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.
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.