if you send something 2 hours before the post is published, late at night, itâs not going to make it into the post.
This would make sense to me if Ben had been working to an external deadline, but instead this is directly downstream from Benâs choice to allocate very little time to draft review and ensuring he had his facts right. It sounds like Spencer sent these text messages <24hr after being sent the draft; how quickly would he have needed to turn around his review to count?
To be clear, we were working to a substantial degree to an external deadline, since publishing this post required coordinating with many (5-10) external sources and witnesses, with many of them having a strong preference for a concrete time for the post to be published and they can plan around, so they can get ready for any potential retaliation and fallout.
There was wiggle room in that date and time, but by the time Spencer sent this, the post and publish-date was really quite locked in.
I think 24 hours before publication would have been enough to include them. Maybe even 12 hours. As I mentioned in other places, we did send Nonlinear (and Spencer) a list of the relevant claims in the final post, including this one, so I think the fact that the literal draft was only shared 24 hours in advance is irrelevant. Spencer and Nonlinear knew the claims we were planning to put into the post on this matter roughly a week in-advance.
For example, in the call that Nonlinear cancelled with us a day before publication, that would have been a pretty good time to share such evidence with us, and if they had given additional evidence then, it would have made it into the post.
But separately from that, I am not sure what you mean by âcountâ. Spencer claimed that âwe had screenshots that didnât make it into the postâ. I think a reasonable reader would infer from that when the post was being written, we had access to those screenshots. By the time Spencer sent these screenshots, the post was no longer being written in any meaningful way.
To be clear, we were working to a substantial degree to an external deadline, since publishing this post required coordinating with many (5-10) external sources and witnesses, with many of them having a strong preference for a concrete time for the post to be published and they can plan around, so they can get ready for any potential retaliation and fallout.
I donât really see how this is a defense. The fact that you have promised some third parties to do X does not justify you in doing X if X would otherwise not be morally acceptable. And publishing harmful statements about someone that you have good reason to think are false does not seem morally acceptable.
It is a defense that in as much as I think anyone working on a post similar to this, mostly independently of skill level, would end up having to make promises to sources of this type, in order to be able to share concerning information publicly.
Of course, if you think posts of this whole reference class are bad, and it was bad for us to even attempt to make a post that tries to publicize the extensive rumors and concerns that we heard about Nonlinear, then I think itâs not a defense.
But if you think people should attempt to spread that kind of information and share it with more parties, then I think this will somewhat inevitable come with constraints like having to keep publication deadlines and coordinating the many stakeholders involved in such a thing.
Like, what is the alternative that you propose we should have done instead? Not made any promises to our sources at all about doing things that protect them from retaliation and limiting the costs on them? I think in that case you donât get to talk to sources, or you only get to do it for a bit as people get burned and hurt and stop talking to you.
And publishing harmful statements about someone that you have good reason to think are false does not seem morally acceptable.
I am pretty sure Ben has published no harmful statements about someone that he thought were false. Indeed, as I have said many times, he seems to have been exceptionally careful with the epistemic states he attached to his statements in his post.
Iâm well aware of the difficulties of balancing competing stakeholders giving you feedback late on posts and trying to hit publication timing targets. I think you had several valid options:
Never make commitments about publication date and time in the first place.
Make commitments, but be clear they are provisional. When you receive this information, email your sources saying âhey guys, really sorry but we just received some last-minute info that we need to update on. Weâll circle back to coordinate a new launch date that works for you.â
Give Spencer a reasonable deadline to respond, committing to take into account feedback received before this deadline.
Delete that section and publish on the original schedule.
Edit the section and publish on the original schedule.
Edit the section and publish on the original schedule.
I mean, to be clear, we did this the first time Nonlinear disputed the relevant section.
Alice quit being vegan while working there. She was sick with covid in a foreign country, with only the three Nonlinear cofounders around, but nobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan food, so she barely ate for 2 days. Alice eventually gave in and ate non-vegan food in the house. She also said that the Nonlinear cofounders marked her quitting veganism as a âwinâ, as they thad been arguing that she should not be vegan.
(Nonlinear disputes this, and says that they did go out and buy her some vegan burgers food and had some vegan food in the house. They agree that she quit being vegan at this time, and say it was because being vegan was unusually hard due to being in Puerto Rico. Alice disputes that she received any vegan burgers.)
I think this section is really quite clear. We have one report from Alice saying that she quit being vegan. We directly include, in the next paragraph, the fact that Nonlinear disputes this. I really donât think we misled anyone. The screenshots sent did not actually materially change anything in the paragraphs above, indeed both of the paragraphs are still fully accurate (and in as much as Alice claimed that she did not get food while indeed getting food, that is IMO an important part of the story that seems important for other people to be able to cross-check).
I think the choice of âyou have some sources, you cite the sources while being really quite clear that you donât fully trust your sources, and when a thing gets directly disputed by another source you say that directlyâ is a reasonable thing to do. Again, as Iâve said an enormous number of times, we never had an intention of fully litigating all of these claims before publication, which would have been completely infeasible time-wise.
The alternative to Benâs post would have probably been a series of fully anonymous posts with extremely vague high-level accusations that would have been extremely hard to respond to. We tried to make the claims concrete and provide an interface to aggregate information at all.
Like, what kind of edit would you have preferred us to do instead of the above?
I think this section is really quite clear. We have one report from Alice saying that she quit being vegan. We directly include, in the next paragraph, the fact that Nonlinear disputes this. I really donât think we misled anyone.
I strongly disagree. Aliceâs and Nonlinearâs perspectives are portrayed with very different implicit levels of confidence in those paragraphs. Aliceâs perspective is stated as a factâânobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan food,â not âAlice says nobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan food.â In contrast, Nonlinearâs perspective is shared as â[Nonlinear] says [x].â
I think most readers who trust Ben to be truthful would assume, from the way those paragraphs were worded, that Alice had much better evidence to support her claims, and that Nonlinear was doing some slightly deceitful reputational management by countering them. But that isnât what turned out to be the case:
Nonlinear has evidence that on December 15, they had oatmeal, peanuts, almonds, prunes, tomatoes, cereal, an orange, mixed nuts, and quinoa (which Kat offered to cook) in the house.
At some point, Emerson went out and tried to purchase Alice more food despite his knee injury, but he couldnât find the very specific items she requested.
Then, on December 18, it looks like Aliceâs first non-vegan meal was a vegetarian pizza she ordered (rather than non-vegan food already in the house). It looks like she ordered it right after Kat reminded her that they already had vegan noodles in the fridge.
On top of all of this, apparently everybody in the house was either sick or injured, but Benâs post only mentions that Alice was sick.
It seems that Alice/âBen have no evidence to counter any of the points above.
So the original claim that was stated as fact (ânobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan foodâ) seems very wrong. Which is sad, because itâs a very serious accusation that most people would assume was not made lightly.
Yeah, sorry, I think I was too strong in my language above, though my sense is you are also interpreting my answer to be about a somewhat different question than the one I perceived Larks as asking. To clarify where I think we are on the same page: I am pretty unhappy about that section, and wouldnât ask Ben to write something different given what I believe today.
The thing I was responding to was whether we misrepresented the evidence that we did have at the time.
On that topic, I do think it was a mistake to omit as many of the âAlice/âChloe claims that Xâ in the post as we did, and fall back into a neutral third-party way of summarizing the claims, and given that we did, I think it makes sense to hold Ben and Lightcone more responsible for the veracity of statements that did not include an explicit âAlice/âChloe alleges Xâ.
I also think that there is a pretty reasonable case to be made that we should have waited longer on getting more evidence from Nonlinear. I felt conflicted on this topic then, and feel conflicted now. I really hate that the situation we were in made it quite hard for us to wait longer for Nonlinear to respond to us. I am still not fully sure whether I would wait if I was in this situation again, since the considerations against waiting were also quite strong, though overall I am leaning slightly that waiting would have been the better option (I do not think this forgives or excuses Nonlinearâs attempts at intimidation and threats of retaliation).
However, overall on the question of âdid we accurately summarize the evidence available to usâ, I think Benâs post and this section is doing pretty well.
I agree that we frame Alice and Chloeâs evidence as more trustworthy, and in-aggregate, across the whole post, I stand behind that framing, in that I think Alice and Chloe are substantially more reliable sources of evidence than Kat and Emerson. I agree that in this situation I think this went the wrong way around and it looks to me like the vegan food situation seems like it was represented to us in a substantially misleading way, and I am still hoping for me or Ben to follow up with Alice on this topic and figure out whether I am missing something. However, I think on-average the framing of the post was not misleading about the balance of evidence that we had received to that point (including accounting for expected future evidence Nonlinear that we expected Nonlinear might provide).
Some smaller nitpicks on your comment:
In contrast, Nonlinearâs perspective is shared as â[Nonlinear] says [x].â
Itâs true that we donât share Nonlinearâs perspective with the same authority as Alice and Chloeâs. We did also include a summary directly written from their perspective, which I do think helps:
This seems also straightforwardly inaccurate, we brought her potatoes, vegan burgers, and had vegan food in the house. We had been advising her to 80â20 being a vegan and this probably also weighed on her decision.
Another quick comment:
It seems that Alice/âBen have no evidence to counter any of the points above.
I would give people some time before concluding that. While Ben (and I) are trying really hard to not be dragged into a full-on follow-up investigation of this, I do expect there will be some kind of response to this which includes procuring more evidence. I personally do feel pretty convinced on this point, but I am not updating on Alice or Ben not providing more evidence in coming to that conclusion, since they havenât responded to anything so far, and I do know that many of the claims in the OP and associated appendix are inaccurate, and those also havenât been responded to yet (it includes many claims about what Ben believes or what the process of writing Benâs original post was like, which I am very confident are inaccurate).
I am substantially less confident in that claim, though yeah, I would still overall say I believe it (itâs not super well-operationalized so not super clear what a probability would mean, but like, I guess I am at ~80% that if I knew all the facts and had arbitrary insight into Aliceâs, Katâs and Emersonsâ life that I would overall expect Alice to be reporting more accurately than Kat and Emerson)
Iâm not sure if Spencer sent you all the screenshots or just some of them, but something along the lines of:
Alice quit being vegan while working there. She was sick with covid in a foreign country, with only the three Nonlinear cofounders around, who she alleges refused to go out and get her vegan food, so she barely ate for 2 days. Alice eventually gave in and ate non-vegan food in the house. She also said that the Nonlinear cofounders marked her quitting veganism as a âwinâ, as they thad been arguing that she should not be vegan.
(Nonlinear disputes this, and sent dated screenshots suggesting and says that they did go out and buy her some vegan burgers food and had some vegan food in the house that they cooked for her. They agree that she quit being vegan at this time, and say it was because being vegan was unusually hard due to being in Puerto Rico. Alice disputes that she received any vegan burgers; we did not ask her to comment on the screenshots.)
Importantly the screenshot only covered events on December 15th.
Here is the relevant screenshot:
Kelsey Piper in the thread summarizes these screenshots (together with some other screenshots that Kat shared) as follows:
On December 15, Alice states that sheâd had very little to eat all day, that sheâd repeatedly tried and failed to find a way to order takeout to their location, and tries to ask that people go to Burger King and get her an Impossible Burger which in the linked screenshots they decline to do because they donât want to get fast food. She asks again about Burger King and is told itâs inconvenient to get there. Instead, they go to a different restaurant and offer to get her something from the restaurant they went to. Alice looks at the menu online and sees that there are no vegan options. Drew confirms that âthey have some saladsâ but nothing else for her. She assures him that itâs fine to not get her anything.
It seems completely reasonable that Alice remembers this as âshe was barely eating, and no one in the house was willing to go out and get her nonvegan foodsâ - after all, the end result of all of those message exchanges was no food being obtained for Alice and her requests for Burger King being repeatedly deflected with âwe are down to get anything that isnât fast foodâ and âwe are down to go anywhere within a 12 min driveâ and âour only criteria is decent vibe + not fast foodâ, after which she fails to find a restaurant meeting those (I note, kind of restrictive if not in a highly dense area) criteria and they go somewhere without vegan options and donât get her anything to eat.
It also seems totally reasonable that no one at Nonlinear understood there was a problem. Aliceâs language throughout emphasizes how sheâll be fine, itâs no big deal, sheâs so grateful that they tried (even though they failed and she didnât get any food out of the 12â15 trip, if I understand correctly). I do not think that these exchanges depict the people at Nonlinear as being cruel, insane, or unusual as people. But it doesnât seem to me that Alice is lying to have experienced this as âshe had covid, was barely eating, told people she was barely eating, and they declined to pick up Burger King for her because they didnât want to go to a fast food restaurant, and instead gave her very limiting criteria and went somewhere that didnât have any options she could eatâ.
My guess is this aligned with Benâs interpretation at the time. The screenshots were relevant evidence, but they did not directly disprove anything in the original article.
Kat then shared further screenshots in the comments, which importantly were not shared with Ben beforehand(unless Spencer failed to forward them to me in my DM with him yesterday), that demonstrated that on the next day Kat did successfully bring her food.
However, the story, in the above screenshot, on December 15th, is that indeed Alice did not get food, despite her requesting it. The screenshots that Spencer sent us appear to fail to include the most relevant part of the conversation, which is that they did indeed fail to get her vegan food that day during that trip.
(Edit: Kat disputes this below, sharing some additional screenshots that seem to show that Kat did get food for Alice later that day, which seems important to get right. Though I donât think Spencerâs screenshot demonstrated this).
Here are the edits I currently agree would have been better, though I think they are minor enough that I donât currently see it as a major error to not have included them:
Nonlinear disputes this, and sent dated screenshotsthat document part of the relevant conversation. In those screenshots we can see that on December 15th Alice did indeed request vegan food from multiple restaurants, but her and Drew ran into difficulties finding vegan food that was available in the area, and it seems like Nonlinear ultimate did indeed decline to stop by a different restaurant for Alice to get her vegan food, though the details are not fully clear. They agree that she quit being vegan at this time, and say it was because being vegan was unusually hard due to being in Puerto Rico. Alice disputes that she received any vegan burgers; we did not ask her to comment on the screenshots.)
I really encourage you to look at the screenshots, Kelseyâs summary, and Katâs original comment on the Nonlinear post and explain to me how these screenshots falsify part of the post. As we later received more screenshots, it seems like we actually received confirmation that the conversation on that date did indeed not result in Alice getting food.
(Edit: Kat shares some additional screenshots below that do seem to show Alice got food on the 15th, though not from the restaurant trip that was talked about in the screenshot Spencer sent us)
Iâm a little bit confused about Kelseyâs summaryâit contains a line about rejecting burgers because they were âfast foodâ that doesnât seem to be in the original. So I donât think it can reflect Benâs state of mind in that way.
If you only had the one screenshot (9:53 to 10:28 timestamps), I agree that you canât infer that Kat cooked for âAliceâ, nor is there proof that the discussed burger trip actually took place, though I think they strongly imply it willâcertainly Alice seems to think it has been agreed and will occur. However, I find your comment about 15th vs 16th unconvincing because âAliceâ explicitly claims a 2 day duration, so food the next day would also contradict this (assuming the 15th is the first day).
Here is another possible version that reflects just the one screenshot:
Alice quit being vegan while working there. She was sick with covid in a foreign country, with only the three Nonlinear cofounders around, who she alleges refused to go out and get her vegan food, so she barely ate for 2 days. Alice eventually gave in and ate non-vegan food in the house. She also said that the Nonlinear cofounders marked her quitting veganism as a âwinâ, as they thad been arguing that she should not be vegan.
(Nonlinear disputes this, and sent dated screenshots showing a conversation Kat had with âAliceâ about two different restaurants they could go to, as well as the vegan food they had in the house, which seems to end with an agreement to go to get (vegan) burgers. They further claim (though the screenshots do not prove this) and says that they did go out and buy her some vegan burgers food and had some vegan food in the house. They agree that she quit being vegan at this time, and say it was because being vegan was unusually hard due to being in Puerto Rico. Alice disputes that she received any vegan burgers; we did not ask her to comment on the screenshots.)
I think my key objections to the original version is asserts as fact that Nonlinear refused to get her food, vs this being an unverified claim, and that it does not reflect that NonLinear didnât merely dispute it, they offered evidence.
If you only had the one screenshot (9:53 to 10:28 timestamps), I agree that you canât infer that Kat cooked for âAliceâ, nor is there proof that the discussed burger trip actually took place, though I think they strongly imply it will
Just to be clear, that burger trip did indeed not happen that day, if I understand it correctly. What instead happened is that Kat went out a few hours later and got Alice mashed potatoes at a store (which is not really hinted at at all in the screenshots).
Yeah, I think this version is reasonable and I would have preferred to post this version (and somewhat think that we should have updated it ASAP, even after publication).
on December 15th, is that indeed Alice did not get food,
This is false. Alice got food on December 15th. She got food 2.5 hours after she asked. Actually, she never asked me, I just offered when it seemed like she was struggling.
It says December 16 at 12:14am because I was in Europe at the time, so itâs showing the European time zone. It was Dec 15 at 7:13pm in the local time when this occurred.
She brought up being hungry at 4:53pm. I immediately offered to cook her the food in the house. When she didnât want any of the food in the house or food from any non-fast food restaurant within a 12 minute drive of home, I went out, while sick myself, and got and cooked her food. The only vegan food that fit her criteria in the store.
The only complaint she can legitimately say is that we did not get her Panda Express as fast as she would have liked (we got it for her the next day). She waited 2.5 hours for food. And she could have had it sooner if sheâd wanted any of the food in the house, which she usually ate nearly daily and enjoyed. She just didnât want that food. She wanted fast food and didnât get it as fast as she preferred.
Thank you! This definitely seems like highly relevant evidence.
Can you clarify whether Kelseyâs summary of the December 15th conversation is accurate or inaccurate? Itâs totally possible that I am misreading the screenshots, though my best interpretation was indeed the interpretation that Kelsey made in the screenshots.
I would be happy to correct the statement above if I am wrong here.
I do think this issue seems somewhat separate from the question of âdid the screenshots that were shared with us materially affect the things Ben wrote?â.
To be clear, this is relevant in as much as the original screenshot was evidence of there being more things you could share here, though I currently maintain that I donât think the screenshots that were shared with us showed any material error (given that Kelsey also walked away with the same impression of them being consistent).
I also totally care about just setting the record straight and getting the object-level issue right here, and in as much as there isnât anything very weird going on with the screenshots you sent, I think you provided pretty decent proof here and am changing my mind on the December 15th issue (and think if you had shared those screenshots with us instead, I think itâs pretty likely Ben would have somehow made sure that they made it into the post).
Kelseyâs summary was wrong in a number of important ways.
She missed the fact that we did indeed succeed in getting her vegan food (I found at the nearby store, despite being sick myself). 2.5 hours after we first offered. And it would have been faster if sheâd wanted any of the food in the house, or chosen a restaurant that had vegan options for Emerson and Drew to go to.
It doesnât mention the vegan food that was in the house already that I offered to cook (Alice ate oatmeal almost every day and she loved quinoa. Later when I cooked some up for her, she loved it, like usual, cause quinoa is the Queen of All Foods).
It doesnât mention that Drew said he would go to any restaurant within a 12 minute drive from our place and she just⊠didnât choose a restaurant. She only wanted fast food. So they ended up choosing a restaurant that didnât happen to have vegan options aside from the usual fries.
A quick look at Google Maps shows that there was over 20 restaurants that fit that criteria in the area. It wasnât restrictive at all.
She frames it as they didnât get her the food she wanted âbecause they [didnât] want to get fast food.â Itâs important to note that Emerson and Drew also are people whose preferences matter. Just because Alice is sick doesnât mean everybody has to drop their own needs and preferences to get her the very particular food she wants.
She frames it as Emerson and Drew being somehow inconsiderate and shallow, when you could just as easily frame it as Alice not considering the needs or preferences of anybody but herself, expecting everybody to drop everything and go out of their way so she can get the very specific fast food she wants. Then, when she doesnât get exactly what she wants as fast as she wants, she goes around telling lies about what happened to destroy a charity (e.g. nobody willing to get her food)
As for what Ben knew before publishing, if you look at that screenshot, you can see that:
Drew has offered to pick her up food (âDrew suggested he could otherwise pick up stuffâ)
Me and Emerson offered to pick her up food (âMe and Emerson can do it if he canâtâ)
I offered to cook her the food in the house (âCould make you some quinoaâ)
Ben said in his post that ânobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan foodâ. This is absolutely false. Ben had seen this screenshot clearly showing that we were willing to go out and get her food.
Note that she didnât even ask for food. I just offered because I could see she was in need (âwant me to order food?â)
It also said âso she barely ate for 2 daysâ. It shows in the messages that there was vegan food in the house. So that was clearly not the reason she didnât eat for days.
She had plenty of options but she wanted fast food in particular.
We got her her first choice of fast food the very next day (remember, she only started asking for food in the evening the previous day. It was also hard to get stuff for her. This was our first experience with covid and we were trying to figure out how to manage it, try to have it not spread, etc etc. It was quite a stressful and overwhelming time.).
Because she didnât get a very particular fast food as fast as she wanted, she interpreted this as us being heartless people who wouldnât take care of a sick person in need. She told Ben a false and misleading story about us not being willing to go out and get food for her.
As we later received more screenshots, it seems like we actually received definitive confirmation that the conversation on that date did indeed not result in Alice getting food.
Iâm waiting for Ben, or someone else, to make a table of claims, counter claims, and what the evidence shows. Because nonlinear providing evidence that doesnât support their claims seems to be a common occurance.
Just to give a new example, Kat screenshots herselfreplying âmediating! Appreciate people not talking to loud on the way back [...] â here, to provide evidence supporting that there was not a substantial discussion that occurred. However, I can only interpret the use of âmediating!â to indicate that there was in-fact a substantial amount of discussion at play.
Edit: Retracted as correctly pointed out by @Sean_o_h , I read meditation as mediation.
Benâs choice to allocate very little time to draft review and ensuring he had his facts right
Can you clarify what you mean by âvery little timeâ? Haybrka reports spending 1000+ staff hours, and even Benâs much more conservative estimate of 100-200 hours doesnât feel fair to me to describe as âvery littleâ
Sorry, Iâm trying to talk about the amount of time for âadversarialâ fact checking: when Nonlinear knew the accusations and could provide specific counter evidence. I agree he put a ton of time into the project overall.
This would make sense to me if Ben had been working to an external deadline, but instead this is directly downstream from Benâs choice to allocate very little time to draft review and ensuring he had his facts right. It sounds like Spencer sent these text messages <24hr after being sent the draft; how quickly would he have needed to turn around his review to count?
To be clear, we were working to a substantial degree to an external deadline, since publishing this post required coordinating with many (5-10) external sources and witnesses, with many of them having a strong preference for a concrete time for the post to be published and they can plan around, so they can get ready for any potential retaliation and fallout.
There was wiggle room in that date and time, but by the time Spencer sent this, the post and publish-date was really quite locked in.
I think 24 hours before publication would have been enough to include them. Maybe even 12 hours. As I mentioned in other places, we did send Nonlinear (and Spencer) a list of the relevant claims in the final post, including this one, so I think the fact that the literal draft was only shared 24 hours in advance is irrelevant. Spencer and Nonlinear knew the claims we were planning to put into the post on this matter roughly a week in-advance.
For example, in the call that Nonlinear cancelled with us a day before publication, that would have been a pretty good time to share such evidence with us, and if they had given additional evidence then, it would have made it into the post.
But separately from that, I am not sure what you mean by âcountâ. Spencer claimed that âwe had screenshots that didnât make it into the postâ. I think a reasonable reader would infer from that when the post was being written, we had access to those screenshots. By the time Spencer sent these screenshots, the post was no longer being written in any meaningful way.
I donât really see how this is a defense. The fact that you have promised some third parties to do X does not justify you in doing X if X would otherwise not be morally acceptable. And publishing harmful statements about someone that you have good reason to think are false does not seem morally acceptable.
Yes, this does seem like deciding in advance what side youâre on and who deserves consideration like determining when the post goes up.
It is a defense that in as much as I think anyone working on a post similar to this, mostly independently of skill level, would end up having to make promises to sources of this type, in order to be able to share concerning information publicly.
Of course, if you think posts of this whole reference class are bad, and it was bad for us to even attempt to make a post that tries to publicize the extensive rumors and concerns that we heard about Nonlinear, then I think itâs not a defense.
But if you think people should attempt to spread that kind of information and share it with more parties, then I think this will somewhat inevitable come with constraints like having to keep publication deadlines and coordinating the many stakeholders involved in such a thing.
Like, what is the alternative that you propose we should have done instead? Not made any promises to our sources at all about doing things that protect them from retaliation and limiting the costs on them? I think in that case you donât get to talk to sources, or you only get to do it for a bit as people get burned and hurt and stop talking to you.
I am pretty sure Ben has published no harmful statements about someone that he thought were false. Indeed, as I have said many times, he seems to have been exceptionally careful with the epistemic states he attached to his statements in his post.
Iâm well aware of the difficulties of balancing competing stakeholders giving you feedback late on posts and trying to hit publication timing targets. I think you had several valid options:
Never make commitments about publication date and time in the first place.
Make commitments, but be clear they are provisional. When you receive this information, email your sources saying âhey guys, really sorry but we just received some last-minute info that we need to update on. Weâll circle back to coordinate a new launch date that works for you.â
Give Spencer a reasonable deadline to respond, committing to take into account feedback received before this deadline.
Delete that section and publish on the original schedule.
Edit the section and publish on the original schedule.
I mean, to be clear, we did this the first time Nonlinear disputed the relevant section.
I think this section is really quite clear. We have one report from Alice saying that she quit being vegan. We directly include, in the next paragraph, the fact that Nonlinear disputes this. I really donât think we misled anyone. The screenshots sent did not actually materially change anything in the paragraphs above, indeed both of the paragraphs are still fully accurate (and in as much as Alice claimed that she did not get food while indeed getting food, that is IMO an important part of the story that seems important for other people to be able to cross-check).
I think the choice of âyou have some sources, you cite the sources while being really quite clear that you donât fully trust your sources, and when a thing gets directly disputed by another source you say that directlyâ is a reasonable thing to do. Again, as Iâve said an enormous number of times, we never had an intention of fully litigating all of these claims before publication, which would have been completely infeasible time-wise.
The alternative to Benâs post would have probably been a series of fully anonymous posts with extremely vague high-level accusations that would have been extremely hard to respond to. We tried to make the claims concrete and provide an interface to aggregate information at all.
Like, what kind of edit would you have preferred us to do instead of the above?
I strongly disagree. Aliceâs and Nonlinearâs perspectives are portrayed with very different implicit levels of confidence in those paragraphs. Aliceâs perspective is stated as a factâânobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan food,â not âAlice says nobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan food.â In contrast, Nonlinearâs perspective is shared as â[Nonlinear] says [x].â
I think most readers who trust Ben to be truthful would assume, from the way those paragraphs were worded, that Alice had much better evidence to support her claims, and that Nonlinear was doing some slightly deceitful reputational management by countering them. But that isnât what turned out to be the case:
Nonlinear has evidence that on December 15, they had oatmeal, peanuts, almonds, prunes, tomatoes, cereal, an orange, mixed nuts, and quinoa (which Kat offered to cook) in the house.
On the same day, Kat had successfully purchased mashed potatoes for Alice.
On the next day, they apparently went out and purchased both Panda Express vegan noodles and vegan burgers for Alice.
At some point, Emerson went out and tried to purchase Alice more food despite his knee injury, but he couldnât find the very specific items she requested.
Then, on December 18, it looks like Aliceâs first non-vegan meal was a vegetarian pizza she ordered (rather than non-vegan food already in the house). It looks like she ordered it right after Kat reminded her that they already had vegan noodles in the fridge.
On top of all of this, apparently everybody in the house was either sick or injured, but Benâs post only mentions that Alice was sick.
It seems that Alice/âBen have no evidence to counter any of the points above.
So the original claim that was stated as fact (ânobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan foodâ) seems very wrong. Which is sad, because itâs a very serious accusation that most people would assume was not made lightly.
Yeah, sorry, I think I was too strong in my language above, though my sense is you are also interpreting my answer to be about a somewhat different question than the one I perceived Larks as asking. To clarify where I think we are on the same page: I am pretty unhappy about that section, and wouldnât ask Ben to write something different given what I believe today.
The thing I was responding to was whether we misrepresented the evidence that we did have at the time.
On that topic, I do think it was a mistake to omit as many of the âAlice/âChloe claims that Xâ in the post as we did, and fall back into a neutral third-party way of summarizing the claims, and given that we did, I think it makes sense to hold Ben and Lightcone more responsible for the veracity of statements that did not include an explicit âAlice/âChloe alleges Xâ.
I also think that there is a pretty reasonable case to be made that we should have waited longer on getting more evidence from Nonlinear. I felt conflicted on this topic then, and feel conflicted now. I really hate that the situation we were in made it quite hard for us to wait longer for Nonlinear to respond to us. I am still not fully sure whether I would wait if I was in this situation again, since the considerations against waiting were also quite strong, though overall I am leaning slightly that waiting would have been the better option (I do not think this forgives or excuses Nonlinearâs attempts at intimidation and threats of retaliation).
However, overall on the question of âdid we accurately summarize the evidence available to usâ, I think Benâs post and this section is doing pretty well.
I agree that we frame Alice and Chloeâs evidence as more trustworthy, and in-aggregate, across the whole post, I stand behind that framing, in that I think Alice and Chloe are substantially more reliable sources of evidence than Kat and Emerson. I agree that in this situation I think this went the wrong way around and it looks to me like the vegan food situation seems like it was represented to us in a substantially misleading way, and I am still hoping for me or Ben to follow up with Alice on this topic and figure out whether I am missing something. However, I think on-average the framing of the post was not misleading about the balance of evidence that we had received to that point (including accounting for expected future evidence Nonlinear that we expected Nonlinear might provide).
Some smaller nitpicks on your comment:
Itâs true that we donât share Nonlinearâs perspective with the same authority as Alice and Chloeâs. We did also include a summary directly written from their perspective, which I do think helps:
Another quick comment:
I would give people some time before concluding that. While Ben (and I) are trying really hard to not be dragged into a full-on follow-up investigation of this, I do expect there will be some kind of response to this which includes procuring more evidence. I personally do feel pretty convinced on this point, but I am not updating on Alice or Ben not providing more evidence in coming to that conclusion, since they havenât responded to anything so far, and I do know that many of the claims in the OP and associated appendix are inaccurate, and those also havenât been responded to yet (it includes many claims about what Ben believes or what the process of writing Benâs original post was like, which I am very confident are inaccurate).
Given Chloe is not involved in this claim, do you also stand behind the framing that Alice is more reliable than Kat/âEmerson?
I am substantially less confident in that claim, though yeah, I would still overall say I believe it (itâs not super well-operationalized so not super clear what a probability would mean, but like, I guess I am at ~80% that if I knew all the facts and had arbitrary insight into Aliceâs, Katâs and Emersonsâ life that I would overall expect Alice to be reporting more accurately than Kat and Emerson)
Iâm not sure if Spencer sent you all the screenshots or just some of them, but something along the lines of:
The screenshot Ben received at the time is one of the ones that Kat linked in this comment:
https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââ32LMQsjEMm6NK2GTH/ââsharing-information-about-nonlinear?commentId=Ejbe8ukX6FhrfRv5C
Importantly the screenshot only covered events on December 15th.
Here is the relevant screenshot:
Kelsey Piper in the thread summarizes these screenshots (together with some other screenshots that Kat shared) as follows:
My guess is this aligned with Benâs interpretation at the time. The screenshots were relevant evidence, but they did not directly disprove anything in the original article.
Kat then shared further screenshots in the comments, which importantly were not shared with Ben beforehand (unless Spencer failed to forward them to me in my DM with him yesterday), that demonstrated that on the next day Kat did successfully bring her food.
However, the story, in the above screenshot, on December 15th, is that indeed Alice did not get food, despite her requesting it. The screenshots that Spencer sent us appear to fail to include the most relevant part of the conversation, which is that they did indeed fail to get her vegan food
that dayduring that trip.(Edit: Kat disputes this below, sharing some additional screenshots that seem to show that Kat did get food for Alice later that day, which seems important to get right. Though I donât think Spencerâs screenshot demonstrated this).
Here are the edits I currently agree would have been better, though I think they are minor enough that I donât currently see it as a major error to not have included them:
I really encourage you to look at the screenshots, Kelseyâs summary, and Katâs original comment on the Nonlinear post and explain to me how these screenshots falsify part of the post. As we later received more screenshots, it seems like we actually received confirmation that the conversation on that date did indeed not result in Alice getting food.
(Edit: Kat shares some additional screenshots below that do seem to show Alice got food on the 15th, though not from the restaurant trip that was talked about in the screenshot Spencer sent us)
Iâm a little bit confused about Kelseyâs summaryâit contains a line about rejecting burgers because they were âfast foodâ that doesnât seem to be in the original. So I donât think it can reflect Benâs state of mind in that way.
If you only had the one screenshot (9:53 to 10:28 timestamps), I agree that you canât infer that Kat cooked for âAliceâ, nor is there proof that the discussed burger trip actually took place, though I think they strongly imply it willâcertainly Alice seems to think it has been agreed and will occur. However, I find your comment about 15th vs 16th unconvincing because âAliceâ explicitly claims a 2 day duration, so food the next day would also contradict this (assuming the 15th is the first day).
Here is another possible version that reflects just the one screenshot:
I think my key objections to the original version is asserts as fact that Nonlinear refused to get her food, vs this being an unverified claim, and that it does not reflect that NonLinear didnât merely dispute it, they offered evidence.
Just to be clear, that burger trip did indeed not happen that day, if I understand it correctly. What instead happened is that Kat went out a few hours later and got Alice mashed potatoes at a store (which is not really hinted at at all in the screenshots).
Yeah, I think this version is reasonable and I would have preferred to post this version (and somewhat think that we should have updated it ASAP, even after publication).
This is false. Alice got food on December 15th. She got food 2.5 hours after she asked. Actually, she never asked me, I just offered when it seemed like she was struggling.
It says December 16 at 12:14am because I was in Europe at the time, so itâs showing the European time zone. It was Dec 15 at 7:13pm in the local time when this occurred.
She brought up being hungry at 4:53pm. I immediately offered to cook her the food in the house. When she didnât want any of the food in the house or food from any non-fast food restaurant within a 12 minute drive of home, I went out, while sick myself, and got and cooked her food. The only vegan food that fit her criteria in the store.
The only complaint she can legitimately say is that we did not get her Panda Express as fast as she would have liked (we got it for her the next day). She waited 2.5 hours for food. And she could have had it sooner if sheâd wanted any of the food in the house, which she usually ate nearly daily and enjoyed. She just didnât want that food. She wanted fast food and didnât get it as fast as she preferred.
Iâm currently back on the same time zone, so hereâs the same screenshot, but showing the right time zone dates and times
Thank you! This definitely seems like highly relevant evidence.
Can you clarify whether Kelseyâs summary of the December 15th conversation is accurate or inaccurate? Itâs totally possible that I am misreading the screenshots, though my best interpretation was indeed the interpretation that Kelsey made in the screenshots.
I would be happy to correct the statement above if I am wrong here.
I do think this issue seems somewhat separate from the question of âdid the screenshots that were shared with us materially affect the things Ben wrote?â.
To be clear, this is relevant in as much as the original screenshot was evidence of there being more things you could share here, though I currently maintain that I donât think the screenshots that were shared with us showed any material error (given that Kelsey also walked away with the same impression of them being consistent).
I also totally care about just setting the record straight and getting the object-level issue right here, and in as much as there isnât anything very weird going on with the screenshots you sent, I think you provided pretty decent proof here and am changing my mind on the December 15th issue (and think if you had shared those screenshots with us instead, I think itâs pretty likely Ben would have somehow made sure that they made it into the post).
Kelseyâs summary was wrong in a number of important ways.
She missed the fact that we did indeed succeed in getting her vegan food (I found at the nearby store, despite being sick myself). 2.5 hours after we first offered. And it would have been faster if sheâd wanted any of the food in the house, or chosen a restaurant that had vegan options for Emerson and Drew to go to.
It doesnât mention the vegan food that was in the house already that I offered to cook (Alice ate oatmeal almost every day and she loved quinoa. Later when I cooked some up for her, she loved it, like usual, cause quinoa is the Queen of All Foods).
It doesnât mention that Drew said he would go to any restaurant within a 12 minute drive from our place and she just⊠didnât choose a restaurant. She only wanted fast food. So they ended up choosing a restaurant that didnât happen to have vegan options aside from the usual fries.
A quick look at Google Maps shows that there was over 20 restaurants that fit that criteria in the area. It wasnât restrictive at all.
She frames it as they didnât get her the food she wanted âbecause they [didnât] want to get fast food.â Itâs important to note that Emerson and Drew also are people whose preferences matter. Just because Alice is sick doesnât mean everybody has to drop their own needs and preferences to get her the very particular food she wants.
She frames it as Emerson and Drew being somehow inconsiderate and shallow, when you could just as easily frame it as Alice not considering the needs or preferences of anybody but herself, expecting everybody to drop everything and go out of their way so she can get the very specific fast food she wants. Then, when she doesnât get exactly what she wants as fast as she wants, she goes around telling lies about what happened to destroy a charity (e.g. nobody willing to get her food)
As for what Ben knew before publishing, if you look at that screenshot, you can see that:
Drew has offered to pick her up food (âDrew suggested he could otherwise pick up stuffâ)
Me and Emerson offered to pick her up food (âMe and Emerson can do it if he canâtâ)
I offered to cook her the food in the house (âCould make you some quinoaâ)
Ben said in his post that ânobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan foodâ. This is absolutely false. Ben had seen this screenshot clearly showing that we were willing to go out and get her food.
Note that she didnât even ask for food. I just offered because I could see she was in need (âwant me to order food?â)
It also said âso she barely ate for 2 daysâ. It shows in the messages that there was vegan food in the house. So that was clearly not the reason she didnât eat for days.
She had plenty of options but she wanted fast food in particular.
We got her her first choice of fast food the very next day (remember, she only started asking for food in the evening the previous day. It was also hard to get stuff for her. This was our first experience with covid and we were trying to figure out how to manage it, try to have it not spread, etc etc. It was quite a stressful and overwhelming time.).
Because she didnât get a very particular fast food as fast as she wanted, she interpreted this as us being heartless people who wouldnât take care of a sick person in need. She told Ben a false and misleading story about us not being willing to go out and get food for her.
Iâm waiting for Ben, or someone else, to make a table of claims, counter claims, and what the evidence shows. Because nonlinear providing evidence that doesnât support their claims seems to be a common occurance.
Just to give a new example,Kat screenshots herselfreplying âmediating! Appreciate people not talking to loud on the way back[...] â here, to provide evidence supporting that there was not a substantial discussion that occurred. However, I can only interpret the use of âmediating!â to indicate that there was in-fact a substantial amount of discussion at play.Edit: Retracted as correctly pointed out by @Sean_o_h , I read meditation as mediation.
Uh, the word in that screenshot is âmeditatingâ. She was asking people to not talk too loudly while she was meditating.
That is correct.
Oh thanks for flagging, I will retract it now
Can you clarify what you mean by âvery little timeâ? Haybrka reports spending 1000+ staff hours, and even Benâs much more conservative estimate of 100-200 hours doesnât feel fair to me to describe as âvery littleâ
Sorry, Iâm trying to talk about the amount of time for âadversarialâ fact checking: when Nonlinear knew the accusations and could provide specific counter evidence. I agree he put a ton of time into the project overall.