I want to share the following, while expecting that it will probably be unpopular.
I feel many people are not being charitable enough to Nonlinear here.
I have only heard good things about Nonlinear, outside these accusations. I know several people who have interacted with them—mainly with Kat—and had good experiences. I know several people who deeply admire her. I have interacted with Kat occasionally, and she was helpful. I have only read good things about Emerson.
As far as I can tell from this and everything I know/have read, it seems reasonable to assume that the people at Nonlinear are altruistic people. They have demonstrably made exceptional commitments to doing good; started organisations, invested a lot of time and money in EA causes, and helped a lot of people.
Right now, on the basis of what could turn out to have been a lot of lies, their reputations, friendship futures and careers are at risk of being badly damaged (if not already so).
This may have been (more) justified if the claims in the original post were all found and believed to be clearly true. However, that was, and is not, clearly the case at this point in time.
At present, Nonlinear have demonstrably set aside significant time to write a huge response to the claims made against them. From my initial reading they seem to have largely shown that most claims were not accurate, that the sources of the claims were unreliable (and bad actors), that the method of investigation was unfair (as per their example of its use toward Ben).
Despite this, NL have not been shown much support or sympathy. Relatively few (popular) comments appear to say something like “thank you for writing this up… it must have been hard to deal with the accusations… I changed my mind on x based on your evidence....I still don’t think you were correct about y—can you say more there.”
Instead, as I see it, the main, or at least most upvoted, response here has been to critique stylistic mistakes made in their almost impossible task of refuting very damaging claims from anonymous sources in unknown contexts. Or to critique remote work and travel while trying to do good, or various ways they are running their organisation unconventionally etc.
[I admit that I am conflicted on the part about Ben—I agree it could be seen as unfair but it shows how his method was flawed in a very effective way. I can understand critiques of this—but surely a comment that is solely a critique isn’t the best/fairest way to respond to a post like this in this context]
If you face a lot of false accusations, I can’t even imagine how hard it is to find the time and mental strength to produce what has been produced, let alone to respond to all the comments in a measured way.
If, and it is still to be determined, the claims made were largely false, then I think it is incredibly impressive and admirable that NL still made such a great effort to refute them despite the amount of ingratitude, criticism and unkindness that they faced in the comments on the original post.
I can’t help but feel that too many people essentially made their minds up after reading the first post from Ben and are now consciously or unconsciously seeking to maintain their prior negative associations.
I’d like people to imagine what they would do in a similar situation if they were faced with similar accusations. How would you successfully persuade people that you didn’t do the things you were accused of, and that the context was not as portrayed? How would you feel when most of the EA forum community appeared to form a firm impression that you and your organisation were bad, and didn’t thank you for your effort of writing a huge response or really engage the counterclaims.
Nonlinear and their members may have made some mistakes or acted unethically, but the evidence for this is currently in dispute. In light of what they have done previously, here, and more generally, they surely deserve more empathy and positive (or at least neutral) engagement than what they are getting. I imagine that all of us would want the same if put in their circumstances.
As I finish this, I sort of regret starting to write it, and I may regret posting it. I just don’t feel comfortable watching this happen without saying something.
As per my earlier comment, I still need to read Ben’s original post and the full appendix from the response posts in more detail, to feel more confident about my judgement. I could change my mind and decide that Nonlinear etc made more serious mistakes than I thought and that I don’t feel so positive about them anymore. However, I would still like a more charitable response to their efforts and evidence.
I will also admit that I do like to see the best in people, and this has led me astray in the past (e.g., with Gleb). I hope I am not wrong here.
22/12/23 Edit:
I said elsewhere that I would read the arguments from both sides and then make a final decision. I haven’t done that because I didn’t have time, and it didn’t feel like high value. Especially in light of later posts and comments by people who are better qualified. I feel that it is still better (or at least closer to keeping my prior commitment) to state my current position for future readers than to not say anything further. With that in mind, this (copied from elsewhere) is where I ended up:
Before BP post: NL are a sort of atypical, low structure EA group, doing entrepreneurial and coordination focused work that I think is probably positive impact. After BP post: NL are actually pretty exploitative and probably net negative overall. I’ll wait to hear their response, but I doubt it will change my mind very much. After NL post: NL are probably not exploitative. They made some big mistakes (and had bad luck) with some risks they took in hiring and working unconventionally. I think they are probably still likely to have a positive impact on expectation. I think that they have been treated harshly. After this post: I update to be feeling more confident that this wasn’t a fair way to judge NL and that these sorts of posts/investigations shouldn’t be a community norm.
I am still pretty uncertain overall. I definitely think that NL should be more careful and conventional in their hiring and work practices in the future.
I added this as an edit because I didn’t think it warranted a new comment, and a new comment would provoke more engagement and distract more people, etc.
I think it is entirely possible that people are being unkind because they updated too quickly on claims from Ben’s post that are now being disputed, and I’m grateful that you’ve written this (ditto chinscratch’s comment) as a reminder to be empathetic. That being said, there are also some reasons people might be less charitable than you are for reasons that are unrelated to them being unkind, or the facts that are in contention:
I have only heard good things about Nonlinear, outside these accusations
Right now, on the basis of what could turn out to have been a lot of lies, their reputations, friendship futures and careers are at risk of being badly damaged
Without commenting on whether Ben’s original post should have been approached better or worded differently or was misleading etc, this comment from the Community Health/Special Projects team might add some useful additional context. There are also previous allegations that have been raised.[1]
Perhaps you are including both of these as part of the same set of allegations, but some may suggest that not being permitted to run sessions / recruit at EAGs and considering blocking attendance (especially given the reference class of actions that have prompted various responses that you can see here) is qualitatively important and may affect whether commentors are being charitable or not (as opposed to if they just considered the contents of Ben’s post VS Nonlinear (NL)’s response). Of course, this depends on how much you think the Community Health/Special Projects team are trustworthy with their judgement / investigation, or how likely this is all just an information cascade etc.
It seems reasonable to assume that the people at Nonlinear are altruistic people.
It is possible for altruistic people to be poor managers, poor leaders, make bad decisions about professional boundaries, have a poor understanding of power dynamics, or indeed, be abusive. The extent to which people at NL are altruistic is (afaict) not a major point of contention, and it is possible to not update about how altruistic someone is while also wanting to hold them accountable to some reasonable standard like “not being abusive or manipulative towards people you manage”.
Instead, as I see it, the main, or at least most upvoted, response here has been to critique stylistic mistakes made in their almost impossible task of refuting very damaging claims from anonymous sources in unknown contexts.
The claims in question from Alice/Chloe/Ben are not anonymous, the identities of Alice and Chloe are known to the Nonlinear team.
Independent of my personal views on these issues, I do think the pushback around ‘stylistic mistakes’ are reasonable insofar as people interpret this to be indicative of something concerning about NL’s approach towards managing staff / criticism / conflict (1, 2, 3), rather than e.g. just being nitpicky about tone, though I appreciate both interpretations are plausible.
I’d like people to imagine what they would do in a similar situation if they were faced with similar accusations. How would you successfully persuade people that you didn’t do the things you were accused of, and that the context was not as portrayed?
I think (much) less is more in this case.[2] I think there are parts of this current post that feel more subjective and not supported by facts, and may be reasonably interpreted by a cynical outsider to look like a distraction or a defensive smear campaign. I think these choices are counterproductive (both for a truth-seeking outsider, and for NL’s own interests), especially given the allegations of frame control and being retaliatory.
There are other parts that might similarly be reasonably interpreted to range from irrelevant (Alice’s personal drug use habits), unproductive (links to Kathy Forth), or misleading (inclusion of photos, inconsistent usage of quotation marks, unnecessary paraphrasing, usage of quotes that miss the full context). I disagreed with the approaches here, though I acknowledge there were competing opinions and I wasn’t privy to the internal discussions that lead to the decisions.
I think a cleaner version of this would have probably been something 5 to 10x shorter (not including the appendix), and looked something like:[3]
Apology for harms done
Acknowledgement of which allegations are seen as the most major (much closer to top 3-5 than all 85)
Responses to major allegations, focusing only on factual differences and claims that are backed up by ~irrefutable evidence
Charitable interpretations of Alice/Chloe/Ben’s position, despite above factual disagreement (what kinds of things need to be true for their allegations to be plausibly reasonable or fair from their perspective),
Lessons learnt, and things NL will do differently in future (some expression of self-awareness / reflection)
An appendix containing a list of unresolved but less critical allegations
Disclaimer: I offered to (and did) help review an early draft, in large part because I expected the NL team to (understandably!) be in panic mode after Ben’s post/getting dogpiled, and I wanted further community updates to be based on as much relevant information as was possible.
This footnote added in response to Jeff’s comment: I agree that it’s likely not double counting, because the story there appears to be one where Kat left the working relationship, which is inconsistent with the accounts of Alice / Chloe’s situations, but also makes it unlikely that the “current employee of NL / Kat” hypothesis is correct.
There are also been previous allegations that have been raised.
I was initially concerned that I might be double counting information if that comment turned out to be from Alice or Chloe, but it is dated 2022-11-14 and and I interpret it as being from a current employee. Ben’s post has:
Alice travelled with Nonlinear from November 2021 to June 2022 and started working for the org from around February, and Chloe worked there from January 2022 to July 2022.
Before Ben’s post, I had heard some good things and many bad things about Nonlinear, to the point that I was trying to figure out who their board members were in case I needed to raise concerns about one or both of the co-founders (I failed to figure it out because they weren’t a registered charity and didn’t have their board members listed on their website either).
I want to share the following, while expecting that it will probably be unpopular.
I feel many people are not being charitable enough to Nonlinear here.
I have only heard good things about Nonlinear, outside these accusations. I know several people who have interacted with them—mainly with Kat—and had good experiences. I know several people who deeply admire her. I have interacted with Kat occasionally, and she was helpful. I have only read good things about Emerson.
As far as I can tell from this and everything I know/have read, it seems reasonable to assume that the people at Nonlinear are altruistic people. They have demonstrably made exceptional commitments to doing good; started organisations, invested a lot of time and money in EA causes, and helped a lot of people.
Right now, on the basis of what could turn out to have been a lot of lies, their reputations, friendship futures and careers are at risk of being badly damaged (if not already so).
This may have been (more) justified if the claims in the original post were all found and believed to be clearly true. However, that was, and is not, clearly the case at this point in time.
At present, Nonlinear have demonstrably set aside significant time to write a huge response to the claims made against them. From my initial reading they seem to have largely shown that most claims were not accurate, that the sources of the claims were unreliable (and bad actors), that the method of investigation was unfair (as per their example of its use toward Ben).
Despite this, NL have not been shown much support or sympathy. Relatively few (popular) comments appear to say something like “thank you for writing this up… it must have been hard to deal with the accusations… I changed my mind on x based on your evidence....I still don’t think you were correct about y—can you say more there.”
Instead, as I see it, the main, or at least most upvoted, response here has been to critique stylistic mistakes made in their almost impossible task of refuting very damaging claims from anonymous sources in unknown contexts. Or to critique remote work and travel while trying to do good, or various ways they are running their organisation unconventionally etc.
[I admit that I am conflicted on the part about Ben—I agree it could be seen as unfair but it shows how his method was flawed in a very effective way. I can understand critiques of this—but surely a comment that is solely a critique isn’t the best/fairest way to respond to a post like this in this context]
If you face a lot of false accusations, I can’t even imagine how hard it is to find the time and mental strength to produce what has been produced, let alone to respond to all the comments in a measured way.
If, and it is still to be determined, the claims made were largely false, then I think it is incredibly impressive and admirable that NL still made such a great effort to refute them despite the amount of ingratitude, criticism and unkindness that they faced in the comments on the original post.
I can’t help but feel that too many people essentially made their minds up after reading the first post from Ben and are now consciously or unconsciously seeking to maintain their prior negative associations.
I’d like people to imagine what they would do in a similar situation if they were faced with similar accusations. How would you successfully persuade people that you didn’t do the things you were accused of, and that the context was not as portrayed? How would you feel when most of the EA forum community appeared to form a firm impression that you and your organisation were bad, and didn’t thank you for your effort of writing a huge response or really engage the counterclaims.
Nonlinear and their members may have made some mistakes or acted unethically, but the evidence for this is currently in dispute. In light of what they have done previously, here, and more generally, they surely deserve more empathy and positive (or at least neutral) engagement than what they are getting. I imagine that all of us would want the same if put in their circumstances.
As I finish this, I sort of regret starting to write it, and I may regret posting it. I just don’t feel comfortable watching this happen without saying something.
As per my earlier comment, I still need to read Ben’s original post and the full appendix from the response posts in more detail, to feel more confident about my judgement. I could change my mind and decide that Nonlinear etc made more serious mistakes than I thought and that I don’t feel so positive about them anymore. However, I would still like a more charitable response to their efforts and evidence.
I will also admit that I do like to see the best in people, and this has led me astray in the past (e.g., with Gleb). I hope I am not wrong here.
22/12/23 Edit:
I said elsewhere that I would read the arguments from both sides and then make a final decision. I haven’t done that because I didn’t have time, and it didn’t feel like high value. Especially in light of later posts and comments by people who are better qualified. I feel that it is still better (or at least closer to keeping my prior commitment) to state my current position for future readers than to not say anything further. With that in mind, this (copied from elsewhere) is where I ended up:
Before BP post: NL are a sort of atypical, low structure EA group, doing entrepreneurial and coordination focused work that I think is probably positive impact.
After BP post: NL are actually pretty exploitative and probably net negative overall. I’ll wait to hear their response, but I doubt it will change my mind very much.
After NL post: NL are probably not exploitative. They made some big mistakes (and had bad luck) with some risks they took in hiring and working unconventionally. I think they are probably still likely to have a positive impact on expectation. I think that they have been treated harshly.
After this post: I update to be feeling more confident that this wasn’t a fair way to judge NL and that these sorts of posts/investigations shouldn’t be a community norm.
I am still pretty uncertain overall. I definitely think that NL should be more careful and conventional in their hiring and work practices in the future.
I added this as an edit because I didn’t think it warranted a new comment, and a new comment would provoke more engagement and distract more people, etc.
I think it is entirely possible that people are being unkind because they updated too quickly on claims from Ben’s post that are now being disputed, and I’m grateful that you’ve written this (ditto chinscratch’s comment) as a reminder to be empathetic. That being said, there are also some reasons people might be less charitable than you are for reasons that are unrelated to them being unkind, or the facts that are in contention:
Without commenting on whether Ben’s original post should have been approached better or worded differently or was misleading etc, this comment from the Community Health/Special Projects team might add some useful additional context. There are also previous allegations that have been raised.[1]
Perhaps you are including both of these as part of the same set of allegations, but some may suggest that not being permitted to run sessions / recruit at EAGs and considering blocking attendance (especially given the reference class of actions that have prompted various responses that you can see here) is qualitatively important and may affect whether commentors are being charitable or not (as opposed to if they just considered the contents of Ben’s post VS Nonlinear (NL)’s response). Of course, this depends on how much you think the Community Health/Special Projects team are trustworthy with their judgement / investigation, or how likely this is all just an information cascade etc.
It is possible for altruistic people to be poor managers, poor leaders, make bad decisions about professional boundaries, have a poor understanding of power dynamics, or indeed, be abusive. The extent to which people at NL are altruistic is (afaict) not a major point of contention, and it is possible to not update about how altruistic someone is while also wanting to hold them accountable to some reasonable standard like “not being abusive or manipulative towards people you manage”.
The claims in question from Alice/Chloe/Ben are not anonymous, the identities of Alice and Chloe are known to the Nonlinear team.
Independent of my personal views on these issues, I do think the pushback around ‘stylistic mistakes’ are reasonable insofar as people interpret this to be indicative of something concerning about NL’s approach towards managing staff / criticism / conflict (1, 2, 3), rather than e.g. just being nitpicky about tone, though I appreciate both interpretations are plausible.
I think (much) less is more in this case.[2] I think there are parts of this current post that feel more subjective and not supported by facts, and may be reasonably interpreted by a cynical outsider to look like a distraction or a defensive smear campaign. I think these choices are counterproductive (both for a truth-seeking outsider, and for NL’s own interests), especially given the allegations of frame control and being retaliatory.
There are other parts that might similarly be reasonably interpreted to range from irrelevant (Alice’s personal drug use habits), unproductive (links to Kathy Forth), or misleading (inclusion of photos, inconsistent usage of quotation marks, unnecessary paraphrasing, usage of quotes that miss the full context). I disagreed with the approaches here, though I acknowledge there were competing opinions and I wasn’t privy to the internal discussions that lead to the decisions.
I think a cleaner version of this would have probably been something 5 to 10x shorter (not including the appendix), and looked something like:[3]
Apology for harms done
Acknowledgement of which allegations are seen as the most major (much closer to top 3-5 than all 85)
Responses to major allegations, focusing only on factual differences and claims that are backed up by ~irrefutable evidence
Charitable interpretations of Alice/Chloe/Ben’s position, despite above factual disagreement (what kinds of things need to be true for their allegations to be plausibly reasonable or fair from their perspective),
Lessons learnt, and things NL will do differently in future (some expression of self-awareness / reflection)
An appendix containing a list of unresolved but less critical allegations
Disclaimer: I offered to (and did) help review an early draft, in large part because I expected the NL team to (understandably!) be in panic mode after Ben’s post/getting dogpiled, and I wanted further community updates to be based on as much relevant information as was possible.
This footnote added in response to Jeff’s comment: I agree that it’s likely not double counting, because the story there appears to be one where Kat left the working relationship, which is inconsistent with the accounts of Alice / Chloe’s situations, but also makes it unlikely that the “current employee of NL / Kat” hypothesis is correct.
Perhaps hypocritical given the length of this comment
Acknowledging that I have no PR expertise
I was initially concerned that I might be double counting information if that comment turned out to be from Alice or Chloe, but it is dated 2022-11-14 and and I interpret it as being from a current employee. Ben’s post has:
Before Ben’s post, I had heard some good things and many bad things about Nonlinear, to the point that I was trying to figure out who their board members were in case I needed to raise concerns about one or both of the co-founders (I failed to figure it out because they weren’t a registered charity and didn’t have their board members listed on their website either).