To recap, I thought Ben’s original post was unfair even if he happened to be right about Nonlinear because of how chilling it is for everyone else to know they could be on blast if they try to do anything. It sounded like NL made mistakes, but they sounded like very typical mistakes of EA/rationalists when they try out new or unusual social arrangements. Since the attitude around me if you don’t like contracts you entered is generally “tough shit, get more agency”, I was surprised at the responses saying Alice and Chloe should have been protected from an arrangement they willing entered (that almost anyone but EAs/rationalists would have told them was a bad idea). It made me think Ben/Lightcone had a double standard toward an org they already didn’t like because of Emerson talking about Machiavellian strategies and marketing.
Idk if Emerson talking about libel was premature. Many have taken it as an obvious escalation, but it seems like he called it exactly right because NL’s reputation is all but destroyed. Maybe if he hadn’t said that Ben would have waited for their response before publishing, and it would have been better. I think it’s naive and irresponsible for Ben/Lightcone to act like a post like Ben’s was all-in-the-family or something and Emerson was the one getting too real. These forums are NL’s constituency. Damaging their reputation in EA is damaging the main reputation that matters.
I did think the original post was witch-hunty. Even if it was all true and balanced (just not able to share smoking guns) re:NL, the effect on readers is to communicate that smallish infractions will out you as not good enough or reveal your unacceptable character. I’m starting a new org and it terrified me that my inevitable mistakes would be unacceptable.“No mistakes allowed” seems like the worst norm imaginable for a community like ours. It actually is okay to make mistakes with org structure and employer-employee relationships and try again.
Zooming out from this particular case, I’m concerned that our community is both (1) extremely encouraging and tolerant of experimentation and poor, undefined boundaries and (2) very quick to point the finger when any experiment goes wrong. If we don’t want to have strict professional norms I think it’s unfair to put all the blame on failed experiments without updating the algorithm that allows people embark on these experiments with community approval.
To be perfectly clear, I think this community has poor professional boundaries and a poor understanding of why normie boundaries exist. I would like better boundaries all around. I don’t think we get better boundaries by acting like a failure like this is due to character or lack of integrity instead of bad engineering. If you wouldn’t have looked at it before it imploded and thought the engineering was bad, I think that’s the biggest thing that needs to change. I’m concerned that people still think that if you have good enough character (or are smart enough, etc), you don’t need good boundaries and systems.