Co-founder of Nonlinear, Charity Entrepreneurship, Charity Science Health, and Charity Science.
Kat Woods
Karma: 4,459
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Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
Why fun writing can save lives: the case for it being high impact to make EA writing entertaining
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A quick update from Nonlinear
One example of the evidence we’re gathering
We are working hard on a point-by-point response to Ben’s article, but wanted to provide a quick example of the sort of evidence we are preparing to share:
Her claim: “Alice claims she was sick with covid in a foreign country, with only the three Nonlinear cofounders around, but nobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan food, so she barely ate for 2 days.”
The truth (see screenshots below):There was vegan food in the house (oatmeal, quinoa, mixed nuts, prunes, peanuts, tomatoes, cereal, oranges) which we offered to cook for her.
We were picking up vegan food for her.
Months later, after our relationship deteriorated, she went around telling many people that we starved her. She included details that depict us in a maximally damaging light—what could be more abusive than refusing to care for a sick girl, alone in a foreign country? And if someone told you that, you’d probably believe them, because who would make something like that up?
Evidence
The screenshots below show Kat offering Alice the vegan food in the house (oatmeal, quinoa, cereal, etc), on the first day she was sick. Then, when she wasn’t interested in us bringing/preparing those, I told her to ask Drew to go pick up food, and Drew said yes. Kat also left the house and went and grabbed mashed potatoes for her nearby.
See more screenshots here of Drew’s conversations with her.
Initially, we heard she was telling people that she “didn’t eat for days,” but she seems to have adjusted her claim to “barely ate” for “2 days”.
It’s important to note that Alice didn’t lie about something small and unimportant. She accused of us a deeply unethical act—the kind that most people would hear and instantly think you must be a horrible human—and was caught lying.
We believe many people in EA heard this lie and updated unfavorably towards us. A single false rumor like this can unfairly damage someone’s ability to do good, and this is just one among many she told.
We have job contracts, interview recordings, receipts, chat histories, and more, which we are working full-time on preparing.
This claim was a few sentences in Ben’s article but took us hours to refute because we had to track down all of the conversations, make them readable, add context, anonymize people, check our facts, and write up an explanation that was rigorous and clear. Ben’s article is over 10,000 words and we’re working as fast as we can to respond to every point he made.
Again, we are not asking for the community to believe us unconditionally. We want to show everybody all of the evidence and also take responsibility for the mistakes we made.
We’re just asking that you not overupdate on hearing just one side, and keep an open mind for the evidence we’ll be sharing as soon as we can.
- Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong by (19 Dec 2023 12:00 UTC; 337 points)
- Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong by (LessWrong; 19 Dec 2023 12:00 UTC; 168 points)
- 's comment on Sharing Information About Nonlinear by (8 Sep 2023 11:50 UTC; 39 points)
- 's comment on Sharing Information About Nonlinear by (9 Sep 2023 16:20 UTC; 19 points)
- 's comment on Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims by (14 Dec 2023 4:05 UTC; 12 points)
- 's comment on Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims by (15 Dec 2023 20:31 UTC; 1 point)
The Parable of the Boy Who Cried 5% Chance of Wolf
I’m so impressed that Pablo asked for an external review when he was feeling potentially burnt out and not sure about the impact of the wiki. That takes some incredible epistemic (and emotional!) chops. This is an example of EA at its finest.
@EV US Board @EV UK Board could you include Owen’s response document somewhere in the post? It contains a lot of important information and it’s getting lost in the comments.