Sorry for confusing Rethink Priorities and Rethink Charity before I edited it, but it still seems really relevant and a direct answer to the question at hand that Nonlinear was indeed fiscally sponsored by Rethink Charity, and people seem to keep downvoting it, which makes no sense IMO.
I think it’s bad to repeatedly accuse people of things they didn’t do, or having responsibilities they didn’t have, and then write “Oops, sorry!”, and we should do less of this.
You could have easily checked in with them, as with Macaskill last time, so that RP didn’t have to rush in immediately with a correction, since otherwise way fewer people will see the correction than the original claim/accusation (if any). It lowers this forum’s epistemics, wastes people’s time, and stains accused people’s reputation for no reason.
The tradeoff between writing a claim instantly or spending some time to confirm its correctness usually favours the latter. If I were on the board of RP, having my name on this thread could be damaging, and I would feel lucky that it got corrected immediately. I downvoted because I want to see fewer comments like that.
Just for context, I posted this comment after I messaged a Rethink board member who told me:
“So the Rethink Board delegates authority to govern non-linear to a specific sub-board. I’ll find out who is on that sub-board.”
I really feel like given that response, I sure felt justified in my epistemic state that Rethink Priorities was indeed the appropriate organization. It turned out to be a miscommunication, which is unfortunate, but I did actually try to confirm this before posting.
You messaged a ‘Rethink’ board member as in a Rethink Priorities board member or a Rethink Charity board member? They seem to have fully disjoint boards.
(That these are both “Rethink” while independent is not great branding, and I think they should expect continued confusion until one of them renames.)
EDIT: I see below you say you talked to Niel of RP, so it sounds like he was just wrong in his response to you?
Yeah, Rethink Priorities, and yeah he was just wrong, which confused me. To be clear, I don’t think this was his fault, I asked the question in a kind of leading way, and he responded very quickly, and so I model this more as an unfortunate miscommunication.
I just got very excited and posted immediately because I thought that maybe there would be some way out of this that doesn’t primarily route through the court of public opinion which my guess was everyone would appreciate.
Yeah, Rethink Priorities, and yeah he was just wrong, which confused me. To be clear, I don’t think this was his fault, I asked the question in a kind of leading way, and he responded very quickly, and so I model this more as an unfortunate miscommunication.
Confirming that I was wrong about this in my communication with Oli. Also agreeing with Oli here on the context in which those comments were made.
I have made a note in my reflective journal entry on this event to be more careful with my comms in circumstances such as this one.
That’s rough! It sounds like you did the right thing (checking with an RP board member before saying NL was under RP) and then the harsh response was because others couldn’t tell you’d done the right thing.
My guess is if you had posted a second comment with the true information people would have downvoted the first incorrect one, upvoted the second, and the net would be negative (because people are very averse to false information being shared).
I feel like I shared very relevant information in either case, and IMO it feels like a reasonable mistake to make to think that Rethink Charity is the same as Rethink Priorities, given that they were indeed the same organization in the past.
I also messaged Niel from the Rethink board who himself said to me things that sounded like it confirmed that Nonlinear was fiscally sponsored (happy to share the text in DMs), so I feel like my epistemic state was really quite reasonable.
Ok, what is the crazy downvoting going on here?
Sorry for confusing Rethink Priorities and Rethink Charity before I edited it, but it still seems really relevant and a direct answer to the question at hand that Nonlinear was indeed fiscally sponsored by Rethink Charity, and people seem to keep downvoting it, which makes no sense IMO.
I think it’s bad to repeatedly accuse people of things they didn’t do, or having responsibilities they didn’t have, and then write “Oops, sorry!”, and we should do less of this.
You could have easily checked in with them, as with Macaskill last time, so that RP didn’t have to rush in immediately with a correction, since otherwise way fewer people will see the correction than the original claim/accusation (if any). It lowers this forum’s epistemics, wastes people’s time, and stains accused people’s reputation for no reason.
The tradeoff between writing a claim instantly or spending some time to confirm its correctness usually favours the latter. If I were on the board of RP, having my name on this thread could be damaging, and I would feel lucky that it got corrected immediately. I downvoted because I want to see fewer comments like that.
Just for context, I posted this comment after I messaged a Rethink board member who told me:
“So the Rethink Board delegates authority to govern non-linear to a specific sub-board. I’ll find out who is on that sub-board.”
I really feel like given that response, I sure felt justified in my epistemic state that Rethink Priorities was indeed the appropriate organization. It turned out to be a miscommunication, which is unfortunate, but I did actually try to confirm this before posting.
You messaged a ‘Rethink’ board member as in a Rethink Priorities board member or a Rethink Charity board member? They seem to have fully disjoint boards.
(That these are both “Rethink” while independent is not great branding, and I think they should expect continued confusion until one of them renames.)
EDIT: I see below you say you talked to Niel of RP, so it sounds like he was just wrong in his response to you?
Yeah, Rethink Priorities, and yeah he was just wrong, which confused me. To be clear, I don’t think this was his fault, I asked the question in a kind of leading way, and he responded very quickly, and so I model this more as an unfortunate miscommunication.
I just got very excited and posted immediately because I thought that maybe there would be some way out of this that doesn’t primarily route through the court of public opinion which my guess was everyone would appreciate.
Confirming that I was wrong about this in my communication with Oli. Also agreeing with Oli here on the context in which those comments were made.
I have made a note in my reflective journal entry on this event to be more careful with my comms in circumstances such as this one.
That’s rough! It sounds like you did the right thing (checking with an RP board member before saying NL was under RP) and then the harsh response was because others couldn’t tell you’d done the right thing.
My guess is if you had posted a second comment with the true information people would have downvoted the first incorrect one, upvoted the second, and the net would be negative (because people are very averse to false information being shared).
I feel like I shared very relevant information in either case, and IMO it feels like a reasonable mistake to make to think that Rethink Charity is the same as Rethink Priorities, given that they were indeed the same organization in the past.
I also messaged Niel from the Rethink board who himself said to me things that sounded like it confirmed that Nonlinear was fiscally sponsored (happy to share the text in DMs), so I feel like my epistemic state was really quite reasonable.