I upvoted this, but disagreed. I think the timeline would be better if it included:
November 2022: FLI inform Nya Dagbladet Foundation (NDF) that they will not be funding them
15 December 2022: FLI learn of media interest in the story
I therefore don’t think it’s “absurd” to have expected FLI to have repudiated NDF sooner. You could argue that by apologising for their mistake before the media interest does more harm than good by drawing attention to it (and by association, to NDF), but once they became aware of the media attention, I think they should have issued something more like their current statement.
I also agreed with the thrust of titotal’s comment that their first statement was woefully inadequate (it was more like “nothing to see here” than “oh damn, we seriously considered supporting an odious publication and we’re sorry”). I don’t think lack of time gets them off the hook here, given they should have expected Expo to publish at some point.
I don’t think anyone owes an apology for expecting FLI to do better than this.
(Note: I appreciate Max Tegmark was dealing with a personal tragedy (for which, my condolences) at the time of it becoming ‘a thing’ on the EA Forum, so I of course wouldn’t expect him to be making quick-but-considered replies to everything posted on here at that time. But I think there’s a difference between that and the speed of the proper statement.)
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FWIW I also had a different interpretation of Shakeel’s 9:18pm comment than what you write here:
“Jan 13, 9:18pm: Shakeel follows up, repeating that he sees no reason why FLI wouldn’t have already made a public statement, and raises the possibility that FLI has maybe done sinister questionably-legal things and that’s why they haven’t spoken up.”
Shakeel said “Jason’s comment has made me realise there might be something else going on here, though; if that is the case then that would make the silence make more sense.” → this seemed to me that Shakeel was trying to to be charitable, and understand the reasons FLI hadn’t replied quicker.
Only a subtle difference, but wanted to point that out.
November 2022: FLI inform Nya Dagbladet Foundation (NDF) that they will not be funding them
15 December 2022: FLI learn of media interest in the story
Yeah, if the early EA Forum comments had explicitly said “FLI should have said something public about this as soon as they discovered that NDF was bad”, “FLI should have said something public about this as soon as Expo contacted them”, or “FLI should have been way more response to Expo’s inquiries”—and if we’d generally expressed a lot more uncertainty and been more measured in what we said in the first few days—then I might still have disagreed, but I wouldn’t have seen this as an embarrassingly bad response in the same way.
I, as a casual reader who wasn’t trying to carefully track all the timestamps, had no idea when I first skimmed these threads on Jan. 13-14 that the article had only come out a few hours ago, and I didn’t track timestamps carefully enough to register just how fast the EA Forum went from “a top-level post exists about this at all” to “wow, FLI is stonewalling us” and “wow, there must be something really sinister here given that FLI still hasn’t responded”. I feel like I was misled by these comments, because I just took for granted (to some degree) that the people writing these highly upvoted comments were probably not saying something transparently silly.
If a commenter like Jason thought that FLI was “stonewalling” because they didn’t release a public statement about this in December, then it’s important to be explicit about that, so casual readers don’t come away from the comment section thinking that FLI is displaying some amazing level of unresponsiveness to the forum post or to the news article.
once they became aware of the media attention, I think they should have issued something more like their current statement.
This is less obvious to me, if they didn’t owe a public response before Expo reached out to them. A lot of press inquiries don’t end up turning into articles, and if the goal is to respond to press coverage, it’s often better to wait and see what’s in the actual article, since you might end up surprised about the article’s contents.
I don’t think anyone owes an apology for expecting FLI to do better than this.
“Do better than this”, notably, is switching out concrete actions for a much more general question, one that’s closer to “What’s the correct overall level of affect we should have about FLI right now?”.
If we’re going to have “apologize when you mess up enough” norms, I think they should be more about evaluating local process, and less about evaluating the overall character of the person you’re apologizing to. (Or even the character-in-this-particular-case, since it’s possible to owe someone an apology even if that person owes an apology too.) “Did I fuck-up when I did X?” should be a referendum on whether the local action was OK, not a referendum on the people you fucked up at.
More thoughts about apology norms in my comment here.
I upvoted this, but disagreed. I think the timeline would be better if it included:
November 2022: FLI inform Nya Dagbladet Foundation (NDF) that they will not be funding them
15 December 2022: FLI learn of media interest in the story
I therefore don’t think it’s “absurd” to have expected FLI to have repudiated NDF sooner. You could argue that by apologising for their mistake before the media interest does more harm than good by drawing attention to it (and by association, to NDF), but once they became aware of the media attention, I think they should have issued something more like their current statement.
I also agreed with the thrust of titotal’s comment that their first statement was woefully inadequate (it was more like “nothing to see here” than “oh damn, we seriously considered supporting an odious publication and we’re sorry”). I don’t think lack of time gets them off the hook here, given they should have expected Expo to publish at some point.
I don’t think anyone owes an apology for expecting FLI to do better than this.
(Note: I appreciate Max Tegmark was dealing with a personal tragedy (for which, my condolences) at the time of it becoming ‘a thing’ on the EA Forum, so I of course wouldn’t expect him to be making quick-but-considered replies to everything posted on here at that time. But I think there’s a difference between that and the speed of the proper statement.)
***
FWIW I also had a different interpretation of Shakeel’s 9:18pm comment than what you write here:
“Jan 13, 9:18pm: Shakeel follows up, repeating that he sees no reason why FLI wouldn’t have already made a public statement, and raises the possibility that FLI has maybe done sinister questionably-legal things and that’s why they haven’t spoken up.”
Shakeel said “Jason’s comment has made me realise there might be something else going on here, though; if that is the case then that would make the silence make more sense.” → this seemed to me that Shakeel was trying to to be charitable, and understand the reasons FLI hadn’t replied quicker.
Only a subtle difference, but wanted to point that out.
Yeah, if the early EA Forum comments had explicitly said “FLI should have said something public about this as soon as they discovered that NDF was bad”, “FLI should have said something public about this as soon as Expo contacted them”, or “FLI should have been way more response to Expo’s inquiries”—and if we’d generally expressed a lot more uncertainty and been more measured in what we said in the first few days—then I might still have disagreed, but I wouldn’t have seen this as an embarrassingly bad response in the same way.
I, as a casual reader who wasn’t trying to carefully track all the timestamps, had no idea when I first skimmed these threads on Jan. 13-14 that the article had only come out a few hours ago, and I didn’t track timestamps carefully enough to register just how fast the EA Forum went from “a top-level post exists about this at all” to “wow, FLI is stonewalling us” and “wow, there must be something really sinister here given that FLI still hasn’t responded”. I feel like I was misled by these comments, because I just took for granted (to some degree) that the people writing these highly upvoted comments were probably not saying something transparently silly.
If a commenter like Jason thought that FLI was “stonewalling” because they didn’t release a public statement about this in December, then it’s important to be explicit about that, so casual readers don’t come away from the comment section thinking that FLI is displaying some amazing level of unresponsiveness to the forum post or to the news article.
This is less obvious to me, if they didn’t owe a public response before Expo reached out to them. A lot of press inquiries don’t end up turning into articles, and if the goal is to respond to press coverage, it’s often better to wait and see what’s in the actual article, since you might end up surprised about the article’s contents.
“Do better than this”, notably, is switching out concrete actions for a much more general question, one that’s closer to “What’s the correct overall level of affect we should have about FLI right now?”.
If we’re going to have “apologize when you mess up enough” norms, I think they should be more about evaluating local process, and less about evaluating the overall character of the person you’re apologizing to. (Or even the character-in-this-particular-case, since it’s possible to owe someone an apology even if that person owes an apology too.) “Did I fuck-up when I did X?” should be a referendum on whether the local action was OK, not a referendum on the people you fucked up at.
More thoughts about apology norms in my comment here.