You spoke to 20+ reviewers, half of which were sought out to disagree with you, and not a single one could provide a case for differential technology?
Personally I read this as a straightforward accusation of dishonesty—something I would expect moderators to object to if the comment was critical (rather than supportive) of EA orthodoxy.
This is remarkably similar to a critique we got from Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh
I also found it suspicious that Rubi felt the need to comment using an anonymous throwaway account despite speaking in favor of established power structures.
To clarify, that’s not to say Rubi is necessarily Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh. I have no idea and I don’t know Seán.
However, this situation is very strange. Almost everyone on the EAforum uses their real name or a very thin pseudonym.
I am anonymous because vocally disagreeing with the status quo would probably destroy any prospects of getting hired or funded by EA orgs (see my heavily downvoted comment about my experiences somewhere at the bottom of this thread).
Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh here. Since I have been named specifically, I would like to make it clear that when I write here, I do so under Sean_o_h, and have only ever done so. I am not Rubi, and I don’t know who Rubi is. I ask that the moderators check IP addresses, and reach out to me for any information that can help confirm this.
I am on leave and have not read the rest of this discussion, or the current paper (which I imagine is greatly improved from the draft I saw), so I will not participate further in this discussion at this time.
To clear up my identity, I am not Seán and do not know him. I go by Rubi in real life, although it is a nickname rather than my given name. I did not mean for my account to be an anonymous throwaway, and I intend to keep on using this account on the EA Forum. I can understand how that would not be obvious as this was my first post, but that is coincidental. The original post generated a lot of controversy, which is why I saw it and decided to comment.
You spoke to 20+ reviewers, half of which were sought out to disagree with you, and not a single one could provide a case for differential technology?
I would have genuinely liked an answer to this. If none of the reviewers made the case, that is useful information about the selection of the reviewers. If some reviewers did, but were ignored by the authors, then it reflects negatively on the authors not to address this and say that the case for differential technology is unclear.
I am anonymous because vocally disagreeing with the status quo would probably destroy any prospects of getting hired or funded by EA orgs (see my heavily downvoted comment about my experiences somewhere at the bottom of this thread).
This clearly doesn’t apply to Rubi, so what’s up?
There are many reasons for people to use pseudonyms on the Forum, and we allow it with few restrictions. It’s also fine to have multiple accounts.
To clarify, that’s not to say Rubi is necessarily Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh. I have no idea and I don’t know Seán.
However, this situation is very strange.
What exactly is “suspicious” or “strange” here? What is the thing you suspect, and is that thing against the Forum’s rules? If not, do you think it should be?
Using vague insinuations instead of straightforwardly accusing someone doesn’t change the result — which is that Seán understandably feels like he’s been called out and needs to deny the “non-accusation”. What were you trying to accomplish by talking about Seán here?
*****
You’ve now made several comments in this thread that were rude or insulting towards other users. That’s not okay, whether or not your position happens to align with any “status quo”. (See theseexamples of comments being moderated for exactly this reason despite their position on the “popular” side of whatever thread they were a part of.)
If you want to object to someone’s argument, state your objection. Explain why they’re wrong, or what they’ve missed. This is almost always better than “I find this user suspicious” or “this user is acting in bad faith”.
Several of your comments on this thread were good. I appreciated the links here and some of the questions here. But if you continue posting rude or insulting comments, the moderation team may take action.
Personally I read this as a straightforward accusation of dishonesty—something I would expect moderators to object to if the comment was critical (rather than supportive) of EA orthodoxy.
As a moderator, I wouldn’t object to this comment no matter who made it. I see it as a criticism of someone’s work, not an accusation that the person was dishonest.
If someone wrote a paper critiquing the differential technology paradigm and spoke to lots of reviewers about it — including many who were known to be pro-DT — but didn’t cite any pro-DT arguments, it would be fine for someone to ask: “Did you really not hear any cases for the DT paradigm?”
The question doesn’t have to mean “you deliberately acted like there were no good pro-DT arguments and hoped we would believe you”. That would frankly be a silly thing to say, since Carla and Luke are obviously familiar with these arguments and know that many of their readers would also be familiar with these arguments.
It could also imply:
“You didn’t ask the kinds of questions of reviewers that would lead them to spell out their cases for DT”
“You didn’t make room in your paper to discuss the pro-DT arguments you heard, and I think you should have”
Or, more straightforwardly, you could avoid assuming any particular implication and just read the question as a question: “Why were there no pro-DT arguments in your piece?”
I personally read implication (1), because of the statement ”...made it seem like you did not do your research”.
Carla’s response read to me as a response to implication (2): “We chose not to discuss pro-DT arguments, because trying to give that kind of space to counterarguments for all of our points would be beyond the scope of our paper.” Which is a fine, reasonable response.
I think Rubi’s comment should have been more clear; it’s more important for questioners to ask good questions than for respondents to correctly guess at what the questioner meant.
Overall, as a moderator, my response to this part of Rubi’s comment is “this is unclear and could mean many things — perhaps one of these things is uncivil, but Carla answered a civil version of the question, and I’m not going to deliberately choose to interpret the question as the most uncivil version of itself.”
*****
On the level of meta-moderation, these are the things I personally look for*, in rough priority order (other mods may differ):
Comments that clearly insult another user
Comments that include an information hazard or advocate for seriously harmful action
Comments that interfere with good discourse in other ways
If you say “Rubi’s comment is unclear, which means it’s in category (3)” — you’d be right, but there are a lot of comments that are unclear, and it isn’t realistic for moderators to respond to more than a tiny fraction of them, which means I focus on comments in the first two categories.
If you say “Rubi’s comment could be taken to imply an insult, which means it’s in category (1)” — I disagree, because I don’t see any insulting read as “clear”, and there are plenty of other ways to interpret the comment.
And of course, the specific position someone takes in a debate has no bearing on how we moderate, unless a particular position is in category (2) (“we should release a plague to kill everyone”).
*I should also mention that I’m a human with limited human attention. So I’m not going to see every comment on every post. That’s why every post comes with a “report” option, which people should really use if they think a comment should be moderated:
If you report a post or comment, one or more mods will definitely look at it and at least consider your argument for why it was reportable.
Something not being moderated doesn’t imply that it’s definitely fine — it could also mean the mods haven’t read it, or that the mods didn’t read it with “moderator vision” on. There have been times I read a comment in my off time, then saw the same comment reported later and said “oh, huh, this probably should be moderated”.
Personally I read this as a straightforward accusation of dishonesty—something I would expect moderators to object to if the comment was critical (rather than supportive) of EA orthodoxy.
I also found it suspicious that Rubi felt the need to comment using an anonymous throwaway account despite speaking in favor of established power structures.
To clarify, that’s not to say Rubi is necessarily Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh. I have no idea and I don’t know Seán.
However, this situation is very strange. Almost everyone on the EAforum uses their real name or a very thin pseudonym.
I am anonymous because vocally disagreeing with the status quo would probably destroy any prospects of getting hired or funded by EA orgs (see my heavily downvoted comment about my experiences somewhere at the bottom of this thread).
This clearly doesn’t apply to Rubi, so what’s up?
Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh here. Since I have been named specifically, I would like to make it clear that when I write here, I do so under Sean_o_h, and have only ever done so. I am not Rubi, and I don’t know who Rubi is. I ask that the moderators check IP addresses, and reach out to me for any information that can help confirm this.
I am on leave and have not read the rest of this discussion, or the current paper (which I imagine is greatly improved from the draft I saw), so I will not participate further in this discussion at this time.
To clear up my identity, I am not Seán and do not know him. I go by Rubi in real life, although it is a nickname rather than my given name. I did not mean for my account to be an anonymous throwaway, and I intend to keep on using this account on the EA Forum. I can understand how that would not be obvious as this was my first post, but that is coincidental. The original post generated a lot of controversy, which is why I saw it and decided to comment.
I would have genuinely liked an answer to this. If none of the reviewers made the case, that is useful information about the selection of the reviewers. If some reviewers did, but were ignored by the authors, then it reflects negatively on the authors not to address this and say that the case for differential technology is unclear.
There are many reasons for people to use pseudonyms on the Forum, and we allow it with few restrictions. It’s also fine to have multiple accounts.
What exactly is “suspicious” or “strange” here? What is the thing you suspect, and is that thing against the Forum’s rules? If not, do you think it should be?
Using vague insinuations instead of straightforwardly accusing someone doesn’t change the result — which is that Seán understandably feels like he’s been called out and needs to deny the “non-accusation”. What were you trying to accomplish by talking about Seán here?
*****
You’ve now made several comments in this thread that were rude or insulting towards other users. That’s not okay, whether or not your position happens to align with any “status quo”. (See these examples of comments being moderated for exactly this reason despite their position on the “popular” side of whatever thread they were a part of.)
If you want to object to someone’s argument, state your objection. Explain why they’re wrong, or what they’ve missed. This is almost always better than “I find this user suspicious” or “this user is acting in bad faith”.
Several of your comments on this thread were good. I appreciated the links here and some of the questions here. But if you continue posting rude or insulting comments, the moderation team may take action.
As a moderator, I wouldn’t object to this comment no matter who made it. I see it as a criticism of someone’s work, not an accusation that the person was dishonest.
If someone wrote a paper critiquing the differential technology paradigm and spoke to lots of reviewers about it — including many who were known to be pro-DT — but didn’t cite any pro-DT arguments, it would be fine for someone to ask: “Did you really not hear any cases for the DT paradigm?”
The question doesn’t have to mean “you deliberately acted like there were no good pro-DT arguments and hoped we would believe you”. That would frankly be a silly thing to say, since Carla and Luke are obviously familiar with these arguments and know that many of their readers would also be familiar with these arguments.
It could also imply:
“You didn’t ask the kinds of questions of reviewers that would lead them to spell out their cases for DT”
“You didn’t make room in your paper to discuss the pro-DT arguments you heard, and I think you should have”
Or, more straightforwardly, you could avoid assuming any particular implication and just read the question as a question: “Why were there no pro-DT arguments in your piece?”
I personally read implication (1), because of the statement ”...made it seem like you did not do your research”.
Carla’s response read to me as a response to implication (2): “We chose not to discuss pro-DT arguments, because trying to give that kind of space to counterarguments for all of our points would be beyond the scope of our paper.” Which is a fine, reasonable response.
I think Rubi’s comment should have been more clear; it’s more important for questioners to ask good questions than for respondents to correctly guess at what the questioner meant.
Overall, as a moderator, my response to this part of Rubi’s comment is “this is unclear and could mean many things — perhaps one of these things is uncivil, but Carla answered a civil version of the question, and I’m not going to deliberately choose to interpret the question as the most uncivil version of itself.”
*****
On the level of meta-moderation, these are the things I personally look for*, in rough priority order (other mods may differ):
Comments that clearly insult another user
Comments that include an information hazard or advocate for seriously harmful action
Comments that interfere with good discourse in other ways
If you say “Rubi’s comment is unclear, which means it’s in category (3)” — you’d be right, but there are a lot of comments that are unclear, and it isn’t realistic for moderators to respond to more than a tiny fraction of them, which means I focus on comments in the first two categories.
If you say “Rubi’s comment could be taken to imply an insult, which means it’s in category (1)” — I disagree, because I don’t see any insulting read as “clear”, and there are plenty of other ways to interpret the comment.
And of course, the specific position someone takes in a debate has no bearing on how we moderate, unless a particular position is in category (2) (“we should release a plague to kill everyone”).
*I should also mention that I’m a human with limited human attention. So I’m not going to see every comment on every post. That’s why every post comes with a “report” option, which people should really use if they think a comment should be moderated:
If you report a post or comment, one or more mods will definitely look at it and at least consider your argument for why it was reportable.
Something not being moderated doesn’t imply that it’s definitely fine — it could also mean the mods haven’t read it, or that the mods didn’t read it with “moderator vision” on. There have been times I read a comment in my off time, then saw the same comment reported later and said “oh, huh, this probably should be moderated”.
Honestly, fair enough.