Overall, there just feels like too little engagement with the possibility that Chloe’s experience was maybe predictable and not out of the ordinary, i.e., that Chloe wasn’t entitled or disgruntled to react the way she did.
To give some more context on this:
Let’s take the claim that it was discouraged to talk to friends or family (this was one of the things were I thought Nonlinear’s reply seemed more convincing than I would have expected, but still leaves me with uncertainty rather than settling everything for sure).
Nonlinear links to a screenshot with a policy named “Internal: policy for inviting guests.” The policy mentions “friends and family.” Nonlinear frame this as follows. Chloe was lying to claim that she was discouraged from talking to them, because the policy says otherwise. Because she was lying about it, we should discount what she says on other issues.
I’m thinking “maybe, but there are other possibilities.”
Firstly, I’m curious what the following phrase is about “the above roughly reflects the priority list as well.” Is “the priority list” a separate thing? Or is this talking about a ranking of priorities from top to bottom? Even if there’s no intended ranking from top to bottom, I feel like it’s not outlandish to come away with the impression that “friends and family” was maybe added somewhat grudgingly rather than enthusiastically, since another section in the screenshot justifies having visitors with “it can have an extremely high impact to have different people join us” and compares it to a “constant EAG.” (These things apply a lot less to family or EA-disinterested friends.)
Also, sometimes written policies don’t capture implicit sentiments. It’s possible for a policy to say “it’s okay/encouraged to do x” while simultaneously there’s some social pressure in the group to do very little x.
The discussion about the screenshot made it seem like the screenshot settles everything.
Instead, I’d have thought it’s more balanced to say something like “this screenshot at the very least shows that it wasn’t our official policy to discourage these things, so Chloe/Alice should have mentioned this for fairness reasons.”
We also show text messages of us encouraging them to invite people over. We even have text messages showing me encouraging Chloe to see her boyfriend sooner and her saying no. Alice invited multiple friends to travel with us. When Chloe quit one of her friends was visiting us for 2-4 weeks (can’t quite remember). To be fair, that friend we invited. But if she’d invited him, we would have been thrilled.
Their portrayal of us saying that only me and Emerson could invite people to travel with us is clearly established to be false.
On this point, your reply seems very compelling to me. ((Though it’s at least imaginable that Chloe would point out ways in which this is misleading – e.g., maybe her bf had “EA potential” or got along well with Emerson or you and some other friends of hers didn’t, and maybe someone made comments about her other friends. Idk.))
I think it’s important to not hold people to unreasonable standards when they try to present a lot of evidence. If this (the invites allowed list) is one of only few instances where it’s overstated how important a particular piece of evidence is, then that’s still totally compatible with a high degree of objectivity!
I overall felt like there were some other places where I was uncertain how much to update, while your wording “wanted” me to make a very big update. But I also think these things can be hard to judge.
To give some more context on this:
Let’s take the claim that it was discouraged to talk to friends or family (this was one of the things were I thought Nonlinear’s reply seemed more convincing than I would have expected, but still leaves me with uncertainty rather than settling everything for sure).
Nonlinear links to a screenshot with a policy named “Internal: policy for inviting guests.” The policy mentions “friends and family.” Nonlinear frame this as follows. Chloe was lying to claim that she was discouraged from talking to them, because the policy says otherwise. Because she was lying about it, we should discount what she says on other issues.
I’m thinking “maybe, but there are other possibilities.”
Firstly, I’m curious what the following phrase is about “the above roughly reflects the priority list as well.” Is “the priority list” a separate thing? Or is this talking about a ranking of priorities from top to bottom? Even if there’s no intended ranking from top to bottom, I feel like it’s not outlandish to come away with the impression that “friends and family” was maybe added somewhat grudgingly rather than enthusiastically, since another section in the screenshot justifies having visitors with “it can have an extremely high impact to have different people join us” and compares it to a “constant EAG.” (These things apply a lot less to family or EA-disinterested friends.)
Also, sometimes written policies don’t capture implicit sentiments. It’s possible for a policy to say “it’s okay/encouraged to do x” while simultaneously there’s some social pressure in the group to do very little x.
The discussion about the screenshot made it seem like the screenshot settles everything.
Instead, I’d have thought it’s more balanced to say something like “this screenshot at the very least shows that it wasn’t our official policy to discourage these things, so Chloe/Alice should have mentioned this for fairness reasons.”
This on its own, maybe. But Chloe’s boyfriend was invited to travel with us for 2 of the 5 months she was with us, and we were about to invite him to travel with us indefinitely, free of charge. That’s a hard to fake signal that she was more than welcome to invite friends and family.
We also show text messages of us encouraging them to invite people over. We even have text messages showing me encouraging Chloe to see her boyfriend sooner and her saying no. Alice invited multiple friends to travel with us. When Chloe quit one of her friends was visiting us for 2-4 weeks (can’t quite remember). To be fair, that friend we invited. But if she’d invited him, we would have been thrilled.
Their portrayal of us saying that only me and Emerson could invite people to travel with us is clearly established to be false.
On this point, your reply seems very compelling to me. ((Though it’s at least imaginable that Chloe would point out ways in which this is misleading – e.g., maybe her bf had “EA potential” or got along well with Emerson or you and some other friends of hers didn’t, and maybe someone made comments about her other friends. Idk.))
I think it’s important to not hold people to unreasonable standards when they try to present a lot of evidence. If this (the invites allowed list) is one of only few instances where it’s overstated how important a particular piece of evidence is, then that’s still totally compatible with a high degree of objectivity!
I overall felt like there were some other places where I was uncertain how much to update, while your wording “wanted” me to make a very big update. But I also think these things can be hard to judge.