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.
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.