Kelsey Piper

• Kelsey Piper 11 Jan 2024 21:56 UTC

  67 points

  18 ∶ 2

  in reply to: Minh Nguyen’s comment on: Prac­ti­cally A Book Re­view: Ap­pendix to “Non­lin­ear’s Ev­i­dence: De­bunk­ing False and Mislead­ing Claims”

  I’m confused. “render internet related services as requested by the Company from time to time” is not at all a contractual obligation to produce content on an ongoing basis. If there were a contractual obligation to produce content on an ongoing basis, I’d expect the contract to specify how much content, for how long. I’d understand ‘internet related services’ to mean help with access to the account, authentication, etc. as relevant, not as an ongoing job as a content creator.
  
  I agree that Emerson argues that Emerson alone created content for the site, and that Deck doesn’t dispute this, but neither of them seem to actually argue Deck had a contractual obligation to create such content (and reading the contract, I think he clearly did not). Instead, I parse Emerson making this claim as a sort of moral claim to the high ground (“I’m the one doing the hard work here”), not a claim that Deck failed to fulfill contractual responsibilities. I don’t see anywhere where Emerson actually alleges breach of terms by Deck, as opposed to alleging that Deck is trying to take advantage of Emerson’s hard work by backing out of the contract.

• Kelsey Piper 7 Sep 2023 23:55 UTC

  64 points

  20 ∶ 5

  on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  First; the formal employee drove without a license for 1-2 months in Puerto Rico. We taught her to drive, which she was excited about. You might think this is a substantial legal risk, but basically it isn’t, as you can see here, the general range of fines for issues around not-having-a-license in Puerto Rico is in the range of $25 to $500, which just isn’t that bad.

  I have no knowledge specific to Puerto Rico, but my understanding is that by far the most important risk incurred when driving without a license is that an unlicensed driver will also almost certainly be uninsured or be in violation of the terms of their insurance such that their insurance will decline claims related to unlicensed driving they were doing, and therefore that an unlicensed driver would potentially be liable for extraordinary sums of money if they were to get into an accident for which they were at fault. Was this person insured? Did the car insurance policy allow unlicensed drivers? What would have happened if there had been an at-fault car accident with another driver?

• Kelsey Piper 7 Sep 2023 22:30 UTC

  50 points

  5 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  Yep this changed my mind as well—thank you!

• Kelsey Piper 7 Sep 2023 21:42 UTC

  16 points

  2 ∶ 2

  in reply to: Kat Woods’s comment on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  - at this point, Alice was just a friend traveling with us. There were no professional entanglements.

  The post says

  Alice worked there from November 2021 to June 2022,

  Is that incorrect? When did Alice start working for Nonlinear?

• Kelsey Piper 7 Sep 2023 21:11 UTC

  105 points

  44 ∶ 10

  in reply to: Kelsey Piper’s comment on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  I should also add that this (including the question of whether Alice is credible) is not very important to my overall evaluation of the situation, and I’d appreciate it if Nonlinear spent their limited resources on the claims that I think are most shocking and most important, such as the claim that Woods said “your career in EA would be over with a few DMs” to a former employee after the former employee was rumored to have complained about the company.

• Kelsey Piper 7 Sep 2023 20:30 UTC

  237 points

  66 ∶ 6

  in reply to: Kat Woods’s comment on: Shar­ing In­for­ma­tion About Nonlinear

  It could be that I am misreading or misunderstanding these screenshots, but having read through them a couple of times trying to parse what happened, here’s what I came away with:

  On December 15, Alice states that she’d had very little to eat all day, that she’d repeatedly tried and failed to find a way to order takeout to their location, and tries to ask that people go to Burger King and get her an Impossible Burger which in the linked screenshots they decline to do because they don’t want to get fast food. She asks again about Burger King and is told it’s inconvenient to get there. Instead, they go to a different restaurant and offer to get her something from the restaurant they went to. Alice looks at the menu online and sees that there are no vegan options. Drew confirms that ‘they have some salads’ but nothing else for her. She assures him that it’s fine to not get her anything.

  
  It seems completely reasonable that Alice remembers this as ‘she was barely eating, and no one in the house was willing to go out and get her nonvegan foods’ - after all, the end result of all of those message exchanges was no food being obtained for Alice and her requests for Burger King being repeatedly deflected with ‘we are down to get anything that isn’t fast food’ and ‘we are down to go anywhere within a 12 min drive’ and ‘our only criteria is decent vibe + not fast food’, after which she fails to find a restaurant meeting those (I note, kind of restrictive if not in a highly dense area) criteria and they go somewhere without vegan options and don’t get her anything to eat.
  
  It also seems totally reasonable that no one at Nonlinear understood there was a problem. Alice’s language throughout emphasizes how she’ll be fine, it’s no big deal, she’s so grateful that they tried (even though they failed and she didn’t get any food out of the ¹²⁄₁₅ trip, if I understand correctly). I do not think that these exchanges depict the people at Nonlinear as being cruel, insane, or unusual as people. But it doesn’t seem to me that Alice is lying to have experienced this as ‘she had covid, was barely eating, told people she was barely eating, and they declined to pick up Burger King for her because they didn’t want to go to a fast food restaurant, and instead gave her very limiting criteria and went somewhere that didn’t have any options she could eat’.
  
  On December 16th it does look like they successfully purchased food for her.
  
  My big takeaway from these exchanges is not that the Nonlinear team are heartless or insane people, but that this degree of professional and personal entanglement and dependence, in a foreign country, with a young person, is simply a recipe for disaster. Alice’s needs in the ¹²⁄₁₅ chat logs are acutely not being met. She’s hungry, she’s sick, she conveys that she has barely eaten, she evidently really wants someone to go to BK and get an impossible burger for her, but (speculatively) because of this professional/​personal entanglement, she lobbies for this only by asking a few times why they ruled out Burger King, and ultimately doesn’t protest when they instead go somewhere without food she can eat, assuring them it’s completely fine. This is also how I relate to my coworkers, tbh—but luckily, I don’t live with them and exclusively socialize with them and depend on them completely when sick!!
  
  Given my experience with talking with people about strongly emotional events, I am inclined towards the interpretation where Alice remembers the 15th with acute distress and remembers it as ‘not getting her needs met despite trying quite hard to do so’, and the Nonlinear team remembers that they went out of their way that week to get Alice food—which is based on the logs from the 16th clearly true! But I don’t think I’d call Alice a liar based on reading this, because she did express that she’d barely eaten and request apologetically for them to go somewhere she could get vegan food (with BK the only option she’d been able to find) only for them to refuse BK because of the vibes/​inconvenience.

The costs of caution

Is it time for a pause?

• Kelsey Piper 31 Mar 2023 16:27 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Pato’s comment on: New blog: Planned Obsolescence

  We’re aiming for a pretty high post volume, enough that I assumed we shouldn’t cross-post all posts, but if there were a ton of demand for that we could probably reconsider.

New blog: Planned Obsolescence

How oral re­hy­dra­tion ther­apy was de­vel­oped

• Kelsey Piper 5 Feb 2023 0:33 UTC

  22 points

  3 ∶ 1

  Error

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  when binding #:USER-ID163

• Kelsey Piper 5 Feb 2023 0:32 UTC

  55 points

  20 ∶ 0

  Error

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  is not of type
    SIMPLE-STRING
  when binding #:USER-ID163

• Kelsey Piper 4 Feb 2023 0:07 UTC

  45 points

  19 ∶ 3

  in reply to: ozymandias’s comment on: EA, Sex­ual Harass­ment, and Abuse

  Yeah, I was surprised to see Davis claiming in this comment section that he merely thinks we should combat inappropriate pressure to be polyamorous (which of course we should do!) and of course I want to create space for his views to evolve if they have evolved, but the views he is expressing here are not the views he has routinely espoused in the past, and “I’ve faced backlash for my views” without explaining what the views were does seem disingenuous to me.
  

• Kelsey Piper 3 Feb 2023 23:52 UTC

  69 points

  33 ∶ 1

  in reply to: ElliotJDavies’s comment on: EA, Sex­ual Harass­ment, and Abuse

  Hmm, if Davis had said “I think pressure to be polyamorous has been a problem in the community...” or “I’ve received backlash for speaking out against dynamics surrounding polyamory” then I think I would have reacted differently.

  But he said “I think polyamory has been a problem” and “I’ve received backlash for speaking out against polyamory”. He has indeed long been outspoken against polyamory—not against dynamics in polyamory that make the community unwelcoming or unprofessional, against the practice under all circumstances. He has told me at other times that polyamory is inherently immoral and wrong and that no one should ever be polyamorous, which inclined me towards the broader interpretation of what he was trying to say.

  I agree many people in the comments do not object to anyone practicing polyamory, but to pressures and dynamics it can create, and those comments did not give me the same reaction. But Davis in particular does think, and has said to me, that my relationships are inherently immoral and that polyamory is never acceptable and I think the wording of his comment reflected that belief of his, and that’s why his framing bothered me when the framing in these other comments (which was focused on specific potential harms) did not bother me.

• Kelsey Piper 3 Feb 2023 21:07 UTC

  38 points

  19 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Jeff Kaufman’s comment on: EA, Sex­ual Harass­ment, and Abuse

  That seems basically reasonable to me, though it feels operative that you would be acting in your independent capacity as a person with opinions who tries to convince other people that your opinions are correct. I’d be much more uncomfortable with an EA institution that had a ‘talking people out of polyamorous relationships’ department.

  I think there are some forms of social pressure which are fine for individuals to apply but which are damaging and coercive if they have formal institutional weight behind them, so calls for “people who agree with me polyamorous relationships are damaging” to advocate for that stance don’t make me uneasy the way calls for “the community” to “handle” those things make me uneasy.

• Kelsey Piper 3 Feb 2023 20:34 UTC

  164 points

  71 ∶ 11

  in reply to: Davis_Kingsley’s comment on: EA, Sex­ual Harass­ment, and Abuse

  I am very bothered specifically by the frame “I wish we had resolved [polyamory] “internally” rather than it being something exposed by outside investigators.”
  
  I am polyamorous; I am in committed long-term relationships (6 years and 9 years) with two women, and occasionally date other people. I do not think there is anything in my relationships for “the community” to “resolve internally”. It would not be appropriate for anyone to tell me to break up with one of my partners. It would not be appropriate for anyone to hold a community discussion about how to ‘resolve’ my relationships, though of course I disclose them when they are relevant to conflict-of-interest considerations, and go out of my way to avoid such conflicts. I would never ask out a woman who might rely on me as a professional mentor, or a woman who is substantially less professionally established.
  
  There are steps that can be taken, absolutely should be taken, and for the most part to my knowledge have been taken to ensure that professional environments aren’t sexualized and that bad actors are unwelcome. Asking people out or flirting with them in professional contexts should be considered unacceptable. People who engage in a pattern of coercive, harassing, and unwelcoming behavior should be unwelcome as a result. People should have trusted avenues to report misconduct. People should not ask out their employees or anyone they have substantial direct power over.

  We should talk openly about it when these incidents occur, in order to improve, and we should be fine with those conversations being “external” because the insistence that we resolve things “internally” is to me incredibly inappropriate and associated with handling things badly.
  
  But outside those steps, what would it mean to “handle” my polyamorous relationships? What would “resolving polyamory” look like”? Are we talking about statements from formal organizations about which relationship styles are permissible? Informal social sanction aimed not at misconduct but at anyone in a nontraditional relationship? Why is that something that the ‘community’ should do?
  

  What links here?

  • lilly's comment on Peo­ple Will Some­times Just Lie About You by aella (18 Feb 2023 15:03 UTC; 72 points)
  • None of them along the line Know what any of it is worth's comment on Karma over­rates some top­ics; re­sult­ing is­sues and po­ten­tial solutions by Lizka (3 Feb 2023 23:11 UTC; 2 points)

• Kelsey Piper 24 Jan 2023 1:56 UTC

  38 points

  14 ∶ 1

  in reply to: joshcmorrison’s comment on: FLI FAQ on the re­jected grant pro­posal controversy

  I basically feel the same confusion and dissatisfaction that Josh is expressing here. This is a very big mistake. It doesn’t feel to me like a misunderstanding that would be likely to happen in the normal course of business without several underlying things having gone quite wrong. I don’t feel like I understand how those things went wrong, and so I don’t feel sure they’ve been fixed.

• Kelsey Piper 15 Jan 2023 23:31 UTC

  18 points

  5 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Lorenzo Buonanno’s comment on: AGI and the EMH: mar­kets are not ex­pect­ing al­igned or un­al­igned AI in the next 30 years

  I’m not totally sure what I think the correct market behavior based on knowable information was, but it seems very hard to make the case that a large crash on Feb 20th is evidence of the markets moving “in tandem with rational expectations”.

• Kelsey Piper 15 Jan 2023 22:11 UTC

  46 points

  11 ∶ 3

  in reply to: SantaRKlaas’s comment on: AGI and the EMH: mar­kets are not ex­pect­ing al­igned or un­al­igned AI in the next 30 years

  Almost everyone I knew was concerned with the pandemic going global and dramatically disrupting our lives much sooner than Feb 20th. On January 26th, a post on the EA Forum, “Concerning the Recent 2019-Novel Coronavirus Outbreak”, made the case we should be worried. By a few weeks later than that, everyone I know was already bracing for covid to hit the US. Looking back at my house Discord server, we had the “if we have to go weeks without leaving the house, is there anything we’d run out of? Let’s buy it now” conversation February 6th (which is also when my Vox article about Covid published, in which I quote a source saying“Instead of deriding people’s fears about the Wuhan coronavirus, I would advise officials and reporters to focus more on the high likelihood that things will get worse and the not-so-small possibility that they will get much worse.”)
  
  The late January SlateStarCodex open threads also typically contained 10-20 comments discussing the virus, linking prediction markets, debating the odds of more than 500k deaths and how people in various places should expect disruptions to their daily life. (“‘If everyone involved massively bungles absolutely everything, this would be pretty-bad-but-not-apocalyptic.’, a commentator argued on January 29th.)
  
  In late January/​early February, I think attitudes were that the virus was a big deal but still more likely than not to be successfully contained, though people should prepare just in case. I think people with our knowledge state wouldn’t’ve bet confidently on a failure of containment on January 30th (some did, but it wasn’t the median community stance), but the markets would have started moving in that direction steadily from very early in February.
  
  I think financial markets not responding until Feb 20th was a clear case of markets doing substantially worse than the people around me.