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.
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.