I want to flag that “That sounds to me like a thing only cartoon villains would say.” is absolutely contrary to discourse norms on the forum. I don’t think it was said maliciously, but it’s definitely not “kind,” and it does not “approach disagreements with curiosity.”
Edit: Clearly, I read this very differently than others, and given that, I’m happy to retract my claim that this was mean-spirited.
When I wrote my comment, I worried it would be unkind to Zoe because I’m also questioning her recollection of what people said.
Now that it looks like people did in fact say the thing exactly the way I quoted it (or identical to it in meaning and intent), my comment looks more unkind toward Zoe’s critics.
Edit: Knowing for sure that people actually said the comment, I obviously no longer think they must be cartoon villains. (But I remain confused.)
I haven’t seen any quotes but Joey saying he had the same experience, Zoe confirming that she didn’t misremember this part, and none of the reviewers speaking up saying “This isn’t how things happened,” made me update that maybe one or more people actually did say the thing I considered cartoonish.
And because people are never cartoon villains in real life, I’m now trying to understand what their real motivations were.
For instance, one way I thought of how the comment could make sense is if someone brought it up because they are close to Zoe and care most about her future career and how she’ll be doing, and they already happen to have a (for me very surprising) negative view of EA funders and are pessimistic about bringing about change. In that scenario, it makes sense to voice the concerns for Zoe’s sake.
Initially, I simply assumed that the comment must be coming from the people who have strong objections to (parts of) Zoe’s paper. And I was thinking “If you think the paper is really unfair, why not focus on that? Why express a concern about funding that only makes EA look even worse?”
So my new model is that the people who gave Zoe this sort of advice may not have been defending EA at all, but rather shared Zoe’s criticisms or were, if anything, more pessimistic than Zoe.
(I’m probably wrong about the above hypothesis, but then I’m back to being confused.)
It might be useful to hear from the reviewers themselves as to the thought process here. As mentioned above, I don’t really understand why anyone would advise the authors not to publish this. For comparison, I have published several critiques of the research of several Open Phil-funded EA orgs while working at an open phil-funded EA org. In my experience, I think if the arguments are good, it doesn’t really matter if you disagree with something Open Phil funds. Perhaps that is not true in this domain for some reason?
(In my words: Some reviewers like and support Zoe and Luke but are worried about the sustainability of their funding situation because of the model that these reviewers have of some big funders. So these reviewers are well-intentioned and supportive in their own way. I just hope that their worries are unwarranted.)
I think a third hypothesis is that they really think funding whatever we are funding at the moment is more important than continuing to check whether we are right; and don’t see the problems with this attitude (perhaps because the problem is more visible from a movement-wide, longterm perspective rather than an immediate local one?).
As a moderator, I thought Lukas’s comment was fine.
I read it as a humorous version of “this doesn’t sound like something someone would say in those words”, or “I cast doubt on this being the actual thing someone said, because people generally don’t make threats that are this obvious/open”.
Reading between the lines, I saw the comment as “approaching a disagreement with curiosity” by implying a request for clarification or specification (“what did you actually hear someone say”?). Others seem to have read the same implication, though Lukas could have been clearer in the first place and I could be too charitable in my reading.
Compared to this comment, I thought Lukas’s added something to the conversation (though the humor perhaps hurt more than helped).
*****
On a meta level, I upvoted David’s comment because I appreciate people flagging things for potential moderation, though I wish more people would use the Report button attached to all comments and posts (which notifies all mods automatically, so we don’t miss things):
I appreciated Lukas‘ comment as I had the same reaction. The idea somebody would utter this sentence and not cringe about having said something so obviously wrongheaded feels very off. I think adding something like „Hey, this specific claim would be almost shockingly surprising for my current models /gesturing at the reason why/“ is a useful promp/invitation for further discussion and not unkind or uncurios.
I want to flag that “That sounds to me like a thing only cartoon villains would say.” is absolutely contrary to discourse norms on the forum. I don’t think it was said maliciously, but it’s definitely not “kind,” and it does not “approach disagreements with curiosity.”Edit: Clearly, I read this very differently than others, and given that, I’m happy to retract my claim that this was mean-spirited.
When I wrote my comment, I worried it would be unkind to Zoe because I’m also questioning her recollection of what people said.
Now that it looks like people did in fact say the thing exactly the way I quoted it (or identical to it in meaning and intent), my comment looks more unkind toward Zoe’s critics.
Edit: Knowing for sure that people actually said the comment, I obviously no longer think they must be cartoon villains. (But I remain confused.)
fwiw I was not offended at all.
I’m a bit lost, are you saying that the quotes you have seen were or were not as cartoon villainish as you thought?
I haven’t seen any quotes but Joey saying he had the same experience, Zoe confirming that she didn’t misremember this part, and none of the reviewers speaking up saying “This isn’t how things happened,” made me update that maybe one or more people actually did say the thing I considered cartoonish.
And because people are never cartoon villains in real life, I’m now trying to understand what their real motivations were.
For instance, one way I thought of how the comment could make sense is if someone brought it up because they are close to Zoe and care most about her future career and how she’ll be doing, and they already happen to have a (for me very surprising) negative view of EA funders and are pessimistic about bringing about change. In that scenario, it makes sense to voice the concerns for Zoe’s sake.
Initially, I simply assumed that the comment must be coming from the people who have strong objections to (parts of) Zoe’s paper. And I was thinking “If you think the paper is really unfair, why not focus on that? Why express a concern about funding that only makes EA look even worse?”
So my new model is that the people who gave Zoe this sort of advice may not have been defending EA at all, but rather shared Zoe’s criticisms or were, if anything, more pessimistic than Zoe.
(I’m probably wrong about the above hypothesis, but then I’m back to being confused.)
It might be useful to hear from the reviewers themselves as to the thought process here. As mentioned above, I don’t really understand why anyone would advise the authors not to publish this. For comparison, I have published several critiques of the research of several Open Phil-funded EA orgs while working at an open phil-funded EA org. In my experience, I think if the arguments are good, it doesn’t really matter if you disagree with something Open Phil funds. Perhaps that is not true in this domain for some reason?
This is also how I interpreted the situation.
(In my words: Some reviewers like and support Zoe and Luke but are worried about the sustainability of their funding situation because of the model that these reviewers have of some big funders. So these reviewers are well-intentioned and supportive in their own way. I just hope that their worries are unwarranted.)
I think a third hypothesis is that they really think funding whatever we are funding at the moment is more important than continuing to check whether we are right; and don’t see the problems with this attitude (perhaps because the problem is more visible from a movement-wide, longterm perspective rather than an immediate local one?).
As a moderator, I thought Lukas’s comment was fine.
I read it as a humorous version of “this doesn’t sound like something someone would say in those words”, or “I cast doubt on this being the actual thing someone said, because people generally don’t make threats that are this obvious/open”.
Reading between the lines, I saw the comment as “approaching a disagreement with curiosity” by implying a request for clarification or specification (“what did you actually hear someone say”?). Others seem to have read the same implication, though Lukas could have been clearer in the first place and I could be too charitable in my reading.
Compared to this comment, I thought Lukas’s added something to the conversation (though the humor perhaps hurt more than helped).
*****
On a meta level, I upvoted David’s comment because I appreciate people flagging things for potential moderation, though I wish more people would use the Report button attached to all comments and posts (which notifies all mods automatically, so we don’t miss things):
I appreciated Lukas‘ comment as I had the same reaction. The idea somebody would utter this sentence and not cringe about having said something so obviously wrongheaded feels very off. I think adding something like „Hey, this specific claim would be almost shockingly surprising for my current models /gesturing at the reason why/“ is a useful promp/invitation for further discussion and not unkind or uncurios.