While I guess I will be trying to withhold some judgment out of principle, I legitimately cannot imagine any plausible context which will make this any different.
Since I was curious and it wasn’t ctrl-F-able, I’ll post the immediate context here:
Maybe it didn’t seem like it to you that it’s shit-talking, but others in the community are viewing it that way. It’s unprofessional—companies do not hire people who speak ill of their previous employer—and also extremely hurtful 😔. We’re all on the same team here. Let’s not let misunderstandings escalate further.
This is a very small community. Given your past behavior, if we were to do the same to you, your career in EA would be over with a few DMs, but we aren’t going to do that because we care about you and we need you to help us save the world.
Indeed, without context that is a cartoon villain thing to say. Not asking you to believe us, yet just asking you to withhold judgment until you’ve seen the evidence we have which will make that message seem very different in context.
How complicated is providing context for that without a week of work on your side? The only plausible exculpatory context I can imagine is something akin to: “If somebody sent me a text like this, I would sever all contact with them, so I’m providing it as an example of what I consider to be unacceptable.” I fail to see how hard it is to explain why the claims are false now and then provide detailed receipts within the week.
I don’t know any of the parties involved here, but the Nonlinear side seems pretty fishy so far.
So, I’m new here, and apparently, I’ve misunderstood something. My comment didn’t seem all that controversial to me, but it’s been down-voted by everybody who gave it a vote. Can somebody pass me a clue as to why there is strong disagreement with my statement? Thanks.
I think that if a comment gets lots and lots of eyes on it, the upvotes and agreement votes will end up being reasonable enough. But I think there are other situations (not uncommon) where there are not enough eyes on it and the vote counts are unreasonable. I also think that there is a risk of unreasonable vote counts even once there are lots of eyes on the comment in question in situations like these where the dynamics are particularly mind-killing.
For your comment, I don’t see anything downvote worthy. My best guess is that the downvoters didn’t think you were being charitable enough. Personally I think the belief that you were being uncharitable enough to justify a downvote is pretty unreasonable.
As of now, the votes are positive. I guess it sometimes happens that some people like your comment, some people don’t like it, and the ones who don’t like it just noticed it first.
(By the way, I mostly agree with the spirit of your comment, but I think you used too strong words. So I didn’t vote either way. For example, as mentioned elsewhere, a good reason to wait for a week might be that the “context” is someone else’s words, and you want to get their consent to publish the record. Also, the conclusion that “the Nonlinear side seems pretty fishy” is like… yeah, I suppose that most readers feel the same, but the debate is precisely about whether Nonlinear can produce in a week some context that will make it seem “less fishy”. They would probably agree that the text as it is written now does not put them in good light.)
I strongly disagree with this and am surprised that there is so much agreement with it.
Interpreted literally,
FWIW I’ve never known a character of high integrity who I could imagine writing the phrase “your career in EA would be over with a few DMs”.
contains the phrase “your career in EA would be over with a few DMs”. I don’t think it was meant to be interpreted literally though.
In which case it becomes a matter of things like context, subtext, and non-verbal cues. I can certainly imagine, in practice, a character of high integrity writing such a phrase.
For example, maybe I know the person well enough to justify the following charitable interpretation:
That phrase could be interpreted as a subtle threat, especially in the context of us currently being in the midst of an ongoing argument. However, I know you well enough to think that it is unlikely that you intended this to be a threat.
Instead, I think you just intended to use a personal example to make the potential downsides of badmouthing very salient.
For example, maybe I know the person well enough to justify the following charitable interpretation:
That phrase could be interpreted as a subtle threat, especially in the context of us currently being in the midst of an ongoing argument. However, I know you well enough to think that it is unlikely that you intended this to be a threat.
Instead, I think you just intended to use a personal example to make the potential downsides of badmouthing very salient.
This does not at all seem like a thing I would ever say except in the context of an obvious-to-me joke (and if I misread the room enough to later learn that someone didn’t interpret me as joking, I’d be extremely mortified and apologize profusely).
FWIW, I didn’t mean it as a cheap shot. I just wanted to establish that context is, in fact, relevant (use-mention is an example of relevant context). And from there, go on to talk about why I think there are realistic contexts where a high-character person would make the statement.
FWIW I’ve never known a character of high integrity who I could imagine writing the phrase “your career in EA would be over with a few DMs”.
While I guess I will be trying to withhold some judgment out of principle, I legitimately cannot imagine any plausible context which will make this any different.
Since I was curious and it wasn’t ctrl-F-able, I’ll post the immediate context here:
Indeed, without context that is a cartoon villain thing to say. Not asking you to believe us, yet just asking you to withhold judgment until you’ve seen the evidence we have which will make that message seem very different in context.
How complicated is providing context for that without a week of work on your side? The only plausible exculpatory context I can imagine is something akin to: “If somebody sent me a text like this, I would sever all contact with them, so I’m providing it as an example of what I consider to be unacceptable.” I fail to see how hard it is to explain why the claims are false now and then provide detailed receipts within the week.
I don’t know any of the parties involved here, but the Nonlinear side seems pretty fishy so far.
So, I’m new here, and apparently, I’ve misunderstood something. My comment didn’t seem all that controversial to me, but it’s been down-voted by everybody who gave it a vote. Can somebody pass me a clue as to why there is strong disagreement with my statement? Thanks.
I think that if a comment gets lots and lots of eyes on it, the upvotes and agreement votes will end up being reasonable enough. But I think there are other situations (not uncommon) where there are not enough eyes on it and the vote counts are unreasonable. I also think that there is a risk of unreasonable vote counts even once there are lots of eyes on the comment in question in situations like these where the dynamics are particularly mind-killing.
For your comment, I don’t see anything downvote worthy. My best guess is that the downvoters didn’t think you were being charitable enough. Personally I think the belief that you were being uncharitable enough to justify a downvote is pretty unreasonable.
As of now, the votes are positive. I guess it sometimes happens that some people like your comment, some people don’t like it, and the ones who don’t like it just noticed it first.
(By the way, I mostly agree with the spirit of your comment, but I think you used too strong words. So I didn’t vote either way. For example, as mentioned elsewhere, a good reason to wait for a week might be that the “context” is someone else’s words, and you want to get their consent to publish the record. Also, the conclusion that “the Nonlinear side seems pretty fishy” is like… yeah, I suppose that most readers feel the same, but the debate is precisely about whether Nonlinear can produce in a week some context that will make it seem “less fishy”. They would probably agree that the text as it is written now does not put them in good light.)
Was the follow-up promised here ever produced?
The prediction market is still reasonably optimistic that something will be published soon: https://manifold.markets/Rodeo/will-nonlinear-post-its-response-by
That market has since resolved “No”, and the duplicated market for december 13 is now at 13%: https://manifold.markets/MarcusAbramovitch/will-nonlinear-post-its-response-by-9bcfa0ac9796
I strongly disagree with this and am surprised that there is so much agreement with it.
Interpreted literally,
contains the phrase “your career in EA would be over with a few DMs”. I don’t think it was meant to be interpreted literally though.
In which case it becomes a matter of things like context, subtext, and non-verbal cues. I can certainly imagine, in practice, a character of high integrity writing such a phrase.
For example, maybe I know the person well enough to justify the following charitable interpretation:
Are you familiar with the use-mention distinction? It seems pretty relevant here.
This does not at all seem like a thing I would ever say except in the context of an obvious-to-me joke (and if I misread the room enough to later learn that someone didn’t interpret me as joking, I’d be extremely mortified and apologize profusely).
FWIW, I didn’t mean it as a cheap shot. I just wanted to establish that context is, in fact, relevant (use-mention is an example of relevant context). And from there, go on to talk about why I think there are realistic contexts where a high-character person would make the statement.