All of Ben Pace's Comments + Replies

My attention continues to be on the question of whether my post was accurate and whether this post debunks the claims and narratives shared in mine. To minimize public attention costs and also to preserve my own sanity, I am aiming to engage with Nonlinear’s response in a way that focuses only on the clearest and most direct critiques of my post. I’m currently focusing on 2-3 of the claims in their response that most contradict my post, investigating them further, and intend to publish the results of that.

Once I’ve finished that process and shared my think... (read more)

I’m currently focusing on 2-3 of the claims in their response that most contradict my post, investigating them further, and intend to publish the results of that.

I hope that while you’re investigating this, you talk to us and ask us for any evidence we have. We’re more than happy to share relevant evidence and are willing to set reasonable deadlines for how long it’ll take for us to send it to you. 

We also don’t want to waste more people’s time on going back and forth publicly about the evidence when you can easily check with us first before publishin... (read more)

Ben Pace
4mo217
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Brief update: I am still in the process of reading this. At this point I have given the post itself a once-over, and begun to read it more slowly (and looking through the appendices as they're linked).

I think any and all primary sources that Kat provides are good (such as the page of records of transactions). I am also grateful that they have not deanonymized Alice and Chloe.

I plan to compare the things that this post says directly against specific claims in mine, and acknowledge anything where I was factually inaccurate. I also plan to do a pass wher... (read more)

My attention continues to be on the question of whether my post was accurate and whether this post debunks the claims and narratives shared in mine. To minimize public attention costs and also to preserve my own sanity, I am aiming to engage with Nonlinear’s response in a way that focuses only on the clearest and most direct critiques of my post. I’m currently focusing on 2-3 of the claims in their response that most contradict my post, investigating them further, and intend to publish the results of that.

Once I’ve finished that process and shared my think... (read more)

NL: A quick note on how we use quotation marks: we sometimes use them for direct quotes and sometimes use them to paraphrase.

I had missed that; thank you for pointing it out!

While using quotation marks for paraphrase or when recounting something as best as you recall is occasionally done in English writing, primarily in casual contexts, I think it's a very poor choice for this post. Lots of people are reading this trying to decide who to trust, and direct quotes and paraphrase have very different weight. Conflating them, especially in a way where many r... (read more)

Thanks for saying that, but no request from me. (And my guess is it'll be fine and I'll add my bullets back in a day or so.)

Some brief reactions:

  1. I mostly don't like the 'justice' process involved in other cases insofar as it is primarily secret and hidden. I don't think it's much of a justice system where you often don't know the accusations against you or why you're being punished.
  2. The data on negative performance is also profoundly censored! I am not sure why you think this makes this more likely to make me update positively on the process involved.
  3. I am pro having some surveys of people's general attitudes toward CEA Community Health. Questions like "Have you ever reported an
... (read more)

Fwiw, seems like the positive performance is more censored in expectation than the negative performance: while a case that CH handled poorly could either be widely discussed or never heard about again, I'm struggling to think of how we'd all hear about a case that they handled well, since part of handling it well likely involves the thing not escalating into a big deal and respecting people's requests for anonymity and privacy.

It does seem like a big drawback that the accused don't know the details of the accusations, but it also seems like there are obvio... (read more)

Noted. FYI in my culture it's considered pro-social to let people know what trades you'd be up for and what price. 

Also, and there's a good chance that this isn't the main thing you're responding to, but FWIW we're not doing active fundraising any more (as we were successful at getting our basic needs met for continuing), so this isn't like me trying to get my salary fundraised or anything like that.

7
NickLaing
6mo
Thanks, appreciate the response and that makes sense.

Appreciate the comment. I sadly decided to edit out a few bullets on that to check in on what's okay to share. That's my fault, I will make sure to leave a new comment when I am able to add them back in, probably in a day or two (but might be longer).

2
AnonymousEAForumAccount
6mo
Let me know if you'd like me to remove my comment while this gets sorted out.

I looked through all the mentions of his behavior in the post. I think only one of them is plausibly misleading. I say

I see clear reasons to think that Kat, Emerson and Drew intimidated these people into accepting some of the actions or dynamics that hurt them

I only have reports of intimidating actions from Emerson and Kat, not Drew. I don't have any reason to think he reduced the level of intimidation, but I don't want to convey that I know of positive acts of intimidation that he took, beyond broadly participating in the dynamics set up by Emerson and Ka... (read more)

I confirm that this is Chloe, who contacted me through our standard communication channels to say she was posting a comment today.

True! But for the record I definitely don't have remotely enough personal wealth to cover such a suit. So if libel suits are permissible then you may only hear about credible accusations from people on teams who are willing to back the financial cost, the number of which in my estimation is currently close to 1.

Added: I don't mean to be more pessimistic than is accurate. I am genuinely uncertain to what extent people will have my back if a lawsuit comes up (Manifold has it at 13%), and my uncertainty range does include "actually quite a lot of people are w... (read more)

I don't mean to imply that I couldn't see evidence that persuaded me that this concern had been mediated sufficiently. But silencing and intimidating into being quiet is a problem that self-reinforces — when it's happening, it stops you from learning about it, and about anything else bad that's happening. So I think it's important to take a much more hardline stance against it than with other norm-violations even if the two norm-violations caused a similar amount of damage.

That sounds quite plausible. Will do a re-read of my post (and my notes) to check what I say, and think about what edit/additions are worth making. 

(Will come back for that tomorrow. I'm signing off for today and taking the evening to rest.)

8
Joel Becker
7mo
Thank you Ben -- please check comment mentions of Drew, too!

I can tell you that someone was quite actively scared of you doing something like this, and believed you to have said it to them. I wasn't there myself so I cannot confirm whether it's a mishearing or whatever.

There's a broader question that I am often confused about regarding whether it's good or bad to think carefully about how to really deceive someone, or really hurt someone, even if it's motivated defensively. Then people can be unsure about the boundaries of whether you'll use it against them. If someone were to tell you that they know general skills... (read more)

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David Mathers
7mo
'or get people swatted, or get people on immigration black-lists for certain countries,' I find it pretty hard to come up with a realistic scenario where these would ever be justified. 

Yeah, I mis-wrote there, will update that line in the post (though I say it correctly a few paragraphs later[1]). They traveled together between those dates. 

From my perspective it's fairly ambiguous at what point Alice started "working" for Nonlinear. 

  • On the call with me, Kat said (roughly verbatim) "If you asked each of me/Emerson/Drew at what point Alice became an employee, we'd each give three different answers." Kat said that her answer was at the end of February when they claim that they started paying Alice $1k/month, and that was when Kat
... (read more)

To check, I am reading you as saying that you used Google's AI to generate that description of Nonlinear, and then you wrote down what you expected, assuming that it had 25 employees and was active for 5 years.

It does seem that the org is much smaller than you expected. Nonetheless I'd be interested to read about how surprised you are by the content of the post after stating your anticipations.

2
keller_scholl
7mo
Correct: I'm vaguely aware of Kat Woods posting on FB, but haven't investigated Nonlinear in any depth before: having an explicit definition of "what information I'm working with" seemed useful. Yes, Nonlinear is smaller than expected. I outlined a bad org with problems, even after adjusting for a hostile reporter and a vengeful ex-employee. I think that the evidence is somewhat weaker than what I expect, not counting that I trust you personally, and the allegations are stronger/worse. Overall, it was a negative update about Nonlinear.
Ben Pace
7mo56
23
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The answer to many of your questions is no, I have little former professional experience at this sort of investigation! (I had also never run an office before Lightcone Office, never run a web forum before LessWrong, and never run a conference before EAGxOxford 2016.)

My general attitude to doing new projects that I think should be done and nobody else is doing them is captured in this quote by Eliezer Yudkowsky that I think about often:

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that the important things are accomplished not by those best suited to do them, or by those who ought to be responsible for doing them, but by whoever actually shows up.

To answer this question:

Does the author have any personal relationship to any of their key sources? Any personal or professional conflicts of interest? Any personal agenda? Was their payment of money to anonymous sources appropriate and ethical?

I had never heard Alice or Chloe's names before Kat told me them the first time. I have a fairly strong second-degree connection with Chloe. I had met Kat once before she visited the Lightcone Offices, having one ~20 min conversation with her at Palmcone, an event Lightcone ran in the Bahamas. I had never met Emerso... (read more)

Thank you! I am also primarily concerned with the experience of the former employees, which has been exceedingly unpleasant.

I will also say, I heard from Alice and Chloe and others that people said things like "Nonlinear is really high impact, we shouldn't hurt them" and then also "Nonlinear is too powerful, we should try to change them to become better people".

When I was deciding whether to invite them to the Lightcone Offices, I thought some of their prizes seemed like good ideas, and it swayed me on accepting their request.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but FWIW I think Sam Bankman-Freid and Alameda would have been honestly described as "a notable but relatively minor actor in the space" during the many years when they were building their resource base, hiring, getting funds, and during which time people knew multiple serious accusations about him/them. I am here trying to execute an algorithm that catches bad actors before they become too powerful. I think Emerson is very ambitious and would like a powerful role in EA/X-risk/etc.

I agree with this, and think it could have been a terrible day for EA if stuff like this surfaced later in a world where Nonlinear had become more influential. But thankfully* we're not in that world.

(* Thankfully assuming the allegations are broadly true etc etc.)

without inviting or even permitting the accused party to share their side of the story in advance

You may have missed the section where I had a 3hr call with them and summarized what they told me? It's not everything we'd want but I think this sentence is inaccurate.

I suspect Ben does in fact have some understanding of the political dimension of his decision to share this post

Of course I do! I thought about it a bunch and came to the conclusion that it's best to share serious and credible accusations early and fast.

To be clear I only informed them about my planned writeup on Friday.

(The rest of the time lots of other people involved were v afraid of retaliation and intimidation and I wanted to respect that while gathering evidence. I believe if I hadn't made that commitment to people then I wouldn't have gotten the evidence.)

6
burner
7mo
Thanks - more sympathetic to the ask in that case, though I don't think you were obliged to wait. 

To confirm: I had a quickly written bit about the glassdoor reviews. It was added in without much care because it wasn't that cruxy to me about the whole situation, just a red flag that suggested further investigation was worth it, that someone else suggested I add for completeness. The reviews I included were from after the time that Emerson's linkedin says he was CEO, and I'm glad that Spencer corrected me.

If I'm remembering the other one, there was also a claim that I included not because it was itself obviously unethical, but because it seemed to indic... (read more)

I'd also be pleased to find out that my understanding is wrong! 

I don't think they're in a position to show that a lot of hurt didn't accrue to the employees, but maybe they can show some ways in which they clearly signaled that they wouldn't try to ruin their employees or intimidate them, such as

  • Texts where they told Alice/Chloe  "I understand that you had a horrible experience here, and it's totally fine for you to tell other people that this working/living environment was awful and you've been really hurt by it, and also here's a way in which
... (read more)

Appreciate the comment Joel :) 

(And of course, if you later come to have a critical/negative opinion of parts of my post, you're v welcome to share those too!)

Here's another thing.

That’s a red line in my book, and I will not personally work with Nonlinear in the future because of it, and I recommend their exclusion from any professional communities that wish to keep up the standard of people not being silenced about extremely negative work experiences.

Let's suppose that Nonlinear have crossed red lines, and that additional information from them won't change this. (In reality I think that this is up in the air for the next week or so; I won't allow my limited imagination to diminish the hope.)

Do you not believe i... (read more)

Yes, I think that the post does not do enough to make it clear that the central allegations are not about Drew Spartz. Happy to expand.

I'll quote Emerson Spartz on this one:

People are so irrationally intimidated by lawyers that some legal firms make all their money by sending out thousands of scary form letters demanding payment for bullshit transgressions.  My company was threatened with thousands of frivolous lawsuits but only actually sued once.

Threats are cheap.

It is indeed high stakes! But in my opinion they have opted in to this sort of accusation being openly stated. Many hundreds or even thousands of people have given their lives and efforts to causes and projects led by high-status people in EA, often on the grounds that it is "high trust" and the people are well-intentioned. Once you are taking those resources — for instance having a woman you talked to once at an EAG come and fly out and live with you and work for you while nomadically traveling and paying her next to nothing, or do the same via a short hi... (read more)

Seems great! I am glad you had good interactions with them. They do seem overwhelmingly positive in their general demeanor, and high energy and excited about projects.

Personally I have found that getting too attached the supposed goodness of my intentions as a guide to my moral character has been a distraction, in times when my behavior has not actually been that good.

I've not looked into it in great detail, but I think of it as a classically Christian idea to try to evaluate if someone is a good or a bad person internally, and give reward/punishment based on that. In contrast, I believe it's mostly better to punish people based on their behavior, often regardless of whether you judge them to internally be 'selfish' or ... (read more)

The Rose Garden Inn was also purchased on a loan from Jaan Tallinn (I'm not quite sure how the finances worked but we weren't given the funds directly), and so we owe him ~$16MM-or-a-hotel at some point in the future.

I did also not account for all the furniture costs in that section (however, I suspect ~50% of the furniture will get used in the future either by projects by our team or other projects we like, so it's not all sunk cost).

A quick fermi for how much furniture we bought is something like 40 standing desks (~$600) + 40 office chairs (~$600) + 20 couches (~$1000) is more than half of it, then give a factor of 2x for everything else (rugs, end-tables, lights, etc), which comes out to $136,000.

As I say, ~50% will get kept and used for other stuff, so it's only about $80k of further sunk cost.

The charity section famously has lower salaries because the work is more intrinsically rewarding than regular corporate fare.

I thought it was because there's no profit to be made doing the work.

Nah, I am regularly wildly un-careful in my speech, so moving to Signal is a major benefit precisely for me.

Agree on UI though, the first time ppl text me I don't know who they are, and no photos for most of my contacts.

Happy to get behind this, I am always down to move to Signal. You can reach me there at five one oh, nine nine eight, four seven seven one (also a +1 at the front for US country code). (Please identify yourself when you text me.)

Pretty sure non-zero people have tried, my guess is the question is "how competent of an attacker and how much effort do they put into it".

It's nice to see this again <3 

I asked Parfit to give this talk at that EAGxOxford, a conference Jacob Lagerros and I were the lead organizers of [edit: I see James Aung posted this, who was on the team too!]. It was one of the last talks of his life. I remember writing him an email about what talk to give, and he wrote a very long word document back as an attachment. He was a very careful thinker.

Also I remember a pretty endearing interaction between him and Anders Sandberg, where Anders pretended to be a fan and got Parfit to sign a copy of his book. (It was a joke because Anders and Parfit were former roommates and good friends.)

4
Gavin
2y
In the Q&A after this talk, Sandberg asked "What is the moral relevance of Apple laptops booting half a second slower?" (since on Parfit's simple view of aggregation, with millions of devices, this is equivalent to a massive loss of life). I always thought Parfit was being rude by ignoring the question, but your comment makes it seem more like joshing.

I think chapter 4, The Kinetics of an Intelligence Explosion, has a lot of terms and arguments from EY's posts in the FOOM Debate. (I've been surprised by this in the past, thinking Bostrom invented the terms, then finding things like resource overhangs getting explicitly defined in the FOOM Debate.)

Yeah, well, I haven't thought about this case much, so maybe there's some good counterargument, but I think of personal attacks as "this person's hair looks ugly" or "this person isn't fun at parties", not "this person is not strong in an area of the job that I think is key". Professional criticism seems quite different from personal attacks, and I hold different norms around how appropriate it is to bring up in public contexts.

Sure, it's a challenge to someone to be professionally criticized, and can easily be unpleasant, but it's not irrelevant or off-topic and can easily be quite valuable and important.

Hi, can you give an example of a speculative personal attack in the post that you're referring to?

4
Jeff Kaufman
2y
How about: I read this as a formal and softened way of saying "Chloe made avoidably bad grants because she wouldn't do the math". Different people will interpret the softening differently: it can come across either as "hey maybe this could have been a piece of what happened?" or "this is totally what I think happened, but if I say it bluntly that would be rude".
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Aaron Gertler
2y
Thanks for this feedback. The horizontal scroll is a matter of having long email addresses on those page, and I'll clean that up after checking with page owners. Agree with info density dropping on the grants page — I think there's an easy improvement or two to be made here (e.g. removing the "Learn More" arrow), which I'll be aiming to make as the new site owner (with input from others at OP).

Habryka left a lot of the relevant comments. My main positive is the separation of blogposts and research reports, I think that is likely pretty helpful when looking just for the high-effort research. My main negative was the information density decrease on the grants page, a page for a few years of my life I used to check regularly. Comparing on iPad right now with the way back machine, I used to see 8 grants on a page, but now I only see 2, so a 4x reduction.

2
Ben Pace
2y
Feedback that the following page had like 1-2 letters width of horizontal scroll when I loaded on iPad. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/berkeley-existential-risk-initiative-seri-summer-fellowships/ Added: this page too: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/open-philanthropy-course-development-grants/

Took me a while to find where you got your 2x+y from, I see it's visible if you highlight the cells in the sheet.

Here's a sheet with the score as sorted by the top 1k people, which is what I was interested in seeing: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VODS3-NrlBTnSMbGibhT4M2FpmfT-ojaPTEuuFIk9xc/edit?usp=sharing

Feedback: I tried and failed on my phone to read the voting results by the ranking of how people voted. I don’t know what weighting is used in the spreadsheet so the ordering feels monkeyed-with.

2
Charles He
2y
Can you write a bit more about what you mean? What voting results? Why would it be obvious that you could back this out? I don’t remember the details but I remember thinking the quadratic voting formula seemed sort of “underdetermined” and left room for “post processing”, but I read this as the “designer” wasn’t confident and leaving room to get well behaved results (as opposed schemes of outright manipulation).

(Someone told me this comment read as hostile to them; FYI I thought it was a funny series of thoughts that I had, no hostility meant at all!)

3
Charles He
2y
I didn't think this was hostile at all. 
2
Ben_West
2y
FWIW I didn't interpret it is hostile, though I did change the title to make it more clear that I'm not suggesting CEA change
2
Linch
2y
I also did not interpret it as hostile fwiw (though I'm not Ben/CEA)

I saw this title and assumed someone was making a public criticism of CEA.

Then I saw it was written by a present CEA staff member. 

And I thought "Wow, creative way to get changes made at your organization." :D

4
Ben Pace
2y
(Someone told me this comment read as hostile to them; FYI I thought it was a funny series of thoughts that I had, no hostility meant at all!)

If I were Thomas Kwa right now I would be offering Eneasz $10,000 for 5% of his impact certificate for making the HPMOR podcast.

1
Jack R
2y
Ha!

Ah, this is the true meta trap for EAs.

Woop, thank you for true but contrary datapoints.

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