Thanks for the reply Timothy, and I totally appreciate you choosing to not engage again as this can be quite time and energy consuming. There’s one thing I wasn’t clear enough in my original comment which I’ve now edited which might mean we’re not as misaligned as one might think!
Namely, I didn’t say (or even necessarily think) that your comment on the truthfulness of John’s claim was net negative, as you suggest. I’ve edited the original comment but in practice what I meant was, I think there’s better ways of doing so, without questioning the sexual harassment claims actually made by the women affected in these incidents. So overall I agree it’s important to point about claims that are untruthful, but I also think you did this in a way that a) casted doubted on the actual sexual harassment, which IMO seems very likely so it is insensitive to suggest otherwise and b) is damaging to the EA community as a safe place for women.
For reference, this is what I updated my sentence to in the previous comment:
Again, I agree there are some epistemic benefits to calling out statements that don’t seem correct, but I think there are also some large downsides to the way you did this in this instance. [edited last sentence only]
Thanks for the reply Timothy, and I totally appreciate you choosing to not engage again as this can be quite time and energy consuming. There’s one thing I wasn’t clear enough in my original comment which I’ve now edited which might mean we’re not as misaligned as one might think!
Namely, I didn’t say (or even necessarily think) that your comment on the truthfulness of John’s claim was net negative, as you suggest. I’ve edited the original comment but in practice what I meant was, I think there’s better ways of doing so, without questioning the sexual harassment claims actually made by the women affected in these incidents. So overall I agree it’s important to point about claims that are untruthful, but I also think you did this in a way that a) casted doubted on the actual sexual harassment, which IMO seems very likely so it is insensitive to suggest otherwise and b) is damaging to the EA community as a safe place for women.
For reference, this is what I updated my sentence to in the previous comment: