You should also correct your comment on the original post
Matis
Karma: 666
“Deceptive” might be too strong because it may not have been the intention to mislead.
But the post definitely is misleading without that information. The reported reception of the paper comes across in a very different light if you know Torres was a co-author.
One, in giving comments, people may have been responding in their feedback to Torres, who (as can be seen from their social media presence) is extremely quarrelsome and seems to habitually mislead.
Two, objections to the project being undertaken could have been influenced by Torres’s involvement, and rightly so in my opinion.
Three, knowing Torres was an author updates me towards thinking that earlier versions of the paper were more inflammatory/defamatory than the final version.
For example, by this point Torres would have already been:
-insinuating that various longtermists hold white supremacists views
-baselessly insinuating or accusing them of plagiarism or something close to it
-calling them liars while admitting the truth of what they said (which was part of what led to the Forum ban)
Accusations of harbouring bad intentions would have been appropriate if not required by this point.
UPDATE: less certain of the below. Be sure to read this comment by Cremer disputing Torres’s account https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vv7FBtMxBJicM9pae/democratising-risk-a-community-misled?commentId=CwxqjeG8qqwy8gz4c
The fact that Torres was a co-author certainly does change the way I interpret the original post. For example. Cremer writes of the review process, “By others we were accused of lacking academic rigour and harbouring bad intentions.”
Before I knew about the Torres part, that sounded more troubling—it would maybe reflect badly on EA culture if reviewers were accusing Cremer and Kemp of these things just for writing “Democratising Risk”. I don’t think it’s a good paper, but I don’t think the content of the final paper is evidence of bad intentions.
But to accuse Torres of having bad intentions and lacking academic rigor? Reviewers would have been absolutely right to do so. By the time the paper was circulating, presumably Torres had already begun their campaign of slander against various members of the longtermist and EA communities.
It’s been interesting to re-read the discussion of this post in light of new knowledge that Emile P Torres was originally a co-author. For example, Cremer instructs reviewers to ask why they might have felt like the paper was a hostile attack. Well, I’d certainly see why readers could have had this perception if they read it after Emile had already started publicly insinuating that various longtermists are sympathetic to white supremacy, are plagiarists.
Cremer also says some reviewers asked, “Do you hate longtermism?”
The answer she gives above is “No. We are both longtermists (probs just not the techno utopian kind)”, but it seems like the answer would have in fact been “Two of us do not, but one the authors does hate longtermism and has publicly called it incredibly dangerous”