I agree that this would be a good thing to get clarity on as well, though I think it’s a very dangerous thing to ask people to verify in a public setting? We could take for granted that it’s true if they don’t explicitly deny it, but the issue might matter more or less to different people if it was simply an ask vs if there was pressure to do it.
Personally my take is something like “It would be bad to pressure people to do this if they don’t want to. It would be the kind of mistake I hope someone would learn from if they made it. It affects some level of how hostile and unpleasant the job would feel for people being pressured to do that, but doesn’t affect the other claims of abuse, so while it would be good to know on the basis of how much of the accusers’ experience matched reality vs not, it doesn’t feel cruxy to me on the other issues.”
You make a fair point about the risk of admitting to such activities in a public setting. Although, if the statement is not true, there would be no risk in denying it, right? I’m hesitant to assume something is true in the absence of a denial, but I wanted to at least give Nonlinear an opportunity to deny it.
This will vary between readers, but I personally find this more cruxy than perhaps you do. In my opinion: asking an employee to commit illegal acts, even with minimal social pressure, especially in a foreign country, especially if it happened multiple times, is a very serious concern. I can imagine extreme instances where it could be justified, but it doesn’t seem like that applies to this situation.
I am also hoping that the accuracy of the weed allegation is much less ambiguous than some of the harder-to-pin down abuse claims (even if those might be worse in sum total if they were all true).
I agree that asking employees to commit illegal acts they wouldn’t normally commit is bad. I qualify it like that be because I’ve known many people who casually break the law in many ways on “victimless crimes” like smoking pot (particularly before it became largely legalized) or getting prescription medicine from others, and I think rationalists/EAs are not unique compared to base rates in skirting laws like this.
Unless the accusers are the sorts of people who don’t, like me, then it would make sense to me if they were asked to do something that seemed in line with their normal behavior. But this is speculation on my part, and I agree that pressuring them in any case would be wrong.
Yeah I see your point. I think I personally have a stronger aversion to illegal requests from employers as a matter of a principle, even if the employee does that sort of thing anyway. But I can see how other people might view that differently.
That said, in this particular case, it doesn’t seem like Chloe would otherwise be illegally buying weed?
I know this is probably a frustrating thing for others to read, but seems worth saying anyway… since making the above comment I’ve had private information shared with me that makes me more confident NL didn’t act in an abusive way regarding this particular issue.
I agree that this would be a good thing to get clarity on as well, though I think it’s a very dangerous thing to ask people to verify in a public setting? We could take for granted that it’s true if they don’t explicitly deny it, but the issue might matter more or less to different people if it was simply an ask vs if there was pressure to do it.
Personally my take is something like “It would be bad to pressure people to do this if they don’t want to. It would be the kind of mistake I hope someone would learn from if they made it. It affects some level of how hostile and unpleasant the job would feel for people being pressured to do that, but doesn’t affect the other claims of abuse, so while it would be good to know on the basis of how much of the accusers’ experience matched reality vs not, it doesn’t feel cruxy to me on the other issues.”
You make a fair point about the risk of admitting to such activities in a public setting. Although, if the statement is not true, there would be no risk in denying it, right? I’m hesitant to assume something is true in the absence of a denial, but I wanted to at least give Nonlinear an opportunity to deny it.
This will vary between readers, but I personally find this more cruxy than perhaps you do. In my opinion: asking an employee to commit illegal acts, even with minimal social pressure, especially in a foreign country, especially if it happened multiple times, is a very serious concern. I can imagine extreme instances where it could be justified, but it doesn’t seem like that applies to this situation.
I am also hoping that the accuracy of the weed allegation is much less ambiguous than some of the harder-to-pin down abuse claims (even if those might be worse in sum total if they were all true).
I agree that asking employees to commit illegal acts they wouldn’t normally commit is bad. I qualify it like that be because I’ve known many people who casually break the law in many ways on “victimless crimes” like smoking pot (particularly before it became largely legalized) or getting prescription medicine from others, and I think rationalists/EAs are not unique compared to base rates in skirting laws like this.
Unless the accusers are the sorts of people who don’t, like me, then it would make sense to me if they were asked to do something that seemed in line with their normal behavior. But this is speculation on my part, and I agree that pressuring them in any case would be wrong.
Yeah I see your point. I think I personally have a stronger aversion to illegal requests from employers as a matter of a principle, even if the employee does that sort of thing anyway. But I can see how other people might view that differently.
That said, in this particular case, it doesn’t seem like Chloe would otherwise be illegally buying weed?
I know this is probably a frustrating thing for others to read, but seems worth saying anyway… since making the above comment I’ve had private information shared with me that makes me more confident NL didn’t act in an abusive way regarding this particular issue.