Good question! Somebody wrote this post. And I've had a handful of people say they use it all the time. Mostly for EAGs or other conferences. 

Haven't heard of anybody using it for long stays yet, which was my original use case for it. 

Smart! Love the modified mantras. Will try them today. 

Still working on it full time! I'd guess we'll publish in the next 1-4 weeks. I really hope it is sooner. I want to finish this more than anybody. 

Sorry for it taking so long. This is the first time I've ever done crisis communication and if I had a time machine, I'd do things differently. 

Have no fear! We are responding. We’ve been working on this full time the entire time. We have over 200 pages written so far and are in the last stages of editing to the point where we’ll be able to get feedback from friends. We’re aiming to get this done in the next few weeks because we want to be working on things that actually help with AI. However, it’s a very large doc, it’s a hostile audience, it takes way more effort to debunk something than to say something, etc. Also, man, I really hate editing, so it’s a bit of a slog. 

(Obviously didn’t mean to write over 200 pages. Just Ben accused us of a lot of things and we were writing in multiple documents, so didn’t see what had happened until it was too late 😛.)

We tried to make it crystal clear that it was about seeing the evidence first, rather than posting at all. 

Here's the full email. 

"Importantly, we are not asking Ben to not publish, just to give until the end of next week to gather and share the evidence we have."

Quick thing to re-emphasize. It was not saying we'd sue if they posted. It was saying if they posted without giving us a week to send them the evidence that we thought would largely update the post they wrote. 

Ben's post has already been changed in many ways based on our conversation and the information we showed him on the call. It seems like basic truth-seeking behavior to hear the other side and see counter-evidence. 

He sent us the draft on a day he knew we were traveling and had sketchy internet, and that one of our members was sick. He'd had months and hundreds of hours to gather evidence for and write a >10k word post and he gave us a day to respond on a day he knew we were unable to respond well. 

We were traveling that entire day (which he knew) and when we asked why there was a rush, couldn't he wait a week for more information that might sizeably update him, he said he couldn't wait and wouldn't tell us why. 

We were not asking him not to post. We were asking him to see our evidence before posting. 

I think this is a really important distinction. 

We were not suppressing evidence, but trying to share it. 

And they were refusing to look at it and did not care at all about the effects this would have on our ability to do good in the future. And also despite the fact that after they posted and paid the ex-employees (before they saw our evidence), this would make it psychologically impossible for them to update. 

Yes he was

Not all of them. He was shown the first set of screenshots, showing clearly that we said we were going to get her food. 

To be fair, we didn't show the screenshots about the mashed potatoes yet, which was proof we went out to get her vegan food. 

But we did show him there was vegan food in the house, which I think is an extremely important detail. 

Not feeding a sick friend (she was not working for us at the time) when she didn't have any food is cruel and uncaring. 

Offering to cook a sick friend vegan food in the house and her preferring us to go out and get her a burger is extremely different. 

And we asked him for more time to send him all the rest, to show that not only was there vegan food in the house, but that we brought her food. We have more that's not included in this post too. We're working full time on gathering the evidence, but even just this 2 line claim has taken us hours and hours to gather, anonymize, format, write, and handle comments. He decided he wanted to post the post anyways, without waiting to see all the evidence.  

We chose this example not because it’s the most important (although it certainly paints us in a very negative and misleading light) but simply because it was the fastest claim to explain where we had extremely clear evidence without having to add a lot of context, explanation, find more evidence, etc. 

Even so, it took us hours to put together and share. Both because we had to track down all of the old conversations, make sure we weren’t getting anything wrong, anonymize Alice, format the screenshots (they kept getting blurry), and importantly, write it up. 

Writing for the EA Forum/LessWrong is already quite a difficult thing, with it being a reasonable assumption that people will point out any little detail you get wrong. I ask you to please empathize with how it must be for us now, given that so many people currently see everything we post through the lens of being unethical people.

If you’ve ever spent a long time trying to get a post just right for the EA Forum/LessWrong, I ask you to empathize with what we’re going through here.

We also had to spend time dealing with all of the other comments while trying to pull this together. My inbox is completely swamped. Not to mention trying to deal with my own emotional reactions to this incredibly difficult situation. 

We intend to address the point you are describing as soon as we can. We're all working full-time on this and will get back to you as soon as we can. This was simply meant as a quick example of the evidence we'll be providing, not a comprehensive rebuttal, which we're working on. 

We chose this example not because it’s the most important (although it certainly paints us in a very negative and misleading light) but simply because it was the fastest claim to explain where we had extremely clear evidence without having to add a lot of context, explanation, find more evidence, etc. 

Even so, it took us hours to put together and share. Both because we had to track down all of the old conversations, make sure we weren’t getting anything wrong, anonymize Alice, format the screenshots (they kept getting blurry), and importantly, write it up. 

Writing for the EA Forum/LessWrong is already quite a difficult thing, with it being a reasonable assumption that people will point out any little detail you get wrong. I ask you to please empathize with how it must be for us now, given that so many people currently see everything we post through the lens of being unethical people.

If you’ve ever spent a long time trying to get a post just right for the EA Forum/LessWrong, I ask you to empathize with what we’re going through here.

We also had to spend time dealing with all of the other comments while trying to pull this together. My inbox is completely swamped. Not to mention trying to deal with my own emotional reactions to this incredibly difficult situation. 

We intend to address the points you are describing as soon as we can. We're all working full-time on this and will get back to you as soon as we can. This was simply meant as a quick example of the evidence we'll be providing, not a comprehensive rebuttal, which we're working on.