I was asked to comment by Ben earlier, but have been juggling more directly impactful projects and retreats. I have been somewhat close to parts of the unfolding situation, including spending some time with both Alice, Chloe, and (separately) the Nonlinear team in-person, and communicating online on-and-off with most parties.
I can confirm some of the patterns Alice complained about, specifically not reliably remembering or following through on financial and roles agreements, and Emerson being difficult to talk to about some things. I do not feel notably harmed by these, and was able to work them out with Drew and Kat without much difficulty, but it does back up my perception that there were real grievances which would have been harmful to someone in a less stable position. I also think they’ve done some excellent work, and would like to see that continue, ideally with clear and well-known steps to mitigate the kinds of harms which set this in motion.
I have consistently attempted to shift Nonlinear away from what appears to me a wholly counterproductive adversarial emotional stance, with limited results. I understand that they feel defected against, especially Emerson, but they were in the position of power and failed to make sure those they were working with did not come out harmed, and the responses to the initial implosion continued to generate harm and distraction for the community. I am unsettled by the threat of legal action towards Lightcone and focus on controlling the narrative rather than repairing damage.
Emerson: You once said one of the main large failure modes you were concerned about becoming was Stalin’s mistake: breaking the networks of information around you so you were unaware things were going so badly wrong. My read is you’ve been doing this in a way which is a bit more subtle than the gulags, by the intensity of your personality shaping the fragments of mind around you to not give you evidence that in fact you made some large mistakes here. I felt the effects of this indirectly, as well as directly. I hope you can halt, melt, and catch fire, and return to the effort as someone who does not make this magnitude of unforced error.
You can’t just push someone who is deeply good out of the movement which has the kind of co-protective nature of ours in the way you merely shouldn’t in some parts of the world, if there’s intense conflict call in a mediator and try and heal the damage.
Edit: To clarify, this is not intended as a blanket endorsement of mediation, or of avoiding other forms of handling conflict. I do think that going into a process where the parties genuinely try and understand each other’s worlds much earlier would have been much less costly for everyone involved as well as the wider community in this case, but I can imagine mediation is often mishandled or forced in ways which are also counterproductive.
For what it’s worth, I think mediation in situations like this seems like a naive and terrible strategy.
I do not want to aim for and end state of “the relationships have been mended”. That seems outside of the scope of what we can reasonably commit to in the majority of wrongdoings. And it’s just not what I think you should aim for when trying to get justice after someone has been hurt.
When a crime is committed like theft or damages, courts would not issue that the defendant has to engage in “100 hours of mediation”, I think they’d be like “go to prison for 6 months” or “pay back $100k to the defendants”.
I think if the wrongdoing has been established as having happened (e.g. by courts or by however the local social environment figures that sort of thing out), the wrongdoer should pay a cost that makes sure the initial act was not worth it to them (ex ante), and then everyone can move on, and the parties involved can figure out whatever relationship they want after that (including no relationship).
It’s far easier to look past former wrongs after debts have been paid or bad deeds punished, and it’s good to avoid having the victim and the perpetrator talk about it at length. That is often both unproductive and painful for the victim.
Edit: Oops! I wrote ‘meditation’ instead of ‘mediation’. Fixed.
Forced or badly done mediation seems indeed terrible, entering into conversation facilitated by someone skilled with an intent to genuinely understand the harms caused and make sure you correct he underlying patterns seems much less bad than the actual way the situation played out.
I agree with that statement as worded, but you still seem to be presupposing a view of ‘mediation is good-by-default in this sort of situation’ that at least don’t think you’ve argued for.
That’s fair, I’ve added a note to the bottom of the post to clarify my intended meaning. I am not arguing for it in a well-backed up way, just stating the output of my models from being fairly close to the situation and having watched a different successful mediation.
I was asked to comment by Ben earlier, but have been juggling more directly impactful projects and retreats. I have been somewhat close to parts of the unfolding situation, including spending some time with both Alice, Chloe, and (separately) the Nonlinear team in-person, and communicating online on-and-off with most parties.
I can confirm some of the patterns Alice complained about, specifically not reliably remembering or following through on financial and roles agreements, and Emerson being difficult to talk to about some things. I do not feel notably harmed by these, and was able to work them out with Drew and Kat without much difficulty, but it does back up my perception that there were real grievances which would have been harmful to someone in a less stable position. I also think they’ve done some excellent work, and would like to see that continue, ideally with clear and well-known steps to mitigate the kinds of harms which set this in motion.
I have consistently attempted to shift Nonlinear away from what appears to me a wholly counterproductive adversarial emotional stance, with limited results. I understand that they feel defected against, especially Emerson, but they were in the position of power and failed to make sure those they were working with did not come out harmed, and the responses to the initial implosion continued to generate harm and distraction for the community. I am unsettled by the threat of legal action towards Lightcone and focus on controlling the narrative rather than repairing damage.
Emerson: You once said one of the main large failure modes you were concerned about becoming was Stalin’s mistake: breaking the networks of information around you so you were unaware things were going so badly wrong. My read is you’ve been doing this in a way which is a bit more subtle than the gulags, by the intensity of your personality shaping the fragments of mind around you to not give you evidence that in fact you made some large mistakes here. I felt the effects of this indirectly, as well as directly. I hope you can halt, melt, and catch fire, and return to the effort as someone who does not make this magnitude of unforced error.
You can’t just push someone who is deeply good out of the movement which has the kind of co-protective nature of ours in the way you merely shouldn’t in some parts of the world, if there’s intense conflict call in a mediator and try and heal the damage.
Edit: To clarify, this is not intended as a blanket endorsement of mediation, or of avoiding other forms of handling conflict. I do think that going into a process where the parties genuinely try and understand each other’s worlds much earlier would have been much less costly for everyone involved as well as the wider community in this case, but I can imagine mediation is often mishandled or forced in ways which are also counterproductive.
For what it’s worth, I think mediation in situations like this seems like a naive and terrible strategy.
I do not want to aim for and end state of “the relationships have been mended”. That seems outside of the scope of what we can reasonably commit to in the majority of wrongdoings. And it’s just not what I think you should aim for when trying to get justice after someone has been hurt.
When a crime is committed like theft or damages, courts would not issue that the defendant has to engage in “100 hours of mediation”, I think they’d be like “go to prison for 6 months” or “pay back $100k to the defendants”.
I think if the wrongdoing has been established as having happened (e.g. by courts or by however the local social environment figures that sort of thing out), the wrongdoer should pay a cost that makes sure the initial act was not worth it to them (ex ante), and then everyone can move on, and the parties involved can figure out whatever relationship they want after that (including no relationship).
It’s far easier to look past former wrongs after debts have been paid or bad deeds punished, and it’s good to avoid having the victim and the perpetrator talk about it at length. That is often both unproductive and painful for the victim.
Edit: Oops! I wrote ‘meditation’ instead of ‘mediation’. Fixed.
Forced or badly done mediation seems indeed terrible, entering into conversation facilitated by someone skilled with an intent to genuinely understand the harms caused and make sure you correct he underlying patterns seems much less bad than the actual way the situation played out.
I agree with that statement as worded, but you still seem to be presupposing a view of ‘mediation is good-by-default in this sort of situation’ that at least don’t think you’ve argued for.
That’s fair, I’ve added a note to the bottom of the post to clarify my intended meaning. I am not arguing for it in a well-backed up way, just stating the output of my models from being fairly close to the situation and having watched a different successful mediation.