimately a character judgement, and I don’t have a strong opinion about who is correct about Emerson’s character here. However, I do not think it’s actually important to the issue at hand, since the purported ambition was not in fact load-bearing to the original argument in any way.
The second section is longer, and goes on for several pages. It concerns Emerson’s previous company, Dose.
Specifically, in the original post, Ben quoted a couple very negative Glassdoor reviews about Dose and about Emerson specifically. He also noted there were “also far worse reviews about a hellish work place which are very worrying, but they’re from the period after Emerson’s LinkedIn says he left, so I’m not sure to what extent he is responsible he is for them.”
According to the Google Doc, Ben’s original post included those reviews and he only removed them after being prompted several times. If that’s true, that seems suboptimal but not horrible: that’s the point of sharing posts with people before sharing them publicly.
Nonlinear’s response also claims that
The link goes to a comment where Kat calculates that average. I double-checked the numbers by averaging all the Emerson-era reviews, and I got a slightly lower number, but probably that was because I did not know exactly when he left and included all of the 2017 reviews in the average. However. One of the reviews says:
and that seems important. Overall, the reviews, even the overall positive ones, appear to have a consensus that there was a huge amount of micromanagement, and a lot of confusion and lack of direction. Which is not a mortal sin, but seems worth keeping in mind.
This claim has no links or sources, and by its nature, will not be in the original post, so I’m not sure how to fact-check it.
This part has no links to sources, so I don’t know what exactly Habryka found or said about it, but in fact there are seven 1-star reviews from this period, out of a total of 35 reviews. (The comment mentioning commissioned reviews was actually not one of them.) Obviously Nonlinear is correct that one anonymous allegation of commissioning reviews is not conclusive, but in my subjective opinion, it seems broadly plausible.
This section also contains a great deal of anger at Ben for his perceived carelessness with Emerson’s reputation. I agree that the anger would be justified if he was in fact careless, but I do not in fact see all that much evidence of that carelessness in this section. Which makes the outrage ring somewhat hollow. It is difficult to take seriously accusations that Ben “frames it in the most outrage-inducing way” when, as far as I can tell, that is what the document I am reading is doing.
Overall, my impression is that the evidence is inconclusive about whether Emerson was a bad boss at Dose. It seems valid for Ben to have included the poor reviews in the original post, though I think he should have also included the fact that there were a bunch of positive reviews.