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.
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.