Basically almost any other strategy for dealing with bad actors? Other than maybe “ignore the problem and hope it goes away” which unfortunately seems depressingly common to me.
For example, Ben said he spent 300+ hours on his Nonlinear investigation. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the investigation ended up costing Lightcone 500+ hours total. (Even ignoring all the hours it’s going to cost all other parties). Lightcone very much does not have this time or emotional energy to spend on every (potential) bad actor, and indeed Ben himself said he’s not planning to do it again unless people are willing to buy out his time for >800k/year.
From my perspective, if I hear rumors about a potentially sketchy person that I’m deciding whether to give resources to (most centrally funding, but also you can imagine spots in a gated event, or work hours, or office space, or an implicit or explicit endorsement[1]), it takes me maybe X hours to decide I don’t want to work with them until I see further exculpatory evidence. If I decide to go outside the scope of my formal responsibilities, it’d take me 3-10X hours before gathering enough evidence to share a private docket in semi-formal settings, and probably another 3-10X that (including further investigation, a very careful writeup, and all the followup work) before I’m ready to have a public exposé.
Meanwhile, the world is burning.
If my standard for “rejecting an application because applicant is suss” is as high as “need to have enough evidence and careful writing to be comfortable with a public writeup in a highly adversarial domain against a very probable bad actor,” I’d probably be recommending like, I dunno, 5-10 grants a year.
I think the case for public writeups are strongest are when the bad actors in question are too powerful for private accountability (eg SBF), or when somehow all other methods are ineffective (eg for some reason community members need to know about “here’s a bad actor but many people don’t know” and all the other methods for community gatekeeping have failed). But public exposes feel very much like a “last resort” strategy to me for most issues, and not your front line of defense.
For people not in a similar formal position, you can imagine a similar dilemma for whether you want to spread negative rumors along the whisper network.
It seems like you’re very focused on the individual cost of investigation, and not the community wide benefit of preventing abuse from occurring.
The first and most obvious point is that bad actors cause harm, and we don’t want harm in our community. Aside from the immediate effect, there are also knock-on effects. Bad actors are more likely to engage in unethical behavior (like the FTX fraud), are likely to misuse funds, are non-aligned with our values (do you want an AGI designed by an abuser?), etc.
Even putting morality aside, it doesn’t stack up. 500 hours is roughly 3 months of full-time work. I would say the mistreated employees of nonlinear have lost far more than that. Hell, if a team of 12 loses one week of useful productivity from a bad boss, that cancels out the 500 hours.
I’m assuming this is an uncharitable and somewhat dickish way to accuse me of not reading your comment. I assure you I have. You are saying that it is not worth putting 500 hours into the level of investigation required to get it to the level of evidence required for a “public expose”. I am saying that this is worth it, because the community gets far more than 500 hours of benefit from this investigation. The lesser amount of investigation you advocate for will have a comparably smaller effect.
We’re issuing a warning for this comment for breaking our Forum norm on civility. We don’t think it was meant to be insulting, based on Linch’s previous Twitter poll (created months ago) and the fact that he himself is not a native speaker. However, we think the stark difference between the Twitter poll and responses here shows that this comment was widely taken as insulting, even if that wasn’t the intent. (I certainly saw it that way before reading the Twitter poll.)
A subsequent comment (“I at least made an effort to understand the language when I immigrated”) was more obviously an attack on titotal, and contributed to this warning.
Linch is an extremely active Forum user whose contributions have been vastly beneficial on net, and this strikes us as an uncharacteristic lapse. A warning doesn’t mean that someone hasn’t been a valuable member of the Forum; however, being a valuable member of the Forum doesn’t insulate someone from moderator action in cases like this.
On the constructive side, it’s hard to say what a “better” version of this comment would have looked like; even comments like “I think there may be a language barrier” still imply something along the lines of “you understand me so poorly that I think you may not be fluent in English”.
In the end, we think the best response to a confusing argument is to engage at the points of confusion (if that seems worthwhile), or ignore it (if not).
Another member of our team drafted these sample comments — not as “you should have said exactly X”, but “here’s one shape a better response could have taken”:
Engaging:
From your comment, you seem to think I’m arguing that public investigation is net harmful because the individual cost outweighs the collective benefit. That’s not my argument. Instead, I think that the collective benefit would be higher if someone took the time/energy spent on one public investigation and used it for many private investigations, because private investigations can also be valuable and are much easier to conduct.
It’s important to compare action not just to the null case (“is this better than nothing?”), but also to other possible actions (“is this the best way to handle problem X?”).
Does that response make sense? Did I misread your objection?
Ignoring:
This comment doesn’t address my argument; I think you may have misunderstood me. I don’t plan to engage further.
I’m aware of this failure mode, but I specificallyasked Twitter a few months ago whether this type of question is considered racist, and the unanimous consensus is “no.” It’s possible they’ve misled me however.
My current position is that people with apparent poor reading comprehension[1] are not worth engaging with online[2] if they’re native speakers, but non-native speakers can at least use Google translate or something[3] so having a conversation with them isn’t hopeless.
I feel like I already spend a ton of effort on trying to make my writing simple enough to be understandable to the 20th percentile of EA Forum users (eg have far shorter sentences than my preferred style). Obviously if I’m a better writer explaining ideas simply would be effortless, but I’m not. I just wish readers would put in at least a bit of effort, and/or be more willing to acknowledge fault.
I know this might be unfair for smart people with reading disabilities like dyslexia. I’m sorry; I can only hope in-person conversations and podcasts are enough.
Linch, surprised you felt like titotal wasn’t reading your comment properly, since I feel like they make a version of the basically right argument here which is around deterrence and the benefits of public knowledge of wrongdoing outside the specific case. Any sort of investigatory/punitive process (e.g. in most legal contexts) will often have resources devoted to it that are very significant compared to the actual potential wrongdoing being interrogated. But having a system that reliably identifies wrongdoing is quite valuable (and even a patchwork system is probably also quite valuable). Plus there are a whole bunch of diffuse positive externalities to information (e.g. not requiring each actor in the system to spend the effort making a private judgment that has a decent chance of being wrong).
I think the broader problem with your argument here is it’s an example of consequentialism struggling to deal with collective action problems/the value of institutions. The idea that all acts can be cashed out into utility (i.e. “world is burning” above) struggles to engage with cases where broader institutions are necessary for an ecosystem to function. To use an example from outside this case, if one evaluates public statements on their individual utility (rather than descriptive accuracy), it can stymie free inquiry and lead to poorer decision-making. (Not saying this can never be accounted for through a consequentialist or primarily consequentialist theory but I think it’s a persistent and difficult problem).
I think “you didn’t seem to read my comment, which frustrates me” is a better thing to say to someone than “are you a native english speaker?” since it seems to get at the problem more directly and isn’t exclusionary to non-native speakers (which is rude, even if that’s not the intention). I also think the instant case should give pause about the way you’re attempting to deal with bad faith critics, since labeling a critic mentally as poorly comprehending or in bad faith can be a subconscious crutch to miss the thrust of their argument.
On the object-level, I think the argument has to route around something like “1 public investigation is worth 3-10 private cases not being addressed/punished,” because in the world we live in, resources are patently limited and most people empirically do not go around investigating potential bad actors.
I feel pretty much capped at how much time/emotional energy I can spend on investigations, given that I have competing priorities like a day job and writing snarky EA forum comments. I already kinda feel like “did my time” for things-akin-to-investigations that I initiated or participated in; if the expectation is always a public writeup I might as well curl up in a ball or something. And I suspect I’m more able/willing to take on public flak and private reprisal than most people on this forum. So I expect having norms to make investigations more costly to straightforwardly decrease them happening.
I think an undertone in much of this thread is that people simultaneously expect processes that can “reliably identify wrongdoing” as well as the benefits of public discourse, without being willing to pay the costs associated with such investigations and disclosures. It reminds me of taxpayers who want lower taxes and increased budgets. Overall this feels surprisingly “not EA” to me, in that one of the basic tenets of EA is appreciating the existence of tradeoffs.
I think “you didn’t seem to read my comment, which frustrates me” is a better thing to say to someone than “are you a native english speaker?” since it seems to get at the problem more directly and isn’t exclusionary to non-native speakers
Yeah this is helpful. Though to be clear, I think they did “read” my comment, just didn’t try to understand it.
And I’m sorry to appear to be exclusionary to non-native speakers, though again I want to register that (as you know) I’m not a native speaker myself whereas you and most people reprimanding me appear to be.
Yeah I should have clarified that I knew you’re not a native speaker and understand why that motivates your argument, but the harm of being exclusionary stems in part because not every reader will know that. (Though I think even if every reader did know that you were a non-native speaker, it still does create a negative effect (via this exclusionary channel) albeit a smaller one).
Also I didn’t take your claim to be “investigations should not only take place in cases where their results will be made public.” (Which seems to be the implication of your reply above but maybe I’m misunderstanding). I don’t think “public exposes are useful” implies that you need to necessarily conduct the work needed for a public expose in cases where you suspect wrongdoing.
Should also say as your friend that I recognize it sucks to be criticized especially when it feels like a group pile-on, and I appreciate your making controversial claims even if I don’t agree with them.
but the harm of being exclusionary stems in part because not every reader will know that. (Though I think even if every reader did know that you were a non-native speaker, it still does create a negative effect (via this exclusionary channel) albeit a smaller one).
For the record, I consider being a non-native speaker exculpatory evidence. I’d much rather exclude native speakers with poor[1] reading comprehension than non-native speakers.
Also I didn’t take your claim to be “investigations should not only take place in cases where their results will be made public.” (Which seems to be the implication of your reply above but maybe I’m misunderstanding). I don’t think “public exposes are useful” implies that you need to necessarily conduct the work needed for a public expose in cases where you suspect wrongdoing.
I agree it’s not a necessary result, but I think it has a strong directional effect. At the very least people will feel encouraged to make their results public, a situation where they’re likely to already systematically underestimate the costs (though tbf maybe some of the benefits as well).
Should also say as your friend that I recognize it sucks to be criticized especially when it feels like a group pile-on, and I appreciate your making controversial claims even if I don’t agree with them.
I appreciate the sympathy! I was worried a while ago that I cared more about being liked than being right, so I’m at least glad to get some contrary evidence here.
But the potential to be hurt by bad actors is (Edit: or, arguably, people with less influence and less access to non-public information are actually more likely to get hurt).
I agree with Akhil. There is no benefit to the comment you wrote and plenty of downside. If you’re feeling hopeless about conversing with someone or feeling misunderstood, say that instead. Condescendingly implying someone who disagrees with you isn’t good enough at English because they’re not a native speaker is a terrible response.
I’m confused why people keep thinking “not a native speaker” is a bad/unkind assumption, whereas from my perspective that is the most charitable plausible explanation of titotal’s repeated posting behavior (and the only one that makes me think it might be worthwhile to continue engaging with them). Every other explanation I could come up with is less flattering.
Tbh I’d rather go to sleep rather than litigate this case further, but sure.
The main issue is frequent aggressive misreadings. To give a few examples that I feel less emotional about now:
See this comment, and then doubling down here. I struggle to see how a native speaker could’ve misunderstood me.
At the time people challenged me when I suggested titotal use Google Translate. I was cowardly and retracted my comment, which I now regret.
See also here: “there is no guarantee that your co-workers are good housemates just because they are EA”: arguments for a lack of a sufficiency condition seems bizarre since no one could plausibly make a positive sufficiency case (as opposed to eg a correlational case, or Pablo’s reply).
ETA: see also here, which at the time I held my tongue,
I would like to reiterate that it’s pretty rich that multiple people who are probably native English speakers have decided to call me racist over that remark. If it helps, I can assure you that race was not at all on my mind when I made that comment, and indeed I’m quite willing to listen to people who display competent moral reasoning, regardless of demographics.
I’m sorry you felt offended by my comment. A few points:
I do not think you’re a racist or were trying to be racist, or that race was on your mind when making that comment. I thought you were feeling misunderstood by titotal and mistakenly thought this was a good way to push back. I said there are no upsides and plenty of downsides to your comment and suggested that you be more direct with your actual problem with titotal instead. “If you’re feeling hopeless about conversing with someone or feeling misunderstood, say that instead.”
Your defense about this being the most charitable interpretation you can think of doesn’t engage with any of the points above. A “charitable” explanation that is unlikely to be relevant even if true is just not worth much, nor did you ask your question in a way to make it easy for an actual non-native speaker to admit to a potential vulnerability if that was going on. I read your comment as a passive-aggressive “Can’t you read?” attack which carelessly used language issues as a shield against being called out for being an attack.
I’ve seen a previous similar comment you made and ignored it at the time, especially since (as you say somewhere here) you could have easily been a non-native speaker yourself. But because it had seemingly moved from a one-off comment to a pattern that you thought was justified, I’m glad I pushed back on it.
I did not call you racist and neither did Akhil. We called out issues with your comment. I hope you are mindful of the difference.
I am sympathetic to a general point about native speakers scolding a non-native speaker for not being inclusive enough in their language, but you are making some assumptions in applying it here.
As an unrelated point, I personally hope whether you listen to someone or not isn’t founded on whether they display competent moral reasoning, but I’m unsure what you meant by this.
I read your comment as a passive-aggressive “Can’t you read?” attack which carelessly used language issues as a shield against being called out for being an attack.
Yes, this is an accurate reading. Except I dispute “carelessly.”
I did not call you racist and neither did Akhil. We called out issues with your comment. I hope you are mindful of the difference.
Hmm sorry how is the following statement not a claim that I was being racist, at least in that incidence?
unacceptable comment, steeped with condescension and some racism.
If I say someone is doing something unacceptably racist, this is not exactly a subtle accusation! I mean, it’s possible someone isn’t overall racist in most ways but is racist in a specific way (eg think of an overall progressive voter/parent who still tries to persuade their children to not marry outside of their race). But I also contest that I was being racist in that comment specifically.
Let’s imagine your charitable hypothesis was true and titotal was a non-native speaker who misread some comments due to lack of familiarity with the language. When they pushed back on something you said, you condescendingly asked them if they were a native speaker and ignored everything else they said. This is a tactic with a racist element.
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.
2. Also called in·sti·tu·tion·al rac·ism [in-sti-too-shuh-nl rey-siz-uhm, -tyoo-], struc·tur·al rac·ism [struhk-cher-uhl rey-siz-uhm], sys·tem·ic rac·ism [si-stem-ik rey-siz-uhm] . a policy, system of government, etc., that is associated with or originated in such a doctrine, and that favors members of the dominant racial or ethnic group, or has a neutral effect on their life experiences, while discriminating against or harming members of other groups, ultimately serving to preserve the social status, economic advantage, or political power of the dominant group.
Can you clarify whether you think my comment fits into (1) or (2), or both? Alternatively, if you think dictionary.com’s definition is not the one you were using, can you pull up which alternative definition of racism you and/or Akhil were invoking when you made your comments?
Ok, in that case your claim is that my sentence is part of a “policy, system of government etc...that favors members of the dominant social group?”
Can you explain what prompted it?
I do not view my actions as racist, at least in this instance. If the claim is accurate, I need to reflect more on how to be less racist. If the claim is inaccurate, then, well, I also have some other reflection to do about life choices.
Linch, I believe you wrote elsewhere here that you wish people had engaged with you charitably, instead of focusing on possibly flawed word choice. I have tried to do this with you, although I feel you haven’t always returned the favor (uncharitable assumptions about my motivations/background, mischaracterizing my comments). You contested there was an element of racism in your comment and I gave you a simple, non-legalese outline of why I think so. In response to this, instead of engaging with my point, you asked me an extremely basic question about how to define racism, a question I had already partially addressed multiple times in how it applies here.
My gut reaction was that this was a defensive reaction and you weren’t interested in engaging, you just wanted to seem not racist and win an online debate.
Of course, my gut could be wrong. So I asked you where you were coming from. And I’m glad to hear you seem to be genuinely interested in learning whether you made mistakes here.
Unfortunately, I am not interested in the type of debate you’re setting up. I gave you a simple outline earlier of where I was coming from and you are welcome to engage with it.
I don’t personally view your comment as racist, but it feels like you’re trying to understand why someone might, so here’s a take.
Here’s a thing that I think is true: your comment came across as dismissive because it didn’t engage with the substance of what had been said. Instead, it seemed to dismiss someone’s substantive comments on the basis of their command of English. Consequently, it came across as a personal attack and specifically as dismissively disrespectful. (To be clear, I’m not saying this was your intention in making the comment; here I’m making a claim about how it came across, or at least how it will have come across to some readers)
Now let’s just focus on it as a dismissal for a moment (that is, let’s just focus on the role it plays as a dismissal despite the fact that this wasn’t the role you were intending it to play). This sort of dismissal might strike some as racist for two reasons:
1. Because there is a (very imperfect) connection between race and native grasp of English, this sort of strategy for dismissal of a person’s substantive views is likely to disproportionally impact people of certain races and is likely to reinforce existing factors that mean such people are dismissed/disrespected/not-adequately-heard. (This is perhaps particularly crucial given that English is one of a small number of languages that is disproportionately important for having power)
2. Because of 1, this strategy is (I suspect) actually deliberately used in many cases as a form of racist dismissal. At the very least, many people will perceive that this is so. Consequently, statements like this take on a certain sort of cultural meaning and carry with them certain consequences (for example, if someone has been racistly dismissed in this way many times before, it will be more hurtful to them to face this sort of dismissal again, and so the sentence comes to be particularly harmful to people who have experienced racist attacks).
Given 1 and 2, this sort of statement occupies a certain place in a set of norms around discourse: it is a member of a class of statements that reinforces racial disparities, that harms people disproportionally from certain races, and that is used as a dogwhistle to describe racist dismissal as something else. I think this does roughly fit the second definition of racism that you point to (or, at least, the more complete version of this that recognises that systemtic racism can be about not just policies or systems but also about the role played in broader social norms).
For myself, I buy at least some of the above, and think it might mean it was worth commenting on the way that your commenting could be upsetting to some. I wouldn’t personally chose to describe the comment as racism, because I think this is too easily read as a comment on a person’s intention and virtue, rather than some sort of comment about the place of the statement within a broader societal context. And as I’m confident your intentions here were good, I personally would avoid this description.
So I do understand this is not your actual position and you’re trying to explain someone else’s position. Nonetheless I’m going to try to argue against it directly:
Because of 1, this strategy is (I suspect) actually deliberately used in many cases as a form of racist dismissal...for example, if someone has been racistly dismissed in this way many times before, it will be more hurtful to them to face this sort of dismissal again
As a non-native speaker, I think I have literally never been dismissed in this way[1]. So I suspect you’re setting up an imaginary problem. But I only have anecdotes to go off of rather than data; if someone has survey data I’m willing to update quickly.
I think this does roughly fit the second definition of racism that you point to (or, at least, the more complete version of this...[emphasis mine]
Here’s where I’m coming from: I think you are bending over backwards to support what I view to be a blatantly false claim. In modern left-leaning American culture, “racist” is one of the worst things you can call someone, I’m surprised so many people would stand for me being called that based on such scant evidence, and I’m currently reflecting on whether it makes sense for me to continue to devote so much of my life to being in a community (see EDIT [2]) that finds this type of thing permissible.
For myself, I buy at least some of the above, and think it might mean it was worth commenting on the way that your commenting could be upsetting to some.
I’m not surprised my comment is upsetting to the intended target (what I perceive as poor reading comprehension by people who know better), and/or to people who might choose to take offense on others’ behalf. If anybody genuinely feels unwelcome for object-level race or ethnic-related reasons based on my comment, I’m deeply sorry and I’m happy to apologize further publicly if someone in that position messages me about it and/or messages one of the forum mods to relay the message to me.
And as I’m confident your intentions here were good, I personally would avoid this description.
Thank you. To be clear, I do appreciate both your confidence and your reticence.
EDIT: A month + in, no one has ever messaged me saying that they felt unwelcome for object-level race- or ethnic-related reasons. This feels like confirmatory evidence that privileged native speakers in fact are doing the political move of “feeling offended on others’ behalf” instead of being willing to acknowledge (and/or defend) their own mediocrity. (See also anti-Asian rules passed in educational etc institutions in the name of “diversity”, which I’m pretty sure benefits white people much more than other ethnic minorities)
And to be clear I’ve experienced very blatant (though ultimately harmless) racism not too infrequnetly, as an argumentative visibly nonwhite person on the ’net.
EDIT: I’m afraid that came off too dramatically. I do view being involved in the community as a community pretty differently than being involved professionally. I still intend to work on EA projects etc even if I reduce eg EA Forum commenting or going to social events dramatically, and personal unpleasantness is not going to stop me from working in EA unless it’s like >10-100x this comment thread daily. (And even if I stop having jobs in EA organizations for other reasons I’d likely still intend to be effectively altruistic with my time and other resources)
I’m not really up for a long exchange here, as I find this sort of thing draining. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t reply further after this message.
As a non-native speaker, I think I have literally never been dismissed in this way. So I suspect you’re setting up an imaginary problem. But I only have anecdotes to go off of rather than data; if someone has survey data I’m willing to update quickly.
In text, at least, your English is notably better than the average native speaker, so I’m not convinced you’re representative here. Even setting aside your grasp of English, your obvious high intelligence would, I suspect, make it pretty hard to pull off dismissing you in this way, as would your willingness to speak your views. So I’m not convinced that the fact that you haven’t experienced this means that others haven’t.
That said, I accept that I have no actual data to point to.
In modern left-leaning American culture, “racist” is one of the worst things you can call someone,
I actually think this is importantly false (or, at least, importantly incomplete as a characterisation). Modern left-leaning culture really does distinguish between racism in the two senses that you quoted earlier. And when it comes to structural racism, saying that someone is racist (in the sense of having acted in a way that perpetuates and buys into racist structural norms) just isn’t a terrible thing to call someone.
I’ve heard multiple people saying that they think everyone is racist (ie. socialised into problematic norms that perpetuate racist discrimination) and also that they are themselves of course racist (because they too have been socialised in this way).
Structural racism is seen as a big deal by the left. It’s seen as worth correcting the influence of this on ourselves. But it’s not seen as a terrible accusation to acknowledge that a particular statement or behaviour was structurally racist (indeed, saying this can be helpful for allowing people to make progress in challenging the ways that structural racism has impacted their thinking).
Of course, a statement that someone is racist might be ambiguous, between the terrible reading and the structural reading, which is why I wouldn’t personally use it in the latter way. So I do wish we lived in a world where people wouldn’t call you racist for the things in this thread.
I’m surprised so many people would stand for me being called that based on such scant evidence
Setting aside my just-stated wish, my guess is that no-one intended to call you racist in the terrible sense. And, at the very least, my guess is that the reason people “stand for” Akhil’s comment is that they do not see it as an accusation of racism in the terrible sense.
I myself did not read it this way, despite (and I would actually say, because of) very much being steeped in the contemporary left. This is partly because Akhil commented on your comment rather than on you as an individual, and partly because I think the structural, rather than the terrible, claim is the more plausible accusation here (the accusation being something like: the statement is given meaning by a set of structural norms that developed because of racist attitudes and that perpetuates racial disadvantage). So I guess I felt like the charitable read of Akhil was that he wasn’t calling you racist in the terrible sense but rather was making a claim about structural racism.
For what it’s worth, I think it would be a real loss to the community if you chose to be less involved.
Linch, IMO this isn’t about racism. It’s just very condescending. Both the question itself, and the general treatment of non-natives here.
My level of English is much beyond Google translate being of any help, and I understood the same as titotal. Consider that your writing might not convey the meaning you intend, rather than the readers having too poor comprehension to understand it.
Edit: like the other commenter I’ll add that I know you’re well intentioned and I don’t feel very comfortable being part of this strong group reaction (Linch lynch?). But I felt it important to make my thoughts more explicit than just a downvote.
Consider that your writing might not convey the meaning you intend, rather than the readers having too poor comprehension to understand it.
Yeah this is an interesting question to consider. Speaking more generally, perhaps it might be helpful to consider which pieces of evidence are most dispositive for distinguishing the two hypotheses:
many people have poor reading comprehension
I’m bad at conveying information
I think I’ve gathered quite a bit of evidence in favor of the first proposition, and plenty of disconfirmatory evidence against the second.
Quick note: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with asking “are you an english speaker” for this reason, I’m just kinda surprised that that seemed like a crux in this particular case. Their argument seemed cogent, even if you disagreed with it.
Thanks for the affirmation but while I strongly contest the “racism” remark by Akhil, I don’t think you should have much evidence about my internal motives re: “trying to be condescending.” Seems pretty hard to falsify.
If someone consistently generates combinations of words in an obviously adversarial/adverse way, then there are two major explanations:
They have chosen to be disruptive
the average intelligence of an EAforum user allows them to easily find clever ways to do this while simultaneously skirting the rules, or even with charisma on top of that (optimize for gaining status among onlookers)
refuting their argument gives them attention and puts you on a playing field that they are willing to invest way more time into thinking about
They don’t realize that they are being disruptive, e.g. due to language barrier, in which case Linch needs to know because then it is worth his time to make the effort to resolve the issue
They don’t realize they are being disruptive, due to a personality issue that they’re only dimly aware of and calling attention to it might help them
In both scenarios, asking them if they’re a native language speaker appears to be a net positive choice. I think that Linch was tearing down a Chesterton-Schelling fence here, causing an unforseen consequence, such as dozens of people going absolutely bananas.
My model is that Lightcone thinks FTX could have been prevented with this kind of information sharing, so they consider it potentially very impactful. I want Lightcone to discuss their Theory of Change here more thoroughly (maybe in a formal dialog) because I think they weight to risks of corruption from within EA as more dangerous than I do compared to external issues.
Not everyone is well connected enough to hear rumours. Newcomers and/or less-well-connected people need protection from bad actors too. If someone new to the community was considering an opportunity with Nonlinear, they wouldn’t have the same epistemic access as a central and long-standing grant-maker. They could, however, see a public exposé.
Like Guy Raveh’s comment, I think your comment is assuming the conclusion. If it were the case that the only (or best) way to deal with problematic actors in our community is via people learning about them and deciding not to work with them, then I agree that public awareness campaigns is the best strategy. But there are a number of other strategies that does not route completely through everybody voluntarily self-selecting away.
You didn’t provide an alternative, other than the example of you conducting your own private investigation. That option is not open to most, and the beneficial results do not accrue to most.
I agree hundreds of hours of work is a cost; that is a pretty banal point. I think we agree that a more systematic solution would be better than relying on a single individual’s decision to put in a lot of work and take on a lot of risk. But you are, blithely in my view, dismissing one of the few responses that have the potential to protect people. Nonlinear have their own funding, and lots of pre-existing ties to the community and EA public materials. A public expose has a much better chance of protecting newcomers from serious harm than some high-up EAs having a private critical doc.
The impression I have of your view is that it would have been better if Ben hadn’t written or published his post and instead saved his time, and prefer that Nonlinear was quietly rejected by those in the know. Is that an accurate picture of your view?
If you think there are better solutions, it would be good to name them up front, rather than just denigrate public criticism.
Taking a step back, I suspect part of the disagreement here is that I view my position as the default position whereas alternative positions need strong positive arguments for them, whereas (if I understand correctly), you and other commentators/agree-voters appear to believe that the position “public exposes are the best strategy” ought to be the default position and anything else need strong positive arguments for it. Stated that way, I hope you can see why your position is irrational:
The burden of proof isn’t on me. Very few strategies are the best possible strategy, so “X is a good use of time” has a much higher burden of proof than “X is not a good use of time.”
Compare “Charity C is probably a good donation target” vs “Charity C is probably not a good donation target.”
If you didn’t think of alternatives before saying public exposés is good, I’m honestly not sure how to react here. I’m kinda flabbergasted at your reaction (and that of people who agree with you).
Nonlinear have their own funding, and lots of pre-existing ties to the community and EA public materials.
Sure, if people agreed with me about the general case and argued that the Nonlinear exposé was an unusual exception, I’d be more inclined to take their arguments seriously. I do think the external source of funding makes it plausible that Nonlinear specifically could not be defanged via other channels. And I did say earlier “I think the case for public writeups are strongest are when the bad actors in question are too powerful for private accountability (eg SBF), or when somehow all other methods are ineffective.”
A public expose has a much better chance of protecting newcomers from serious harm than some high-up EAs having a private critical doc.
People keep asserting this without backing it up with either numbers or data or even actual arguments (rather than just emotional assertions).
The impression I have of your view is that it would have been better if Ben hadn’t written or published his post and instead saved his time, and prefer that Nonlinear was quietly rejected by those in the know. Is that an accurate picture of your view?
Thanks for asking. I think a better use of Ben’s time (though not necessarily the best use)is to spend .2x as much time on the Nonlinear investigation + followup work and then spend the remaining .8x of his time on other investigations. I think this strictly decreases the influence of bad actors in EA.
Your top-level post did not claim ‘public exposés are not the best strategy’, you claimed “public exposés are often a bad idea in EA”. That is a different claim, and far from a default view. It is also the view I have been arguing against. I think you’ve greatly misunderstood others’ positions, and have rudely dismissed them rather than trying to understand them. You’ve ignored the arguments given by others, while not defending your own assertions. So it’s frustrating to see you playing the ‘I’m being cool-headed and rational here’ card. This has been a pretty disappointing negative update for me. Thanks
Sorry, what does “bad idea” mean to you other than “this is not the best use of resources?” Does it have to mean net negative?
I’ve sorry that you believe I misunderstood other’s positions. Or that I’m playing the “I’m being cool and rational here” card. I don’t personally think I’m being unusually cool here, if anything this is a pretty unpleasant experience that has made me reconsider whether the EA community is worth continued engagement with.
I have made some updates as well, though I need to reflect further on the wisdom of sharing them publicly.
Things can be ‘not the best’, but still good. For example, let’s say a systematic, well-run, whistleblower organisation was the ‘best’ way. And compare it to ‘telling your friends about a bad org’. ‘Telling your friends’ is not the best strategy, but it still might be good to do, or worth doing. Saying “telling your friends is not the best way” is consistent with this. Saying “telling your friends is a bad idea” is not consistent with this.
I.e. ‘bad idea’ connotes much more than just ‘sub-optimal, all things considered’.
Sorry by “best” I was locally thinking of what’s locally best given present limitations, not globally best (which is separately an interesting but less directly relevant discussion). I agree that if there are good actions to do right now, it will be wrong for me to say that all of them are bad because one should wait for (eg) a “systematic, well-run, whistleblower organisation.”
For example, if I was saying “GiveDirectly is a bad charity for animal-welfare focused EAs to donate to,” I meant that there are better charities on the margin for animal-welfare focused EAs to donate to. I do not mean that in the abstract we should not donate to charities because a well-run international government should be handling public goods provisions and animal welfare restrictions instead. I agree that I should not in most cases be comparing real possibilities against an impossible (or at least heavily impractical) ideal.
Similarly, if I said “X is a bad idea for Bob to do,” I meant there are better things for Bob to do with Bob’s existing limitations etc, not that if Bob should magically overcome all of his present limitations and do Herculeanly impossible tasks. And in fact I was making a claim that there are practical and real possibilities that in my lights are probably better.
I.e. ‘bad idea’ connotes much more than just ‘sub-optimal, all things considered’.
Well clearly my choice of words on a quickly fired quick take at 1AM was sub-optimal, all things considered. Especially ex post. But I think it’d be helpful if people actually argued about the merits of different strategies instead of making inferences about my racism or lack thereof, or my rudeness or lack thereof. I feel like I’m putting a lot of work in defending fairly anodyne (denotatively) opinions, even if I had a few bad word choices.
After this conversation, I am considering retreating to more legalese and pre-filtering all my public statements for potential controversy by GPT-4, as a friend of mine suggested privately. I suspect this will be a loss for the EA forum being a place where people could be honest and real and human with each other, but it’d be a gain for my own health as well as productivity.
Happy to end this thread here. On a meta-point, I think paying attention to nuance/tone/implicatures is a better communication strategy than retreating to legalese, but it does need practice. I think reflecting on one’s own communicative ability is more productive than calling others irrational or being passive-aggressive. But it sucks that this has been a bad experience for you. Hope your day goes better!
Most of these have the downside of not giving the accused the chance to respond and thereby giving the community the chance to evaluate both the criticism and the response (which as I wrote recently isn’t necessarily a dominant consideration, but it is an upside of the public writeup).
I agree what you said is a consideration, though I’m not sure that’s an upside. eg I wasted a lot more time/sleep on this topic than if I learned about it elsewhere and triaged accordingly, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other members of the public did as well.
Basically almost any other strategy for dealing with bad actors? Other than maybe “ignore the problem and hope it goes away” which unfortunately seems depressingly common to me.
For example, Ben said he spent 300+ hours on his Nonlinear investigation. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the investigation ended up costing Lightcone 500+ hours total. (Even ignoring all the hours it’s going to cost all other parties). Lightcone very much does not have this time or emotional energy to spend on every (potential) bad actor, and indeed Ben himself said he’s not planning to do it again unless people are willing to buy out his time for >800k/year.
From my perspective, if I hear rumors about a potentially sketchy person that I’m deciding whether to give resources to (most centrally funding, but also you can imagine spots in a gated event, or work hours, or office space, or an implicit or explicit endorsement[1]), it takes me maybe X hours to decide I don’t want to work with them until I see further exculpatory evidence. If I decide to go outside the scope of my formal responsibilities, it’d take me 3-10X hours before gathering enough evidence to share a private docket in semi-formal settings, and probably another 3-10X that (including further investigation, a very careful writeup, and all the followup work) before I’m ready to have a public exposé.
Meanwhile, the world is burning.
If my standard for “rejecting an application because applicant is suss” is as high as “need to have enough evidence and careful writing to be comfortable with a public writeup in a highly adversarial domain against a very probable bad actor,” I’d probably be recommending like, I dunno, 5-10 grants a year.
I think the case for public writeups are strongest are when the bad actors in question are too powerful for private accountability (eg SBF), or when somehow all other methods are ineffective (eg for some reason community members need to know about “here’s a bad actor but many people don’t know” and all the other methods for community gatekeeping have failed). But public exposes feel very much like a “last resort” strategy to me for most issues, and not your front line of defense.
For people not in a similar formal position, you can imagine a similar dilemma for whether you want to spread negative rumors along the whisper network.
It seems like you’re very focused on the individual cost of investigation, and not the community wide benefit of preventing abuse from occurring.
The first and most obvious point is that bad actors cause harm, and we don’t want harm in our community. Aside from the immediate effect, there are also knock-on effects. Bad actors are more likely to engage in unethical behavior (like the FTX fraud), are likely to misuse funds, are non-aligned with our values (do you want an AGI designed by an abuser?), etc.
Even putting morality aside, it doesn’t stack up. 500 hours is roughly 3 months of full-time work. I would say the mistreated employees of nonlinear have lost far more than that. Hell, if a team of 12 loses one week of useful productivity from a bad boss, that cancels out the 500 hours.
May I ask again if you are a native English speaker?
I’m assuming this is an uncharitable and somewhat dickish way to accuse me of not reading your comment. I assure you I have. You are saying that it is not worth putting 500 hours into the level of investigation required to get it to the level of evidence required for a “public expose”. I am saying that this is worth it, because the community gets far more than 500 hours of benefit from this investigation. The lesser amount of investigation you advocate for will have a comparably smaller effect.
Also, I recommend reading up on the forum guidelines again.
We’re issuing a warning for this comment for breaking our Forum norm on civility. We don’t think it was meant to be insulting, based on Linch’s previous Twitter poll (created months ago) and the fact that he himself is not a native speaker. However, we think the stark difference between the Twitter poll and responses here shows that this comment was widely taken as insulting, even if that wasn’t the intent. (I certainly saw it that way before reading the Twitter poll.)
A subsequent comment (“I at least made an effort to understand the language when I immigrated”) was more obviously an attack on titotal, and contributed to this warning.
Linch is an extremely active Forum user whose contributions have been vastly beneficial on net, and this strikes us as an uncharacteristic lapse. A warning doesn’t mean that someone hasn’t been a valuable member of the Forum; however, being a valuable member of the Forum doesn’t insulate someone from moderator action in cases like this.
We feel grateful to the community for responding productively to this situation.
On the constructive side, it’s hard to say what a “better” version of this comment would have looked like; even comments like “I think there may be a language barrier” still imply something along the lines of “you understand me so poorly that I think you may not be fluent in English”.
In the end, we think the best response to a confusing argument is to engage at the points of confusion (if that seems worthwhile), or ignore it (if not).
Another member of our team drafted these sample comments — not as “you should have said exactly X”, but “here’s one shape a better response could have taken”:
Engaging:
Ignoring:
@Linch this is an unacceptable comment, steeped with condescension and some racism.
I’m aware of this failure mode, but I specifically asked Twitter a few months ago whether this type of question is considered racist, and the unanimous consensus is “no.” It’s possible they’ve misled me however.
My current position is that people with apparent poor reading comprehension[1] are not worth engaging with online[2] if they’re native speakers, but non-native speakers can at least use Google translate or something[3] so having a conversation with them isn’t hopeless.
I feel like I already spend a ton of effort on trying to make my writing simple enough to be understandable to the 20th percentile of EA Forum users (eg have far shorter sentences than my preferred style). Obviously if I’m a better writer explaining ideas simply would be effortless, but I’m not. I just wish readers would put in at least a bit of effort, and/or be more willing to acknowledge fault.
especially if feigned, as appears to be the case.
I know this might be unfair for smart people with reading disabilities like dyslexia. I’m sorry; I can only hope in-person conversations and podcasts are enough.
Not saying this is necessary. I’m not a native English speaker either, but I at least made an effort to understand the language when I immigrated.
Linch, surprised you felt like titotal wasn’t reading your comment properly, since I feel like they make a version of the basically right argument here which is around deterrence and the benefits of public knowledge of wrongdoing outside the specific case. Any sort of investigatory/punitive process (e.g. in most legal contexts) will often have resources devoted to it that are very significant compared to the actual potential wrongdoing being interrogated. But having a system that reliably identifies wrongdoing is quite valuable (and even a patchwork system is probably also quite valuable). Plus there are a whole bunch of diffuse positive externalities to information (e.g. not requiring each actor in the system to spend the effort making a private judgment that has a decent chance of being wrong).
I think the broader problem with your argument here is it’s an example of consequentialism struggling to deal with collective action problems/the value of institutions. The idea that all acts can be cashed out into utility (i.e. “world is burning” above) struggles to engage with cases where broader institutions are necessary for an ecosystem to function. To use an example from outside this case, if one evaluates public statements on their individual utility (rather than descriptive accuracy), it can stymie free inquiry and lead to poorer decision-making. (Not saying this can never be accounted for through a consequentialist or primarily consequentialist theory but I think it’s a persistent and difficult problem).
I think “you didn’t seem to read my comment, which frustrates me” is a better thing to say to someone than “are you a native english speaker?” since it seems to get at the problem more directly and isn’t exclusionary to non-native speakers (which is rude, even if that’s not the intention). I also think the instant case should give pause about the way you’re attempting to deal with bad faith critics, since labeling a critic mentally as poorly comprehending or in bad faith can be a subconscious crutch to miss the thrust of their argument.
On the object-level, I think the argument has to route around something like “1 public investigation is worth 3-10 private cases not being addressed/punished,” because in the world we live in, resources are patently limited and most people empirically do not go around investigating potential bad actors.
I feel pretty much capped at how much time/emotional energy I can spend on investigations, given that I have competing priorities like a day job and writing snarky EA forum comments. I already kinda feel like “did my time” for things-akin-to-investigations that I initiated or participated in; if the expectation is always a public writeup I might as well curl up in a ball or something. And I suspect I’m more able/willing to take on public flak and private reprisal than most people on this forum. So I expect having norms to make investigations more costly to straightforwardly decrease them happening.
I think an undertone in much of this thread is that people simultaneously expect processes that can “reliably identify wrongdoing” as well as the benefits of public discourse, without being willing to pay the costs associated with such investigations and disclosures. It reminds me of taxpayers who want lower taxes and increased budgets. Overall this feels surprisingly “not EA” to me, in that one of the basic tenets of EA is appreciating the existence of tradeoffs.
Yeah this is helpful. Though to be clear, I think they did “read” my comment, just didn’t try to understand it.
And I’m sorry to appear to be exclusionary to non-native speakers, though again I want to register that (as you know) I’m not a native speaker myself whereas you and most people reprimanding me appear to be.
Yeah I should have clarified that I knew you’re not a native speaker and understand why that motivates your argument, but the harm of being exclusionary stems in part because not every reader will know that. (Though I think even if every reader did know that you were a non-native speaker, it still does create a negative effect (via this exclusionary channel) albeit a smaller one).
Also I didn’t take your claim to be “investigations should not only take place in cases where their results will be made public.” (Which seems to be the implication of your reply above but maybe I’m misunderstanding). I don’t think “public exposes are useful” implies that you need to necessarily conduct the work needed for a public expose in cases where you suspect wrongdoing.
Should also say as your friend that I recognize it sucks to be criticized especially when it feels like a group pile-on, and I appreciate your making controversial claims even if I don’t agree with them.
For the record, I consider being a non-native speaker exculpatory evidence. I’d much rather exclude native speakers with poor[1] reading comprehension than non-native speakers.
I agree it’s not a necessary result, but I think it has a strong directional effect. At the very least people will feel encouraged to make their results public, a situation where they’re likely to already systematically underestimate the costs (though tbf maybe some of the benefits as well).
I appreciate the sympathy! I was worried a while ago that I cared more about being liked than being right, so I’m at least glad to get some contrary evidence here.
say worse than GPT-3.5? Or worse than GPT-4, I’m not sure.
As long as a public exposé reaches 3-10X more people, this seems entirely plausible.
Influence in EA is not uniformly distributed, nor is access to information, nor is ability to draw inferences from information.
But the potential to be hurt by bad actors is (Edit: or, arguably, people with less influence and less access to non-public information are actually more likely to get hurt).
I agree with Akhil. There is no benefit to the comment you wrote and plenty of downside. If you’re feeling hopeless about conversing with someone or feeling misunderstood, say that instead. Condescendingly implying someone who disagrees with you isn’t good enough at English because they’re not a native speaker is a terrible response.
I’m confused why people keep thinking “not a native speaker” is a bad/unkind assumption, whereas from my perspective that is the most charitable plausible explanation of titotal’s repeated posting behavior (and the only one that makes me think it might be worthwhile to continue engaging with them). Every other explanation I could come up with is less flattering.
Are you able to clarify what the issue with titotal’s posts is?
Tbh I’d rather go to sleep rather than litigate this case further, but sure.
The main issue is frequent aggressive misreadings. To give a few examples that I feel less emotional about now:
See this comment, and then doubling down here. I struggle to see how a native speaker could’ve misunderstood me.
At the time people challenged me when I suggested titotal use Google Translate. I was cowardly and retracted my comment, which I now regret.
See also here: “there is no guarantee that your co-workers are good housemates just because they are EA”: arguments for a lack of a sufficiency condition seems bizarre since no one could plausibly make a positive sufficiency case (as opposed to eg a correlational case, or Pablo’s reply).
ETA: see also here, which at the time I held my tongue,
I would like to reiterate that it’s pretty rich that multiple people who are probably native English speakers have decided to call me racist over that remark. If it helps, I can assure you that race was not at all on my mind when I made that comment, and indeed I’m quite willing to listen to people who display competent moral reasoning, regardless of demographics.
Hi Linch,
I’m sorry you felt offended by my comment. A few points:
I do not think you’re a racist or were trying to be racist, or that race was on your mind when making that comment. I thought you were feeling misunderstood by titotal and mistakenly thought this was a good way to push back. I said there are no upsides and plenty of downsides to your comment and suggested that you be more direct with your actual problem with titotal instead. “If you’re feeling hopeless about conversing with someone or feeling misunderstood, say that instead.”
Your defense about this being the most charitable interpretation you can think of doesn’t engage with any of the points above. A “charitable” explanation that is unlikely to be relevant even if true is just not worth much, nor did you ask your question in a way to make it easy for an actual non-native speaker to admit to a potential vulnerability if that was going on. I read your comment as a passive-aggressive “Can’t you read?” attack which carelessly used language issues as a shield against being called out for being an attack.
I’ve seen a previous similar comment you made and ignored it at the time, especially since (as you say somewhere here) you could have easily been a non-native speaker yourself. But because it had seemingly moved from a one-off comment to a pattern that you thought was justified, I’m glad I pushed back on it.
I did not call you racist and neither did Akhil. We called out issues with your comment. I hope you are mindful of the difference.
I am sympathetic to a general point about native speakers scolding a non-native speaker for not being inclusive enough in their language, but you are making some assumptions in applying it here.
As an unrelated point, I personally hope whether you listen to someone or not isn’t founded on whether they display competent moral reasoning, but I’m unsure what you meant by this.
Yes, this is an accurate reading. Except I dispute “carelessly.”
Hmm sorry how is the following statement not a claim that I was being racist, at least in that incidence?
If I say someone is doing something unacceptably racist, this is not exactly a subtle accusation! I mean, it’s possible someone isn’t overall racist in most ways but is racist in a specific way (eg think of an overall progressive voter/parent who still tries to persuade their children to not marry outside of their race). But I also contest that I was being racist in that comment specifically.
Let’s imagine your charitable hypothesis was true and titotal was a non-native speaker who misread some comments due to lack of familiarity with the language. When they pushed back on something you said, you condescendingly asked them if they were a native speaker and ignored everything else they said. This is a tactic with a racist element.
Here’s the dictionary definition of racism:
Can you clarify whether you think my comment fits into (1) or (2), or both? Alternatively, if you think dictionary.com’s definition is not the one you were using, can you pull up which alternative definition of racism you and/or Akhil were invoking when you made your comments?
I’m surprised by this question. Can you explain what prompted it? I think I’ve been pretty clear that I don’t think your comment was motivated by (1).
Ok, in that case your claim is that my sentence is part of a “policy, system of government etc...that favors members of the dominant social group?”
I do not view my actions as racist, at least in this instance. If the claim is accurate, I need to reflect more on how to be less racist. If the claim is inaccurate, then, well, I also have some other reflection to do about life choices.
I will probably refrain from engaging further.
Linch, I believe you wrote elsewhere here that you wish people had engaged with you charitably, instead of focusing on possibly flawed word choice. I have tried to do this with you, although I feel you haven’t always returned the favor (uncharitable assumptions about my motivations/background, mischaracterizing my comments). You contested there was an element of racism in your comment and I gave you a simple, non-legalese outline of why I think so. In response to this, instead of engaging with my point, you asked me an extremely basic question about how to define racism, a question I had already partially addressed multiple times in how it applies here.
My gut reaction was that this was a defensive reaction and you weren’t interested in engaging, you just wanted to seem not racist and win an online debate.
Of course, my gut could be wrong. So I asked you where you were coming from. And I’m glad to hear you seem to be genuinely interested in learning whether you made mistakes here.
Unfortunately, I am not interested in the type of debate you’re setting up. I gave you a simple outline earlier of where I was coming from and you are welcome to engage with it.
Take care.
I don’t personally view your comment as racist, but it feels like you’re trying to understand why someone might, so here’s a take.
Here’s a thing that I think is true: your comment came across as dismissive because it didn’t engage with the substance of what had been said. Instead, it seemed to dismiss someone’s substantive comments on the basis of their command of English. Consequently, it came across as a personal attack and specifically as dismissively disrespectful. (To be clear, I’m not saying this was your intention in making the comment; here I’m making a claim about how it came across, or at least how it will have come across to some readers)
Now let’s just focus on it as a dismissal for a moment (that is, let’s just focus on the role it plays as a dismissal despite the fact that this wasn’t the role you were intending it to play). This sort of dismissal might strike some as racist for two reasons:
1. Because there is a (very imperfect) connection between race and native grasp of English, this sort of strategy for dismissal of a person’s substantive views is likely to disproportionally impact people of certain races and is likely to reinforce existing factors that mean such people are dismissed/disrespected/not-adequately-heard. (This is perhaps particularly crucial given that English is one of a small number of languages that is disproportionately important for having power)
2. Because of 1, this strategy is (I suspect) actually deliberately used in many cases as a form of racist dismissal. At the very least, many people will perceive that this is so. Consequently, statements like this take on a certain sort of cultural meaning and carry with them certain consequences (for example, if someone has been racistly dismissed in this way many times before, it will be more hurtful to them to face this sort of dismissal again, and so the sentence comes to be particularly harmful to people who have experienced racist attacks).
Given 1 and 2, this sort of statement occupies a certain place in a set of norms around discourse: it is a member of a class of statements that reinforces racial disparities, that harms people disproportionally from certain races, and that is used as a dogwhistle to describe racist dismissal as something else. I think this does roughly fit the second definition of racism that you point to (or, at least, the more complete version of this that recognises that systemtic racism can be about not just policies or systems but also about the role played in broader social norms).
For myself, I buy at least some of the above, and think it might mean it was worth commenting on the way that your commenting could be upsetting to some. I wouldn’t personally chose to describe the comment as racism, because I think this is too easily read as a comment on a person’s intention and virtue, rather than some sort of comment about the place of the statement within a broader societal context. And as I’m confident your intentions here were good, I personally would avoid this description.
So I do understand this is not your actual position and you’re trying to explain someone else’s position. Nonetheless I’m going to try to argue against it directly:
As a non-native speaker, I think I have literally never been dismissed in this way[1]. So I suspect you’re setting up an imaginary problem. But I only have anecdotes to go off of rather than data; if someone has survey data I’m willing to update quickly.
Here’s where I’m coming from: I think you are bending over backwards to support what I view to be a blatantly false claim. In modern left-leaning American culture, “racist” is one of the worst things you can call someone, I’m surprised so many people would stand for me being called that based on such scant evidence, and I’m currently reflecting on whether it makes sense for me to continue to devote so much of my life to being in a community (see EDIT [2]) that finds this type of thing permissible.
I’m not surprised my comment is upsetting to the intended target (what I perceive as poor reading comprehension by people who know better), and/or to people who might choose to take offense on others’ behalf. If anybody genuinely feels unwelcome for object-level race or ethnic-related reasons based on my comment, I’m deeply sorry and I’m happy to apologize further publicly if someone in that position messages me about it and/or messages one of the forum mods to relay the message to me.
Thank you. To be clear, I do appreciate both your confidence and your reticence.
EDIT: A month + in, no one has ever messaged me saying that they felt unwelcome for object-level race- or ethnic-related reasons. This feels like confirmatory evidence that privileged native speakers in fact are doing the political move of “feeling offended on others’ behalf” instead of being willing to acknowledge (and/or defend) their own mediocrity. (See also anti-Asian rules passed in educational etc institutions in the name of “diversity”, which I’m pretty sure benefits white people much more than other ethnic minorities)
See also this Twitter poll https://twitter.com/LinchZhang/status/1708625779800867126
And to be clear I’ve experienced very blatant (though ultimately harmless) racism not too infrequnetly, as an argumentative visibly nonwhite person on the ’net.
EDIT: I’m afraid that came off too dramatically. I do view being involved in the community as a community pretty differently than being involved professionally. I still intend to work on EA projects etc even if I reduce eg EA Forum commenting or going to social events dramatically, and personal unpleasantness is not going to stop me from working in EA unless it’s like >10-100x this comment thread daily. (And even if I stop having jobs in EA organizations for other reasons I’d likely still intend to be effectively altruistic with my time and other resources)
I’m not really up for a long exchange here, as I find this sort of thing draining. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t reply further after this message.
In text, at least, your English is notably better than the average native speaker, so I’m not convinced you’re representative here. Even setting aside your grasp of English, your obvious high intelligence would, I suspect, make it pretty hard to pull off dismissing you in this way, as would your willingness to speak your views. So I’m not convinced that the fact that you haven’t experienced this means that others haven’t.
That said, I accept that I have no actual data to point to.
I actually think this is importantly false (or, at least, importantly incomplete as a characterisation). Modern left-leaning culture really does distinguish between racism in the two senses that you quoted earlier. And when it comes to structural racism, saying that someone is racist (in the sense of having acted in a way that perpetuates and buys into racist structural norms) just isn’t a terrible thing to call someone.
I’ve heard multiple people saying that they think everyone is racist (ie. socialised into problematic norms that perpetuate racist discrimination) and also that they are themselves of course racist (because they too have been socialised in this way).
Structural racism is seen as a big deal by the left. It’s seen as worth correcting the influence of this on ourselves. But it’s not seen as a terrible accusation to acknowledge that a particular statement or behaviour was structurally racist (indeed, saying this can be helpful for allowing people to make progress in challenging the ways that structural racism has impacted their thinking).
Of course, a statement that someone is racist might be ambiguous, between the terrible reading and the structural reading, which is why I wouldn’t personally use it in the latter way. So I do wish we lived in a world where people wouldn’t call you racist for the things in this thread.
Setting aside my just-stated wish, my guess is that no-one intended to call you racist in the terrible sense. And, at the very least, my guess is that the reason people “stand for” Akhil’s comment is that they do not see it as an accusation of racism in the terrible sense.
I myself did not read it this way, despite (and I would actually say, because of) very much being steeped in the contemporary left. This is partly because Akhil commented on your comment rather than on you as an individual, and partly because I think the structural, rather than the terrible, claim is the more plausible accusation here (the accusation being something like: the statement is given meaning by a set of structural norms that developed because of racist attitudes and that perpetuates racial disadvantage). So I guess I felt like the charitable read of Akhil was that he wasn’t calling you racist in the terrible sense but rather was making a claim about structural racism.
For what it’s worth, I think it would be a real loss to the community if you chose to be less involved.
Linch, IMO this isn’t about racism. It’s just very condescending. Both the question itself, and the general treatment of non-natives here.
My level of English is much beyond Google translate being of any help, and I understood the same as titotal. Consider that your writing might not convey the meaning you intend, rather than the readers having too poor comprehension to understand it.
Edit: like the other commenter I’ll add that I know you’re well intentioned and I don’t feel very comfortable being part of this strong group reaction (Linch lynch?). But I felt it important to make my thoughts more explicit than just a downvote.
Yeah this is an interesting question to consider. Speaking more generally, perhaps it might be helpful to consider which pieces of evidence are most dispositive for distinguishing the two hypotheses:
many people have poor reading comprehension
I’m bad at conveying information
I think I’ve gathered quite a bit of evidence in favor of the first proposition, and plenty of disconfirmatory evidence against the second.
Quick note: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with asking “are you an english speaker” for this reason, I’m just kinda surprised that that seemed like a crux in this particular case. Their argument seemed cogent, even if you disagreed with it.
This wasn’t ideal but I want to affirm that Linch is not rascist or trying to be condescending.
Thanks for the affirmation but while I strongly contest the “racism” remark by Akhil, I don’t think you should have much evidence about my internal motives re: “trying to be condescending.” Seems pretty hard to falsify.
If someone consistently generates combinations of words in an obviously adversarial/adverse way, then there are two major explanations:
They have chosen to be disruptive
the average intelligence of an EAforum user allows them to easily find clever ways to do this while simultaneously skirting the rules, or even with charisma on top of that (optimize for gaining status among onlookers)
refuting their argument gives them attention and puts you on a playing field that they are willing to invest way more time into thinking about
They don’t realize that they are being disruptive, e.g. due to language barrier, in which case Linch needs to know because then it is worth his time to make the effort to resolve the issue
They don’t realize they are being disruptive, due to a personality issue that they’re only dimly aware of and calling attention to it might help them
In both scenarios, asking them if they’re a native language speaker appears to be a net positive choice. I think that Linch was tearing down a Chesterton-Schelling fence here, causing an unforseen consequence, such as dozens of people going absolutely bananas.
To be clear, I think “obviously adversarial/adverse way” is too strong.
My model is that Lightcone thinks FTX could have been prevented with this kind of information sharing, so they consider it potentially very impactful. I want Lightcone to discuss their Theory of Change here more thoroughly (maybe in a formal dialog) because I think they weight to risks of corruption from within EA as more dangerous than I do compared to external issues.
Not everyone is well connected enough to hear rumours. Newcomers and/or less-well-connected people need protection from bad actors too. If someone new to the community was considering an opportunity with Nonlinear, they wouldn’t have the same epistemic access as a central and long-standing grant-maker. They could, however, see a public exposé.
Like Guy Raveh’s comment, I think your comment is assuming the conclusion. If it were the case that the only (or best) way to deal with problematic actors in our community is via people learning about them and deciding not to work with them, then I agree that public awareness campaigns is the best strategy. But there are a number of other strategies that does not route completely through everybody voluntarily self-selecting away.
You didn’t provide an alternative, other than the example of you conducting your own private investigation. That option is not open to most, and the beneficial results do not accrue to most. I agree hundreds of hours of work is a cost; that is a pretty banal point. I think we agree that a more systematic solution would be better than relying on a single individual’s decision to put in a lot of work and take on a lot of risk. But you are, blithely in my view, dismissing one of the few responses that have the potential to protect people. Nonlinear have their own funding, and lots of pre-existing ties to the community and EA public materials. A public expose has a much better chance of protecting newcomers from serious harm than some high-up EAs having a private critical doc. The impression I have of your view is that it would have been better if Ben hadn’t written or published his post and instead saved his time, and prefer that Nonlinear was quietly rejected by those in the know. Is that an accurate picture of your view? If you think there are better solutions, it would be good to name them up front, rather than just denigrate public criticism.
Taking a step back, I suspect part of the disagreement here is that I view my position as the default position whereas alternative positions need strong positive arguments for them, whereas (if I understand correctly), you and other commentators/agree-voters appear to believe that the position “public exposes are the best strategy” ought to be the default position and anything else need strong positive arguments for it. Stated that way, I hope you can see why your position is irrational:
The burden of proof isn’t on me. Very few strategies are the best possible strategy, so “X is a good use of time” has a much higher burden of proof than “X is not a good use of time.”
Compare “Charity C is probably a good donation target” vs “Charity C is probably not a good donation target.”
If you didn’t think of alternatives before saying public exposés is good, I’m honestly not sure how to react here. I’m kinda flabbergasted at your reaction (and that of people who agree with you).
Separately, I did write up alternatives here.
Sure, if people agreed with me about the general case and argued that the Nonlinear exposé was an unusual exception, I’d be more inclined to take their arguments seriously. I do think the external source of funding makes it plausible that Nonlinear specifically could not be defanged via other channels. And I did say earlier “I think the case for public writeups are strongest are when the bad actors in question are too powerful for private accountability (eg SBF), or when somehow all other methods are ineffective.”
People keep asserting this without backing it up with either numbers or data or even actual arguments (rather than just emotional assertions).
Thanks for asking. I think a better use of Ben’s time (though not necessarily the best use)is to spend .2x as much time on the Nonlinear investigation + followup work and then spend the remaining .8x of his time on other investigations. I think this strictly decreases the influence of bad actors in EA.
Your top-level post did not claim ‘public exposés are not the best strategy’, you claimed “public exposés are often a bad idea in EA”. That is a different claim, and far from a default view. It is also the view I have been arguing against. I think you’ve greatly misunderstood others’ positions, and have rudely dismissed them rather than trying to understand them. You’ve ignored the arguments given by others, while not defending your own assertions. So it’s frustrating to see you playing the ‘I’m being cool-headed and rational here’ card. This has been a pretty disappointing negative update for me. Thanks
Sorry, what does “bad idea” mean to you other than “this is not the best use of resources?” Does it have to mean net negative?
I’ve sorry that you believe I misunderstood other’s positions. Or that I’m playing the “I’m being cool and rational here” card. I don’t personally think I’m being unusually cool here, if anything this is a pretty unpleasant experience that has made me reconsider whether the EA community is worth continued engagement with.
I have made some updates as well, though I need to reflect further on the wisdom of sharing them publicly.
Things can be ‘not the best’, but still good. For example, let’s say a systematic, well-run, whistleblower organisation was the ‘best’ way. And compare it to ‘telling your friends about a bad org’. ‘Telling your friends’ is not the best strategy, but it still might be good to do, or worth doing. Saying “telling your friends is not the best way” is consistent with this. Saying “telling your friends is a bad idea” is not consistent with this.
I.e. ‘bad idea’ connotes much more than just ‘sub-optimal, all things considered’.
Sorry by “best” I was locally thinking of what’s locally best given present limitations, not globally best (which is separately an interesting but less directly relevant discussion). I agree that if there are good actions to do right now, it will be wrong for me to say that all of them are bad because one should wait for (eg) a “systematic, well-run, whistleblower organisation.”
For example, if I was saying “GiveDirectly is a bad charity for animal-welfare focused EAs to donate to,” I meant that there are better charities on the margin for animal-welfare focused EAs to donate to. I do not mean that in the abstract we should not donate to charities because a well-run international government should be handling public goods provisions and animal welfare restrictions instead. I agree that I should not in most cases be comparing real possibilities against an impossible (or at least heavily impractical) ideal.
Similarly, if I said “X is a bad idea for Bob to do,” I meant there are better things for Bob to do with Bob’s existing limitations etc, not that if Bob should magically overcome all of his present limitations and do Herculeanly impossible tasks. And in fact I was making a claim that there are practical and real possibilities that in my lights are probably better.
Well clearly my choice of words on a quickly fired quick take at 1AM was sub-optimal, all things considered. Especially ex post. But I think it’d be helpful if people actually argued about the merits of different strategies instead of making inferences about my racism or lack thereof, or my rudeness or lack thereof. I feel like I’m putting a lot of work in defending fairly anodyne (denotatively) opinions, even if I had a few bad word choices.
After this conversation, I am considering retreating to more legalese and pre-filtering all my public statements for potential controversy by GPT-4, as a friend of mine suggested privately. I suspect this will be a loss for the EA forum being a place where people could be honest and real and human with each other, but it’d be a gain for my own health as well as productivity.
Happy to end this thread here. On a meta-point, I think paying attention to nuance/tone/implicatures is a better communication strategy than retreating to legalese, but it does need practice. I think reflecting on one’s own communicative ability is more productive than calling others irrational or being passive-aggressive. But it sucks that this has been a bad experience for you. Hope your day goes better!
Can you give some examples of other strategies you think seem better?
eg, some (much lighter) investigation, followed by:
denying them power/resources if you are personally in a position to do so
talking to the offenders if you think they are corrigible and not retributive
alternatively, talking to someone in a senior position/position of authority over the offenders who can deliver the message more sternly etc
(if nonprofit) talking to the nonprofit’s board if it’s not captured
(if grad student, and the problems are professional) talking to their advisor if you think the advisor’s sympathetic to your concerns
(if funded by EA folks) talking to their funders
(if clearcut case of criminal conduct in a jurisdiction that is likely to care) giving information you’ve gathered to the police
propagate the relevant rumors along your whisper network
circulating a draft version of the post you want to make public privately first, with or without your name
adding their names to a relevant blacklist
Most of these have the downside of not giving the accused the chance to respond and thereby giving the community the chance to evaluate both the criticism and the response (which as I wrote recently isn’t necessarily a dominant consideration, but it is an upside of the public writeup).
I agree what you said is a consideration, though I’m not sure that’s an upside. eg I wasted a lot more time/sleep on this topic than if I learned about it elsewhere and triaged accordingly, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other members of the public did as well.