If a company has 21 employees and someone says it has 7, I’m not going to call the situation ambiguous just because someone disagrees with me.
Sure, I agree with this particular case. There is a level of clarity above which you can say ambiguous without getting criticism. Mathematical statements or extremely simple factual statements are in that category. If that had been the only item in the section, I wouldn’t have an issue with it. But you’ve also picked the most objective one to make this argument. Habyrka also already admitted that he got the number of people in the company wrong, so this is not the problematic claim.
Edit: Apologies, I didn’t check the context. I endorse the general point about narrow claims, but the quote from Habryka isn’t relevant.
Speaking of unpleasant framing, I’m wholly unimpressed by the framing of me “trying to turn [your] objection into an object-level debate.” It matters whether, on the object level, things I said were unambiguous are.
I don’t get the point here. “The object-level question matters” isn’t a rebuttal to “you’re trying to make it about an object-level question”.
It’s inevitable that some people are going to dislike the way I chose to frame my reply, but I did so carefully and with an eye towards serious, charitable, direct engagement with the topic on its merits. “Epistemically toxic” is strong phrasing that I wholly reject.
I agree that it’s a strong phrasing, but I stand by it. I wouldn’t bring up style if I didn’t if I only had minor issues with it. I think the ability to differentiate between consensus-level claims and opinions is one of the main reasons why discussion on LW and EA is less bad than discussion everywhere else on the internet, and I perceive this post and the conversation as an step toward eroding that difference.
I have no doubts that you think the style was fine. I also have no doubts that you’d be able to justify the “charitable” and “direct” adjectives as you understand them. I expect the problem would again be that you’ll define them by subjective, things-people-can-disagree-about standards. By my standards, the post is not direct engagement since it begins by drawing an emotionally loaded analogy, and it’s not charitable because of the section I’ve been criticizing. Both of these are true regardless of the object-level merits (unless every object level claim were in the category of extremely straight-forward factual statements, which it isn’t).
But you’ve also picked the most objective one to make this argument. Habyrka also already admitted that he got the number of people in the company wrong, so this is not the problematic claim.
This comment has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at hand! I have never admitted I “got the number of people in the company wrong”! And even if I did, it wouldn’t matter because I didn’t write the post.
The comment you linked talks about a completely separate discussion where the question at hand was how many people who have worked with Kat/Emerson/Drew we have talked to, which is multiple dozens. I misspoke and instead said that we had talked to that many people who “worked at Nonlinear” which is false. But this had nothing to do with Ben’s claim in the post, it was just me being sloppy with language.
I absolutely do not admit that Ben’s post substantially got the number of Nonlinear employees during the relevant period wrong. As far as I can tell it is still accurate.
I absolutely do not admit that Ben’s post substantially got the number of Nonlinear employees during the relevant period wrong. As far as I can tell it is still accurate.
His precise sentence was this:
My current understanding is that they’ve had around ~4 remote interns, 1 remote employee, and 2 in-person employees (Alice and Chloe).
He did not say “At the time Alice and Chloe were working there, they’d had...”. He used the present tense! It is simple revisionism to act as if the sentence says anything else. Anyone reading that sentence would and should come to the conclusion that he was speaking about the company as a whole, providing background context for who they are, not anchoring it to some unspecified point in the past.
He did not say “At the time Alice and Chloe were working there, they’d had...”. He used the present tense!
Presumably you meant to say “he used the past tense”.
You used the present tense in this discussion, so I was responding to claims about the present tense. You said “If a company has 21 employees and someone says it has 7, I’m not going to call the situation ambiguous just because someone disagrees with me.”, which to me reads as clearly talking about how many employees a company has simultaneously.
I agree that in the quoted section Ben’s post talks in the past tense in a way that implies it is talking about all historical employees (by the end of the period Ben’s investigation covers, Nonlinear was not properly incorporated, so there is not even really a sense of legal employment, so how to handle past data points, and what the ground truth is, is messier than it would usually be). The veracity of that statement seems still right to me, though not one I really want to litigate here, or am really that confident about.
In other places he also talks about the number of concurrent employees. I just wanted to make sure no falsehoods about concurrent employees get propagated.
I meant nothing of the sort. “They’ve had” is present perfect tense, and it’s in a section where he is referring to Nonlinear in the present tense as of 7 September 2023 as he outlines the basics of their structure and history.
EDIT:
which to me reads as clearly talking about how many employees a company has simultaneously.
This reading would make sense in isolation; as we have all been talking about the same fact pattern for a week, I admit it makes rather less sense to me. Either you read my statement as a general hypothetical to demonstrate what an unambiguous falsehood looks like, in which case there’s no issue, or you read it as referring to the Nonlinear situation, in which common sense dictates it should be read as sloppy shorthand for the “has had 21 employees” fact pattern that’s been under discussion.
I meant nothing of the sort. “They’ve had” is present perfect tense, and it’s in a section where he is referring to Nonlinear in the present tense as of 7 September 2023 as he outlines the basics of their structure and history.
Ah, sorry, that’s not how I would have used “present tense”, but I am also not a native english speaker.
This reading would make sense in isolation; as we have all been talking about the same fact pattern for a week, I admit it makes rather less sense to me.
I agree it would have been better to ask for clarification instead of immediately objecting. As I say in a comment above, I do really care about misrepresentations of Ben’s post being corrected, because there is a very large amount of that in Nonlinear’s reply.
I did just straightforwardly update from the language you used here that in the OP you had interpreted Ben as talking about the number of maximum concurrent employees during the relevant period (which I agree is not the most natural interpretation of the language Ben used, but seemed implied to me by the language you used). We’ve now clarified, and I apologize for jumping to hasty conclusions about your epistemic state.
Ah, sorry! I had vaguely remembered that comment and it took me a while to find it, and I think I was so annoyed in that moment that I just assumed the context would fit without checking (which I realize makes no sense since you didn’t even write the original post). I’ll edit my comment.
Sure, I agree with this particular case. There is a level of clarity above which you can say ambiguous without getting criticism. Mathematical statements or extremely simple factual statements are in that category. If that had been the only item in the section, I wouldn’t have an issue with it. But you’ve also picked the most objective one to make this argument.Habyrka also already admittedthat he got the number of people in the company wrong, so this is not the problematic claim.Edit: Apologies, I didn’t check the context. I endorse the general point about narrow claims, but the quote from Habryka isn’t relevant.
I don’t get the point here. “The object-level question matters” isn’t a rebuttal to “you’re trying to make it about an object-level question”.
I agree that it’s a strong phrasing, but I stand by it. I wouldn’t bring up style if I didn’t if I only had minor issues with it. I think the ability to differentiate between consensus-level claims and opinions is one of the main reasons why discussion on LW and EA is less bad than discussion everywhere else on the internet, and I perceive this post and the conversation as an step toward eroding that difference.
I have no doubts that you think the style was fine. I also have no doubts that you’d be able to justify the “charitable” and “direct” adjectives as you understand them. I expect the problem would again be that you’ll define them by subjective, things-people-can-disagree-about standards. By my standards, the post is not direct engagement since it begins by drawing an emotionally loaded analogy, and it’s not charitable because of the section I’ve been criticizing. Both of these are true regardless of the object-level merits (unless every object level claim were in the category of extremely straight-forward factual statements, which it isn’t).
This comment has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at hand! I have never admitted I “got the number of people in the company wrong”! And even if I did, it wouldn’t matter because I didn’t write the post.
The comment you linked talks about a completely separate discussion where the question at hand was how many people who have worked with Kat/Emerson/Drew we have talked to, which is multiple dozens. I misspoke and instead said that we had talked to that many people who “worked at Nonlinear” which is false. But this had nothing to do with Ben’s claim in the post, it was just me being sloppy with language.
I absolutely do not admit that Ben’s post substantially got the number of Nonlinear employees during the relevant period wrong. As far as I can tell it is still accurate.
His precise sentence was this:
He did not say “At the time Alice and Chloe were working there, they’d had...”. He used the present tense! It is simple revisionism to act as if the sentence says anything else. Anyone reading that sentence would and should come to the conclusion that he was speaking about the company as a whole, providing background context for who they are, not anchoring it to some unspecified point in the past.
This is a strange claim to litigate in this way.
Presumably you meant to say “he used the past tense”.
You used the present tense in this discussion, so I was responding to claims about the present tense. You said “If a company has 21 employees and someone says it has 7, I’m not going to call the situation ambiguous just because someone disagrees with me.”, which to me reads as clearly talking about how many employees a company has simultaneously.
I agree that in the quoted section Ben’s post talks in the past tense in a way that implies it is talking about all historical employees (by the end of the period Ben’s investigation covers, Nonlinear was not properly incorporated, so there is not even really a sense of legal employment, so how to handle past data points, and what the ground truth is, is messier than it would usually be). The veracity of that statement seems still right to me, though not one I really want to litigate here, or am really that confident about.
In other places he also talks about the number of concurrent employees. I just wanted to make sure no falsehoods about concurrent employees get propagated.
I meant nothing of the sort. “They’ve had” is present perfect tense, and it’s in a section where he is referring to Nonlinear in the present tense as of 7 September 2023 as he outlines the basics of their structure and history.
EDIT:
This reading would make sense in isolation; as we have all been talking about the same fact pattern for a week, I admit it makes rather less sense to me. Either you read my statement as a general hypothetical to demonstrate what an unambiguous falsehood looks like, in which case there’s no issue, or you read it as referring to the Nonlinear situation, in which common sense dictates it should be read as sloppy shorthand for the “has had 21 employees” fact pattern that’s been under discussion.
Ah, sorry, that’s not how I would have used “present tense”, but I am also not a native english speaker.
I agree it would have been better to ask for clarification instead of immediately objecting. As I say in a comment above, I do really care about misrepresentations of Ben’s post being corrected, because there is a very large amount of that in Nonlinear’s reply.
I did just straightforwardly update from the language you used here that in the OP you had interpreted Ben as talking about the number of maximum concurrent employees during the relevant period (which I agree is not the most natural interpretation of the language Ben used, but seemed implied to me by the language you used). We’ve now clarified, and I apologize for jumping to hasty conclusions about your epistemic state.
Ah, sorry! I had vaguely remembered that comment and it took me a while to find it, and I think I was so annoyed in that moment that I just assumed the context would fit without checking (which I realize makes no sense since you didn’t even write the original post). I’ll edit my comment.
Thank you!