My original comment left a pretty wide window of possibilities open, and your reply falls within that window, so I don’t quite think we disagree a lot. However, in the spirit of nitpicking, I’ll make a couple of points:
Prominence of disclosure matters. The fact that Ben included the information in his post shows that he didn’t intend to hide it; nonetheless, my sense is that he didn’t highlight it as a disclosure / disclaimer / caveat for readers to keep in mind when interpreting the post. He did include other disclaimers around his process and motivation at the start of the post, that I found helpful, and his non-inclusion of payment along with those disclosures gives me the sense that he didn’t consider the distortionary effect of payment as a biasing factor worth highlighting to readers. My guess is that it would be pretty likely for readers to miss it (as I did). I’m genuinely uncertain whether the lack of discussion around this was driven by people not noticing it, or noticing it and not thinking it mattered.
I’m familiar with the broad outlines of the whistleblower law (from this podcast episode). I think there’s a distinction, though, between awarding money after a determination / judgment of harm, versus awarding money as a journalist or investigator who’s trying to report on the situation. I don’t know exactly how Ben perceived his role, and perhaps the point is that he didn’t perceive his role as being strictly one or the other, but a mix.
Yeah, this makes sense. FWIW, my current memory of the situation was that Ben hadn’t made any promises about paying for information until quite late in the process, and the primary purpose of the payment was to enable the publishing of information that was already circling around privately (i.e. in private docs that Alice and Chloe had shared with some others).
Of course, it’s hard to get rid of the incentive, but I think given that it was paying for publishing something that was already largely written up, I do think the immediate incentives here are weaker (though of course in the long run, and also via various more TDT-ish considerations, there is still an effect here).
I also am not super confident in the exact historical details here. Slack records suggest the rewards hadn’t been finalized the week before the post.
Alas, I do not know. I have some internal Slack records suggesting it as a thing to consider in April, but I don’t know when Ben brought it up to Alice or Chloe. I am confident nothing was confirmed until quite close to the post being published, but I don’t know when the idea was first floated (with the only bound I have is that it probably wasn’t before April).
My original comment left a pretty wide window of possibilities open, and your reply falls within that window, so I don’t quite think we disagree a lot. However, in the spirit of nitpicking, I’ll make a couple of points:
Prominence of disclosure matters. The fact that Ben included the information in his post shows that he didn’t intend to hide it; nonetheless, my sense is that he didn’t highlight it as a disclosure / disclaimer / caveat for readers to keep in mind when interpreting the post. He did include other disclaimers around his process and motivation at the start of the post, that I found helpful, and his non-inclusion of payment along with those disclosures gives me the sense that he didn’t consider the distortionary effect of payment as a biasing factor worth highlighting to readers. My guess is that it would be pretty likely for readers to miss it (as I did). I’m genuinely uncertain whether the lack of discussion around this was driven by people not noticing it, or noticing it and not thinking it mattered.
I’m familiar with the broad outlines of the whistleblower law (from this podcast episode). I think there’s a distinction, though, between awarding money after a determination / judgment of harm, versus awarding money as a journalist or investigator who’s trying to report on the situation. I don’t know exactly how Ben perceived his role, and perhaps the point is that he didn’t perceive his role as being strictly one or the other, but a mix.
Yeah, this makes sense. FWIW, my current memory of the situation was that Ben hadn’t made any promises about paying for information until quite late in the process, and the primary purpose of the payment was to enable the publishing of information that was already circling around privately (i.e. in private docs that Alice and Chloe had shared with some others).
Of course, it’s hard to get rid of the incentive, but I think given that it was paying for publishing something that was already largely written up, I do think the immediate incentives here are weaker (though of course in the long run, and also via various more TDT-ish considerations, there is still an effect here).
I also am not super confident in the exact historical details here. Slack records suggest the rewards hadn’t been finalized the week before the post.
Thanks. Do you remember when Ben started discussing the possibility of pay?
Alas, I do not know. I have some internal Slack records suggesting it as a thing to consider in April, but I don’t know when Ben brought it up to Alice or Chloe. I am confident nothing was confirmed until quite close to the post being published, but I don’t know when the idea was first floated (with the only bound I have is that it probably wasn’t before April).