All of Emerson Spartz's Comments + Replies
Kat just added context below, but I'll also note that the 'transport drugs across a country border' story is wildly distorted and we will provide evidence in the forthcoming post that we're working hard on.
Thanks for updating this! This points at something that concerned me about the structure of the original post - Alice or Chloe accuse me of something, but (in the event it was actually covered in my one conversation with Ben) my response to it (or, rather, Ben's paraphrase) might only be included 8,000 words later, and still likely missing important context I would want to add.
I really respect that even in the middle of all this you (and other members of the LW team) still team leave comments like these.
I think serious mistakes were made in how this situation was handled but I have never doubted that you guys are trying your best to help the community, and comments like this are proof of that.
Thanks for doing this, Nathan! I'm finding these results interesting and informative and I expect this to elevate to the discourse.
I agree that if it were just a few disputed claims that would be a a reasonable thing to do, there are so many. And there is so much nuance.
Here is one example, however. This took us hours to prepare, just to rebut a single false claim:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5pksH3SbQzaniX96b/a-quick-update-from-nonlinear
Crostposted from LessWong (link)
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like it should take less than an hour to read the post, make a note of every claim that's not true, and then post that list of false claims, even if it would take many days to collect all the evidence that shows those points are false.
I imagine that would be helpful for you, because readers are much more likely to reserve judgement if you listed which specific things are false.
Personally, I could look over that list and say "oh yeah, number 8 [or whatever] is cruxy for me. If t...
I would think you could go through the post and list out 50 bullet points of what you plan to contest in a couple of hours.
I find the idea of doing that absolutely awful and I've never done anything like that. Unfortunately, it's a lie there is no possibility of defending myself from, since it's hearsay from an anonymous source.
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...
To clarify, do you mean you have never asked/recruited someone to stalk, intimidate, or harass someone else, or do you mean you have never boasted about it?
It was not remotely enough time to actually rebut all of the false claims and we told him so. We assumed that would be the first of many calls - it would take at least a week to clear things up - and then he just surprised us by posting.
My guess is it was enough time to say which claims you objected to and sketch out the kind of evidence you planned to bring. And Ben judged that your response didn't indicate you were going to bring anything that would change his mind enough that the info he had was worth sharing. E.g. you seemed to focus on showing that Alice couldn't be trusted, but Ben felt that this would not refute enough of the other info he had collected / the kinds of refutation (e.g. only a $50 for driving without a license, she brought back illegal substances anyway) were not com...
This was twisted to make me seem like a villain. I recommended it as a book specifically to read to be able to defend against unethical people who use those tactics offensively - Defense Against the Dark Arts.
My comment was still when I was mid reading OP. Earlier in the essay there's an account of the Adorian Deck situation, then the excerpts from the book, which is as far as I got before I wrote this comment. Later in OP does the case for that Emerson is interested in literature like this for DADA reasons become clearer and defensible.
For commenting before I got to the end of the post, I apologize.
Yes, that is incorrect. One of many such factual inaccuracies and why we told Ben to give us a week. The exact date is not simple to explain, since she gradually began working with us, but we will clarify ASAP.
On December 15, as your screenshots seem to illustrate that you were not able to provide her hot (vegan) food, despite >2 hours of text messaging with both Kat and Drew.
The reason we urge everyone to withhold judgment is because even what currently look like "uncontested/incontestable claims" are, in fact, very much contestable.
For example: "(Kat's text screenshotted above is pretty blatant here)."
I agree that it does indeed look blatant here. But when you see the full context - the parts Alice conspicuously did not include - the meaning will change radically, to the point where you will likely question Alice's other claims and 'evidence'.
I concur with David. Irrespective of the circumstances, the threat is unmistakably apparent. It appears that thus far, both of you have issued threats to individuals, either to tarnish their reputation or to initiate legal action against them. Regrettably, these actions are not enhancing your own reputation. In fact, they are casting a shadow of suspicion upon you.
The problem with Kat’s text is that it’s a very thinly veiled threat to end someone’s career in an attempt to control Nonlinear’s image. There is no context that justifies such a threat.
Could be! I might end up with egg on my face here, in which case I will do my best to admit it. That said, my most important claim is my last: if you wanted me and others to truly withhold judgement, you really shouldn't have threatened to sue.
If you can share (publicly or privately) strong evidence contradicting "claims [...] that wildly distort the true story" (emphasis mine), I pre-commit to signal boosting.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't be surprised if you do have strong counter-evidence to some claims (given the number of claims made, the ease with which things can be lost in translation, your writing this email, etc.). But, as of right now, I would be surprised if my understanding of the important stuff -- roughly, the items covered in Ben's epistemic state and the crossing of red lines -...
It is very difficult for people to change their minds later, and most people assume that if you’re on trial, you must be guilty, which is why judges remind juries about “innocent before proven guilty”.
This is one of the foundations of our legal system, something we learned over thousands of years of trying to get better at justice. You’re just assuming I’m guilty and saying that justifies not giving me a chance to present my evidence.
Trials are public as well. Indeed our justice system generally doesn't have secret courts, so I am not sure what ...
Sanjay, I just realized you were the top comment, and now I notice that I feel confused, because your comment directly inspired me to express my views in a tone that was more opinionated and less-hedgy.
I appreciate - no, I *love* - EA's truth seeking culture but I wish it were more OK to add a bit of Gryffindor to balance out the Ravenclaw.
Thanks for the feedback. I tried to do both. I think the doomerism levels are so intense right now and need to be balanced out with a bit of inspiration.
I worry that the doomer levels are so high EAs will be frozen into inaction and non-EAs will take over from here. This is the default outcome, I think.
Going to say something seemingly-unpopular in a tone that usually gets downvoted but I think needs to be said anyway:
This stat is why I still have hope: 100,000 capabilities researchers vs 300 alignment researchers.
Humanity has not tried to solve alignment yet.
There's no cavalry coming - we are the cavalry.
I am sympathetic to fears of a new alignment researchers being net negative, and I think plausibly the entire field has, so far, been net negative, but guys, there are 100,000 capabilities researchers now! One more is a drop in the bucket.
If you're...
My gut reaction when reading this comment:
This comment looks like it's written in an attempt to "be inspirational", not an attempt to share a useful insight, or ask a question.
I hope this doesn't sound unkind. I recognise that there can be value in being inspirational, but it's not what I'm looking for when I'm reading these comments.
We built an EA bounty platform and have paid out a few dozen bounties!
Great idea! Would love to help you with this - I'm both an entrepreneur, a history nerd (1,000+ books) and am very interested in AI governance.
Let me know: emersonspartz@nonlinear.org or Twitter DM @EmersonSpartz
Lots of potential here! I've given 6 TEDx talks and would love to be helpful for anyone pursuing this - feel free to reach out.
I agree and will use this opportunity to re-share some tips for increasing readability. I used to manage teams of writers/editors and here are some ideas we found useful:
To remove fluff, imagine someone is paying you $1,000 for every word you remove. Our writers typically could cut 20-50% with minimal loss of information.
Long sentences are hard to read, so try to change your commas into periods.
Long paragraphs are hard to read, so try to break each paragraph into 2-3 sentences.
Most people just skim, and some of your ideas are much more important than others, so bold/italicize your important points.
Love this! I used to manage teams of writers/editors and here are some ideas we found useful for increasing readability:
To remove fluff, imagine someone is paying you $1,000 for every word you remove. Our writers typically could cut 20-50% with minimal loss of information.
Long sentences are hard to read, so try to change your commas into periods.
Long paragraphs are hard to read, so try to break each paragraph into 2-3 sentences.
Most people just skim, and some of your ideas are much more important than others, so bold/italicize your important points.
Agreed - we reached out to some people in the group to see if they wanted to add their listings to the sheet!
That depends on the funders! Give enough bounties, I'd expect an optimal bounty distribution to look power law-ish with a few big bounties (>10k-1m?) and many small ones (<10k).
I didn't think about it much - public might be better. I assumed some people would be hesitant to share publicly and I'd get more submissions if private, but I'm not sure if that offsets the creative stimulus of sharing publicly.
- I'd guess 80% chance at least one gets funded by Feb 2022.
- I want to fund every idea that is good enough and then figure out how to scale the bounty market making process 100x.
- 2 from this particular experiment, but I intend to do more experiments like this.
I actually think that's an interesting idea! I like the idea of using bounties to spur more bounty innovation. I'd love to see more bounties like this - let's try mapping the whole design space.
Shovel ready bounties are preferred but to avoid premature exploitation I'd just like to hear as many ideas as possible at this point. Some ideas might require back and forth, but that's ok!
Seeing the ideas coming in is already giving me lots of ideas for ways to potentially scale this.
@Ben Pace Can you please add at the top of the post "Nonlinear disputes at least 85 of the claims in this post and intends to publish a detailed point-by-point response.
They also published this short update giving an example of the kind of evidence they plan to demonstrate."
We keep hearing from people who don't know this. Our comments get buried, so they think your summary at the bottom contains the entirety of our response, though it is just the tip of the iceberg. As a result, they think your post marks the end of the story, and not the opening cha... (read more)
I've made an edit at the top.
I look forward to reading your point-by-point response. I suspect you will convince me that some of the events described in this post were characterized inaccurately, in ways that are unflattering to Nonlinear. However, I think it is very unlikely you will convince me that Nonlinear didn't screw up in several big, important ways, causing significant harm in the process (for reasons along these lines).
I would thus strongly encourage you to also think about what mistakes Nonlinear made, and what things it is worth apologizing for. I think this would be... (read more)