The post in which I speak about EAs being uncomfortable about us publishing the article only talks about interactions with people who did not have any information about initial drafting with Torres. At that stage, the paper was completely different and a paper between Kemp and I. None of the critiques about it or the conversations about it involved concerns about Torres, co-authoring with Torres or arguments by Torres, except in so far as they might have taken Torres an example of the closing doors that can follow a critique. The paper was in such a totally different state and it would have been misplaced to call it a collaboration with Torres.
There was a very early draft of Torres and Kemp which I was invited to look at (in December 2020) and collaborate on. While the arguments seemed promising to me, I thought it needed major re-writing of both tone and content. No one instructed me (maybe someone instructed Luke?) that one could not co-author with Torres. I also don’t recall that we were forced to take Torres off the collaboration (I’m not sure who know about the conversations about collaborations we had): we decided to part because we wanted to move the content and tone in a very different direction, because Torres had (to our surprise) unilaterally published major parts of the initial draft as a mini-book already and because we thought that this collaboration was going to be very difficult. I recall video calls in which we discussed the matter with Torres, decided to take out sections that were initially supplied by Torres and cite Torres’ mini-book whereever we deemed it necessary to refer to it. The degree to which the Democratising Risk paper is influenced by Torres is seen in our in-text citations: we don’t hide the fact that we find some of the arguments noteworthy! Torres agreed with those plans.
At the time it seemed to me that I and Torres were trying to achieve fundamentally different goals: I wanted to start a critical discussion within EA and Torres was ready by that stage to incoculate others against EA and longtermism. It was clear to me that the tone and style of argumentation of initial drafts had little chance of being taken seriously in EA. My own opinion is that many arguments made by Torres are not rigorous enough to sway me, but that they often contain an initial source of contention that is worth spending time developping further to see whether it has substance. Torres and I agree in so far as we surely both think there are several worthy critiques of EA and longtermism that should be considered, but I think we differ greatly in our credences in the plausibility of different critiques, how we wanted to treat and present critiques and who we wanted to discuss them with.
The emotional contexual embedding of an argument matters greatly to its perception. I thought EAs, like most people, were not protected from assessing arguments emotionally and while I don’t follow EA dramas closely (someone also kindly alerted me to this one unfolding), by early 2021 I had gotten the memo that Torres had become an emotional signal for EAs to discount much of what the name was attached to. At the time I thought it would not do the arguments justice to let them be discounted because of an associated name that many in EA seem to have an emotional reaction against and the question of reception did become one factor for why we thought it best not to consider the co-authorship with Torres. One can of course manage perception of a paper via co-authorship and we considered collaborating with respected EAs to give it more credibility but we decided both against name-dropping those people who invested via long conversations and commentary in the piece to boost it as much as we decided not to advertise that there are obvious overlaps with some of Torres’ critiques. There is nothing to hide in my view: one can read Torres’ work and Democratising Risk (and in fact many other peoples’ critiques) and see similarities—this should probably strengthen one’s belief that there’s something in that ballpark of arguments that many people feel we should take seriously?
Apart from the fact that it really is an entirely different paper (what you saw is version 26 or something and I think about 30 people have commented on it. I’m not sure it’s meaningful to speak about V1 and V20 as being the same paper. And what you see is all there is: all the citations of Torres are indeed pointing to writing by Torres, but they are easily found and you’ll see that it is not a disproportionate influence), we did indeed hope to avoid the exact scenario we find ourselves in now! The paper is at risk of being evaluated in light of any connection to Torres rather than on it’s own terms, and my trustworthiness in reporting on EAs treatment of critiques is being questioned because I cared about the presentation and reception of the arguments in this paper? A huge amount of work went into adjusting the tone of the paper to EAs (irrespective of Torres, this was a point of contention between Luke and I too), to ensure the arguments would get a fair hearing and we had to balance this against non-EA outsiders who thought we were not forceful enough.
I think we succeeded in this balance, since both sides still to tell us we didn’t do quite enough (the tone still seems harsh to EAs and too timid to outsiders) but both EAs and outsiders do engage with the paper and the arguments and I do think it is true that there is a greater awareness about (self-) censorship risk and critiques being valuable. Having published , EAs have so far been kind towards me. This is great! I do hope it’ll stay this way. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not sexy to be seen as the critic. It doesn’t feel great to be told a paper will damage an institution, to have others insinuate that I plug my own papers under pseudonyms in forum comments or that I had malicious intentions in being open about the experience, and it’s annoying to be placed into boxes with other authors who you might strongly disagree with. While I understand that those who don’t know me must take any piece of evidence they can get to evaluate the trustworthiness of my claims, I find it a little concerning that anyone should be willing to infer and evaluate character from minor interactions. Shouldn’t we rather say: given that we can’t fully verify her experience, can we think about why such an experience would be bad for the project of EA and what safeguards we have in place such that those experiences don’t happen? My hope was that I can serve as a positive example to others who feel the need to voice whatever opinion (“see it’s not so bad!”), so I thank anyone on here who is trying to ease the exhaust that inevitably comes with navigating criticism in a community. The experience so far has made me think that EAs care very much that all arguments (including those they disagree with) are heard. Even if you don’t think I’m trustworthy and earnest in my concerns, do please continue to keep the benefit of doubt in mind towards your perceived critics, I think we all agree they are valuable to have among us and if you care about EA, do keep the process of assessing trustworthiness amicable, if not for me then for future critics who do a better job than I.
@throwaway151 I recommend editing this post to include a link to this comment in its body (and maybe change the title). At this point it seems like it’s Torres’ word against Cremer’s and I see no reason to default to Torres’ side/interpretation given this. For people who won’t read the comments that carefully this seems important, especially since this post looks quiet enough now that it’s unlikely this comment will be upvoted to the top comment above one that has karma in the triple digits.
At this point, this looks like it was a motivated attack on Cremer and Kemp because of a vendetta against Torres—which wasn’t obvious until the “anonymous” author decided to post a litany of his multi-year documentation of all the things he’s upset at Emile about.
So yes, I think that changing the post to include this new revelation—one which should have been investigated before posting—clearly and at the top of the post, is a minimal necessary step, and I think that the Moderation team should probably step in if it doesn’t happen.
ETA: Glad to see that this was done, albeit minimally and partially. It needs to be clearer, since it is fundamentally disputing the claims made, which the author admits he did not investigate before writing the post.
Given that people are sharing evidence on Torres, I thought I would chime in. I agree it would have been better for the OP to share with Zoe before posting, but I also think working with Torres is a mistake.
My relationship with Torres started after I criticised something he wrote about Steven Pinker on Facebook—my critique was about 3 sentences. My critique was supported by others in the community, including Will MacAskill. I think this was the start of Torres becoming disenchanted with EA.
From this point on, he published several now infamous pieces suggesting that I and others in EA support white supremacy. He also sent me numerous messages on Facebook after I had stopped responding. In this Facebook post, Torres inexplicably namechecks me while he is accusing some people of being rapists/paedophiles (their names are redacted)
My whole experience with Torres has been surreal—for one small piece of criticism, he went after me for years. I know he has done the same to others: some people he has gone after have needed counselling, and I think people should take that into account when they interact with Torres.
For people who are confused that Torres, who wrote a book defending the FHI-house view of x-risk in 2017 and endorsed that view until his review of Pinker in 2019, now thinks EA is so bad, it seems to be because he thinks he faced some rejection by the community.
“In this Facebook post, Torres inexplicably namechecks me while he is accusing some people of being rapists/paedophiles (their names are redacted)”
When was this post from—before or after he was banned from the forum over attacking you a bit over a year ago? Given that he’s repeatedly made malicious claims about you in the past couple years, this seems a bit inexplicable. Because if it’s actually referring to someone who was on Epstein’s jet, this seems mostly justifiable, other than the weird decision to name-check you. Or was this from before the vendetta started?
hi david, this was from before he was banned from the forum but after his beef with me started—this was while he was doing all the white supremacy articles about me, beckstead and others. he had a long-standing dispute with the people mentioned, and independently at the time he was especially annoyed at me for criticising him. I think that is what led him to namecheck me in his allegation.
I hadn’t heard of one of the people he was accusing at the time that he wrote the facebook post. I have no idea whether or not the allegations are true, I just don’t understand why he involved me in them.
EA Forum moderators take note: I believe the individual above is the same who created these two Twitter accounts just a few days ago, both of which were used to harass me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1569401706999595009. I have screenshots of many of our exchanges if you’d like. Harassment on social media should warrant being banned from this website, especially when the harasser continues to conceal their identity. Please act.
(EDIT: Please note also that this “throwaway” account was created just this month. Are you, as a community, okay with people creating anonymous Twitter accounts and anonymous EA Forum accounts to share misleading and out-of-context screenshots about someone? If so, I’ll make a note of it.)
Please note also that this “throwaway” account was created just this month.
My prior is that the reason Throwaway151 posted under a new anonymous account is not that they want to harass you. Rather, it’s that there is public evidence that you yourself harass (evidence: your exchanges with Peter Boghossian) those who you perceive to be your enemies. Anonymity is not ideal but it’s understandable given your history, in my opinion, even if you’ve admitted to and apologized for some of this past conduct.
Again, it goes without saying that none of this would justify Throwaway151 harassing you in turn, but I see no evidence that that has happened.
If by “share misleading and out-of-context screenshots about someone” you are referring to the screenshots posted above, I disagree strongly with this characterization. From what I can tell, the screenshots are not misleading, and the additional context you provided doesn’t change what I take away from the screenshots: you have a history of online interactions with perceived enemies that are reasonably construed as menacing and upsetting.
In addition, the screenshot Halstead shared strongly adds to this impression.
My prior is that the reason Throwaway151 posted under a new anonymous account is not that they want to harass you.
Yeah, given the extensive documentation that the Throwaway151 account posted of years worth of Torres’ falsehoods, I think it’s absolutely clear that it’s someone who has far more than a passing interest, and that even if the post wasn’t malicious, it was at least negligently defamatory, given that they admitted that no effort went into verifying any of the original claim.
I think that anonymity encouraged/enabled the negligence and was for that reason and to that extent bad. That’s different from trying to harass Torres. Any malice or negligent defamation has been towards Cremer and Kemp.
I was just saying that a major reason Throwaway151 could reasonably desire anonymity is Torres’s verifiable track record (see other comments on this post) of harassment. So anonymity is less evidence of ill intent than it would otherwise be. Of course, if Throwaway151 has in fact harassed Torres on Twitter as Torres claims, that is terrible. (I maintain that nothing Throwaway151 has done on the Forum constitutes harassment of Torres.)
Related small point: I think you mean “years worth of Torres’s menacing behavior”, not “years worth of Torres’s falsehoods”. As far as I can tell there aren’t actually any lies in that thread, just unnerving behavior.
Are you, as a community, okay with people creating anonymous Twitter accounts and anonymous EA Forum accounts to share misleading and out-of-context screenshots about someone?
I am confident I speak for the community when I say: no, absolutely not. If you are being harassed on Twitter, by Throwaway151 or by anyone else, that is wrong and unacceptable. I’d be especially angry and concerned if Twitter harassment is coming from EAs, and I emphatically condemn any such behavior.
Harassment on social media should warrant being banned from this website, especially when the harasser continues to conceal their identity.
I agree, and I expect the moderation team to take action if they have sufficient compelling evidence that this is in fact what has happened.
(a) This is taken out of context. (b) My “prank” was intended to mimic precisely what these far-right trolls were doing. (c) I realized in retrospect that stooping to their level was no good. (d) I repeatedly, publicly, and honestly apologized for acting like them (in this one particular case; it was the only time I did anything like this). (e) I continue to apologies for the momentary lapse of judgment. I am sorry for it. I thought it would be funny to mimic them, but I think I was wrong. (f) Michael Shermer has been accused by many women of harassment, assault, and r*pe. I mentioned that in a Salon article, and he went ballistic. No one should trust what he says about me. This is not good epistemics.
(a) To be honest, I doubt that there could be a “context” that would make your email look anything other than menacing and stalkerish. But I would be happy to hear what that context is. That is a pretty serious charges and I don’t want to update on misleading or selective evidence.
Thank you for correcting the record, Zoe, and my apologies if I’d misremembered some of this. I am more than happy to update on the information provided. (Also consulting with a few others who were somewhat involved in this whole process, i.e., who knew what was going on from the inside, to see what they remember.)
To recall, what you tweeted was this: “We had already finished a penultimate draft of the paper. I was removed. Forcibly. So much for academic freedom”
Did you or did you not, at the time, have definite evidence of being “removed forcibly” after the penultimate draft? It strains credulity that you could have been “misremembering” that this happened.
Given the uncertainty in the chronology of events and nature of how authorship and review occurred, would it have not made sense to reach out to Cremer and Kemp before posting this?
It would make any commentary much less speculative and heated.
If the OP has done this and not received a reply, they should make that clear (but my understanding is that this was not done, which imo is a significant oversight)
The fact that Torres was a co-author certainly does change the way I interpret the original post. For example. Cremer writes of the review process, “By others we were accused of lacking academic rigour and harbouring bad intentions.”
Before I knew about the Torres part, that sounded more troubling—it would maybe reflect badly on EA culture if reviewers were accusing Cremer and Kemp of these things just for writing “Democratising Risk”. I don’t think it’s a good paper, but I don’t think the content of the final paper is evidence of bad intentions.
But to accuse Torres of having bad intentions and lacking academic rigor? Reviewers would have been absolutely right to do so. By the time the paper was circulating, presumably Torres had already begun their campaign of slander against various members of the longtermist and EA communities.
“-insinuating that various longtermists hold white supremacists views”
Give me one example of this. I have always explicitly maintained, along with Mitchell and Chaudhury, the following:
“Whiteness is remarkable in its ability to render itself invisible to those who possess and benefit from it. Many, if not most, of the (often liberal humanitarian) authors of ‘end of the world’ discourses seem unaware of its integral influence on their thinking, and would almost certainly be horrified at the thought of their work entrenching racialized injustices. We are not suggesting that these authors espouse explicit, intentional and/or extreme racist ideals, on which much public discussion by white people of racism tends to focus.7 Nor do we wish to homogenize or present as equivalent all of the viewpoints discussed in this paper, which display a range of expressions of whiteness and levels of awareness thereof.”
I have never once said “X is a white supremacist” or “X is a racist.” Not once. EA Forum moderators: ask people to support their wild accusations or delete these comments. Thanks.
You are defending yourself against something I did not accuse you of.
I claimed that what you do is insinuation. This indeed implies precisely what you have just claimed: that you never directly write “X is a white supremacist” or “X is a racist”.
You constantly retreat to the alleged fact that you have never said these things explicitly, which is why I was careful with my words.
It’s not a “wild accusation”, it’s a reasonable characterization of very many tweets and articles of yours about figures in longtermism and EA. Have a nice day.
To clarify, this assumes that the reviews were done with Torres as an identified author. That seems plausible, but unclear, and I think it should be verified either way.
A comment aimed at readers, authors, and commenters alike:
Please try not to misgender people, but also don’t assume ill intent if someone does; a correction is appreciated, but insinuations of ill intent are not. The post currently has correct pronouns, and we’re considering this topic closed in this case.
In this instance, the “formerly X” seems quite relevant because of Torres’s history in EA. If I was the OP, I wouldn’t immediately know how to unambiguously make the point that we’re talking about the person who made all these crazy bad-faith accusations against EA without something like “formerly X.” (Of course, I’d see no need to mention “formerly X” if Torres was entirely new to EA or didn’t have a public persona beforehand.)
If you know of a better way to handle this issue with previous EA involvement, maybe it would be helpful for others to post a suggestion.
The post currently includes a deadname. Deadnames are harmful and it’s completely unnecessary to include it here because the OP is literally quoting the source’s Twitter account. This is rationalizing bigotry.
Academia references people by their last names all of the time. A much more unambiguous way to reference this person would be a simply sentence providing the context (e.g., “the same tores who was notoriously banned from EA for slagging certain people off”). This isnt difficult. So not difficult, that the OP actually did include this context so that no one was confused.
Phil Torres is not currently a deadname. A deadname is a name that someone is no longer using in their public persona, but the name Phil is displayed prominently on their web page. Searching Amazon for Phil Torres finds their books, searching Amazon for Emile Torres does not.
Moreover, it’s basically impossible to understand what’s going on here without knowing that Phil and Emile are the same person, and asking the original poster to avoid mentioning the name-mapping is asking them to obfuscate.
Phil Torres is not currently a deadname...he name Phil is displayed prominently on their web page.
I do not think this is a fair characterization of what the page contains. His name is only displayed within an image of the cover of books he wrote beforehand, and in exact quotes. That said, even though I don’t think he actually has said his former name is upsetting or offensive to him, I think the norm of calling people what they request to be called, and not using their former name, is a reasonable one.
That’s completely fair—but as I said, “I don’t think he actually has said his former name is upsetting or offensive to him, I think the norm of calling people what they request to be called, and not using their former name, is a reasonable one.”
Thank you for educating people in this community about the harm caused by deadnames.
My personal impression is that no one here meant to cause harm by it and I’m pleased to see that the OP has updated the post twice. I do expect that there is a bit of defensiveness going on as a result of Émile’s (to my mind, extremely bad faith) attacks on the community and in reaction to accusations of ill intent that people believe are unfounded, but “rationalizing bigotry” seems to me an exaggeration. I think people can reasonably disagree on whether exaggerations, strong language etc are usually necessary to achieve justice, but I think people in this community generally think it’s very rare that that’s the most effective approach, so I think this sort of thing is why you’ve been getting a lot of downvotes.
I also admit that I was thinking “Surely sometimes it’s okay to mention a deadname to provide relevant clarification, but I don’t have enough understanding to know how to do it sensitively in this case yet” and now I think that something similar to your suggestion here would be a good solution. I expect you are feeling very hurt and angry as a result of the comments on this post, but if you feel up to engaging further, I’d be interested to know if you think the following phrasing might be okay:
“However, they did not disclose that Émile P. Torres (who used to go by a different first name) was a co-author on the article...”
I’m hoping that it might be okay (although of course I know I’m not asking Émile themself but it seems like you have a lot more knowledge about this sort of thing than others here) and also might be sufficiently clear who is being referred to.
You can actually use a deadname to reference people when it’s necessary, but because the OP put it all in context, no one needed the reference, everyone who cares knew who they were talking about. And generally in academic circles, especially self referencing ones like EA, using last names only is entirely acceptable.
The problem here is that the OP quite intentionally chose to use a deadname to begin with while they were quite clearly posting an otherwise maligning post about someone who also happened to be transgender. It’s incredibly suspect and the fact that the OP ignored me regarding the deadname just confirms the suspicion.
Sacrificing concern for harm brought to others in pursuit of rational purity over some petty drama post about the inconsequential politics of EA intrigue is not a serious altruistic argument. I’m sorry, I can never take that seriously.
As a (minor) point related to this discussion, I want to flag that Zoe never got back to me after this interaction.
[Edit: This no longer applies – Zoe and I had a call and she could indeed convince me. See here for my update. Also, I want to flag that after it came out that Torres’ involvement wasn’t as a co-author at the time when Zoe faced criticism of the draft, it anyway wouldn’t make sense to assume that she’d be misleading anyone about any sort of info. I didn’t have a call with her to vet her or anything because that wasn’t needed. I just took the opportunity to learn more about what happened before the publication of the paper and so I can post an update to this comment here which would be unfair to Zoe if left unaltered.]
It’s very possible that this may just be due to not using FB frequently (I messaged her on FB). Even so, I think it’s bad form to pocket the credit (e.g., I at first somewhat changed my mind about a comment where I initially voiced skepticism about something, and could imagine that others updated in the same direction) for having specific info by saying that one is going to share it privately and then not sharing it privately.
For context, the specific claim under question was me saying that I’m skeptical that she presented an accurate view of the pushback she received on publishing the paper.
As soon as there’s some evidence for non-optimal integrity (the evidence brought forward here about Torres IMO qualifies if it is accurate – though I wouldn’t necessarily trust Torres to represent accurately what happened), then it becomes also an issue of game theory rather than just epistemics whether to give someone the benefit of the doubt.
Of course, if anyone else has talked to Zoe about the topic or if Zoe herself wants to share more about the situation, we could more easily decide what’s going and if her initial account of the pushback against the paper was roughly accurate.
Hi Lukas—I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you, I think this should be considered bad form. tbh I cannot recall why I didn’t, I just remember having been on many calls about this (realising this approach wasn’t scalable) and simply wanting to take a break from this paper after many months of it taking emotional effort (and I am indeed rarely on FB and must have fogotten to reply). I would have hoped for you to ping me via email if it was important to you! I’m still happy to have a call to answer your questions.
If some of these other people you had calls with about the topic could have posted on the same thread or same comment section and said something like “Talked to Zoe (or Luke) and they have info they can’t disclose publicly that underscores their account and it seemed to all make sense to me” – that would have been enough to take care of my curiosity and skepticism!
At this point, the main thing I’m curious about is your thoughts on Torres’ involvement (edit, just saw that you made a long comment on that!). I don’t think a call is necessary for that because it seems that after all the speculations in the OP and this comment section, a public comment from you or Luke would probably be best rather than private calls.
That said, if you for some reason prefer to explain some things only in a private call and want someone to report back to the community with their overall impression and updates (positive or negative depending on their feelings on the call and without sharing an of the specifics), I’m happy to volunteer for that!
Upvoted in part for the “if it is accurate” qualification—we don’t know if in fact Torres was on the paper, given that our only info comes from an extremely unreliable source (Torres).
(Other admittedly speculative evidence is this tweet )
I think it would be good to get clarification from Cremer or Kemp about this, since as I have said it seems like a key piece of information.
It would be very helpful at this point to hear more info about the timeline of the paper review process and Torres’s involvement from Cremer, Kemp. Or one of the many reviewers (though I wouldn’t begrudge reviewers wanting to steer clear of a messy issue like this)
Given Cremer’s statement below and it doesn’t seem OP asked Cremer or Kemp for their views before posting, at the moment I am strongly downvoting this post. I will change to a weak downvote once it’s been updated to reflect that Cremer denies the claims above.
Agree that having Torres on the paper changes how I’d interpret Cremer’s post about this paper, but I disagree that it was “deceptive” for them to exclude Torres’s name given they were allegedly forced to do so.
Torres alleges that Cremer and Kemp were forced to remove them from the paper (which I don’t trust for obvious reasons), but even granting that, that doesn’t mean Cremer and Kemp were forced to never mention the fact that Torres was originally a co-author. I basically can’t believe they were “forced” to keep it a secret that Torres was ever involved.
Or even asked! That wouldn’t even make sense for supposedly-censorious “EA elites” to do. If I were a censorious EA elite I would want people to know about Torres’s involvement in the paper.
I concerned about the lack of disclosure, but I do not know if the pushback they got, and complained about in the post, occurred based on a paper that Emile co-authored, or if they were asked to remove him, and then got the feedback they complained about. The author of this anonymous post does not clarify this. In the latter case, which still seems entirely plausible, their post did not need to mention his earlier co-authorship, and it would have been misleading. Given that there is a factual question which would lead me to think that their post was entirely reasonable, I want clarify before I would be willing to condemn anything.
For the paper, we should absolutely not discount arguments based on who made them. And I thought the paper itself was pretty reasonable, well written, well sourced, and I disagree strongly with parts of it.
(And note that none of the EA community members who were asked to review the paper came forward, even anonymously, to say that they were deceptive—which implies to me very strongly that the feedback was given on a paper that Emile was not listed as a co-author on, and would fully justify Cremer and Kemp not bringing up this now actually very misleading fact.)
Kudos for noticing this incongruency! I think I and others should have noticed confusion more here (even though many people did flag that Torres’s tweet could be misrepresenting what happened).
I’m unclear on what you mean—did someone who reviewed the paper inform you of this? If so, that would be private evidence that he was on the paper, though given that you’re an anonymous source claiming private information, I’d want to have someone who is not anonymous clarify what occurred and whose names were on the paper when it was reviewed, even if the identified individual didn’t disclose who the reviewer was.
Torres did provide comments on a draft indeed—so did many others, we were very liberal in sharing it before it went out. I would have to dig deep to know whether we accepted Torres’ comments on any later drafts, but I’m very sure there was no major rewriting in response to Torres comments and we certaintly saw now responsibility to do so: commentary is not authorship.
I was one of the people who commented, on what was likely version 26 or 27. (This was in November, 2021.) And Torres certainly wasn’t listed as an author by that stage. I don’t think I saw any comments from them on that version either, but there were a lot of comments in total so I’m not sure.
First, yes, I agree that it would help if Cremer or Kemp explained, but I’m skeptical that you reached out to ask before posting this.
But if they had collaborated in secret, and then didn’t write the post, or wrote the post on the basis of feedback received on a draft Emile was not credited on, I would have no problem—except for a serious feeling of unease about why Emile wasn’t given credit, counterbalanced by recognition that the paper would have been less impactful if they had. ( As much as I vehemently disagree with Emile, and wish he were far less confrontational, they have made some really good points about what EA has been doing wrong.)
Second, yes, Emile has made enemies, though I still think we’d all be better off as a community not socially shunning people, if they are willing to abide by community norms. And this itself is an important community norms issue, which I think needs clarification—though to make sure I’m being transparent here, if being friendly with Emile is disqualifying from having this conversation, I’m disqualified, and I guess you think I need to be shunned.
But if not, I don’t think you get to question the judgement or ethics of people who choose to collaborate with people who you disapprove of, unless there is some specific thing you know of in addition to the collaboration that causes you to question their judgement or ethics—enabling or ignoring abuse, being dishonest with others (as you claim but did not try to confirm in this case,) and so on. So if you think you personally should shun Emile, I’ll disagree with you, but not argue with your decision to do so. And if working with him after he was “shunned” is a disqualification, Cremer and Kemp would be too. But I would strongly maintain that who you talk to, or collaborate with academically, REALLY shouldn’t be a reason to shun you or publicly attack you and claim you misled the community without even checking first.
I for one would not support a norm of second-degree shunning, i.e. shunning people who don’t shun Torres. I wouldn’t shun people who write papers with them. This may be too lenient of me, but I wouldn’t like that precedent.
That said, I definitely am in favor of shunning Torres and think you should too. Not because Torres has made harsh criticisms of EA that I consider incorrect, but because they repeatedly tell blatant lies while doing so (and just lies in general, about unrelated things). That’s what I think should be disqualifying.
I wonder if you are still friendly with Torres because you don’t know about (or don’t agree that there is) any cases of outright lying, as opposed to the kinds of insinuation and defamation that Torres’s very-recently-adopted ideological stance can (imo, in some cases) encourage.
I think “don’t lie” (and its corollary “don’t lie about people on social media and in popular articles”) is one of the most important community norms, which Torres is constantly, flagrantly violating.
There’s also the question of online harassment. People I trust say that Torres has engaged in menacing online behavior against EAs. I have not seen evidence of this.
But this is made plausible by the fact that Torres verifiably engaged in borderline-harassment or harassment, back when Torres was having a (very similar!) conversion-away-from + crusade-of-slander against New Atheism. The evidence for that can be found publicly (making multiple Twitter accounts to get around Peter Boghossian blocking him, emailing Peter Boghossian to menacingly say he is going to show up to his class). This past track record alone is good reason to not work with Torres, in my opinion.
There is a fairly clear m.o. and no reason to think it won’t keep happening.
No I didn’t discuss it with them previously. I don’t trust them so I won’t interact with them.
Can you answer this question: If someone has co-authored a paper with someone who tweets every day saying “David Manheim endorses white supremacy” and writes articles in online outlets saying that, what would you think?
I would ask the same question to Cremer and Kemp. If someone tweets every day and writes articles in web outlets saying “Zoe Cremer and Luke Kemp endorse white supremacy, are racist, endorse eugenics” while misquoting and misrepresenting you, would you still be happy to work with them? It seems like they are happy to work with Torres because he flatters their ideology and so will overlook grotesque abuse, which they wouldn’t do if it were aimed at them.
Also, using the same argumentative techniques as Torres, it would be quite easy to make this case. Cremer and Kemp think Sam Bankman-Fried’s money should be decided democratically, which will foreseeably lead to the deaths of huge numbers of black people, in expectation.
I personally would consider working with someone who has acted inappropriately, if I thought they had something very useful to add to my specific research project.
I wouldn’t work with them if I thought association with them would lead to poor reception of my work or if their actions made me doubt their ability/knowledge.
EDIT: I simply feel trying to do the most good has to mean working with people who can best contribute to making that happen.
I agree this is clearly a terrible argument and I’d hope my proposition for distributed decision making would never be dragged into such an argumentative mess. Throwaway151, I’m happy to have a call to discuss the many doubts and questions you have?
Please answer this question: if Torres had spent the last several years calling you a white supremacist, a eugenicist, a racist, and a plagiarist in articles in popular media and on twitter, and misquoted and misrepresented things you had said to make you look as bad as possible, would you still work with him?
It sounds as though he did this to you, and you’re still upset about it—which is entirely reasonable, but it doesn’t relate to what you’re asking. Obviously, no-one expects you to work with Emile, but I think it’s not acceptable to attack other people for doing so—or worse, for not doing so, assuming the worst, and not bothering to investigate.
In “I don’t trust them”, I think Throwaway151 is referring to Kremer and Kemp, not Torres—as you said you didn’t think he had reached out to Kremer and Kemp.
Throwaway151 should have asked Kemp and Cremer about the claim regardless though, and included their response in the post—even if just to disagree with it.
I assumed it was referring to whoever told the anonymized author of the post about the fact that Emile was originally a co-author. (Which, as has now been clarified, isn’t really true.)
But the fact that someone can post like this on the forum, admittedly without trying to verify the claims he doesn’t trust, seems bad, and I’m glad Lizka said they would be investigating - I just hope that the moderator’s investigation includes the anonymized poster of the original, now refuted claims.
Hiding Torres’ authorship was deceptive, from a research ethics perspective, even if done due to outside pressure.
This doesn’t affect my view about the story at all. “threats of censorship and defunding” for publishing their critique of EA are just as bad with Torres on the paper as they are without them.
It seems if you believe (1) then that should affect your (2).
If, as you believe, Cremer and Kemp were deceptive about Torres’s authorship, shouldn’t that make you trust their reporting of the story less?
In the original Cremer post, we get Cremer and Kemp’s own interpretation/summary of a long and complicated process involving many personal conversations and emails and google doc comments.
Their summary is then presented as an important story, a wake-up call for EA culture, which was then debated at length in the comments, including repliesfrom Cremer. All while Forum commenters lacked a pretty key piece of information about how to interpret the story.
If (1) is true then it seems like pretty strong evidence that Cremer and Kemp were not particularly concerned (to say the least!) with presenting an accurate picture of the paper’s reception.
Your interpretation that they weren’t concerned with painting an accurate picture hinges on Torres’ involvement being key information about the situation. I just don’t think it is, in that sense.
I think pressure to hide Torres’ involvement (by changing the list of authors) was just as bad as the rest, if it happened.
“Your interpretation that they weren’t concerned with painting an accurate picture hinges on Torres’ involvement being key information about the situation.” I think this is true.
Here’s why I think it’s a key piece of information, I’m curious where you disagree:
The post was meant to give us important information about the epistemics and character of various reviewers in EA.
If some reviewers reacted overly-negatively to a paper by Torres Kemp and Cremer, that’s less troubling than if reviewers reacted negatively to a paper by Kemp and Cremer. Because it’s much more understandable (even if wrong) to react overly-negatively to a paper that is by someone who has revealed bad intentions, slandered your colleagues, and repeatedly lied.
It also makes some of their questions make more sense, like asking the authors “Do you hate longtermism”?
I disagree on that—I think these behaviours and questions from reviewers are not any more reasonable with Torres involved.
However, seeing how lots of people here do care about that piece of information, I guess that does make it important, however inconsequential I personally think it should be.
If they were indeed forced from removing a coauthor from their paper, it doesn’t seem to me that they’re being deceptive when they don’t mention that coauthor.
“Deceptive” might be too strong because it may not have been the intention to mislead.
But the post definitely is misleading without that information. The reported reception of the paper comes across in a very different light if you know Torres was a co-author.
One, in giving comments, people may have been responding in their feedback to Torres, who (as can be seen from their social media presence) is extremely quarrelsome and seems to habitually mislead.
Two, objections to the project being undertaken could have been influenced by Torres’s involvement, and rightly so in my opinion.
Three, knowing Torres was an author updates me towards thinking that earlier versions of the paper were more inflammatory/defamatory than the final version.
Yeah I guess it would depend on the particulars, for example if it’s more like they received an authoritative order not to mention Torres wrt the paper or more like a colleague or peer suggested it? Not sure.
You still haven’t removed their deadname from your post. I notified you of why its problematic in the thread up above where people are deciding to thought police me for correcting you. I’m sure you just missed it in the clutter.
Please do not misgender Émile Torres. They may be a persona non grata in this community, but they still deserve to be called by their preferred name and pronouns like anyone else.
Phil/Émile changed name, but did not change pronouns. A Facebook post I saw indicated that the name change was to avoid confusion with a different Phil Torres, who is an entomologist. While their Twitter profile specifies they/them pronouns, their Facebook profile says he/him (both profiles have the updated name). I think under any reasonable etiquette standard, that means either pronoun is acceptable unless they directly say otherwise.
Their twitter profile, which is what is being posted here, uses they/them. I see absolutely no reason to not err on the side of caution, do you? This OP also used their deadname in place of their name and continues to use their deadname in a “formerly” known as context, which is generally not acceptable, unless explicitly noted as such. And I corrected the OP on this too, they haven’t changed it.
PS, I am queer, nonbinary. If someone with a greater personal experience wants to chime in here, please go ahead I would love to defer. I had zero expectation that I’d have to have these discussions on a forum for altruists nor that I would basically be cyber bullied for correcting people with directness (this is so dumb)...
Erring in the direction of they/them is fine, but I object to pronoun-policing when it’s done on another person’s behalf, and the pronoun that was used is one that the person is currently advertising as correct in any prominent place (such as at the bottom of this page).
The person in question is banned from this forum, is what I gather, is that not correct? So they are completely unable to chime in as we all so graciously debate what is or isn’t allowed for them. I mean, we could literally write a text book on the concept of other while we’re at it I suppose, or we could just err on the side of caution as we should do in all circumstances concerning how we choose to exert power or others or not, no?
Frankly, with the absolute dismissiveness this issue of misgendering and misnaming and deadnaming is being handle by people here and the straight up cyberbullying and thought policing happening here around what should be an incredibly simple issue for supposed altruists to deal with, I highly doubt they’d come back here. This is not how good people deal with things that are literally matters of life and death for others. The complete lack of empathy in this thread is astounding.
Which comments are cyberbullying? I don’t think definition-gerrymandering to sort out “downvotes” from “thought policing” is useful, but I’d like to know where the cyberbullying is.
I mean, you can rationalize it all you want, but its a subjective rationalizing exercise and therefore, well, not meaningfully rational at all—except to you. The participants here are actively downvoting things they don’t want to hear or disagree with and you’d be completely dishonest if you claimed that was done without malice and you know it. This is not some forum populated by Mentats and you’d also be dishonest if you claimed this forum was devoid of active bigots.
For instance, after having been notified twice, the OP still has this person’s deadname in the post. Want to hear a story about a 13 year old I know that started cutting their face to quiet the bullies who insisted on using their deadname to taunt them?
That’s it, that’s the story. Now tell me it’s irrelevant to change language for altruists—an act and choice that literally costs people nothing. Go ahead and tell me the OP is just not quite properly updated.
Goodbye, this is so incredibly the opposite of altruism.
I’ve been trying to write a good response to everything in this post for an hour or so; it’s not easy to write well. Regarding the ban, I thought I’d at least post something that I know.
No, you haven’t. Their name is Émile P. Torres. From their own biography:
I recently changed my name from “Phil Torres” to “Émile P. Torres.”
I think you changed pronouns, but not their name. Their name is clearly in the tweet you’ve quoted. Check your third sentence.
Just a thought: if people on this forum don’t want accusations of supremacist ideological adherence to sprout up and maybe take root, then maybe be more conscientious about proactively not perpetuating supremacist behaviors. You are literally quoting a tweet here that contains a transgender pride flag and this person’s full name. I find it hard to believe you have missed these things, yet you’ve inexplicably misgendered and misnamed this person. Please read this carefully, its not an accusation, quite the opposite.
I’m non-binary and this makes me personally uncomfortable, fyi/as an example.
I’m going to err on the side of caution and assume you don’t know this: the use of dead names, even for context like “formerly X” is typically viewed as derogatory and unwelcome unless the person in question explicitly states otherwise. Everyone who is aware of this story is aware of this story and who you are referencing, you’ve literally quoted their tweet.
In this instance, the “formerly X” seems quite relevant because of Torres’s history in EA. If I was the OP, I wouldn’t immediately know how to unambiguously make the point that we’re talking about the person who made all these crazy bad-faith accusations against EA without something like “formerly X.” (Of course, I’d see no need to mention “formerly X” if Torres was entirely new to EA or didn’t have a public persona beforehand.)
If you know of a better way to handle this issue with previous EA involvement, maybe it would be helpful for others to post a suggestion.
I don’t know, that policy doesn’t seem very workable when a previous name is very well known and their current name is nowhere near as well known. I’m going to disagree and claim it’s okay to list someone’s current name and their previous name so long as there is a good reason behind it. There is definitely a certain segment of the population where the social rules are unambiguous, but it’s far from uncontroversial.
I guess I see us as obligated to try to treat each other as well as we can, but I don’t see us as being obligated to take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state, as that is an impossible burden. This is, of course, a shame, because it’s always sad when someone suffers. It would be nice if we could help everyone, all the time, but sometimes there are real costs to adopting a certain policy. But, just to be clear, we should respect people’s naming preferences insofar as is reasonable/practical.
A choice of words literally costs you or the OP nothing- its just a simple choice you make. And it says far more about you in the context here than you think. Choosing to be empathetic in the way you communicate, again, costing you absolutely nothing. It is what an altruist would do and it certainly doesn’t oblige you to “take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state.”
avoiding deadnaming is important, Torres was widely published before the name change. The project of retroactively updating all the EA forum posts, their old username and so on, has not been undertaken. Someone who cares about not deadnaming may not know an obvious policy in such a case!
Could some of the anonymous folks thought policing my comments here please explain what I’ve done wrong? If not, you’re sort of proving the wrong point here, fyi...
Hi. I’m not one of the people who downvoted you, and I’m not anonymous (while you actually are). But I’ll try to explain what I understand here.
On the one hand, you’re complaining about a behavior that made you feel uncomfortable and would probably make others too. This is important, and EAs should indeed make an effort to not exclude trans/queer people (or any other demographic). This inclusion is important to me personally.
On the other hand, you’re implicitly accusing anyone who replied to you of bad things (e.g. “actively harming people to the point of self harm, resulting in suicide and to the point of physical violence resulting in death”) rather than start off from the assumption that they are ignorant, or even have some reason you don’t see to do what they’re doing. And you’re ignoring the context that they’re trying to give you. You even took this conflict to an entirely unrelated comment thread.
Again, it speaks so much more about EA and this place that you all have put this much energy into policing me, while expending so little energy on reducing the harm you claim to be concerned about. Your forum norms are more important to you, for instance, than harm you could be causing others in this context. I find that incredibly problematic for people claiming to be the arbiters of doing good better and claiming to be altruists.
I personally expended energy not to police you but to answer your question (from the comment I replied to), because I thought it was bad that no one else answered.
I cannot speak for others, but certainly don’t see myself as “the arbiter of doing good better”.
Ah, I didn’t know what thread I was on. Seems the whole forum has decided they need to reasonsplain queer harm to the queer so I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. Thanks for the response.
I think you’re only being downvoted for the “Just a thought” segment, not for pointing out that the name was still wrong (at the time you wrote the comment – it seems to be updated now).
In the “Just a thought” section, you’re IMO coming across as a fanatic on a crusade rather than someone who cares about EA being more welcoming and inclusive (or “taking the right side on a human rights issue” – as you view it; but others may not quite see it in the exact same way even if they generally agree that it’s good to take low-effort actions to prevent others from potentially feeling bad or making a space more accessible for them).
As a comparison, I think factory farming is really bad and I think it’s legitimate that vegans in 2014 or so criticized an EA conference for serving meat. Still, I would downvote vegans who include a rant about how it means EA is a terrible place for altruists if that’s how they approach the issue. Instead, I think vegans who care about EAs not promoting meat at conferences should approach a strategy “continue to criticize, but don’t assume that the target of your criticism is flawed beyond repair for seeing things differently from you.”
Likewise, I want a culture where people are receptive to criticism and ready to make low-effort accommodations even if they disagree with some aspects of the moral position in question.
You were insinuating that someone making a mistake (related to perhaps thoughtlessness or carelessness) is equivalent to a really bad action and calling into question the integrity of EA as a movement (if it happens that a significant portion of EAs would be likely to do that kind of thing). You’re doing this even after the OP showed willingness to update their statements (by changing pronouns at first – they then also changed Torres’s name later [but I see there’s also the issue of “formerly X” that you object to]).
The OP literally created a throw away account called throwaway151 just to attack a transgendered individual and has refused, after having been updated several times about other harmful actions to update their posts. You can rationalize this as naivety all you want, it’s obvious to anyone even slightly aware of how bigotry works what is going on here. And the repeated rationalization of this embarrassingly transparent wink wink is just absurd and disappointing, to say the least. And the fact that you all have wasted exponentially more words and energy on policing me, a non-binary queer person, than you have policing the person actually causing harm to others says pretty much everything.
The OP literally created a throw away account called throwaway151 just to attack a transgendered individual and has refused,
It’s obvious that the OP would have made the exact same type of post if Torres hadn’t changed their name and gender identity (and the post seems to be more about Zoe and Luke), so you’re being incredibly misleading here. I assume it’s probably due to the strong emotions involved – it’s unfortunate how this situation developed. I’m not planning to engage further.
Edit: In light of new comments by the throwaway account, I retract my statement that “the post seems to be more about Zoe and Luke”) – it seems like the OP also has strong views on associating with Torres all by itself. I still see absolutely no reason to believe that they’re acting differently due to the change of gender identity, but I want to flag that I now understand better why the now anonymous account above felt like the OP “had it out for Torres”). (I’m not necessarily saying “having it out for Torres” is unwarranted; I’m just acknowledging a point.)
The use of a deadname is completely unnecessary for reasons already stated. The OP and the people in this post have been informed, by a direct source, that deadname are incredibly harmful but instead of updating to serve altruistic intent, the people in this post at doubling down on a weakly rationalized excuse of naivety which is perpetuating harm.
I was under the impression that most trans people find it ok to mention a deadname in a parenthesis if the person has been notable under that name (which is true of Émile). That’s the Wikipedia policy; here’s a Reddit thread where that seems to be the consensus opinion. Is this wrong?
If this had started that way, it would’ve been fine but within this context, in which the OP clearly intended to malign the subject, regardless and then flat out ignored repeated, civil requests for a change, absolutely not. Context matters. If that was information the OP had and they meant no harm, they would have shared as much. Again, the lengths everyone is going here to police someone explaining harm is incredible...
hmmm so I didn’t downvote, but I think there’s a conflation in your comment between making an etiquette mistake (that Throwaway151 gave every signal that they were trying not to do, trying to fix) and some sort of active or positive cis-supremacism. That kind of conflation is probably seen as sloppy reasoning by many, and makes people hesitate before engaging with you because they don’t want to walk on eggshells, or risk being called transphobic or whatever.
I understand that people not trying hard enough at etiquette feels extremely similar to malice (especially in early stages of transition) because a dozen trans people and/or enbies have reported that to me! But generalizing from Throwaway151′s mistakes to the overall tone of the forum still seems like a mistake.
First of all, this perspective is so far off base. Its not an “etiquette” issue, its a literal human rights issue. Its an issue that is, as we speak, actively harming people to the point of self harm, resulting in suicide and to the point of physical violence resulting in death. And the political climate around this issue, around the globe, is so heated and exacerbated by bigots and bigotry that anyone claiming to be an altruist should be extremely cautious around these things. It would be “sloppy reasoning” to think otherwise. The OP has literally ignored my updates about deadnaming, which rationally says the OP doesn’t actually think these things matter.
It’s worth quantifying and doing ITN estimates of bullying, self harm, suicide in the queer community; then thinking about interventions. I forecast that a good treatment of this would be well received on the forum (which isn’t to say it would go uncriticized). I feel vaguely like I’d support someone doing this in some trivial ways; I’d like to upvote a proper treatment of this, for instance.
But I think it’s basically irrelevant to this post or it’s comments.
I’m sorry you feel like a few EAs might not support or respect you because they disagree with you here, but I don’t think there’s evidence that you’re broadly right about correlations between referring to a he/they who changed their name in the middle of a public writing career and tolerance for bigotry.
Yeah, you don’t get to decide for other people what is or is not harmful to them or who they are. Its just not how it works. When you start letting everyone do that for you, let me know and we can have that conversation. Every bigot (and I am not calling you one) rationalizes their bigotry and the harm they cause to others and devalues it all. That process, which you just summarized, btw, is not altruistic in any way shape or form. Again, words cost you nothing and if someone says they are harmful to them, as a supposed altruist, then you update—because it costs you nothing and you’ve reduced harm.
Point taken, thanks! My original comment was mainly addressed at the fact that OP used “Phil”, and I was not aware that Émile still uses “he” pronouns because their Twitter bio only says “they”. I think the correction – using “Émile” while noting that Émile was “formerly known as Phil” to help others identify him – is satisfactory.
First, thank you for bringing this to ur knowledge and raising the issue. On the other hand, I wouldn’t use such strong words here:
It was extremely deceptive of Cremer and Kemp not to disclose this information, because this, rather than the content of what they wrote, may have contributed to the (alleged) reception to their article.
And I can’t help but notice that I totally ignore your identity, too.
I don’t mean this as an accusation. But either the identity of the author of a post is important, and we should all disclose it properly, or it’s totally secondary to the content, and it’s acceptable to hide it, if this is a hinderance.
(maybe Kemp and Cremer would have been more honest if they had credited Torres with a pseudonym… but I suspect we’d still have this discussion anyway)
I wonder if posts under pseudonyms are getting more frequent.
I think you may not be aware of relevant context. (See the comment by Matis for the same point.) This has practically nothing to do with anonymity norms or evading forum bans. The point is that Zoe and Luke complained about the events before they posted their paper, implying that prominent people in EA tried to prevent them from publishing their thoughts and accused them of bad faith (and warnings that EA funders would not longer fund them, etc.). These accusations would seem to put “prominent EAs or EA funders” in a very bad light if their complaints and warnings were only directed at Zoe and Luke, two EAs with a good track record writing up their thoughts in a way that they consider fair and appropriate. By contrast, if such complaints/warnings were levelled against Torres or because of Torres (or even just in the context of the two of them collaborating closely with Torres as an initial co-author), that would make a lot of sense and seems hard to object to given Torres’s track record (which they already had at the time) of repeatedly making bizarre and wrong accusations and generally being on a kind of crusade against longtermist EA.
To be clear, everything they complain about was after I left the project (so far as I know). I was as surprised as anyone else to read Zoe’s EA Forum post—I hadn’t even seen a draft of it, and didn’t know she’d written it. Their complaints had nothing to do with me having worked on an early draft of the paper!
But either the identity of the author of a post is important, and we should all disclose it properly, or it’s totally secondary to the content, and it’s acceptable to hide it, if this is a hinderance.
It seems reasonable to say ‘the identity is not important, except people who have been specifically banned for abuse.’ Anonymity is desirable, but not to enable evasion of other rules.
I think this is muddying issues somewhat. The question of whether Torres’s involvement should have been disclosed is not about anonymity norms. (It’s not like Torres was trying to avoid Forum rules or anything in co-authoring the academic paper ‘Democratising Risk’.)
The question is whether the (alleged) involvement of Torres should have been disclosed as part of the recounting of the tale of the paper’s reception. Because Torres’s involvement was not disclosed, many people were trying to draw inferences about epistemics and community dynamics in EA while ignorant of a very important fact about why the project might have been getting negative feedback: i.e., that one of the co-authors was [harsh, but all demonstrably true via public evidence] a serial fabulist with a history of harassing and defaming those he disagrees with, and an obviously hostile agenda.
I should be clear: my understanding is that if Torres was indeed involved, then it was not as an anonymous author or anything, and that knowing Torres was involved would explain some of why people might have been negative about the project.
(As would the probable fact that, if Torres was involved, earlier versions of the paper were more hostile in tone).
If Torres was an anonymous collaborator the whole time, then I wouldn’t really care if Cremer and Kemp never disclosed that fact. Because it wouldn’t be relevant for drawing conclusions from the alleged pushback that the project got.
if anonymity is permissible—or, even stronger, desirable—then it seems to me that bans can be easily evaded. One can say “they shouldn’t be evaded!”, but for me it sounds self-defeating to support a norm and at the same time encourage an easy way to evade it. But yeah, legal systems are full of instances of that—but they are often recognized as “bugs”.
I do not think the issue here is that Kemp & Cremer intended to actually evade a ban imposed on Torres, but that their accusation might have been unfair—because it’d be proper to criticize their post given its origins.
This. It almost doesn’t matter what the criticism was anymore, because they were attempting to knowingly post for a banned user. This would have also gotten the other authors banned in other communities. The moderators were surprisingly lenient in not banning the other authors from the EA forum and EA events.
They cowrote an earlier draft with Torres, and then, after removing Torres because of complaints, posted a later draft. There doesn’t even seem to be any evidence here that they were collaborating with Torres on this after Torres’ ban (though there might exist evidence I am unaware of). I think it would have been better to disclose that Torres used to be involved, but I think it would have been overly draconian to ban the post (even more so the poster) over earlier input from someone banned. EA did a good job here because they didn’t ban the authors.
“At this point, Torres had been banned from the EA Forum, they had called many people in the community white supremacists, racists, eugenicists and genocidal, and many people in the community had accused them of harassment.”
First of all, here I am.
Second, could you provide a single example of me calling someone a “white supremacist” or a “racist”? Please, I’d love to see that. A single example: “X is a white supremacist,” or “X is a racist.”
Third, I have indeed connected Bostrom’s transhumanism with eugenics, because there is an obvious, demonstrable, straightforward connection. Want me to provide citations? There’s been a lot published in the technical literature on this issue.
Finally, as for genocidal, I’m making the very same point that Olle Haggstrom (Here Be Dragons) and Peter Singer (“Hinge of History”) have made. But you wouldn’t accuse either of them of calling you longtermists names, would you? Or maybe you would, in which case, add their names to the above.
No one has accused me of “harassment,” so far as I know; if someone has, provide evidence of the supposed harassment (there is no such evidence). To the contrary, I’ve accused John Halstead of defamation and harassment. I asked EA Forum moderators to fact-check Halstead’s outrageous claims; they refused. So much for intellectual honesty.
EA Forum moderators: please ask for evidence of these claims. If none is provided, delete this post immediately, or require the user to modify their claims to make them ACCURATE. Thanks.
I looked into evidence for the quote you posted for one hour. While I think the phrasing is inaccurate, I’d say the gist of the quote is true. For example, it’s pretty understandable that people jump from “Emile Torres says that Nick Beckstead supports white supremacy” to “Emile Torres says that Nick Beckstead is a white supremacist”.
White Supremacy: In a public facebook post you link to this public google doc where you call a quote from Nick Beckstead “unambiguously white-supremacist”.
Genocide: On another facebook post you agree with Olle Häggström [note: Häggström actually strongly disagrees with this characterization of their position] that Bostrom’s idea of transhumanism and utilitarianism in Letters from Utopia “is a recipe for moral disaster—for genocide, white supremacy, and so on.”
Tobias, I think you are absolutely correct. But I will note that this is a well-worn pattern:
Given a long list of tweets and articles that make it quite obvious that Torres is deliberately and repeatedly construing everything ever written or said by longtermists in order to make them appear maximally sinister and dangerous and racist, Torres protests that they have never actually written the sentence “Toby Ord is a white supremacist”.
Rather, Torres is using the scholarly definition of white supremacy, not the every day definition. In this way there’s always plausible deniability that Torres is waging a relentless campaign to portray (e.g.) the founders of Giving What We Can as racists. It’s a classic motte-and-bailey.
The post in which I speak about EAs being uncomfortable about us publishing the article only talks about interactions with people who did not have any information about initial drafting with Torres. At that stage, the paper was completely different and a paper between Kemp and I. None of the critiques about it or the conversations about it involved concerns about Torres, co-authoring with Torres or arguments by Torres, except in so far as they might have taken Torres an example of the closing doors that can follow a critique. The paper was in such a totally different state and it would have been misplaced to call it a collaboration with Torres.
There was a very early draft of Torres and Kemp which I was invited to look at (in December 2020) and collaborate on. While the arguments seemed promising to me, I thought it needed major re-writing of both tone and content. No one instructed me (maybe someone instructed Luke?) that one could not co-author with Torres. I also don’t recall that we were forced to take Torres off the collaboration (I’m not sure who know about the conversations about collaborations we had): we decided to part because we wanted to move the content and tone in a very different direction, because Torres had (to our surprise) unilaterally published major parts of the initial draft as a mini-book already and because we thought that this collaboration was going to be very difficult. I recall video calls in which we discussed the matter with Torres, decided to take out sections that were initially supplied by Torres and cite Torres’ mini-book whereever we deemed it necessary to refer to it. The degree to which the Democratising Risk paper is influenced by Torres is seen in our in-text citations: we don’t hide the fact that we find some of the arguments noteworthy! Torres agreed with those plans.
At the time it seemed to me that I and Torres were trying to achieve fundamentally different goals: I wanted to start a critical discussion within EA and Torres was ready by that stage to incoculate others against EA and longtermism. It was clear to me that the tone and style of argumentation of initial drafts had little chance of being taken seriously in EA. My own opinion is that many arguments made by Torres are not rigorous enough to sway me, but that they often contain an initial source of contention that is worth spending time developping further to see whether it has substance. Torres and I agree in so far as we surely both think there are several worthy critiques of EA and longtermism that should be considered, but I think we differ greatly in our credences in the plausibility of different critiques, how we wanted to treat and present critiques and who we wanted to discuss them with.
The emotional contexual embedding of an argument matters greatly to its perception. I thought EAs, like most people, were not protected from assessing arguments emotionally and while I don’t follow EA dramas closely (someone also kindly alerted me to this one unfolding), by early 2021 I had gotten the memo that Torres had become an emotional signal for EAs to discount much of what the name was attached to. At the time I thought it would not do the arguments justice to let them be discounted because of an associated name that many in EA seem to have an emotional reaction against and the question of reception did become one factor for why we thought it best not to consider the co-authorship with Torres. One can of course manage perception of a paper via co-authorship and we considered collaborating with respected EAs to give it more credibility but we decided both against name-dropping those people who invested via long conversations and commentary in the piece to boost it as much as we decided not to advertise that there are obvious overlaps with some of Torres’ critiques. There is nothing to hide in my view: one can read Torres’ work and Democratising Risk (and in fact many other peoples’ critiques) and see similarities—this should probably strengthen one’s belief that there’s something in that ballpark of arguments that many people feel we should take seriously?
Apart from the fact that it really is an entirely different paper (what you saw is version 26 or something and I think about 30 people have commented on it. I’m not sure it’s meaningful to speak about V1 and V20 as being the same paper. And what you see is all there is: all the citations of Torres are indeed pointing to writing by Torres, but they are easily found and you’ll see that it is not a disproportionate influence), we did indeed hope to avoid the exact scenario we find ourselves in now! The paper is at risk of being evaluated in light of any connection to Torres rather than on it’s own terms, and my trustworthiness in reporting on EAs treatment of critiques is being questioned because I cared about the presentation and reception of the arguments in this paper? A huge amount of work went into adjusting the tone of the paper to EAs (irrespective of Torres, this was a point of contention between Luke and I too), to ensure the arguments would get a fair hearing and we had to balance this against non-EA outsiders who thought we were not forceful enough.
I think we succeeded in this balance, since both sides still to tell us we didn’t do quite enough (the tone still seems harsh to EAs and too timid to outsiders) but both EAs and outsiders do engage with the paper and the arguments and I do think it is true that there is a greater awareness about (self-) censorship risk and critiques being valuable. Having published , EAs have so far been kind towards me. This is great! I do hope it’ll stay this way. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not sexy to be seen as the critic. It doesn’t feel great to be told a paper will damage an institution, to have others insinuate that I plug my own papers under pseudonyms in forum comments or that I had malicious intentions in being open about the experience, and it’s annoying to be placed into boxes with other authors who you might strongly disagree with. While I understand that those who don’t know me must take any piece of evidence they can get to evaluate the trustworthiness of my claims, I find it a little concerning that anyone should be willing to infer and evaluate character from minor interactions. Shouldn’t we rather say: given that we can’t fully verify her experience, can we think about why such an experience would be bad for the project of EA and what safeguards we have in place such that those experiences don’t happen? My hope was that I can serve as a positive example to others who feel the need to voice whatever opinion (“see it’s not so bad!”), so I thank anyone on here who is trying to ease the exhaust that inevitably comes with navigating criticism in a community. The experience so far has made me think that EAs care very much that all arguments (including those they disagree with) are heard. Even if you don’t think I’m trustworthy and earnest in my concerns, do please continue to keep the benefit of doubt in mind towards your perceived critics, I think we all agree they are valuable to have among us and if you care about EA, do keep the process of assessing trustworthiness amicable, if not for me then for future critics who do a better job than I.
@throwaway151 I recommend editing this post to include a link to this comment in its body (and maybe change the title). At this point it seems like it’s Torres’ word against Cremer’s and I see no reason to default to Torres’ side/interpretation given this. For people who won’t read the comments that carefully this seems important,
especially since this post looks quiet enough now that it’s unlikely this comment will be upvoted to the top comment above one that has karma in the triple digits.On the last point, I stand corrected.
At this point, this looks like it was a motivated attack on Cremer and Kemp because of a vendetta against Torres—which wasn’t obvious until the “anonymous” author decided to post a litany of his multi-year documentation of all the things he’s upset at Emile about.
So yes, I think that changing the post to include this new revelation—one which should have been investigated before posting—clearly and at the top of the post, is a minimal necessary step, and I think that the Moderation team should probably step in if it doesn’t happen.
ETA: Glad to see that this was done, albeit minimally and partially. It needs to be clearer, since it is fundamentally disputing the claims made, which the author admits he did not investigate before writing the post.
Given that people are sharing evidence on Torres, I thought I would chime in. I agree it would have been better for the OP to share with Zoe before posting, but I also think working with Torres is a mistake.
My relationship with Torres started after I criticised something he wrote about Steven Pinker on Facebook—my critique was about 3 sentences. My critique was supported by others in the community, including Will MacAskill. I think this was the start of Torres becoming disenchanted with EA.
From this point on, he published several now infamous pieces suggesting that I and others in EA support white supremacy. He also sent me numerous messages on Facebook after I had stopped responding. In this Facebook post, Torres inexplicably namechecks me while he is accusing some people of being rapists/paedophiles (their names are redacted)
My whole experience with Torres has been surreal—for one small piece of criticism, he went after me for years. I know he has done the same to others: some people he has gone after have needed counselling, and I think people should take that into account when they interact with Torres.
For people who are confused that Torres, who wrote a book defending the FHI-house view of x-risk in 2017 and endorsed that view until his review of Pinker in 2019, now thinks EA is so bad, it seems to be because he thinks he faced some rejection by the community.
“In this Facebook post, Torres inexplicably namechecks me while he is accusing some people of being rapists/paedophiles (their names are redacted)”
When was this post from—before or after he was banned from the forum over attacking you a bit over a year ago? Given that he’s repeatedly made malicious claims about you in the past couple years, this seems a bit inexplicable. Because if it’s actually referring to someone who was on Epstein’s jet, this seems mostly justifiable, other than the weird decision to name-check you. Or was this from before the vendetta started?
hi david, this was from before he was banned from the forum but after his beef with me started—this was while he was doing all the white supremacy articles about me, beckstead and others. he had a long-standing dispute with the people mentioned, and independently at the time he was especially annoyed at me for criticising him. I think that is what led him to namecheck me in his allegation.
I hadn’t heard of one of the people he was accusing at the time that he wrote the facebook post. I have no idea whether or not the allegations are true, I just don’t understand why he involved me in them.
Thanks for clarifying!
EA Forum moderators take note: I believe the individual above is the same who created these two Twitter accounts just a few days ago, both of which were used to harass me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1569401706999595009. I have screenshots of many of our exchanges if you’d like. Harassment on social media should warrant being banned from this website, especially when the harasser continues to conceal their identity. Please act.
(EDIT: Please note also that this “throwaway” account was created just this month. Are you, as a community, okay with people creating anonymous Twitter accounts and anonymous EA Forum accounts to share misleading and out-of-context screenshots about someone? If so, I’ll make a note of it.)
My prior is that the reason Throwaway151 posted under a new anonymous account is not that they want to harass you. Rather, it’s that there is public evidence that you yourself harass (evidence: your exchanges with Peter Boghossian) those who you perceive to be your enemies. Anonymity is not ideal but it’s understandable given your history, in my opinion, even if you’ve admitted to and apologized for some of this past conduct.
Again, it goes without saying that none of this would justify Throwaway151 harassing you in turn, but I see no evidence that that has happened.
If by “share misleading and out-of-context screenshots about someone” you are referring to the screenshots posted above, I disagree strongly with this characterization. From what I can tell, the screenshots are not misleading, and the additional context you provided doesn’t change what I take away from the screenshots: you have a history of online interactions with perceived enemies that are reasonably construed as menacing and upsetting.
In addition, the screenshot Halstead shared strongly adds to this impression.
Yeah, given the extensive documentation that the Throwaway151 account posted of years worth of Torres’ falsehoods, I think it’s absolutely clear that it’s someone who has far more than a passing interest, and that even if the post wasn’t malicious, it was at least negligently defamatory, given that they admitted that no effort went into verifying any of the original claim.
I think that anonymity encouraged/enabled the negligence and was for that reason and to that extent bad. That’s different from trying to harass Torres. Any malice or negligent defamation has been towards Cremer and Kemp.
I was just saying that a major reason Throwaway151 could reasonably desire anonymity is Torres’s verifiable track record (see other comments on this post) of harassment. So anonymity is less evidence of ill intent than it would otherwise be. Of course, if Throwaway151 has in fact harassed Torres on Twitter as Torres claims, that is terrible. (I maintain that nothing Throwaway151 has done on the Forum constitutes harassment of Torres.)
Related small point: I think you mean “years worth of Torres’s menacing behavior”, not “years worth of Torres’s falsehoods”. As far as I can tell there aren’t actually any lies in that thread, just unnerving behavior.
I am confident I speak for the community when I say: no, absolutely not. If you are being harassed on Twitter, by Throwaway151 or by anyone else, that is wrong and unacceptable. I’d be especially angry and concerned if Twitter harassment is coming from EAs, and I emphatically condemn any such behavior.
I agree, and I expect the moderation team to take action if they have sufficient compelling evidence that this is in fact what has happened.
The mentioned tweet seems to no longer be available. Could you provide screenshots?
It is available, there is just a typo such that there is a period included at the end of the hyperlink. Just take off the period.
(a) This is taken out of context. (b) My “prank” was intended to mimic precisely what these far-right trolls were doing. (c) I realized in retrospect that stooping to their level was no good. (d) I repeatedly, publicly, and honestly apologized for acting like them (in this one particular case; it was the only time I did anything like this). (e) I continue to apologies for the momentary lapse of judgment. I am sorry for it. I thought it would be funny to mimic them, but I think I was wrong. (f) Michael Shermer has been accused by many women of harassment, assault, and r*pe. I mentioned that in a Salon article, and he went ballistic. No one should trust what he says about me. This is not good epistemics.
(a) To be honest, I doubt that there could be a “context” that would make your email look anything other than menacing and stalkerish. But I would be happy to hear what that context is. That is a pretty serious charges and I don’t want to update on misleading or selective evidence.
Thank you for correcting the record, Zoe, and my apologies if I’d misremembered some of this. I am more than happy to update on the information provided. (Also consulting with a few others who were somewhat involved in this whole process, i.e., who knew what was going on from the inside, to see what they remember.)
To recall, what you tweeted was this: “We had already finished a penultimate draft of the paper. I was removed. Forcibly. So much for academic freedom”
Did you or did you not, at the time, have definite evidence of being “removed forcibly” after the penultimate draft? It strains credulity that you could have been “misremembering” that this happened.
Given the uncertainty in the chronology of events and nature of how authorship and review occurred, would it have not made sense to reach out to Cremer and Kemp before posting this? It would make any commentary much less speculative and heated. If the OP has done this and not received a reply, they should make that clear (but my understanding is that this was not done, which imo is a significant oversight)
The discussion on this post is getting heated, so we’d like to remind everyone of the Forum norms. Chiefly:
Be kind.
Stay on topic.
Be honest.
If you don’t think you can respect these norms consistently in the comments of this post, consider not contributing, and moving on to another post.
We’ll investigate the issues that are brought up to the best of our ability. We’d like to remind readers that a lot of this is speculation.
UPDATE: less certain of the below. Be sure to read this comment by Cremer disputing Torres’s account https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vv7FBtMxBJicM9pae/democratising-risk-a-community-misled?commentId=CwxqjeG8qqwy8gz4c
The fact that Torres was a co-author certainly does change the way I interpret the original post. For example. Cremer writes of the review process, “By others we were accused of lacking academic rigour and harbouring bad intentions.”
Before I knew about the Torres part, that sounded more troubling—it would maybe reflect badly on EA culture if reviewers were accusing Cremer and Kemp of these things just for writing “Democratising Risk”. I don’t think it’s a good paper, but I don’t think the content of the final paper is evidence of bad intentions.
But to accuse Torres of having bad intentions and lacking academic rigor? Reviewers would have been absolutely right to do so. By the time the paper was circulating, presumably Torres had already begun their campaign of slander against various members of the longtermist and EA communities.
For example, by this point Torres would have already been:
-insinuating that various longtermists hold white supremacists views
-baselessly insinuating or accusing them of plagiarism or something close to it
-calling them liars while admitting the truth of what they said (which was part of what led to the Forum ban)
Accusations of harbouring bad intentions would have been appropriate if not required by this point.
“-insinuating that various longtermists hold white supremacists views”
Give me one example of this. I have always explicitly maintained, along with Mitchell and Chaudhury, the following:
“Whiteness is remarkable in its ability to render itself invisible to those who possess and benefit from it. Many, if not most, of the (often liberal humanitarian) authors of ‘end of the world’ discourses seem unaware of its integral influence on their thinking, and would almost certainly be horrified at the thought of their work entrenching racialized injustices. We are not suggesting that these authors espouse explicit, intentional and/or extreme racist ideals, on which much public discussion by white people of racism tends to focus.7 Nor do we wish to homogenize or present as equivalent all of the viewpoints discussed in this paper, which display a range of expressions of whiteness and levels of awareness thereof.”
I have never once said “X is a white supremacist” or “X is a racist.” Not once. EA Forum moderators: ask people to support their wild accusations or delete these comments. Thanks.
You are defending yourself against something I did not accuse you of.
I claimed that what you do is insinuation. This indeed implies precisely what you have just claimed: that you never directly write “X is a white supremacist” or “X is a racist”.
You constantly retreat to the alleged fact that you have never said these things explicitly, which is why I was careful with my words.
It’s not a “wild accusation”, it’s a reasonable characterization of very many tweets and articles of yours about figures in longtermism and EA. Have a nice day.
To clarify, this assumes that the reviews were done with Torres as an identified author. That seems plausible, but unclear, and I think it should be verified either way.
A comment aimed at readers, authors, and commenters alike:
Please try not to misgender people, but also don’t assume ill intent if someone does; a correction is appreciated, but insinuations of ill intent are not. The post currently has correct pronouns, and we’re considering this topic closed in this case.
On deadnames, I currently agree with Lukas Gloor’s comment:
The post currently includes a deadname. Deadnames are harmful and it’s completely unnecessary to include it here because the OP is literally quoting the source’s Twitter account. This is rationalizing bigotry.
Academia references people by their last names all of the time. A much more unambiguous way to reference this person would be a simply sentence providing the context (e.g., “the same tores who was notoriously banned from EA for slagging certain people off”). This isnt difficult. So not difficult, that the OP actually did include this context so that no one was confused.
Phil Torres is not currently a deadname. A deadname is a name that someone is no longer using in their public persona, but the name Phil is displayed prominently on their web page. Searching Amazon for Phil Torres finds their books, searching Amazon for Emile Torres does not.
Moreover, it’s basically impossible to understand what’s going on here without knowing that Phil and Emile are the same person, and asking the original poster to avoid mentioning the name-mapping is asking them to obfuscate.
I do not think this is a fair characterization of what the page contains. His name is only displayed within an image of the cover of books he wrote beforehand, and in exact quotes. That said, even though I don’t think he actually has said his former name is upsetting or offensive to him, I think the norm of calling people what they request to be called, and not using their former name, is a reasonable one.
No, in addition to the 12 places you mention it is also at the bottom of every page:
and elsewhere on the website, in much the same usage as this post:
That’s completely fair—but as I said, “I don’t think he actually has said his former name is upsetting or offensive to him, I think the norm of calling people what they request to be called, and not using their former name, is a reasonable one.”
Thank you for educating people in this community about the harm caused by deadnames.
My personal impression is that no one here meant to cause harm by it and I’m pleased to see that the OP has updated the post twice. I do expect that there is a bit of defensiveness going on as a result of Émile’s (to my mind, extremely bad faith) attacks on the community and in reaction to accusations of ill intent that people believe are unfounded, but “rationalizing bigotry” seems to me an exaggeration. I think people can reasonably disagree on whether exaggerations, strong language etc are usually necessary to achieve justice, but I think people in this community generally think it’s very rare that that’s the most effective approach, so I think this sort of thing is why you’ve been getting a lot of downvotes.
I also admit that I was thinking “Surely sometimes it’s okay to mention a deadname to provide relevant clarification, but I don’t have enough understanding to know how to do it sensitively in this case yet” and now I think that something similar to your suggestion here would be a good solution. I expect you are feeling very hurt and angry as a result of the comments on this post, but if you feel up to engaging further, I’d be interested to know if you think the following phrasing might be okay:
“However, they did not disclose that Émile P. Torres (who used to go by a different first name) was a co-author on the article...”
I’m hoping that it might be okay (although of course I know I’m not asking Émile themself but it seems like you have a lot more knowledge about this sort of thing than others here) and also might be sufficiently clear who is being referred to.
You can actually use a deadname to reference people when it’s necessary, but because the OP put it all in context, no one needed the reference, everyone who cares knew who they were talking about. And generally in academic circles, especially self referencing ones like EA, using last names only is entirely acceptable.
The problem here is that the OP quite intentionally chose to use a deadname to begin with while they were quite clearly posting an otherwise maligning post about someone who also happened to be transgender. It’s incredibly suspect and the fact that the OP ignored me regarding the deadname just confirms the suspicion.
Sacrificing concern for harm brought to others in pursuit of rational purity over some petty drama post about the inconsequential politics of EA intrigue is not a serious altruistic argument. I’m sorry, I can never take that seriously.
What do you consider to be the etiquette when the person refers to themselves as ‘formerly X’, or something to that effect?
As a (minor) point related to this discussion, I want to flag that Zoe never got back to me after this interaction.
[Edit: This no longer applies – Zoe and I had a call and she could indeed convince me. See here for my update. Also, I want to flag that after it came out that Torres’ involvement wasn’t as a co-author at the time when Zoe faced criticism of the draft, it anyway wouldn’t make sense to assume that she’d be misleading anyone about any sort of info. I didn’t have a call with her to vet her or anything because that wasn’t needed. I just took the opportunity to learn more about what happened before the publication of the paper and so I can post an update to this comment here which would be unfair to Zoe if left unaltered.]
It’s very possible that this may just be due to not using FB frequently (I messaged her on FB). Even so, I think it’s bad form to pocket the credit (e.g., I at first somewhat changed my mind about a comment where I initially voiced skepticism about something, and could imagine that others updated in the same direction) for having specific info by saying that one is going to share it privately and then not sharing it privately.
For context, the specific claim under question was me saying that I’m skeptical that she presented an accurate view of the pushback she received on publishing the paper.
As soon as there’s some evidence for non-optimal integrity (the evidence brought forward here about Torres IMO qualifies if it is accurate – though I wouldn’t necessarily trust Torres to represent accurately what happened), then it becomes also an issue of game theory rather than just epistemics whether to give someone the benefit of the doubt.
Of course, if anyone else has talked to Zoe about the topic or if Zoe herself wants to share more about the situation, we could more easily decide what’s going and if her initial account of the pushback against the paper was roughly accurate.
Hi Lukas—I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you, I think this should be considered bad form. tbh I cannot recall why I didn’t, I just remember having been on many calls about this (realising this approach wasn’t scalable) and simply wanting to take a break from this paper after many months of it taking emotional effort (and I am indeed rarely on FB and must have fogotten to reply). I would have hoped for you to ping me via email if it was important to you! I’m still happy to have a call to answer your questions.
Thanks!
If some of these other people you had calls with about the topic could have posted on the same thread or same comment section and said something like “Talked to Zoe (or Luke) and they have info they can’t disclose publicly that underscores their account and it seemed to all make sense to me” – that would have been enough to take care of my curiosity and skepticism!
At this point, the main thing I’m curious about is your thoughts on Torres’ involvement (edit, just saw that you made a long comment on that!). I don’t think a call is necessary for that because it seems that after all the speculations in the OP and this comment section, a public comment from you or Luke would probably be best rather than private calls.
That said, if you for some reason prefer to explain some things only in a private call and want someone to report back to the community with their overall impression and updates (positive or negative depending on their feelings on the call and without sharing an of the specifics), I’m happy to volunteer for that!
Upvoted in part for the “if it is accurate” qualification—we don’t know if in fact Torres was on the paper, given that our only info comes from an extremely unreliable source (Torres).
(Other admittedly speculative evidence is this tweet )
I think it would be good to get clarification from Cremer or Kemp about this, since as I have said it seems like a key piece of information.
It would be very helpful at this point to hear more info about the timeline of the paper review process and Torres’s involvement from Cremer, Kemp. Or one of the many reviewers (though I wouldn’t begrudge reviewers wanting to steer clear of a messy issue like this)
Given Cremer’s statement below and it doesn’t seem OP asked Cremer or Kemp for their views before posting, at the moment I am strongly downvoting this post. I will change to a weak downvote once it’s been updated to reflect that Cremer denies the claims above.
Agree that having Torres on the paper changes how I’d interpret Cremer’s post about this paper, but I disagree that it was “deceptive” for them to exclude Torres’s name given they were allegedly forced to do so.
Torres alleges that Cremer and Kemp were forced to remove them from the paper (which I don’t trust for obvious reasons), but even granting that, that doesn’t mean Cremer and Kemp were forced to never mention the fact that Torres was originally a co-author. I basically can’t believe they were “forced” to keep it a secret that Torres was ever involved.
Or even asked! That wouldn’t even make sense for supposedly-censorious “EA elites” to do. If I were a censorious EA elite I would want people to know about Torres’s involvement in the paper.
I concerned about the lack of disclosure, but I do not know if the pushback they got, and complained about in the post, occurred based on a paper that Emile co-authored, or if they were asked to remove him, and then got the feedback they complained about. The author of this anonymous post does not clarify this. In the latter case, which still seems entirely plausible, their post did not need to mention his earlier co-authorship, and it would have been misleading. Given that there is a factual question which would lead me to think that their post was entirely reasonable, I want clarify before I would be willing to condemn anything.
For the paper, we should absolutely not discount arguments based on who made them. And I thought the paper itself was pretty reasonable, well written, well sourced, and I disagree strongly with parts of it.
(And note that none of the EA community members who were asked to review the paper came forward, even anonymously, to say that they were deceptive—which implies to me very strongly that the feedback was given on a paper that Emile was not listed as a co-author on, and would fully justify Cremer and Kemp not bringing up this now actually very misleading fact.)
Kudos for noticing this incongruency! I think I and others should have noticed confusion more here (even though many people did flag that Torres’s tweet could be misrepresenting what happened).
I’m unclear on what you mean—did someone who reviewed the paper inform you of this? If so, that would be private evidence that he was on the paper, though given that you’re an anonymous source claiming private information, I’d want to have someone who is not anonymous clarify what occurred and whose names were on the paper when it was reviewed, even if the identified individual didn’t disclose who the reviewer was.
Torres did provide comments on a draft indeed—so did many others, we were very liberal in sharing it before it went out. I would have to dig deep to know whether we accepted Torres’ comments on any later drafts, but I’m very sure there was no major rewriting in response to Torres comments and we certaintly saw now responsibility to do so: commentary is not authorship.
I was one of the people who commented, on what was likely version 26 or 27. (This was in November, 2021.) And Torres certainly wasn’t listed as an author by that stage. I don’t think I saw any comments from them on that version either, but there were a lot of comments in total so I’m not sure.
First, yes, I agree that it would help if Cremer or Kemp explained, but I’m skeptical that you reached out to ask before posting this.
But if they had collaborated in secret, and then didn’t write the post, or wrote the post on the basis of feedback received on a draft Emile was not credited on, I would have no problem—except for a serious feeling of unease about why Emile wasn’t given credit, counterbalanced by recognition that the paper would have been less impactful if they had. ( As much as I vehemently disagree with Emile, and wish he were far less confrontational, they have made some really good points about what EA has been doing wrong.)
Second, yes, Emile has made enemies, though I still think we’d all be better off as a community not socially shunning people, if they are willing to abide by community norms. And this itself is an important community norms issue, which I think needs clarification—though to make sure I’m being transparent here, if being friendly with Emile is disqualifying from having this conversation, I’m disqualified, and I guess you think I need to be shunned.
But if not, I don’t think you get to question the judgement or ethics of people who choose to collaborate with people who you disapprove of, unless there is some specific thing you know of in addition to the collaboration that causes you to question their judgement or ethics—enabling or ignoring abuse, being dishonest with others (as you claim but did not try to confirm in this case,) and so on. So if you think you personally should shun Emile, I’ll disagree with you, but not argue with your decision to do so. And if working with him after he was “shunned” is a disqualification, Cremer and Kemp would be too. But I would strongly maintain that who you talk to, or collaborate with academically, REALLY shouldn’t be a reason to shun you or publicly attack you and claim you misled the community without even checking first.
I for one would not support a norm of second-degree shunning, i.e. shunning people who don’t shun Torres. I wouldn’t shun people who write papers with them. This may be too lenient of me, but I wouldn’t like that precedent.
That said, I definitely am in favor of shunning Torres and think you should too. Not because Torres has made harsh criticisms of EA that I consider incorrect, but because they repeatedly tell blatant lies while doing so (and just lies in general, about unrelated things). That’s what I think should be disqualifying.
I wonder if you are still friendly with Torres because you don’t know about (or don’t agree that there is) any cases of outright lying, as opposed to the kinds of insinuation and defamation that Torres’s very-recently-adopted ideological stance can (imo, in some cases) encourage.
I think “don’t lie” (and its corollary “don’t lie about people on social media and in popular articles”) is one of the most important community norms, which Torres is constantly, flagrantly violating.
There’s also the question of online harassment. People I trust say that Torres has engaged in menacing online behavior against EAs. I have not seen evidence of this.
But this is made plausible by the fact that Torres verifiably engaged in borderline-harassment or harassment, back when Torres was having a (very similar!) conversion-away-from + crusade-of-slander against New Atheism. The evidence for that can be found publicly (making multiple Twitter accounts to get around Peter Boghossian blocking him, emailing Peter Boghossian to menacingly say he is going to show up to his class). This past track record alone is good reason to not work with Torres, in my opinion.
There is a fairly clear m.o. and no reason to think it won’t keep happening.
No I didn’t discuss it with them previously. I don’t trust them so I won’t interact with them.
Can you answer this question: If someone has co-authored a paper with someone who tweets every day saying “David Manheim endorses white supremacy” and writes articles in online outlets saying that, what would you think?
I would ask the same question to Cremer and Kemp. If someone tweets every day and writes articles in web outlets saying “Zoe Cremer and Luke Kemp endorse white supremacy, are racist, endorse eugenics” while misquoting and misrepresenting you, would you still be happy to work with them? It seems like they are happy to work with Torres because he flatters their ideology and so will overlook grotesque abuse, which they wouldn’t do if it were aimed at them.
Also, using the same argumentative techniques as Torres, it would be quite easy to make this case. Cremer and Kemp think Sam Bankman-Fried’s money should be decided democratically, which will foreseeably lead to the deaths of huge numbers of black people, in expectation.
I personally would consider working with someone who has acted inappropriately, if I thought they had something very useful to add to my specific research project.
I wouldn’t work with them if I thought association with them would lead to poor reception of my work or if their actions made me doubt their ability/knowledge.
EDIT: I simply feel trying to do the most good has to mean working with people who can best contribute to making that happen.
I agree this is clearly a terrible argument and I’d hope my proposition for distributed decision making would never be dragged into such an argumentative mess. Throwaway151, I’m happy to have a call to discuss the many doubts and questions you have?
Please answer this question: if Torres had spent the last several years calling you a white supremacist, a eugenicist, a racist, and a plagiarist in articles in popular media and on twitter, and misquoted and misrepresented things you had said to make you look as bad as possible, would you still work with him?
It sounds as though he did this to you, and you’re still upset about it—which is entirely reasonable, but it doesn’t relate to what you’re asking. Obviously, no-one expects you to work with Emile, but I think it’s not acceptable to attack other people for doing so—or worse, for not doing so, assuming the worst, and not bothering to investigate.
You are saying you didn’t trust the source that made the claim, but you’re attacking Kemp and Cremer on that basis?
In “I don’t trust them”, I think Throwaway151 is referring to Kremer and Kemp, not Torres—as you said you didn’t think he had reached out to Kremer and Kemp.
Throwaway151 should have asked Kemp and Cremer about the claim regardless though, and included their response in the post—even if just to disagree with it.
I assumed it was referring to whoever told the anonymized author of the post about the fact that Emile was originally a co-author. (Which, as has now been clarified, isn’t really true.)
But the fact that someone can post like this on the forum, admittedly without trying to verify the claims he doesn’t trust, seems bad, and I’m glad Lizka said they would be investigating - I just hope that the moderator’s investigation includes the anonymized poster of the original, now refuted claims.
I think that you need to be reminded of the forum rules.
Contrary to every other comment here, I think:
Hiding Torres’ authorship was deceptive, from a research ethics perspective, even if done due to outside pressure.
This doesn’t affect my view about the story at all. “threats of censorship and defunding” for publishing their critique of EA are just as bad with Torres on the paper as they are without them.
It seems if you believe (1) then that should affect your (2).
If, as you believe, Cremer and Kemp were deceptive about Torres’s authorship, shouldn’t that make you trust their reporting of the story less?
In the original Cremer post, we get Cremer and Kemp’s own interpretation/summary of a long and complicated process involving many personal conversations and emails and google doc comments.
Their summary is then presented as an important story, a wake-up call for EA culture, which was then debated at length in the comments, including replies from Cremer. All while Forum commenters lacked a pretty key piece of information about how to interpret the story.
If (1) is true then it seems like pretty strong evidence that Cremer and Kemp were not particularly concerned (to say the least!) with presenting an accurate picture of the paper’s reception.
Your interpretation that they weren’t concerned with painting an accurate picture hinges on Torres’ involvement being key information about the situation. I just don’t think it is, in that sense.
I think pressure to hide Torres’ involvement (by changing the list of authors) was just as bad as the rest, if it happened.
“Your interpretation that they weren’t concerned with painting an accurate picture hinges on Torres’ involvement being key information about the situation.” I think this is true.
Here’s why I think it’s a key piece of information, I’m curious where you disagree:
The post was meant to give us important information about the epistemics and character of various reviewers in EA.
If some reviewers reacted overly-negatively to a paper by Torres Kemp and Cremer, that’s less troubling than if reviewers reacted negatively to a paper by Kemp and Cremer. Because it’s much more understandable (even if wrong) to react overly-negatively to a paper that is by someone who has revealed bad intentions, slandered your colleagues, and repeatedly lied.
It also makes some of their questions make more sense, like asking the authors “Do you hate longtermism”?
I disagree on that—I think these behaviours and questions from reviewers are not any more reasonable with Torres involved.
However, seeing how lots of people here do care about that piece of information, I guess that does make it important, however inconsequential I personally think it should be.
If they were indeed forced from removing a coauthor from their paper, it doesn’t seem to me that they’re being deceptive when they don’t mention that coauthor.
“Deceptive” might be too strong because it may not have been the intention to mislead.
But the post definitely is misleading without that information. The reported reception of the paper comes across in a very different light if you know Torres was a co-author.
One, in giving comments, people may have been responding in their feedback to Torres, who (as can be seen from their social media presence) is extremely quarrelsome and seems to habitually mislead.
Two, objections to the project being undertaken could have been influenced by Torres’s involvement, and rightly so in my opinion.
Three, knowing Torres was an author updates me towards thinking that earlier versions of the paper were more inflammatory/defamatory than the final version.
Fair enough!
What about when they don’t disclose that that might have influenced the reception of their paper?
Yeah I guess it would depend on the particulars, for example if it’s more like they received an authoritative order not to mention Torres wrt the paper or more like a colleague or peer suggested it? Not sure.
You still haven’t removed their deadname from your post. I notified you of why its problematic in the thread up above where people are deciding to thought police me for correcting you. I’m sure you just missed it in the clutter.
Please do not misgender Émile Torres. They may be a persona non grata in this community, but they still deserve to be called by their preferred name and pronouns like anyone else.
Phil/Émile changed name, but did not change pronouns. A Facebook post I saw indicated that the name change was to avoid confusion with a different Phil Torres, who is an entomologist. While their Twitter profile specifies they/them pronouns, their Facebook profile says he/him (both profiles have the updated name). I think under any reasonable etiquette standard, that means either pronoun is acceptable unless they directly say otherwise.
Their twitter profile, which is what is being posted here, uses they/them. I see absolutely no reason to not err on the side of caution, do you? This OP also used their deadname in place of their name and continues to use their deadname in a “formerly” known as context, which is generally not acceptable, unless explicitly noted as such. And I corrected the OP on this too, they haven’t changed it.
PS, I am queer, nonbinary. If someone with a greater personal experience wants to chime in here, please go ahead I would love to defer. I had zero expectation that I’d have to have these discussions on a forum for altruists nor that I would basically be cyber bullied for correcting people with directness (this is so dumb)...
Erring in the direction of they/them is fine, but I object to pronoun-policing when it’s done on another person’s behalf, and the pronoun that was used is one that the person is currently advertising as correct in any prominent place (such as at the bottom of this page).
The person in question is banned from this forum, is what I gather, is that not correct? So they are completely unable to chime in as we all so graciously debate what is or isn’t allowed for them. I mean, we could literally write a text book on the concept of other while we’re at it I suppose, or we could just err on the side of caution as we should do in all circumstances concerning how we choose to exert power or others or not, no?
The ban on Emile P. Torres, which lasted one year, expired on 12 May 2022, per the ban note.
Frankly, with the absolute dismissiveness this issue of misgendering and misnaming and deadnaming is being handle by people here and the straight up cyberbullying and thought policing happening here around what should be an incredibly simple issue for supposed altruists to deal with, I highly doubt they’d come back here. This is not how good people deal with things that are literally matters of life and death for others. The complete lack of empathy in this thread is astounding.
Which comments are cyberbullying? I don’t think definition-gerrymandering to sort out “downvotes” from “thought policing” is useful, but I’d like to know where the cyberbullying is.
I literally opened my first comment with “avoiding deadnaming is important”, idk if you saw.
I mean, you can rationalize it all you want, but its a subjective rationalizing exercise and therefore, well, not meaningfully rational at all—except to you. The participants here are actively downvoting things they don’t want to hear or disagree with and you’d be completely dishonest if you claimed that was done without malice and you know it. This is not some forum populated by Mentats and you’d also be dishonest if you claimed this forum was devoid of active bigots.
For instance, after having been notified twice, the OP still has this person’s deadname in the post. Want to hear a story about a 13 year old I know that started cutting their face to quiet the bullies who insisted on using their deadname to taunt them?
That’s it, that’s the story. Now tell me it’s irrelevant to change language for altruists—an act and choice that literally costs people nothing. Go ahead and tell me the OP is just not quite properly updated.
Goodbye, this is so incredibly the opposite of altruism.
I’ve been trying to write a good response to everything in this post for an hour or so; it’s not easy to write well. Regarding the ban, I thought I’d at least post something that I know.
sorry i’ve corrected
Thank you!
You should also correct your comment on the original post
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gx7BEkoRbctjkyTme/democratising-risk-or-how-ea-deals-with-critics-1?commentId=DQMpqghToYCCCEtCd
No, you haven’t. Their name is Émile P. Torres. From their own biography:
I think you changed pronouns, but not their name. Their name is clearly in the tweet you’ve quoted. Check your third sentence.
Just a thought: if people on this forum don’t want accusations of supremacist ideological adherence to sprout up and maybe take root, then maybe be more conscientious about proactively not perpetuating supremacist behaviors. You are literally quoting a tweet here that contains a transgender pride flag and this person’s full name. I find it hard to believe you have missed these things, yet you’ve inexplicably misgendered and misnamed this person. Please read this carefully, its not an accusation, quite the opposite.
I’m non-binary and this makes me personally uncomfortable, fyi/as an example.
Sorry have changed the name now—I previously changed the pronouns
I’m going to err on the side of caution and assume you don’t know this: the use of dead names, even for context like “formerly X” is typically viewed as derogatory and unwelcome unless the person in question explicitly states otherwise. Everyone who is aware of this story is aware of this story and who you are referencing, you’ve literally quoted their tweet.
In this instance, the “formerly X” seems quite relevant because of Torres’s history in EA. If I was the OP, I wouldn’t immediately know how to unambiguously make the point that we’re talking about the person who made all these crazy bad-faith accusations against EA without something like “formerly X.” (Of course, I’d see no need to mention “formerly X” if Torres was entirely new to EA or didn’t have a public persona beforehand.)
If you know of a better way to handle this issue with previous EA involvement, maybe it would be helpful for others to post a suggestion.
I don’t know, that policy doesn’t seem very workable when a previous name is very well known and their current name is nowhere near as well known. I’m going to disagree and claim it’s okay to list someone’s current name and their previous name so long as there is a good reason behind it. There is definitely a certain segment of the population where the social rules are unambiguous, but it’s far from uncontroversial.
Only if you completely disregard the suffering and trauma associated with deadnaming.
I guess I see us as obligated to try to treat each other as well as we can, but I don’t see us as being obligated to take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state, as that is an impossible burden. This is, of course, a shame, because it’s always sad when someone suffers. It would be nice if we could help everyone, all the time, but sometimes there are real costs to adopting a certain policy. But, just to be clear, we should respect people’s naming preferences insofar as is reasonable/practical.
A choice of words literally costs you or the OP nothing- its just a simple choice you make. And it says far more about you in the context here than you think. Choosing to be empathetic in the way you communicate, again, costing you absolutely nothing. It is what an altruist would do and it certainly doesn’t oblige you to “take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state.”
avoiding deadnaming is important, Torres was widely published before the name change. The project of retroactively updating all the EA forum posts, their old username and so on, has not been undertaken. Someone who cares about not deadnaming may not know an obvious policy in such a case!
Could some of the anonymous folks thought policing my comments here please explain what I’ve done wrong? If not, you’re sort of proving the wrong point here, fyi...
Hi. I’m not one of the people who downvoted you, and I’m not anonymous (while you actually are). But I’ll try to explain what I understand here.
On the one hand, you’re complaining about a behavior that made you feel uncomfortable and would probably make others too. This is important, and EAs should indeed make an effort to not exclude trans/queer people (or any other demographic). This inclusion is important to me personally.
On the other hand, you’re implicitly accusing anyone who replied to you of bad things (e.g. “actively harming people to the point of self harm, resulting in suicide and to the point of physical violence resulting in death”) rather than start off from the assumption that they are ignorant, or even have some reason you don’t see to do what they’re doing. And you’re ignoring the context that they’re trying to give you. You even took this conflict to an entirely unrelated comment thread.
Again, it speaks so much more about EA and this place that you all have put this much energy into policing me, while expending so little energy on reducing the harm you claim to be concerned about. Your forum norms are more important to you, for instance, than harm you could be causing others in this context. I find that incredibly problematic for people claiming to be the arbiters of doing good better and claiming to be altruists.
I personally expended energy not to police you but to answer your question (from the comment I replied to), because I thought it was bad that no one else answered.
I cannot speak for others, but certainly don’t see myself as “the arbiter of doing good better”.
Ah, I didn’t know what thread I was on. Seems the whole forum has decided they need to reasonsplain queer harm to the queer so I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. Thanks for the response.
I am sorry, but why on earth is this comment being downvoted or whatever you call it?
I think you’re only being downvoted for the “Just a thought” segment, not for pointing out that the name was still wrong (at the time you wrote the comment – it seems to be updated now).
In the “Just a thought” section, you’re IMO coming across as a fanatic on a crusade rather than someone who cares about EA being more welcoming and inclusive (or “taking the right side on a human rights issue” – as you view it; but others may not quite see it in the exact same way even if they generally agree that it’s good to take low-effort actions to prevent others from potentially feeling bad or making a space more accessible for them).
As a comparison, I think factory farming is really bad and I think it’s legitimate that vegans in 2014 or so criticized an EA conference for serving meat. Still, I would downvote vegans who include a rant about how it means EA is a terrible place for altruists if that’s how they approach the issue. Instead, I think vegans who care about EAs not promoting meat at conferences should approach a strategy “continue to criticize, but don’t assume that the target of your criticism is flawed beyond repair for seeing things differently from you.”
Likewise, I want a culture where people are receptive to criticism and ready to make low-effort accommodations even if they disagree with some aspects of the moral position in question.
You were insinuating that someone making a mistake (related to perhaps thoughtlessness or carelessness) is equivalent to a really bad action and calling into question the integrity of EA as a movement (if it happens that a significant portion of EAs would be likely to do that kind of thing). You’re doing this even after the OP showed willingness to update their statements (by changing pronouns at first – they then also changed Torres’s name later [but I see there’s also the issue of “formerly X” that you object to]).
The OP literally created a throw away account called throwaway151 just to attack a transgendered individual and has refused, after having been updated several times about other harmful actions to update their posts. You can rationalize this as naivety all you want, it’s obvious to anyone even slightly aware of how bigotry works what is going on here. And the repeated rationalization of this embarrassingly transparent wink wink is just absurd and disappointing, to say the least. And the fact that you all have wasted exponentially more words and energy on policing me, a non-binary queer person, than you have policing the person actually causing harm to others says pretty much everything.
It’s obvious that the OP would have made the exact same type of post if Torres hadn’t changed their name and gender identity (and the post seems to be more about Zoe and Luke), so you’re being incredibly misleading here. I assume it’s probably due to the strong emotions involved – it’s unfortunate how this situation developed. I’m not planning to engage further.
Edit: In light of new comments by the throwaway account, I retract my statement that “the post seems to be more about Zoe and Luke”) – it seems like the OP also has strong views on associating with Torres all by itself. I still see absolutely no reason to believe that they’re acting differently due to the change of gender identity, but I want to flag that I now understand better why the now anonymous account above felt like the OP “had it out for Torres”). (I’m not necessarily saying “having it out for Torres” is unwarranted; I’m just acknowledging a point.)
The use of a deadname is completely unnecessary for reasons already stated. The OP and the people in this post have been informed, by a direct source, that deadname are incredibly harmful but instead of updating to serve altruistic intent, the people in this post at doubling down on a weakly rationalized excuse of naivety which is perpetuating harm.
I was under the impression that most trans people find it ok to mention a deadname in a parenthesis if the person has been notable under that name (which is true of Émile). That’s the Wikipedia policy; here’s a Reddit thread where that seems to be the consensus opinion. Is this wrong?
If this had started that way, it would’ve been fine but within this context, in which the OP clearly intended to malign the subject, regardless and then flat out ignored repeated, civil requests for a change, absolutely not. Context matters. If that was information the OP had and they meant no harm, they would have shared as much. Again, the lengths everyone is going here to police someone explaining harm is incredible...
At the time of writing, throwaway151 hasn’t commented in several hours (at least 5). Isn’t it possible that throwaway151 logged off a few hours ago?
hmmm so I didn’t downvote, but I think there’s a conflation in your comment between making an etiquette mistake (that Throwaway151 gave every signal that they were trying not to do, trying to fix) and some sort of active or positive cis-supremacism. That kind of conflation is probably seen as sloppy reasoning by many, and makes people hesitate before engaging with you because they don’t want to walk on eggshells, or risk being called transphobic or whatever.
I understand that people not trying hard enough at etiquette feels extremely similar to malice (especially in early stages of transition) because a dozen trans people and/or enbies have reported that to me! But generalizing from Throwaway151′s mistakes to the overall tone of the forum still seems like a mistake.
First of all, this perspective is so far off base. Its not an “etiquette” issue, its a literal human rights issue. Its an issue that is, as we speak, actively harming people to the point of self harm, resulting in suicide and to the point of physical violence resulting in death. And the political climate around this issue, around the globe, is so heated and exacerbated by bigots and bigotry that anyone claiming to be an altruist should be extremely cautious around these things. It would be “sloppy reasoning” to think otherwise. The OP has literally ignored my updates about deadnaming, which rationally says the OP doesn’t actually think these things matter.
It’s worth quantifying and doing ITN estimates of bullying, self harm, suicide in the queer community; then thinking about interventions. I forecast that a good treatment of this would be well received on the forum (which isn’t to say it would go uncriticized). I feel vaguely like I’d support someone doing this in some trivial ways; I’d like to upvote a proper treatment of this, for instance.
But I think it’s basically irrelevant to this post or it’s comments.
I’m sorry you feel like a few EAs might not support or respect you because they disagree with you here, but I don’t think there’s evidence that you’re broadly right about correlations between referring to a he/they who changed their name in the middle of a public writing career and tolerance for bigotry.
Yeah, you don’t get to decide for other people what is or is not harmful to them or who they are. Its just not how it works. When you start letting everyone do that for you, let me know and we can have that conversation. Every bigot (and I am not calling you one) rationalizes their bigotry and the harm they cause to others and devalues it all. That process, which you just summarized, btw, is not altruistic in any way shape or form. Again, words cost you nothing and if someone says they are harmful to them, as a supposed altruist, then you update—because it costs you nothing and you’ve reduced harm.
His pronouns, listed on his website, are he/they.
Point taken, thanks! My original comment was mainly addressed at the fact that OP used “Phil”, and I was not aware that Émile still uses “he” pronouns because their Twitter bio only says “they”. I think the correction – using “Émile” while noting that Émile was “formerly known as Phil” to help others identify him – is satisfactory.
First, thank you for bringing this to ur knowledge and raising the issue. On the other hand, I wouldn’t use such strong words here:
And I can’t help but notice that I totally ignore your identity, too.
I don’t mean this as an accusation. But either the identity of the author of a post is important, and we should all disclose it properly, or it’s totally secondary to the content, and it’s acceptable to hide it, if this is a hinderance.
(maybe Kemp and Cremer would have been more honest if they had credited Torres with a pseudonym… but I suspect we’d still have this discussion anyway)
I wonder if posts under pseudonyms are getting more frequent.
I think you may not be aware of relevant context. (See the comment by Matis for the same point.) This has practically nothing to do with anonymity norms or evading forum bans. The point is that Zoe and Luke complained about the events before they posted their paper, implying that prominent people in EA tried to prevent them from publishing their thoughts and accused them of bad faith (and warnings that EA funders would not longer fund them, etc.). These accusations would seem to put “prominent EAs or EA funders” in a very bad light if their complaints and warnings were only directed at Zoe and Luke, two EAs with a good track record writing up their thoughts in a way that they consider fair and appropriate. By contrast, if such complaints/warnings were levelled against Torres or because of Torres (or even just in the context of the two of them collaborating closely with Torres as an initial co-author), that would make a lot of sense and seems hard to object to given Torres’s track record (which they already had at the time) of repeatedly making bizarre and wrong accusations and generally being on a kind of crusade against longtermist EA.
To be clear, everything they complain about was after I left the project (so far as I know). I was as surprised as anyone else to read Zoe’s EA Forum post—I hadn’t even seen a draft of it, and didn’t know she’d written it. Their complaints had nothing to do with me having worked on an early draft of the paper!
Also worth noting that I’d mentioned our original collaboration to many people in the community prior to that tweet. This isn’t new information.
It seems reasonable to say ‘the identity is not important, except people who have been specifically banned for abuse.’ Anonymity is desirable, but not to enable evasion of other rules.
I think this is muddying issues somewhat. The question of whether Torres’s involvement should have been disclosed is not about anonymity norms. (It’s not like Torres was trying to avoid Forum rules or anything in co-authoring the academic paper ‘Democratising Risk’.)
The question is whether the (alleged) involvement of Torres should have been disclosed as part of the recounting of the tale of the paper’s reception. Because Torres’s involvement was not disclosed, many people were trying to draw inferences about epistemics and community dynamics in EA while ignorant of a very important fact about why the project might have been getting negative feedback: i.e., that one of the co-authors was [harsh, but all demonstrably true via public evidence] a serial fabulist with a history of harassing and defaming those he disagrees with, and an obviously hostile agenda.
I should be clear: my understanding is that if Torres was indeed involved, then it was not as an anonymous author or anything, and that knowing Torres was involved would explain some of why people might have been negative about the project.
(As would the probable fact that, if Torres was involved, earlier versions of the paper were more hostile in tone).
If Torres was an anonymous collaborator the whole time, then I wouldn’t really care if Cremer and Kemp never disclosed that fact. Because it wouldn’t be relevant for drawing conclusions from the alleged pushback that the project got.
Exactly!
No one knew I was involved, though. Honestly. All that happened after I’d moved on. I was as surprised as everyone else to read Zoe’s EA Forum post.
That’s fair, I guess this objection applies to the post on the EA forum but not to the linked article.
Maybe I didn’t quite understande the point, but:
if anonymity is permissible—or, even stronger, desirable—then it seems to me that bans can be easily evaded. One can say “they shouldn’t be evaded!”, but for me it sounds self-defeating to support a norm and at the same time encourage an easy way to evade it. But yeah, legal systems are full of instances of that—but they are often recognized as “bugs”.
I do not think the issue here is that Kemp & Cremer intended to actually evade a ban imposed on Torres, but that their accusation might have been unfair—because it’d be proper to criticize their post given its origins.
This. It almost doesn’t matter what the criticism was anymore, because they were attempting to knowingly post for a banned user. This would have also gotten the other authors banned in other communities. The moderators were surprisingly lenient in not banning the other authors from the EA forum and EA events.
EA did a good job here.
They cowrote an earlier draft with Torres, and then, after removing Torres because of complaints, posted a later draft. There doesn’t even seem to be any evidence here that they were collaborating with Torres on this after Torres’ ban (though there might exist evidence I am unaware of). I think it would have been better to disclose that Torres used to be involved, but I think it would have been overly draconian to ban the post (even more so the poster) over earlier input from someone banned. EA did a good job here because they didn’t ban the authors.
“At this point, Torres had been banned from the EA Forum, they had called many people in the community white supremacists, racists, eugenicists and genocidal, and many people in the community had accused them of harassment.”
First of all, here I am.
Second, could you provide a single example of me calling someone a “white supremacist” or a “racist”? Please, I’d love to see that. A single example: “X is a white supremacist,” or “X is a racist.”
Third, I have indeed connected Bostrom’s transhumanism with eugenics, because there is an obvious, demonstrable, straightforward connection. Want me to provide citations? There’s been a lot published in the technical literature on this issue.
Finally, as for genocidal, I’m making the very same point that Olle Haggstrom (Here Be Dragons) and Peter Singer (“Hinge of History”) have made. But you wouldn’t accuse either of them of calling you longtermists names, would you? Or maybe you would, in which case, add their names to the above.
No one has accused me of “harassment,” so far as I know; if someone has, provide evidence of the supposed harassment (there is no such evidence). To the contrary, I’ve accused John Halstead of defamation and harassment. I asked EA Forum moderators to fact-check Halstead’s outrageous claims; they refused. So much for intellectual honesty.
EA Forum moderators: please ask for evidence of these claims. If none is provided, delete this post immediately, or require the user to modify their claims to make them ACCURATE. Thanks.
I looked into evidence for the quote you posted for one hour. While I think the phrasing is inaccurate, I’d say the gist of the quote is true. For example, it’s pretty understandable that people jump from “Emile Torres says that Nick Beckstead supports white supremacy” to “Emile Torres says that Nick Beckstead is a white supremacist”.
White Supremacy:
In a public facebook post you link to this public google doc where you call a quote from Nick Beckstead “unambiguously white-supremacist”.
You reinforce that view in a later tweet:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1509948468571381762
You claim that the writing of Bostrom, Beckstead, Ord, Greaves, etc. is “very much about the preservation of white Western civilization”:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1527250704313856000
You also tweeted about a criticism of Hilary Greaves in which you “see white supremacy all over it”:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1229107714015604736
Genocide:
On another facebook post you agree with Olle Häggström [note: Häggström actually strongly disagrees with this characterization of their position] that Bostrom’s idea of transhumanism and utilitarianism in Letters from Utopia “is a recipe for moral disaster—for genocide, white supremacy, and so on.”
Eugenics:
In your Salon article you call some of Bostrom’s ideas “straight out of the handbook of eugenics”.
https://www.salon.com/2022/08/20/understanding-longtermism-why-this-suddenly-influential-philosophy-is-so/
You reinforce this view in the following tweet:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1562003541539037186
You also say that “Longtermism is deeply rooted in the ideology of eugenics”.
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1557338332702572545
Racism:
You called Sam Harris “quite racist”:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1384425549091774466
In this tweet you strongly imply that some of Bostrom’s views are indistinguishable from scientific racism:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1569365203049140224
There’s also this tweet that describes the EA community as welcoming to misogynists, neoreactionaries, and racists:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1510708370285776902
Tobias, I think you are absolutely correct. But I will note that this is a well-worn pattern:
Given a long list of tweets and articles that make it quite obvious that Torres is deliberately and repeatedly construing everything ever written or said by longtermists in order to make them appear maximally sinister and dangerous and racist, Torres protests that they have never actually written the sentence “Toby Ord is a white supremacist”.
Rather, Torres is using the scholarly definition of white supremacy, not the every day definition. In this way there’s always plausible deniability that Torres is waging a relentless campaign to portray (e.g.) the founders of Giving What We Can as racists. It’s a classic motte-and-bailey.