Hi, I’m Ben! I’m a Research Fellow at Open Philanthropy, though all views I express here are my own.
Before OP I was an independent researcher in global health and biosecurity, and a Charity Entrepreneurship incubatee. I have an MD and undergrad degrees in philosophy, international relations, and neuroscience, all from the University of Sydney.
I take your (and others’) argument to be that the negative score showed the forum “worked as it should” and that the community in some holistic sense rejected the post’s claims. That argument is very weak if it is based solely on the score being slightly negative (since that could be obtained just by 51% of votes). The argument is strong if the negative score is strong and signals robust rejection. Roughly, the voting pattern was:
Group A—early rejection, −14 score at least
Group B—subsequent support, +38 score at least (possible selection effect, unknown)
Group C—later rejection, −44 score at least (strong selection effect from David’s tweet)
Around 40% of vote points were supportive, without adjusting for Group C’s selection effect (again, very rough). That’s a way higher fraction than I would have expected (I would have guessed maybe 5%, and hoped for less). I agree people are allowed to like posts I don’t like. But this pattern suggests a much higher proportion of the forum support views which I personally think are hot garbage. I’m not saying anything should happen as a result of this. This is just another instance of a reason for me to move away from the EA community. It may be such a reason for others too.