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Comment by Deena Englander (deena-englander) on Sharing Information About Nonlinear · 2023-09-07T14:49:09.245Z · LW · GW

There are so many things wrong with this post that I'm not entirely sure where to start. Here are a few key thoughts on this:

-EA preaches rationalism. As part of rationalism, to understand something truly, you need to investigate both sides of the argument. Yet the author specifically decided to only look at one side of the argument. How can that possibly be a rationalist approach to truth-seeking? If you're going to write a defamation article about someone, especially in EA, please make sure to go about it with the logical rigor you would give any issue. 

-I've been working with Kat and Nonlinear for years now and I heard about the hiring process, the employment issues, and the nasty separation. I can guarantee you from my perspective as a coach that a good number of the items mentioned here are abjectly false. I think the worst mistake Kat made was to not have a contract in writing with both of her employees (Chloe's agreement was in writing) detailing the terms of their work engagement.

-I'm not seeing information collected from other Nonlinear employees, which makes me wonder why there's a biased sample data here. Again, if you're spending the amount of time and effort as was put into this post to defame someone, choose an appropriate data sample.

-Have you ever been through or seen people go through a divorce? Nasty splits happen all the time, and the anger can cloud retrospective judgment. Yet when we hear someone complain about how bad their ex was, we take it with a grain of salt and assume that personal prejudice is clouding their impression of the person (which is usually true). Why isn't that factor taken into account?

-In general, I think it's not a good idea to live with the people you work with. It destroys relationships. So it probably wasn't a good position to start with. I'm not surprised it went sour - how often do people not have great relationships with their roommates? And when you compound that with a built-in hierarchy of employee and boss, it can make it more challenging. It's possible Alice and Chloe didn't know what they were getting themselves into. But that brings me back to Kat's mistake of not getting it in writing for both of them. Their mistake does not give them an excuse for libel.

Honestly, I'm very disappointed in the author for writing a non-rigorous, slanderous accusation of an organization that does a whole lot of good, especially when I know firsthand that it's false. It makes me lose faith in the integrity of the rationalist community. 

Comment by Deena Englander (deena-englander) on Apply to >30 AI safety funders in one application with the Nonlinear Network · 2023-04-13T15:18:50.132Z · LW · GW