There’s a time and place to discuss exceptions to ethics and when goals might justify the means, but this post clearly isn’t it.
Other folks in this comment thread mentioned that Ollie’s request doesn’t require any long philosophical analyses; it just requires leaving out sentences that are hyperbole.
I want to separately bid for a norm on the EA Forum that we err on the side of “encouraging factual discussion at awkward times and in awkward places”, as opposed to erring on the side of “people wait around for a maximally clear social sign al that it’s Okay to voice their thoughts”. If a post like this belongs on the EA Forum at all, then I think it should be fine to do our normal EA-Forum thing of nitpicking phrasings, asking follow-up questions, etc.
It’s RP giving an update/statement that’s legally robust
I don’t think that in this case, saying false things improves RP’s legal situation. I’d assume the goal is reputational (send the right social signals to EAs and random-journalists-and-social-media-users-paying-attention-to-EA), as opposed to legal.
But yes, there might be legal reasons to leave out the sentence altogether, if the alternative is to try to hammer out a much more concrete and detailed version of the sentence? Also, this is a co-written post, and it can be hard to phrase those in ways that are agreeable to every co-author.
I personally mainly disagree with Oliver on the above thread—however, given that there is disagreement, it seems very healthy to me for there to be an open discussion on it.
In this case the issue doesn’t seem scary to discuss publicly. If this were about a much more directly controversial and serious issue, say about public allegations about individuals, that’s where I’d prefer trying to begin it privately first.
> I don’t think that in this case, saying false things improves RP’s legal situation. I’d assume the goal is reputational
I personally didn’t see this as a legal statement, as much as a public statement meant for the community at large.
Other folks in this comment thread mentioned that Ollie’s request doesn’t require any long philosophical analyses; it just requires leaving out sentences that are hyperbole.
I want to separately bid for a norm on the EA Forum that we err on the side of “encouraging factual discussion at awkward times and in awkward places”, as opposed to erring on the side of “people wait around for a maximally clear social sign al that it’s Okay to voice their thoughts”. If a post like this belongs on the EA Forum at all, then I think it should be fine to do our normal EA-Forum thing of nitpicking phrasings, asking follow-up questions, etc.
I don’t think that in this case, saying false things improves RP’s legal situation. I’d assume the goal is reputational (send the right social signals to EAs and random-journalists-and-social-media-users-paying-attention-to-EA), as opposed to legal.
But yes, there might be legal reasons to leave out the sentence altogether, if the alternative is to try to hammer out a much more concrete and detailed version of the sentence? Also, this is a co-written post, and it can be hard to phrase those in ways that are agreeable to every co-author.
I basically agree.
I personally mainly disagree with Oliver on the above thread—however, given that there is disagreement, it seems very healthy to me for there to be an open discussion on it.
In this case the issue doesn’t seem scary to discuss publicly. If this were about a much more directly controversial and serious issue, say about public allegations about individuals, that’s where I’d prefer trying to begin it privately first.
> I don’t think that in this case, saying false things improves RP’s legal situation. I’d assume the goal is reputational
I personally didn’t see this as a legal statement, as much as a public statement meant for the community at large.