Ben Pace

Karma: 3,879

Ben Pace Sep 7, 2023, 8:19 PM
44 points
17 ∶ 2
in reply to: Will Bradshaw’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but FWIW I think Sam Bankman-Freid and Alameda would have been honestly described as “a notable but relatively minor actor in the space” during the many years when they were building their resource base, hiring, getting funds, and during which time people knew multiple serious accusations about him/them. I am here trying to execute an algorithm that catches bad actors before they become too powerful. I think Emerson is very ambitious and would like a powerful role in EA/X-risk/etc.
What links here?
- Manya's comment on Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims by Kat Woods (Dec 13, 2023, 11:28 PM; 91 points)

Ben Pace Sep 7, 2023, 8:16 PM
34 points
13 ∶ 3
in reply to: aprilsun’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
without inviting or even permitting the accused party to share their side of the story in advance
You may have missed the section where I had a 3hr call with them and summarized what they told me? It’s not everything we’d want but I think this sentence is inaccurate.
I suspect Ben does in fact have some understanding of the political dimension of his decision to share this post
Of course I do! I thought about it a bunch and came to the conclusion that it’s best to share serious and credible accusations early and fast.

Ben Pace Sep 7, 2023, 8:12 PM
25 points
7 ∶ 1
in reply to: burner’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
To be clear I only informed them about my planned writeup on Friday.
(The rest of the time lots of other people involved were v afraid of retaliation and intimidation and I wanted to respect that while gathering evidence. I believe if I hadn’t made that commitment to people then I wouldn’t have gotten the evidence.)

Ben Pace Sep 7, 2023, 8:09 PM
33 points
7 ∶ 3
in reply to: spencerg’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
To confirm: I had a quickly written bit about the glassdoor reviews. It was added in without much care because it wasn’t that cruxy to me about the whole situation, just a red flag that suggested further investigation was worth it, that someone else suggested I add for completeness. The reviews I included were from after the time that Emerson’s linkedin says he was CEO, and I’m glad that Spencer corrected me.
If I’m remembering the other one, there was also a claim that I included not because it was itself obviously unethical, but because it seemed to indicate a really invasive social environment, and when I think information has been suppressed I have strong heuristics suggesting to share worrying information even if it isn’t proven or necessarily bad. Anyway, Spencer said he was confident in a very different narrative of events, so I edited it the comment to be more minor.
In general I think Spencer’s feedback on this and other points improved the post (though he also had some inaccurate information).
What links here?
- DanielFilan's comment on Sharing Information About Nonlinear by Ben Pace (Sep 7, 2023, 8:37 PM; 25 points)

Ben Pace Sep 7, 2023, 8:00 PM
24 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: Joel Becker’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
I’d also be pleased to find out that my understanding is wrong!
I don’t think they’re in a position to show that a lot of hurt didn’t accrue to the employees, but maybe they can show some ways in which they clearly signaled that they wouldn’t try to ruin their employees or intimidate them, such as
- Texts where they told Alice/Chloe “I understand that you had a horrible experience here, and it’s totally fine for you to tell other people that this working/living environment was awful and you’ve been really hurt by it, and also here’s a way in which I’m going to make sure you’re better off for having interacted with us”
- Any writing where Emerson says “I have used vicious and aggressive business tactics in the past, but to be clear if this work-slash-family situation really burns you, I will not come after you with these tactics even if I strongly disagree with your interpretations of what happened”
- Or generally some “philosophy of how to behave with allies” doc written by Emerson that says something like “Here are the 48 Laws of Power, and here is my explanation why you should never use these tactics if you want to be trustworthy, and here’s why we would never use them in an EA/x-risk/etc context”
Then that could change my mind on the intimidation aspect a bunch. I think in general intimidation/fear is often indirect and implicit, so it’s going to be hard to disprove, but if there was clear evidence about why that wouldn’t happen here, then I could come to believe that Alice/Chloe/others had managed to trick themselves into being more worried than they needed to be.

Ben Pace Sep 7, 2023, 7:30 PM
11 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Joel Becker’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Appreciate the comment Joel :)
(And of course, if you later come to have a critical/negative opinion of parts of my post, you’re v welcome to share those too!)

Ben Pace Sep 7, 2023, 7:29 PM
52 points
11 ∶ 5
in reply to: Geoffrey Miller’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
I’ll quote Emerson Spartz on this one:
People are so irrationally intimidated by lawyers that some legal firms make all their money by sending out thousands of scary form letters demanding payment for bullshit transgressions. My company was threatened with thousands of frivolous lawsuits but only actually sued once.
Threats are cheap.

Ben Pace Sep 7, 2023, 7:27 PM
45 points
19 ∶ 5
in reply to: Geoffrey Miller’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
It is indeed high stakes! But in my opinion they have opted in to this sort of accusation being openly stated. Many hundreds or even thousands of people have given their lives and efforts to causes and projects led by high-status people in EA, often on the grounds that it is “high trust” and the people are well-intentioned. Once you are taking those resources — for instance having a woman you talked to once at an EAG come and fly out and live with you and work for you while nomadically traveling and paying her next to nothing, or do the same via a short hiring process — then as soon as someone else in that group sees credible evidence that “Wait, these people look to me like they have taken advantage of this resource and really hurt some people and intimidated them into covering it up”, then it behooves them to say so loud and clear!
Perhaps you do not believe this is true of EA circles, and as an older person in these circles that generally correlates (quite wisely) with being on the more hesitant side of giving your full life to whatever a person currently in EA leadership randomly thinks you should do. Nonetheless I think two younger people here have been eaten up and chewed out and I think it’ll happen again, because of people resting on this inaccurately high level of trust. So I’ll say it as loud as you like :)

Ben Pace Sep 7, 2023, 7:22 PM
17 points
8 ∶ 1
in reply to: redbermejo’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Seems great! I am glad you had good interactions with them. They do seem overwhelmingly positive in their general demeanor, and high energy and excited about projects.

Sharing Information About Nonlinear

Ben PaceSep 7, 2023, 6:51 AM

432 points

497 comments34 min readEA link

Ben Pace Mar 23, 2023, 8:33 PM
14 points
6 ∶ 4
in reply to: Ubuntu’s comment on: Shutting Down the Lightcone Offices
Personally I have found that getting too attached the supposed goodness of my intentions as a guide to my moral character has been a distraction, in times when my behavior has not actually been that good.
I’ve not looked into it in great detail, but I think of it as a classically Christian idea to try to evaluate if someone is a good or a bad person internally, and give reward/punishment based on that. In contrast, I believe it’s mostly better to punish people based on their behavior, often regardless of whether you judge them to internally be ‘selfish’ or ‘altruistic’. If MacAskill has repeatedly executed a lot of damaging prestige-seeking strategies and behaved in selfish ways, I think it’s worthwhile to punish the behavior. And in that case I think it’s worthwhile to punish the behavior regardless of whether he is open to change, regardless of whether the behavior is due to fundamental personality traits, and regardless of whether he reflectively endorses the decisions.
Ubuntu writes that they read Habryka as saying “Will is so selfish” rather than “Will and I have major disagreements on the strategies he should pursue but I believe he’s well-intentioned”. But I don’t Habryka’s comment to be saying either of these. I read the comment to simply be saying “Will has repeatedly behaved in ways that trade off integrity for popularity and prestige”. This is also my read of multiple behaviors of Will, and cost him a great deal of respect from me for his personal integrity and as a leader, and this is true regardless of the intentions.

Ben Pace Mar 16, 2023, 8:09 PM
7 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Habryka [Deactivated]’s comment on: Shutting Down the Lightcone Offices
The Rose Garden Inn was also purchased on a loan from Jaan Tallinn (I’m not quite sure how the finances worked but we weren’t given the funds directly), and so we owe him ~$16MM-or-a-hotel at some point in the future.

Ben Pace Mar 16, 2023, 2:46 AM
7 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: HaydnBelfield’s comment on: Shutting Down the Lightcone Offices
I did also not account for all the furniture costs in that section (however, I suspect ~50% of the furniture will get used in the future either by projects by our team or other projects we like, so it’s not all sunk cost).
A quick fermi for how much furniture we bought is something like 40 standing desks (~$600) + 40 office chairs (~$600) + 20 couches (~$1000) is more than half of it, then give a factor of 2x for everything else (rugs, end-tables, lights, etc), which comes out to $136,000.
As I say, ~50% will get kept and used for other stuff, so it’s only about $80k of further sunk cost.

Shutting Down the Lightcone Offices

Habryka [Deactivated]Mar 15, 2023, 1:46 AM

243 points

71 comments17 min readEA link

(www.lesswrong.com)

Ben Pace Jul 29, 2022, 1:14 AM
12 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelPlant’s comment on: Remuneration In Effective Altruism
The charity section famously has lower salaries because the work is more intrinsically rewarding than regular corporate fare.
I thought it was because there’s no profit to be made doing the work.

Ben Pace Jul 21, 2022, 1:31 AM
11 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: RobertM’s comment on: EAs should use Signal instead of Facebook Messenger
Nah, I am regularly wildly un-careful in my speech, so moving to Signal is a major benefit precisely for me.
Agree on UI though, the first time ppl text me I don’t know who they are, and no photos for most of my contacts.

Ben Pace Jul 21, 2022, 1:02 AM
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EAs should use Signal instead of Facebook Messenger
Happy to get behind this, I am always down to move to Signal. You can reach me there at five one oh, nine nine eight, four seven seven one (also a +1 at the front for US country code). (Please identify yourself when you text me.)

Ben Pace Jul 21, 2022, 12:58 AM
14 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Luise’s comment on: EAs should use Signal instead of Facebook Messenger
Pretty sure non-zero people have tried, my guess is the question is “how competent of an attacker and how much effort do they put into it”.

Ben Pace Jun 21, 2022, 11:43 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Fill out this census of everyone who could ever see themselves doing longtermist work — it’ll only take a few mins
Sure, done.

Ben Pace Jun 21, 2022, 6:06 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: technicalities’s comment on: Transcript of a talk on The non-identity problem by Derek Parfit at EAGxOxford 2016
Heeheehee. Sounds like Anders poking fun at his friend live.

Ben Pace

Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

Shut­ting Down the Light­cone Offices

Sharing Information About Nonlinear

Shutting Down the Lightcone Offices