I drew a random number for spot checking the short summary table. (I don’t think spot checking will do justice here, but I’d like to start with something concrete.)
Chloe claimed: they told me not to spend time with my romantic partner
This seems to be about this paragraph from the original post:
Alice and Chloe report that they were advised not to spend time with ‘low value people’, including their families, romantic partners, and anyone local to where they were staying, with the exception of guests/visitors that Nonlinear invited. Alice and Chloe report this made them very socially dependent on Kat/Emerson/Drew and otherwise very isolated.
There aren’t any other details in the original post specifically from Chloe or specifically about her partner, including in the comment in Chloe’s words below the post. The only specific detail about romantic partners I see in the original post is about Alice, and it plausibly fits the “romantic partners” piece of this summary. (“Alice was polyamorous, and she and Drew entered into a casual romantic relationship. Kat previously had a polyamorous marriage that ended in divorce, and is now monogamously partnered with Emerson. Kat reportedly told Alice that she didn’t mind polyamory “on the other side of the world”, but couldn’t stand it right next to her, and probably either Alice would need to become monogamous or Alice should leave the organization.”)
Both links in the summary table go to the same place, which says:
Chloe says: “They told me not to spend time with my boyfriend so I was kept socially dependent”, yet we invited her boyfriend to live with us (rent-free) for 2 of the 5 months, discrediting her as a reliable source of truth
False, Questionable, or Misleading Claim: Alice and Chloe report that they were advised not to spend time with ‘low value people’, including their families, romantic partners…
The Other Side: Simply a sad, unbelievable lie given how easily refutable it is.
In direct contradiction to this, Chloe’s boyfriend traveled with us 40% of the time! (~2 of the 5 months she was with us) We thought he was wonderful, had high potential, and we even considered inviting him to join us indefinitely! Emerson also helped her boyfriend financially for part of the time by not charging him for rent/groceries
[cropped phone screenshots of text conversations from February and May 2022, respectively, with the description “LEFT: Kat and Emerson discuss whether they should let Chloe’s boyfriend stay with them longer. They’re leaning towards yes. Bear in mind, this is while Chloe’s boyfriend is already staying with us. She’s distracted and not getting much work done but we were happy to see her happy! RIGHT: Kat encourages Chloe to see her boyfriend in person, which she’s held off on because she got Covid.”]
Kat regularly helped Chloe figure out ways to feel more connected to her boyfriend while they were long distance, such as encouraging her to have more frequent and longer calls.
Also note that dozens of EAs traveled with us and Emerson generously never charged anyone. He just wanted the highest quality people exchanging ideas to maximize impact in beautiful places.
As far as I can tell, “They told me not to spend time with my boyfriend so I was kept socially dependent” is not a direct quote or paraphrase. (Maybe I’d use ~tildes~ for a device like this.) Rather, it picks out one possible contributor to Ben’s summary paragraph.
Taking the screenshots at face value, they establish that as of February, Kat and Emerson thought Chloe’s boyfriend might have high enough potential for an extended invite (Emerson: “i’m open to it” “he seems eager to help build shit”), and as of May, Kat was not telling Chloe not to spend time with him. (Chloe was with Nonlinear from January to July.)
From my perspective, this is between “not responsive to the complaint” and “evidence for the spirit of the complaint”. It seems an overreach to call “They told me not to spend time with my boyfriend...” a “sad, unbelievable lie” “discrediting [Chloe] as a reliable source of truth” when it is not something anyone has cited Chloe as saying. It seems incorrect to describe “advised not to spend time with ‘low value people’” as in “direct contradiction” with any of this, which instead seems to affirm that traveling with Nonlinear was conditioned on “high potential” or being among the “highest quality people”. Finally, having initially considered inviting Chloe’s boyfriend to travel with them would still be entirely consistent with later deciding not to; encouraging a visit in May would still be consistent with an overall expectation that Chloe not spend too much time with her boyfriend in general for reasons related to his perceived “quality”.
Edit: the summary table also says “We were just about to invite him to travel with us indefinitely because it would make Chloe happy, but then Chloe quit [in July].” This would fit with not inviting him in February and later being reluctant for “quality” reasons.
I feel like I’m confused by what you would find more convincing here given that there was no evidence in the first place that they did say something like that?
Like would them saying “No we didn’t” actually be more persuasive than showing an example of how they did the opposite?
Or like… if we take for granted that words that someone might interpret that way left their mouth, at what point do we stop default trusting the person who clearly feels aggrieved by them and seems willing to exaggerate or lie when they then share those words to others?
There are plenty of context in which the thing alleged is not at all abusive, and plenty of contexts where it is. Without reason to believe they were actually keeping them isolated, I’m not sure how much weight to put on it.
I feel like I’m confused by what you would find more convincing here given that there was no evidence in the first place that they did say something like that?
Like would them saying “No we didn’t” actually be more persuasive than showing an example of how they did the opposite?
Or like… if we take for granted that words that someone might interpret that way left their mouth, at what point do we stop default trusting the person who clearly feels aggrieved by them and seems willing to exaggerate or lie when they then share those words to others?
I’m not sure if you meant to reply to a different comment, but yes, exactly.
I think what you’re asking is, supposing Nonlinear has after all done nothing remarkable with respect to anyone’s romantic partners, how do I come to believe that? How does Nonlinear present counterevidence or discredit Chloe in exactly the right way such that I’m swayed towards the true conclusion? If they deny it, it’s just their word. If they show me a text conversation, well, no one actually said that they didn’t have that text conversation, so it’s not responsive to the complaint. There’s basically no winning. It’s genuinely, upsettingly unfair.
I mean, in some sense, there has to be such a way, or else I’m hopelessly irrational. Which is, yes, exactly, I think a professional, considerate Nonlinear would not have made this post. They would have done something else.
There are plenty of context in which the thing alleged is not at all abusive, and plenty of contexts where it is. Without reason to believe they were actually keeping them isolated, I’m not sure how much weight to put on it.
This is another thought feeding into my wondering how much this kind of “spot checking” really matters. While I’m glad people seem to have appreciated working forward from a particular claim, it would feel way more valuable to work backward from a decision. For me, at least, I don’t think the question “did they keep people isolated in an abusive way” is on any back-chained path, which is good, because I don’t expect to be able to answer that question.
But others are going to want to be convinced or not on different questions. This is why I tried to separate out the parent from my more high-feeling and reactive takes in these other comments. Maybe they can figure out how it fits in to the judgments they need to make.
Maybe! I’m hoping it at least saves people some energy. It’s too late for me, but I confess I’m ambivalent myself about the point of all this. Spot-checking some high level claims is at least tractable, but are there decisions that depend on the outcome? What I care about isn’t whether Nonlinear accurately represented what happened or what Ben said. I was unlikely to ever cross paths with Nonlinear or even Ben beforehand. I want people to get healthy professional experience, and I want the EA community to have healthy responses to internal controversy and bad actors.
Something went wrong long before I started looking at any particular claim. Did they discourage Chloe from spending time with her boyfriend? Was it maybe a unreasonable amount of time, though? Are they being sincere in saying they were happy to see her happy? Is it toxic passive-aggressive behavior to emphasize that they felt that way even though she was distracted and unproductive with him around? Did they fail to invite him on all-expenses-paid world travel? Is Ben Pace a good person?
Like, huh? How did we even get here? Don’t ask your employees to live with you. Don’t engage in social experiments with your employees. Don’t make their romantic partnerships your business. Don’t put people in situations where these are the questions they’re asking. My own suspicion is that everyone, even Nonlinear, would have been better off if Nonlinear had just let this lie and instead gone about earning trust by doing good work with normal working relationships.
“My own suspicion is that everyone, even Nonlinear, would have been better off if Nonlinear had just let this lie and instead gone about earning trust by doing good work with normal working relationships.”
I think I’m not sure this is actually possible without having addressed the original claims. The overriding take I felt from the community after Ben’s post was that they were in exile limbo until their side of the story was shared.
Isn’t Emerson independently wealthy and Nonlinear mostly self-funded? It’s not totally clear to me how that limbo keeps them from getting things done. I guess I don’t fully understand what Nonlinear does—I suppose they “incubate” projects, mostly remotely helping with mentoring and networking? I find the idea a little bewildering together with how they describe their activities, but being on the outs with the EA/AI safety community would be a pretty central obstacle.
So that’s fair and I was probably venting a bit intemperately. I think something like what Stephen Clare outlines is probably better.
I don’t think Nonlinear can get much done if no one wants to work with them. “Incubating AI x-risk nonprofits by connecting founders with ideas, funding, and mentorship” (site) is not really compatible with ‘exile’.
Yeah. Still, I think there’s something I’m groping towards here, which is, like, maybe they should do something else? Sure, you don’t get to be a power broker if you’re in exile. But I don’t see how they were ever going to be able to argue their way back. Even with the perfectly worded response it won’t suddenly make sense to trust them as mentors again; it’s always going to take time and concrete actions to regain confidence. If that means they have to do something other than connecting people with ideas, funding, and mentorship, maybe they should just get started on that other thing.
I drew a random number for spot checking the short summary table. (I don’t think spot checking will do justice here, but I’d like to start with something concrete.)
This seems to be about this paragraph from the original post:
There aren’t any other details in the original post specifically from Chloe or specifically about her partner, including in the comment in Chloe’s words below the post. The only specific detail about romantic partners I see in the original post is about Alice, and it plausibly fits the “romantic partners” piece of this summary. (“Alice was polyamorous, and she and Drew entered into a casual romantic relationship. Kat previously had a polyamorous marriage that ended in divorce, and is now monogamously partnered with Emerson. Kat reportedly told Alice that she didn’t mind polyamory “on the other side of the world”, but couldn’t stand it right next to her, and probably either Alice would need to become monogamous or Alice should leave the organization.”)
Both links in the summary table go to the same place, which says:
As far as I can tell, “They told me not to spend time with my boyfriend so I was kept socially dependent” is not a direct quote or paraphrase. (Maybe I’d use ~tildes~ for a device like this.) Rather, it picks out one possible contributor to Ben’s summary paragraph.
Taking the screenshots at face value, they establish that as of February, Kat and Emerson thought Chloe’s boyfriend might have high enough potential for an extended invite (Emerson: “i’m open to it” “he seems eager to help build shit”), and as of May, Kat was not telling Chloe not to spend time with him. (Chloe was with Nonlinear from January to July.)
From my perspective, this is between “not responsive to the complaint” and “evidence for the spirit of the complaint”. It seems an overreach to call “They told me not to spend time with my boyfriend...” a “sad, unbelievable lie” “discrediting [Chloe] as a reliable source of truth” when it is not something anyone has cited Chloe as saying. It seems incorrect to describe “advised not to spend time with ‘low value people’” as in “direct contradiction” with any of this, which instead seems to affirm that traveling with Nonlinear was conditioned on “high potential” or being among the “highest quality people”. Finally, having initially considered inviting Chloe’s boyfriend to travel with them would still be entirely consistent with later deciding not to; encouraging a visit in May would still be consistent with an overall expectation that Chloe not spend too much time with her boyfriend in general for reasons related to his perceived “quality”.
Edit: the summary table also says “We were just about to invite him to travel with us indefinitely because it would make Chloe happy, but then Chloe quit [in July].” This would fit with not inviting him in February and later being reluctant for “quality” reasons.
I feel like I’m confused by what you would find more convincing here given that there was no evidence in the first place that they did say something like that?
Like would them saying “No we didn’t” actually be more persuasive than showing an example of how they did the opposite?
Or like… if we take for granted that words that someone might interpret that way left their mouth, at what point do we stop default trusting the person who clearly feels aggrieved by them and seems willing to exaggerate or lie when they then share those words to others?
There are plenty of context in which the thing alleged is not at all abusive, and plenty of contexts where it is. Without reason to believe they were actually keeping them isolated, I’m not sure how much weight to put on it.
I’m not sure if you meant to reply to a different comment, but yes, exactly.
I think what you’re asking is, supposing Nonlinear has after all done nothing remarkable with respect to anyone’s romantic partners, how do I come to believe that? How does Nonlinear present counterevidence or discredit Chloe in exactly the right way such that I’m swayed towards the true conclusion? If they deny it, it’s just their word. If they show me a text conversation, well, no one actually said that they didn’t have that text conversation, so it’s not responsive to the complaint. There’s basically no winning. It’s genuinely, upsettingly unfair.
I mean, in some sense, there has to be such a way, or else I’m hopelessly irrational. Which is, yes, exactly, I think a professional, considerate Nonlinear would not have made this post. They would have done something else.
This is another thought feeding into my wondering how much this kind of “spot checking” really matters. While I’m glad people seem to have appreciated working forward from a particular claim, it would feel way more valuable to work backward from a decision. For me, at least, I don’t think the question “did they keep people isolated in an abusive way” is on any back-chained path, which is good, because I don’t expect to be able to answer that question.
But others are going to want to be convinced or not on different questions. This is why I tried to separate out the parent from my more high-feeling and reactive takes in these other comments. Maybe they can figure out how it fits in to the judgments they need to make.
Very valuable contribution. Crowd sourcing this type of effort seems good.
Maybe! I’m hoping it at least saves people some energy. It’s too late for me, but I confess I’m ambivalent myself about the point of all this. Spot-checking some high level claims is at least tractable, but are there decisions that depend on the outcome? What I care about isn’t whether Nonlinear accurately represented what happened or what Ben said. I was unlikely to ever cross paths with Nonlinear or even Ben beforehand. I want people to get healthy professional experience, and I want the EA community to have healthy responses to internal controversy and bad actors.
Something went wrong long before I started looking at any particular claim. Did they discourage Chloe from spending time with her boyfriend? Was it maybe a unreasonable amount of time, though? Are they being sincere in saying they were happy to see her happy? Is it toxic passive-aggressive behavior to emphasize that they felt that way even though she was distracted and unproductive with him around? Did they fail to invite him on all-expenses-paid world travel? Is Ben Pace a good person?
Like, huh? How did we even get here? Don’t ask your employees to live with you. Don’t engage in social experiments with your employees. Don’t make their romantic partnerships your business. Don’t put people in situations where these are the questions they’re asking. My own suspicion is that everyone, even Nonlinear, would have been better off if Nonlinear had just let this lie and instead gone about earning trust by doing good work with normal working relationships.
“My own suspicion is that everyone, even Nonlinear, would have been better off if Nonlinear had just let this lie and instead gone about earning trust by doing good work with normal working relationships.”
I think I’m not sure this is actually possible without having addressed the original claims. The overriding take I felt from the community after Ben’s post was that they were in exile limbo until their side of the story was shared.
Isn’t Emerson independently wealthy and Nonlinear mostly self-funded? It’s not totally clear to me how that limbo keeps them from getting things done. I guess I don’t fully understand what Nonlinear does—I suppose they “incubate” projects, mostly remotely helping with mentoring and networking? I find the idea a little bewildering together with how they describe their activities, but being on the outs with the EA/AI safety community would be a pretty central obstacle.
So that’s fair and I was probably venting a bit intemperately. I think something like what Stephen Clare outlines is probably better.
I don’t think Nonlinear can get much done if no one wants to work with them. “Incubating AI x-risk nonprofits by connecting founders with ideas, funding, and mentorship” (site) is not really compatible with ‘exile’.
Yeah. Still, I think there’s something I’m groping towards here, which is, like, maybe they should do something else? Sure, you don’t get to be a power broker if you’re in exile. But I don’t see how they were ever going to be able to argue their way back. Even with the perfectly worded response it won’t suddenly make sense to trust them as mentors again; it’s always going to take time and concrete actions to regain confidence. If that means they have to do something other than connecting people with ideas, funding, and mentorship, maybe they should just get started on that other thing.
It at least allows people who now trust them again to choose to work with them and have things to point to as to why.
That may be, but they valued their community connections and the pay-related disputes suggest that their funding was limited.