I agree you can have two bad actors at once. The fact that one bad actor is writing distorted critiques that misportray another, does not mean the other person is actually behaving well. The thing I find tough to unpack here is that some (not all) of the critiques I’ve read from you come straight from this fake “Fuentes” account. Given that the person behind that account is misportraying themselves and Émile in obvious places (I already gave a few examples), I would be very careful to not take their critiques at face value. Some years ago, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about a hypothetical scenario where one agent is trying to make you believe X is true even if it’s false, and provides very convincing arguments that X is true anyway. How much should you “update” on their arguments that X is true anyway?
Good nuance. I did not mean to say that you’re a “core” EA person. Please do consider that if you’re going to take this in your own hands (hopefully not Thanos style!) to defend EA from an outsider whose critiques are making EA look bad, then naturally you’ll get many upvotes from members of this community backing you up. Me writing dissonating comments like these on the EA Forum (despite that EAs like you know me) is putting myself into a minority position, where I make myself wide open to being socially discredited from any angle found by any member motivated against. I hesitate to use this analogy, but it’s a bit like returning to a circle of devout Christians to clear the name of an atheist, who turned out to be wrongly accused by an anonymous Christian. This is not a neutral context of conversation, and experiencing that is not pleasant. I think you did not quite consider this in how you worded your initial reply.
[splitting this out from 2.] Where I agree with you is that Émile has repeatedly made overgeneralised blanket statements about people tied to the EA community. And I’ve been correcting Émile on this (eg. see point 1. here: https://x.com/RemmeltE/status/1695071975096340480), in a similar way as I did when advising Glen Weyl against publishing an overgeneralised caustic media article against EA (which along with feedback from someone else, made Glen decide not to publish). I don’t want illegitimate critiques of EA to be shared around, because it makes EAs close off to outside critiques and devote less energy to listening for where to change harmful mindsets/activities in the community.
Perhaps we can pick this up again in DMs or a Calendly call :)
Happy to have a call in a few weeks’ time. Let’s wait until after Émile’s essays regarding accusations and identity by “Fuentes” are (hopefully) out.
And just want to clarify that I do admire you and your work even if I don’t agree with your conclusions. I think you’re a much better EA critic (to the extent you identify as one) than Émile is.
Appreciating your considerate words here. Thank you.
I previously thought Mark Fuentes was someone ~ unaffiliated with this community. The article seemed to present enough evidence that I no longer believe this. (It also made me downwards somewhat on the claims in the Fuentes post, but not enough to get to pre-reading-the-post levels).
Hi JWS,
Responding to your thoughtful points:
I agree you can have two bad actors at once. The fact that one bad actor is writing distorted critiques that misportray another, does not mean the other person is actually behaving well. The thing I find tough to unpack here is that some (not all) of the critiques I’ve read from you come straight from this fake “Fuentes” account. Given that the person behind that account is misportraying themselves and Émile in obvious places (I already gave a few examples), I would be very careful to not take their critiques at face value. Some years ago, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about a hypothetical scenario where one agent is trying to make you believe X is true even if it’s false, and provides very convincing arguments that X is true anyway. How much should you “update” on their arguments that X is true anyway?
Good nuance. I did not mean to say that you’re a “core” EA person. Please do consider that if you’re going to take this in your own hands (hopefully not Thanos style!) to defend EA from an outsider whose critiques are making EA look bad, then naturally you’ll get many upvotes from members of this community backing you up. Me writing dissonating comments like these on the EA Forum (despite that EAs like you know me) is putting myself into a minority position, where I make myself wide open to being socially discredited from any angle found by any member motivated against. I hesitate to use this analogy, but it’s a bit like returning to a circle of devout Christians to clear the name of an atheist, who turned out to be wrongly accused by an anonymous Christian. This is not a neutral context of conversation, and experiencing that is not pleasant. I think you did not quite consider this in how you worded your initial reply.
[splitting this out from 2.] Where I agree with you is that Émile has repeatedly made overgeneralised blanket statements about people tied to the EA community. And I’ve been correcting Émile on this (eg. see point 1. here: https://x.com/RemmeltE/status/1695071975096340480), in a similar way as I did when advising Glen Weyl against publishing an overgeneralised caustic media article against EA (which along with feedback from someone else, made Glen decide not to publish). I don’t want illegitimate critiques of EA to be shared around, because it makes EAs close off to outside critiques and devote less energy to listening for where to change harmful mindsets/activities in the community.
Happy to have a call in a few weeks’ time. Let’s wait until after Émile’s essays regarding accusations and identity by “Fuentes” are (hopefully) out.
Appreciating your considerate words here. Thank you.
See Émile’s substack: https://mileptorres.substack.com/
The article is enough to change my mind, personally.
Change your mind in what way? Could you elaborate a bit?
I previously thought Mark Fuentes was someone ~ unaffiliated with this community. The article seemed to present enough evidence that I no longer believe this. (It also made me downwards somewhat on the claims in the Fuentes post, but not enough to get to pre-reading-the-post levels).