Tiresias

Karma: 503

Tiresias 28 Mar 2024 19:13 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Killing the moths
This post was moving, thank you for writing it. I have dealt with a similar situation, and found it impossible. I’ve dealt with that impossibility by trying to justify what I’ve done, and absolve myself. Your post is forthright: you killed the moths. We can move on from it, but we don’t need to rationalize it.

Tiresias 7 Feb 2024 3:40 UTC
7 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Julia_Wise’s comment on: EV investigation into Owen and Community Health
Thanks for the honest and thoughtful response. I have a couple follow up questions. Since this does occur, I think it would be useful for the community to know what risks they are taking if they choose to report to the CH team.

I am reading what you stated as “reporting something to us does not mean that we will never take action against the person who reported to us.” I see two possible scenarios here, so want to get clarification on what you mean.

One scenario, James reports something to you. You conclude at some point that James has engaged in misconduct, based on reports from people outside of the CH team. Maybe you collected those reports in the process of investigating James’s claim. Maybe someone just separately came to you on an unrelated matter about James. Regardless, it ends up that you have some credibly allege James of misconduct, so you act on that.

Second scenario, James reports something to you. In talking to James, you find him to be abrasive, unreasonable, and generally quite unpleasant to interact with. You grow to have serious concerns about him based on how he’s interacted with you. He’s not engaged in any misconduct (eg, he’s not sexualy harassing you or anything), just generally displaying an unstable personality. You do not receive any reports of misconduct against James.

Have you taken action against someone like “James” in either scenario? Or just in the first scenario?

My second question is: Would it be possible for you to share the percentage of time you’ve taken action against a reporter over the last, say, 5 years?

Thanks again.

P.S. This whole OCB scenario seems like it would be very hard, Julia, and I really appreciate how forthcoming you have been about it. While you admit to making mistakes, I hope the wider community sees that the real mistakes in the CH’s response came from flawed processes more than from any one individual. We all make mistakes in our jobs, and unfortunately yours are publicized more than most. It’s a tough job and I wish you the best

Tiresias 1 Feb 2024 20:17 UTC
8 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: ChanaMessinger’s comment on: EV investigation into Owen and Community Health
This is hard and that should be recognized. It seems you all are taking this extremely seriously and that should be commended.

The recent discussion around Nonlinear got me wondering about one aspect of CH reports I hadn’t considered before.

Has the CH team ever spoken negatively about the person who made a report to people outside the CH team?

I’m thinking of a scenario like: Steve makes an accusation against Lina. The CH team interacts with Steve and through this interaction comes to view him as somewhat of an unstable character. Even though no one has reported Steve, the CH team advises against hiring Steve to other institutions within the EA space, based on their interactions they had with Steve when the reported about Lina’s behavior.

Tiresias 27 Nov 2023 19:30 UTC
3 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: Bob Jacobs’s comment on: Bob Jacobs’s Shortform
+1 for full post. And huge congrats. This must’ve been incredibly difficult work, for an ambitious goal, and you made it happen! So great.

Tiresias 18 Nov 2023 18:26 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
on: An EA’s guide to Berlin
I will be traveling to Berlin soon and this is so helpful! Thank you so much!

Tiresias 5 Oct 2023 13:22 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Nadia Montazeri’s comment on: Want to make a difference on policy and governance? Become an expert in something specific and boring
Another +1 that it’s surprisingly easy to get experts to talk to you. Once for a job I had to find out this super obscure thing about the Federal Reserve. Instead of spending hours trying to research it on my own (which I don’t think would have gone anywhere), I found a Fed expert at a think tank. He also didn’t know the answer to the question, but helped immensely in tracking an answer down. I was surprised by how much time he spent on it!
If you’re becoming an expert in something neglected, chances are there won’t be good public writing about it, so you should really lean on speaking with experts.

Tiresias 29 Sep 2023 22:18 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Our tofu book has launched!! (Upvote on Amazon)
Loved it! And the recipes. And learning how to cook with it more effectively too, super helpful.

Tiresias 25 Sep 2023 22:34 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: How have you become more hard-working?
I have fluctuated between extremely hard working and not hard working. The key factor for me is being physically with other people who are also working, with a set time you need to arrive.

Tiresias 18 Sep 2023 6:56 UTC
17 points
6 ∶ 1
in reply to: Jaime Sevilla’s comment on: Jsevillamol’s Shortform
Could you explain what you perceive as the correct remedy in instance #1?

The implication seems like the solution you prefer is having the community member isolated from official community events. But I’m not sure what work “uncomfortable” is doing here. Was the member harassing the community builder? Because that would seem like justification for banning that member. But if the builder is just uncomfortable due to something like a personal conflict, it doesn’t seem right to ban the member.

But maybe I’m not understanding what your corrective action would be here?

Tiresias 12 Sep 2023 0:14 UTC
5 points
4 ∶ 0
in reply to: Catherine Low’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Can you share what you mean by “intimidating behavior”? How does the community health team define, “intimidating behavior”?

Tiresias 8 Sep 2023 18:24 UTC
22 points
7 ∶ 2
in reply to: Richenda’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
This is not a question for you, but the forum generally.
I agree call-out culture makes me uncomfortable and has many negative aspects. But what alternative is there to improving community health and function? Previous methods, like relying on private systems or CEA, seem to have been catastrophically ineffective. What else could people who have experienced systematically bad behavior, do? How else will we learn to work on ways to try to prevent this sort of thing?

Tiresias 8 Sep 2023 17:47 UTC
6 points
6 ∶ 4
in reply to: spencerg’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
I agree and disagree. I agree that making false claims is serious and people should take great care to avoid it. And your ultimate conclusion that we should reserve final judgment until we see counter evidence sounds right to me.
But 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.
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.
Does a third or more of what Ben wrote comport with your general understanding? If so, these allegations are still concerning to me.
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’ll also say as someone who has experienced harassment, that people really underestimate how much bias they have towards their friends accused of misconduct. Friends of the harasser would say things to defend their friend that to most people would seem pretty obviously wrong, like “he probably wasn’t going to follow through on the threat, so him making the threat is not really an issue.”

Tiresias 7 Sep 2023 22:10 UTC
12 points
5 ∶ 3
on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
I’d like to have a conversation that’s broader than just this specific allegation. There are some claims that are uncontested here, but point to a work environment highly vulnerable to misconduct. Eg, living with your employees.
While this is not the norm for EA orgs, it seems like these dynamics are also not super rare. I expect all broad communities like EA will have some level of misconduct, but we should also strive to minimize it however possible.
So, is there anything EA as a whole can do to minimize things like this? I’d also be curious to know whether CEA knew about any of this (and I’d guess they did since even I—who is not well-connected to Nonlinear—heard whispers). And if so, what steps they took to mitigate this. Or do we think this is out of the jurisdiction of the CEA community health team?

Tiresias 7 Sep 2023 21:57 UTC
22 points
8 ∶ 1
in reply to: Geoffrey Miller’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
I am not a lawyer but have read about defamation law and asked lawyers questions about it. I don’t believe your description of defamation law is as clear cut as you’re making it out to be.
The standard for fault in defamation cases involving private figures is that the defamer had to be “negligent.” That is, they have to have failed to do something they were required to do. Negligence is a vague standard, and it is up to the jury to decide what that means. Framing the point of defamation law as “encourage very high epistemic standards” is just too strong a statement. A jury could interpret it that way, but a jury could interpret it as a much much lower standard.
Furthermore, in my view, basic elements of this post make it a weak case, regardless of whether the claims within it are true of false. Ben is not stating these claims as undisputed, unqualified facts. He is reporting information others have shared with him. It’s only straightforward defamation if he is just making up what people said to him. It’d be more in the defamation camp if Ben himself was saying “Nonlinear mistreated me.”
It seems absolutely inappropriate to me for Nonlinear to threaten to sue in this case. This is a tactic abusers use, and high-integrity people pursue it in much narrower cases.

Tiresias 7 Sep 2023 19:43 UTC
25 points
22 ∶ 2
in reply to: redbermejo’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
I think it’s useful to share positive experiences but I also want to note that in almost all cases of proven misconduct, you will be able to find people who had positive experiences in similar situations. People who behave very poorly are not behaving that poorly all the time.

Tiresias 1 Sep 2023 6:29 UTC
11 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Eliezer Yudkowsky Is Frequently, Confidently, Egregiously Wrong
I really appreciate this post, and think you did a great job writing it. This is one of the most comprehensive summaries of animal consciousness research I have seen, and I will likely be referring back to it. If you’re interested, I have compiled a few sources that try to demonstrate that “animals are conscious” is the consensus view among people who study it. (I was dating someone who weakly believed that animals weren’t conscious, so I sent him a 7 page email on animal consciousness).
I would summarize the errors you’re describing as such:
- Zombie error: Misunderstanding the views of others when refuting their arguments
- Decision theory error: His theory has contradictions and weird implications?
- Animal error: Epistemics. Refusing to engage with evidence.
The zombie and animal errors feel like fundamental, egregious errors. The decision theory error just feels like a philosophical disagreement? Your critique of it sounds like a lot of philosophical critiques of other philosophical theories. So a disagreement, but not evidence of egregious errors. But I’m not a philosopher and haven’t read philosophy in a long, long time. So I may be mistaken about the nature of your disagreement.

Tiresias 1 Sep 2023 4:05 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Progress report on CEA’s search for a new CEO
Would you be willing to describe your approach to reference checks to get more useful information? Questions you ask, etc.

Tiresias 25 Aug 2023 8:04 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Yellow’s comment on: Select examples of adverse selection in longtermist grantmaking
You make good points. Initial thoughts:
Rejection reasons that are fine/good to spread through whisper network:
- Poor performance on a previous grant project that you directly evaluated
- Reasonably verified character issues
Rejection reasons that should not be shared through whisper network:
- Grant proposal content did not meet granting threshold
- Someone in a related field told you of weak job performance
(The idea being other granters should find out those reasons for themselves. Seek out the field experts, maybe talk to new ones).

Tiresias 10 Aug 2023 18:16 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Getting into an EA-aligned organisation mid-career
This in many ways, is really affirming. Thanks for writing!

Tiresias 5 Aug 2023 4:22 UTC
15 points
2 ∶ 2
in reply to: Lauren Maria’s comment on: University EA Groups Need Fixing
It seems like a lot of criticism of EA stems from concern about “groupthink” dynamics. At least, that is my read on the main reason Dave dislikes retreats. This is a major concern of mine as well.
I know groups like CEA and Open Phil have encouraged and funded EA criticism. My difficulty is I don’t know where to find that criticism. I suppose the EA forum frequently posts criticisms, but fighting groupthink by reading the forum seems counter productive.
I’ve personally found a lot of benefit in reading Reflective Altruism’s blog.
What I’m saying is, I know EA orgs want to encourage criticism, and good criticisms do exit, but I don’t think orgs have found a great way to disseminate those criticisms yet. I would want criticism dissemination to be more of a focus.
For example, there is an AI Safety reading list an EA group put out. It’s very helpful, but I haven’t seen any substantive criticism linked to in that list, while arguments in favor of longtermism comprise most of the lists.
I’ve only been to a handful of the conferences, but I’ve not seen a “Why to be skeptical of longtermism” talk posted.
Has there been an 80k podcast episode that centers longtermism skepticism before? I know it’s been addressed, but I think I’ve only seen it addressed relatively briefly by people who are longtermists or identify as EA. I’d like to see more guests like the longtermist skeptics at GPI.
I’ve not seen an event centering longtermism/EA criticism put on by my local group. To be fair to the group, I’ve not browsed their events for some time.
The rare occasions I have seen references to longtermism criticism, it’s something like a blog post made by someone who agrees with longtermism but is laying out counter arguments to be rigorous. This is good of them to do, but genuine criticisms from people outside of the community are more valuable and I’d like to see more of them.
Something related to disseminating more criticism, is including more voices from non-EAs. I worry when I see a list of references and it is all EAs. This seems common, even on websites like 80k.