spencerg

Karma: 1,487

spencerg 17 Apr 2024 3:09 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: What should the EA community learn from the FTX / SBF disaster? An in-depth discussion with Will MacAskill on the Clearer Thinking podcast
Thanks for putting that together @Wei Dai! Out of curiosity, how did you make that transcript?

spencerg 14 Dec 2023 19:10 UTC
58 points
15 ∶ 3
in reply to: Habryka’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
Ben made a bunch of other changes the day of publication. I know that because I pointed out errors in his post that day, and he was correcting them based on me pointing them out (e.g., all of his original quotes from glassdoor that he claimed were about Emerson were not actually about Emerson, which he didn’t realize until I pointed it out, and then he rushed to find new quotes to correct it). I’m sure he had a lot on his mind at that time, so I don’t think it’s egregious that he didn’t add mention of the fact that he had screen shot counter evidence about the “no food while sick stuff”, but it clearly seems to me to be a mistake on his part to not adjust the post or at least acknowledge it in the post. And I know he received the screenshots because he acknowledged getting them. You’re saying it made it into a comment as though Ben gets credit for that—but wasn’t it Kat who posted that comment? He also chose to rush the post out that night despite knowing there was counter evidence. I was honestly shocked he was trying to rush the post out that night because of all the errors I was finding in his post, which I expressed to Ben that day.

Update: I only just saw this point you made, including here for context and because it helps answer what I said: “since publishing this post required coordinating with many (5-10) external sources and witnesses, with many of them having a strong preference for a concrete time for the post to be published and they can plan around, so they can get ready for any potential retaliation and fallout. “

Update 2: “Spencer and Nonlinear knew the claims we were planning to put into the post on this matter roughly a week in-advance.” I’m not sure what you’re basing this on, but this is not accurate. I saw the post on Sept 6 for the first time and Ben published it early morning of Sept 7. During that short gap I sought to help him correct some errors in the post, which he did.
Update 3: the post was indeed being edited in meaningful ways on Sept 6, I know because I was helping Ben identify mistakes he had made and he was making changes based on that (such as the glass door misattribution)
What links here?
- Jeff Kaufman's comment on Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims by Kat Woods (19 Dec 2023 14:43 UTC; 52 points)

spencerg 14 Dec 2023 5:41 UTC
86 points
24 ∶ 3
in reply to: Habryka’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
You say: “This is inaccurate. I don’t think there is any evidence that Ben had access to that doesn’t seem well-summarized by the two sections above. We had a direct report from Alice, which is accurately summarized in the first quote above, and an attempted rebuttal from Kat, which is accurately summarized in the second quote above. We did not have any screenshots or additional evidence that didn’t make it into the post.”
Actually, you are mistaken, Ben did have screenshots. I think you just didn’t know that he had them. I can send you proof that he had them via DM if you like.
Regarding this: “As Kat has documented herself, she asked Alice to bring Schedule 2 drugs across borders without prescription (whether you need a prescription in the country you buy it is irrelevant, what matters is whether you have one in the country you arrive in), something that can have quite substantial legal consequences (I almost certainly would feel pretty uncomfortable asking my employee to bring prescription medications across borders without appropriate prescription).”
It sounds like you’re saying this paragraph by Ben:
“Before she went on vacation, Kat requested that Alice bring a variety of illegal drugs across the border for her (some recreational, some for productivity). Alice argued that this would be dangerous for her personally, but Emerson and Kat reportedly argued that it is not dangerous at all and was “absolutely risk-free”
is an accurate characterization of this sentiment: she was asked to pick up ADHD medicine in a place where it was believed not to require a prescription, and bring it back to a place where it does require a prescription, but then was told not to worry about it when it was found that it does require a prescription where she was going to pick it up.
To me, the former does a really bad job of capturing the latter, sounding WAY worse ethically. But I’d be curious to know if others agree with me or if they think that Ben’s paragraph captured this in a fair way.
On most of the other points I mentioned, it seems you feel that Ben made mistakes or ommisions, which I agree with:
“I currently feel a bit sad about the “daily” here, but would write roughly the same thing replacing it with “multiple times a week”.”
“I do think it’s currently sad that Ben’s post didn’t also mention Alice’s company”
“Yeah, I think it was a bad move to not include the follow-up of “some points still require clarification”″
On the taxi situation, I can’t speak to what it is like to get taxis in all the areas they lived, though this is one of those things Ben could have checked rather easily by asking where they were that she couldn’t get cabs and trying to book a cab (I don’t believe he bothered to check, but correct me if I’m wrong). When I stayed with all of the involved parties for a few days: Alice, Chloe, Kat, Emerson, and Drew (which was not in Peurto Rico), I got taxis twice, and it was slightly annoying—I spent about 5-10 minutes explaining where exactly to meet me, but was able to successfully get taxis on both of those occasions. Of course, that was just in one place that they lived (I think they were in that location for a couple of weeks if I recall correctly), and it might have been harder in other places, but at least in that location, getting taxis was no more than a minor nuisance.
Update: since it’s so easy to verify the claim about taxis, I just went ahead and checked it myself. My understanding is that Chloe was talking about Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. I used google maps to find and then call three taxi companies in that region. The first two didn’t pick up. The third said to text them, which I did, and they gave me a quote for getting a taxi today to drive 40 minutes (which was $45). It took about 10 minutes of my time (and 20 minutes on the clock, since they took ~10 minutes to give me a quote).
I didn’t realize this earlier, but in their evidence doc, Nonlinear talks about a similar check they did: “Lastly, it was not complicated to get a taxi there. I quickly checked, because sometimes we are in places that are truly remote. But there were three taxi services in the area that could have picked her up or driven her there. I called one of them and they said it would cost $30 and they could come pick me up whenever. And one of the other places where we were living at the time, she literally had to book a taxi for me out there, so I know she knew how and that it was possible.
There just wasn’t Uber there, so she’d have to make a phone call to a taxi.”
I can’t tell if you think Alice gave Ben basically accurate information and didn’t leave out critically important details, or if you think she did leave out critically important details (or directly lied to Ben), but it didn’t matter because Ben’s post was justified regardless.

spencerg 14 Dec 2023 2:21 UTC
86 points
24 ∶ 2
in reply to: Habryka’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
I’m surprised to hear you say this Habryka: “I think all the specific statements that Ben made in his post were pretty well-calibrated (and still seem mostly right to me after reading through the evidence)”

Do you think Ben was well calibrated/right when he made, for instance, these claims which Nonlinear has provided counter evidence for?

“She [Alice] 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. Alice eventually gave in and ate non-vegan food in the house” (from my reading of the evidence this is not close to accurate, and I believe Ben had access to the counter evidence at the time when he published)

“Before she went on vacation, Kat requested that Alice bring a variety of illegal drugs across the border for her (some recreational, some for productivity). Alice argued that this would be dangerous for her personally, but Emerson and Kat reportedly argued that it is not dangerous at all and was “absolutely risk-free” (from my reading of the evidence Nonlinear provided, it seems Alice was asked to buy ADHD medicine that they believed was legal to buy where she was, and then they told her never mind when she said it required a prescription)

“After being hired and flying out, Chloe was informed that on a daily basis their job would involve driving e.g. to get groceries when they were in different countries.” (my understanding from what I read was that she was told she could take taxis paid for by nonlinear, and it was more like twice per week not daily)

“In summary Alice spent a lot of her last 2 months with less than €1000 in her bank account, sometimes having to phone Emerson for immediate transfers to be able to cover medical costs when she was visiting doctors. At the time of her quitting she had €700 in her account, which was not enough to cover her bills at the end of the month, and left her quite scared. ” (my understanding is that, according to nonlinear, this was not accurate)

“Afterwards, I wrote up a paraphrase of their responses. I shared it with Emerson and he replied that it was a “Good summary!”” [implying that Emerson was saying his characterization was accurate] (my understanding was that part of Emerson’s message was not mentioned, and that Emerson believed Ben’s summary had serious inaccuracies)
What links here?
- DPiepgrass's comment on Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims by Kat Woods (15 Dec 2023 18:18 UTC; 8 points)

spencerg 13 Dec 2023 1:30 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: pseudonym’s comment on: Who is Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) really, and how could he have done what he did? - three theories and a lot of evidence
I do mean theory A to specifically be a theory where he did not intentionally defraud people. I don’t think the EA + non-DAE + naive utilitarianism + intentional fraud theory is one of the three most likely, that’s why I didn’t discuss it in detail, but I’d be interested in evidence for it (if you think there is evidence for that theory in particular that is not already mentioned in my post)

spencerg 13 Dec 2023 1:28 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: InquilineKea’s comment on: Who is Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) really, and how could he have done what he did? - three theories and a lot of evidence
I’m not sure how this tweet you linked to is related to my post above?

spencerg 13 Dec 2023 1:27 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: David Mathers’s comment on: Who is Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) really, and how could he have done what he did? - three theories and a lot of evidence
I agree that on things that are taboo to support (like this) we should expect support to be greater than publicly acknowledged support. However, a near-universal lack of public support is still evidence of a genuine lack of support. We could debate how much evidence it is. Talking to EAs 1-on-1 I also have barely found any that say they support the kind of actions that SBF was accused of, but many that condemn those actions. Again, not perfect evidence, but it provides a bit of additional evidence.

spencerg 13 Dec 2023 1:20 UTC
14 points
6 ∶ 4
in reply to: Rebecca’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
I didn’t interpret the original post as saying you should update 0%, just that you should update only a very small amount because it’s flimsy and sloppily reported on evidence.

spencerg 12 Dec 2023 20:00 UTC
40 points
12 ∶ 6
in reply to: ElliotJDavies’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
Hi Elliot. To respond to your questions:

(1) I interpreted the section “Sharing Information About Ben Pace” as making the point that it’s quite easy to make very bad-sounding accusations that are not reliable and that are not something people should update to any significant degree on if one applies a one-sided and biased approach. It sounds like some people interpreted it differently, but I thought the point of the section was quite clear (to me, anyway) based on this part of it: “However, this is completely unfair to Ben. It’s written in the style of a hit piece. And I believe you should not update much on Ben’s character from this.
[...list of reasons why you shouldn’t update given...]
I’m not yet worried about these “patterns” about Ben because I don’t know if they are patterns. I haven’t heard his side. And I refuse to pass judgment on someone without hearing their side”
(2) I think it would have been reasonable for Ben to wait 4 or 5 weeks (e.g., 3 or 4 weeks for them to gather their evidence, 1 or 2 weeks to review it). I assume (though I could be wrong) that Nonlinear could have provided a lot of the key evidence in 3 weeks, though not written it up in long-form prose and organized it as they have done for this post, which is vastly more work than merely providing the raw evidence about each claim for someone to look through. Providing evidence to an investigator takes way less time than doing a full write-up for the EA forum.

(3) I didn’t do a detailed look at every row in the “Short summary overview table”, but for the ones I did look into in more detail, I found Nonlinear’s counter evidence to be compelling. That table is organized by claim and is in an easy-to-navigate structure, so I suggest people take a look for themselves at the evidence Nonlinear provided regarding whatever claims they think are important.

spencerg 12 Dec 2023 19:47 UTC
10 points
14 ∶ 11
in reply to: John G. Halstead’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
Are you referring to the part of the post called “Sharing Information on Ben Pace” when you say “attempted smear of Ben in retaliation for writing the post”? If so, I don’t interpret that section the way you might because (from my perspective) it seemed clear that it was trying to make a point about how easy it is to make allegations sound bad when they are flimsy. Especially since the section says:
“However, this is completely unfair to Ben. It’s written in the style of a hit piece. And I believe you should not update much on Ben’s character from this.
[...list of reasons why you shouldn’t update given...]
I’m not yet worried about these “patterns” about Ben because I don’t know if they are patterns. I haven’t heard his side. And I refuse to pass judgment on someone without hearing their side”

spencerg 12 Dec 2023 15:18 UTC
92 points
29 ∶ 10
on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
I’m glad to see that Nonlinear’s evidence is now public, since Ben’s post did not seem to be a thorough investigation. As I said to Ben before he posted his original post, I knew of evidence that strongly contradicted his post, and I encouraged him to temporarily pause the release of his post so he could review the evidence carefully, but he would not delay.

spencerg 12 Nov 2023 2:32 UTC
18 points
5 ∶ 0
in reply to: Mr. Neitzsmith’s comment on: Who is Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) really, and how could he have done what he did? - three theories and a lot of evidence
DAE is more specific than sociopathy. It’s not a term I made up. it also is, in my view, a more useful word to use because people have a lot of connotations with sociopathy, not all of them accurate

spencerg 23 Sep 2023 17:19 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: tylermjohn’s comment on: Should Effective Altruists be Valuists instead of utilitarians?
Cool, thanks for checking it out! I’ll update the post slightly to make it clearer that I’m talking about beliefs rather than the truth.

spencerg 22 Sep 2023 15:13 UTC
11 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: tylermjohn’s comment on: Should Effective Altruists be Valuists instead of utilitarians?
Hi Tyler, thanks for your thoughts on this! Note that this post is not about the best philosophical objections, it’s about what EAs actually believe. I have spoken to many EAs who say they are utilitarian but don’t believe in objective moral truth (or think that objective moral truth is very unlikely) and what I’m responding to in this post is what those people say about what they believe and why. I also have spoken to Jeff Sebo about this as well!
In point 1 and 2 in this post, namely, “1. I think (in one sense) it’s empirically false to say that “only utility is valuable” and “2. It can be psychologically harmful to deny your intrinsic values” I’m making a claim about human psychology, not about philosophy.
So it sounds like you’re mainly respoding to this point in my essay: “3. I think (in one sense) it’s incoherent to only value utility if you don’t believe in moral realism”
That’s totally fair, but please note that I actually solicited feedback on that point from tons of people, including some philosophers, and I wrote a whole essay just about that claim in particular which is linked above (of course, I wouldn’t have expected you to have read it, but I’m just pointing that out). Here is that essay:
https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2022/08/tensions-between-moral-anti-realism-and-effective-altruism/
I will update the post slightly to make it clearer that I have a whole essay discussing objections to that point.
Note that at the bottom of that other essay I discuss every single reasonable-ish objection I’ve heard to that argument, including some from philosophers. Perhaps you have other objections not mentioned there, but I do delve into various objections and have sought a lot of feedback/criticism on that already!
I would be very happy to discuss this topic more with you, and hear your more detailed objections/points you think I am getting wrong—let me know if you’d like to do that!
Finally, I will note though that most of the objections you mention in your comment above are NOT the many EAs I’ve spoken to use to defend their beliefs, so even if they are strong arguments I don’t think they are doing work in why most EAs (who deny objective moral truth but say they are utilitarians) believe what they do.

spencerg 9 Sep 2023 22:24 UTC
31 points
5 ∶ 0
in reply to: Rebecca’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Hi Rebecca. To clarify: that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that in the version Ben showed me hours before publication none of the disparaging Glassdoor comments he used in the post (that he claimed were all about Emerson) were actually about Emerson. He has acknowledged this point. Based on me pointing this out, he hastily fix these mistakes before releasing the public version, hence you won’t find this error in the version of his post above. I use this as an example of just one of a number of what I see as important errors (based on the evidence I have access to) in his draft that was shared with me right before publishing, which made me fear his research was done in a biased, sloppy and/or error prone way, with (from my point of view) not enough care being taken to avoid making false harmful claims.

spencerg 9 Sep 2023 13:02 UTC
35 points
6 ∶ 0
in reply to: Tiresias’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Thanks Tiresias for your thoughtful comments. I agree with much of what you say but I seemingly have a few important differences of opinion:

“I disagree with holding all misconduct reports to incredibly high standards, such that in a report with as many allegations as this, people feel the report is basically wrong if it includes a few misinterpretations. In an ideal world, yes, all summaries of patterns of misconduct would not contain any errors. But in reality, I’ve found that almost all allegations of behaviors that turn out to be—for all intents and purposes—true, contain some level of mistakes, misattributions, specific allegations that are overstated.”
I agree. I don’t think I was holding the report to an incredibly high standard though. When I read it I was immediately chagrined by the amount and severity of false information (i.e., false as far as I can tell based on the evidence I have access to). I was also distressed that Ben was not seeking out evidence he could have easily gotten from nonlinear.

“People who allege misconduct are under intense scrutiny. And absolutely, scrutiny is warranted. But as someone who has reported misconduct and spoken to other people that report misconduct, the expectation of perfection is, to put it mildly, chilling. It means people do not come forward, it means people who do come forward are further traumatized, it means allegations that are 80% truthful are dismissed outright.”
Good point. I would differentiate between the standard for people privately reporting bad behavior (where I think the bar should be way lower) and large scale investigations that are made public (where I think the bar should be much higher for the claims made—e.g., that the investigator should be very careful not to credulously include damaging false information).

“Does a third or more of what Ben wrote comport with your general understanding? If so, these allegations are still concerning to me.”
I think this framing doesn’t quite work because the post contains some very minor concerns and some very major ones, and I think it’s much more important whether the major concerns are accurate than that the minor concerns are accurate, so counting up the number of inaccuracies doesn’t, I think, reflect what’s important. But based on the evidence I’ve seen, some of the damning claims in his original post seemed to me to be false or missing critical context that make them very misleading.

“And on the Kat screenshots/food question, I do not think they delegitimize what Ben wrote here. At worst, Ben somewhat overstated the food situation. But, my overall impression from those screenshots was what Alice said was basically true. Kat’s framing of what the screenshots say make me doubt Kat’s account more, not less.”

I think people should decide for themselves what they think is true about this after reviewing the evidence. Here is a side-by-side comparison of what Ben says and what Kat says:
Ben: “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.”
Kat: “1. There was vegan food in the house (oatmeal, quinoa, mixed nuts, prunes, peanuts, tomatoes, cereal, oranges) which we offered to cook for her. 2. We did pick up vegan food for her.”
And here are the screenshots Kat provided to back up her account: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5pksH3SbQzaniX96b/a-quick-update-from-nonlinear

“I’ll also say as someone who has experienced harassment, that people really underestimate how much bias they have towards their friends accused of misconduct.”
Absolutely agreed, this is a significant issue to watch out for.

spencerg 8 Sep 2023 14:45 UTC
104 points
23 ∶ 6
in reply to: Amber Dawn’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Just to clarify, nonlinear has now picked one claim and provided screen shots relevant to it, I’m not sure if you saw that.

I also want to clarify that I gave Ben a bunch of very specific examples of information in his post that I have evidence are false (responding to the version he sent me hours before publication). He hastily attempted to adjust his post to remove or tweak some of his claims right before publishing based on my discussing these errors with him. It’s a lot easier (and vastly less time consuming) to provide those examples in a private one-on-one with Ben than to provide them publicly (where, for instance, issues of confidentially become much more complicated, and where documentation and wording need to be handled with extreme care, quite different than the norms of conversation).

The easiest to explain example is that Ben claimed a bunch of very bad sounding quotes from Glassdoor were about Emerson that clearly weren’t (he hadn’t been at the company for years when those complaints were written). Ben acknowledged somewhere in the comments that those were indeed not about Emerson and so that was indeed false information in the original version of the post.

My understanding, trying to interpret Ben’s comments on this point (if I’m mistaken, please correct me of course), is that Ben thinks it’s not a big deal that he almost included these false claims about Emerson (and would have had I not pointed it out right before publication) because he doesn’t view these as cruxy for his own personal hypotheses.

On the other hand, I view it as a very big deal to make severely negative, public, false claims about another person, and to me this one example is indicative of the process used to generate the post—a process that, from my point of view based on the evidence I’ve seen, led the post to contain a bunch of false claims.

Of course Ben didn’t purposely say anything he knew to be false, but I think Ben and I have different opinions on how bad it is to make public, false, potentially damaging claims about people, and the standard of care/evidence required before making those claims.

Nonlinear says they will provide lots more specific examples in the coming days of what they see as misinformation in the post—of course it will be up to you to judge whether you find their evidence convincing.

From my point of view, it’s best to reserve judgment until the evidence is released, assuming they do it within a reasonable time frame (e.g., a week or two—if they failed to release the evidence promptly that would be another matter).

I see no reason to jump to conclusions or take sides before we’ve seen all the evidence since it sounds like we’ll have access to it very soon.

spencerg 7 Sep 2023 19:15 UTC
71 points
9 ∶ 2
in reply to: sphor’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Yes, here two examples, sorry I can’t provide more detail:

-there were claims in the post made about Emerson that were not actually about Emerson at all (they were about his former company years after he left). I pointed this out to Ben hours before publication and he rushed to correct it (in my view it’s a pretty serious mistake to make false accusations about a person, I see this as pretty significant)!

-there was also a very disparaging claim made in the piece (I unfortunately can’t share the details for privacy reasons; but I assume nonlinear will later) that was quite strongly contradicted by a text message exchange I have
What links here?
- DanielFilan's comment on Sharing Information About Nonlinear by Ben Pace (LessWrong; 7 Sep 2023 20:37 UTC; 30 points)

spencerg 7 Sep 2023 7:02 UTC
125 points
21 ∶ 36
on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Hi all, I wanted to chime in because I have had conversations relevant to this post with just about all involved parties at various points. I’ve spoken to “Alice” (both while she worked at nonlinear and afterward), Kat (throughout the period when the events in the post were alleged to have happened and afterward), Emerson, Drew, and (recently) the author Ben, as well as, to a much lesser extent, “Chloe” (when she worked at nonlinear). I am (to my knowledge) on friendly terms with everyone mentioned (by name or pseudonym) in this post. I wish well for everyone involved. I also want the truth to be known, whatever the truth is.
I was sent a nearly final draft of this post yesterday (Wednesday), once by Ben and once by another person mentioned in the post.

I want to say that I find this post extremely strange for the following reasons:

(1) The nearly final draft of this post that I was given yesterday had factual inaccuracies that (in my opinion and based on my understanding of the facts) are very serious despite ~150 hours being spent on this investigation. This makes it harder for me to take at face value the parts of the post that I have no knowledge of. Why am I, an outsider on this whole thing, finding serious errors in the final hours before publication? That’s not to say everything in the post is inaccurate, just that I was disturbed to see serious inaccuracies, and I have no idea why nobody caught these (I really don’t feel like I should be the one to correct mistakes, given my lack of involvement, but it feels important to me to comment here since I know there were inaccuracies in the piece, so here we are).

(2) Nonlinear reached out to me and told me they have proof that a bunch of claims in the post are completely false. They also said that in the past day or so (upon becoming aware of the contents of the post), they asked Ben to delay his publication of this post by one week so that they could gather their evidence and show it to Ben before he publishes it (to avoid having him publish false information). However, he refused to do so.

This really confuses me. Clearly, Ben spent a huge amount of time on this post (which has presumably involved weeks or months of research), so why not wait one additional week for Nonlinear to provide what they say is proof that his post contains substantial misinformation? Of course, if the evidence provided by nonlinear is weak, he should treat it as such, but if it is strong, it should also be treated as such. I struggle to wrap my head around the decision not to look at that evidence. I am also confused why Ben, despite spending a huge amount of time on this research, apparently didn’t seek out this evidence from Nonlinear long ago.
To clarify: I think it’s very important in situations like this not to let the group being criticized have a way to delay publication indefinitely. If I were in Ben’s shoes, I believe what I would have done is say something like, “You have exactly one week to provide proof of any false claims in this post (and I’ll remove any claim you can prove is false) then I’m publishing the post no matter what at that time.” This is very similar to the policy we use for our Transparent Replications project (where we replicate psychology results of publications in top journals), and we have found it to work well. We give the original authors a specific window of time during which they can point out any errors we may have made (which is at least a week). This helps make sure our replications are accurate, fair, and correct, and yet the teams being replicated have no say over whether the replications are released (they always are released regardless of whether we get a response).

It seems to me that basic norms of good epistemics require that, on important topics, you look at all the evidence that can be easily acquired.

I also think that if you publish misinformation, you can’t just undo it by updating the post later or issuing a correction. Sadly, that’s not the way human minds/social information works. In other words, misinformation can’t be jammed back into the bottle once it is released. I have seen numerous cases where misinformation is released only later to be retracted, in which the misinformation got way more attention than the retraction, and most people came away only with the misinformation. This seems to me to provide a strong additional reason why a small delay in the publication date appears well worth it (to me, as an outsider) to help avoid putting out a post with potentially substantial misinformation. I hope that the lesswrong/EA communities will look at all the evidence once it is released, which presumably will be in the next week or so, in order to come to a fair and accurate conclusion (based on all the evidence, whatever that accurate final conclusion turns out to be) and do better than these other cases I’ve witnessed where misinformation won the day.

Of course, I don’t know Ben’s reason for jumping to publish immediately, so I can’t evaluate his reasons directly.

Disclaimer: I am friends with multiple people connected to this post. As a reminder, I wish well for everyone involved, and I wish for the truth to be known, whatever that truth happens to be. I have acted (informally) as an advisor to nonlinear (without pay) - all that means, though, is that every so often, team members there will reach out to me to ask for my advice on things.
Note: I’ve updated this comment a few times to try to make my position clearer, to add some additional context, and to fix grammatical mistakes.
What links here?

spencerg 24 Jul 2023 3:06 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Roman Leventov’s comment on: Valuism—an approach to life for you to consider
The way you define values in your comment:
“From the AI “engineering” perspective, values/valued states are “rewards” that the agent adds themselves in order to train (in RL style) their reasoning/planning network (i.e., generative model) to produce behaviours that are adaptive but also that they like and find interesting (aesthetics). This RL-style training happens during conscious reflection.”
is just something different than what I’m talking about in my post when I use the phrase “intrinsic values.”
From what I can tell, you seem to be arguing:
[paraphrasing] “In this one line of work, we define values this way”, and then jumping from there to “therefore, you are misunderstanding values,” when actually I think you’re just using the phrase to mean something different than I’m using it to mean.