KatWoods

Karma: 1,551

KatWoods 13 Feb 2024 3:54 UTC
2 points
2
on: Managing risks while trying to do good
This may be true in other communities, but I think if you’re more status motivated in AI safety and EA you are more likely to be concerned about potential downside risks. Especially post SBF.

Instead of trying to maximize the good, I see a lot of people trying to minimize the chance that things go poorly in a way that could look bad for them.

You are generally given more respect and funding and social standing if you are very concerned about downside risks and reputation hazards.

If anything, the more status-oriented you are in EA, the more likely you are to care about downside risks because of the Copenhagen theory of ethics.

KatWoods 21 Dec 2023 18:20 UTC
1 point
−4
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
This text was sent on November 4th, almost a month before she arrived to come travel with us (not to work for us).
Emerson is not referring to her saying she would make $3000 a month if she worked full-time on her Amazon business. The context of the conversation is she’s trying to figure out whether she should spend an additional $90 to visit her family before joining us, and Emerson is replying saying “If you make $3k a month [$90] is very little money”, so he’s telling her she should spend the $90 to spend time with family. Directly going against the “keeping her isolated from family” story and also supporting (albeit not conclusively proving) that Alice had told him she made $3k per month with her business.

KatWoods 21 Dec 2023 15:43 UTC
0 points
2
in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
I’m currently focusing on 2-3 of the claims in their response that most contradict my post, investigating them further, and intend to publish the results of that.
I hope that while you’re investigating this, you talk to us and ask us for any evidence we have. We’re more than happy to share relevant evidence and are willing to set reasonable deadlines for how long it’ll take for us to send it to you.
We also don’t want to waste more people’s time on going back and forth publicly about the evidence when you can easily check with us first before publishing.
I also recommend you talk to us and see our evidence before you write the post. If you’ve already written the post, it’s hard to update afterward when you get more information. And it’s hard to write an accurate post before you’ve seen all the relevant information.
We did not share all of the relevant evidence because it was already hundreds of pages long and we tried to prioritize. We have more evidence that might be relevant to your post.
I am trying to avoid writing my bottom line, and reduce any (further) friction to me changing my mind on this subject, which is a decent chunk of why I’m not spending time arguing in the comments right now (I expect that to give me a pretty strong “digging in my heels” incentive).
I think this is smart and appreciate it.

KatWoods 20 Dec 2023 19:51 UTC
8 points
5
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong
We said this in our post about the vegan food:
“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.
We have job contracts, interview recordings, receipts, chat histories, and more, which we are working full-time on preparing.
This claim was a few sentences in Ben’s article but took us hours to refute because we had to track down all of the conversations, make them readable, add context, anonymize people, check our facts, and write up an explanation that was rigorous and clear. Ben’s article is over 10,000 words and we’re working as fast as we can to respond to every point he made.
Again, we are not asking for the community to believe us unconditionally. We want to show everybody all of the evidence and also take responsibility for the mistakes we made.”
As for the “isolated” claim, we showed that this did not happen. Alice lived/worked apart from us for 50% of the time. Chloe’s boyfriend was invited to travel with us 40% of the time. We encouraged them to have regular calls with friends and family when they weren’t visiting. We have the invite policy where it says they’re encouraged to invite friends and family (and they followed up on this, like with Chloe’s boyfriend).

KatWoods 20 Dec 2023 16:51 UTC
−2 points
−6
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
I have noticed that you are asking yourself “can I believe this?” when assessing Alice and Chloe’s claims and “must I believe this?” when assessing our claims. Please try to apply similar evidentiary standards to all claims.
she would be provided benefits adding up to the remainder (which wasn’t specified in the contract, but was explained during the relevant interview which Kat posted the transcript off).
Where does it say that in the transcript? I’m reading it again and I just don’t see where we say anything even like that.
And it would be really weird to say that too. I’ve never heard of somebody offering room & board + a stipend who’s said that it has to add up to a certain amount, otherwise you pay the difference (but you don’t pay the difference if the costs go over).
Kat’s job interview transcript seems to suggest the total compensation would be $70k of benefits plus $1k/mo of stipend for a total of $82k
This isn’t what was said. It was (paraphrasing to get rid of verbal tiks): “So what we’re thinking is basically, like having a package where it’s about equivalent of being paid like 70k a year in terms of:
- Housing
- Food
- Travel
- Random fun stuff
- $1k a month for things not covered by that.
Saying “and then on top of that” is just another way for saying “and”. It was a verbal conversation, not a legal contract.
The contract states clearly that there wasn’t any “and then we’ll pay the difference if it’s below $70k” clause.

She clearly communicated that she understood the compensation package before she arrived.

KatWoods 20 Dec 2023 15:47 UTC
3 points
6
in reply to: Czynski’s comment on: Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong
I’m having trouble following your logic. Ben’s post said “they were not able to live apart from the family unit while they worked with them” and we showed evidence that Alice lived apart from us ~50% of the time she worked for us. Are you disputing when Alice and Ben both said she visited her family? Has Alice disputed this, saying that she didn’t actually live and work apart from us from that time?
She didn’t live apart once but twice. She also lived/worked separately in the FTX condos (which we did not live in). And if you’re counting, the time spent apart seems relevant. It was for ~50% of the entire time she worked for us. Not scraps she had to beg for.
In both cases, she never “asked” to leave. She just informed us. Because it wasn’t our place to give “permission”, so framing this as something that she only did at great cost to her is incorrect.
Or are you referring to the one sentence where they didn’t technically say they weren’t allowed to leave. Where they said “Alice and Chloe report that they were advised not to spend time with ‘low value people’, including their families, romantic partners, and anyone local to where they were staying, with the exception of guests/visitors that Nonlinear invited. Alice and Chloe report this made them very socially dependent on Kat/Emerson/Drew and otherwise very isolated.”
Now, if you read this very carefully, technically it does just say they were “advised” to not spend time with others. But it follows up by saying that “this made them very socially dependent on Kat/Emerson/Drew and otherwise very isolated”. This very clearly implies that it was not that once we recommended that Alice postpone visiting her family to have impact. It is saying they were isolated and it clearly implies that it’s because we told them to not spend time with others.
This couldn’t be the case if it wasn’t for the fact that we actually made them isolated. Which is indeed disproven by showing many text messages and screenshots of them hanging out with their families, their romantic partners, and locals. Of showing that Chloe’s boyfriend was invited to travel with us for 2 of the 5 montsh (a hard to fake signal). Of showing that Alice lived/worked apart from us for 50% of the time she worked for us.

KatWoods 20 Dec 2023 2:18 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Rebecca’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
Thanks for letting me know! Strange. It shouldn’t be doing that. Usually if you wait a couple of seconds, it’ll jump to the right section. It’s working on both my mobile and laptop.
If you try waiting a couple seconds and that doesn’t work, let me know. Maybe DM me and then we can troubleshoot, then we can post the solution up when we figure it out.

KatWoods 19 Dec 2023 12:22 UTC
3 points
4
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
The evidence that she made an informed decision are:
- Interview transcripts where you can see how we explained it to her. We recorded the actual conversation in question, so you don’t have to try to guess
- Work contract
- Text messages she herself sent before joining us showing that she understood how the compensation package worked
Her correctly explaining in her own words how the compensation package works seems like more than enough evidence that she understood the compensation package she was signing up for. The fact that we also sent her a work contract and also recorded the original conversation in question and you can see it yourself I think proves more than can usually ever be proven in such cases that she made an informed decision about the compensation package.

KatWoods 19 Dec 2023 12:13 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
Ah, you’re right. So we said twice how much we estimated the compensation package to be worth. Will edit original comment to reflect that.

KatWoods 18 Dec 2023 17:12 UTC
4 points
6
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
Yeah, I agree. I find it quite difficult to write concisely. I am trying to get better, but as you can clearly see, I have not succeeded to the optimal amount yet. 😛

KatWoods 18 Dec 2023 16:25 UTC
3 points
5
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
Good points! Added some more points here as well.
The “spending 80% on travel” is quit misleading, because it comes from counting AirBnB costs as “travel” expenses. That would make sense if they were just traveling for a short period of time, say, to go to an EAG, but if you only live in AirBnBs, then counting that as travel instead of rent seems misleading.
If that’s true, I have spent $0 on housing in the last 4 years, and that doesn’t seem right.
If you don’t count housing as a travel expense, then it comes to only 6% on travel, which is pretty reasonable given that we literally travel full-time.
(Also, it’s irrelevant because rent shouldn’t count as travel expenses, but even if we did count it, it would still only come out to 68%, not 80%. I don’t know where this 80% is coming from.)

KatWoods 18 Dec 2023 16:16 UTC
−1 points
1
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
80% of the money we spent on their compensation was not going to travel. Copy-pasting comments from the thread over here where this number was originally said:
″
spend >80% of their income as travel
Where are you getting that number from? It was a mix of rent, food, medical, productivity tools, etc. Some quick math I did shows that only 6% of the money we spent on her was for travel.
Math from this doc
Flights:800+190=990
Total spent on her when she was compensated with room, board, travel, and medical + stipend: 17,174
990/17174 = 6%
(I didn’t include the flight from the Bahamas to London because that was when she was picking her own cash salary, rather than the all expenses paid + stipend. We’d just already booked it before she’d switched to cash.
If you want to include that, it’s hard, because then should we include the cash comp or not?)
It’s also important to emphasize that even though compensation is not the same as purely cash pay, she signed up for the compensation package that she got. When she asked to get compensated purely in cash, we said yes.
So it’s not like she was forced to spend money in a certain way. It’s like if you signed up for a fellowship that covered room and board and a stipend. Later, you decide that you want to spend the money differently, so you talk to the person in charge and they say it’s fine for you to be purely compensated with cash. There’s no forcing you at any point in that process to spend your money in a particular way.
Second follow up comment:
most people in Alice or Chloe’s shoes would’ve preferred to be paid the equivalent cash amount
Alice did, and then when she asked she got it. Chloe never requested this.
It’s really important that they signed up for this. If we had promised them $75,000 cash salary and then instead gave them this compensation package, I think that is indeed unethical and unfair. However if they knew what they were signing up for and it was clearly communicated and they said yes, then that is totally fine and an informed choice they made.
I don’t see an alternative. I can’t read minds. I couldn’t change their comp package if I didn’t know they wanted to. And when I did know, I said yes.
If they chose this compensation package when they could have applied for other jobs with a more standard package or could have asked for a standard package, then they did indeed choose this compensation package.
Additionally, we need to be able to distinguish between “this was what they chose” and “this was what they would have preferred if they could have had anything in the world right away without having to ask”.
Like, imagine I applied the same standards to funders. “I asked for $50,000 and they gave me $50,000, but I would have preferred $75,000. Yes, I didn’t ask for $75,000, but most people in my shoes would prefer $75,000 over $50,000.” (Or replace with whatever numbers make most sense to you)
This follows the same structure of the argument “Alice and Chloe signed up for a all-expenses-paid + stipend compensation package and they got that, but they would have preferred a cash salary of a similar value to the comp package. Yes, they didn’t ask for that, but most people in their shoes would prefer a cash salary over the other comp package.”
Or maybe a better analogy is a charity applying for funding and the grantmaker donates but with earmarked funds. All orgs would prefer unearmarked funds (flexible funds are more useful than earmarked ones), but that doesn’t mean it’s unethical for a donor to earmark their donations.
Is rent a travel expense?
Counting rent while traveling if this was a part-time travel experience seems reasonable. For example, if they usually live in the Bay area and they’re expected to travel to London for EAG, the cost of the Airbnb in London is clearly a travel expense.
However, if they are always traveling and they do not have a permanent place anywhere, that does not seem like a travel expense but rather just regular rent. Neither of them had a permanent place. Alice had been nomadic before she even met us. Counting that as a travel expense in this context doesn’t make sense and will lead to people being misled.
Think about it. Otherwise then, for the last 4 years I have paid zero rent? Clearly, if you are a full-time nomad then airbnbs are just rent, not travel.
How to calculate total compensation
I quickly googled “when people describe a compensation package do they usually include medical” and the first result said:
“Health Insurance Benefits are a huge piece of your overall compensation package. This can include Medical, Dental, Vision, as well as HSA/FSA accounts. When calculating how much your benefits are worth, think about what percentage your employer is going to be covering. Is your employer covering 100% of the cost? 80%? Does that change if you were to include a spouse or dependents in the coverage? These are all important questions to ask when evaluating an offer package and figuring out how much your health benefits are worth.”
“A total compensation package goes beyond your new hires’ base pay rate. It also includes items like health insurance, bonuses, and paid time off”
When I Google “how to calculate the value of your compensation package” these are the first results:
“To calculate total compensation for an employee, take the sum of their base salary and the dollar value of all additional benefits. Additional benefits include insurance benefits, commissions and bonuses, time-off benefits, and perks.”
“Total compensation is the combined value of your salary, bonuses, a 401(k) match, free office coffee, and more. All those freebies or conveniences that feel like work perks—including your PTO—are actually parts of your total compensation package, and they can have just as much value as your salary.”
Since Google knows my history, I thought maybe it’s giving me a biased result. So I tried searching in incognito mode so it wasn’t taking into account my recent posting, and it gave the same results.
Now, I do think that a compensation package is clearly different from cash salary. We say that right away at the almost the very beginning of our post. But we did not describe it to them or to anybody as a $75,000 salary cash. We described it as a compensation package that we estimated to be worth around $70,000.
Once, off hand, in a recorded interview. Every single other communication was just saying all expenses paid plus stipend.
They were informed about this beforehand and they signed up for it. If they had wanted something different, all they had to do was ask. Or they could have applied to a different job. When Alice did, she got it.
If people come away from reading this thinking that we said that we paid them both a cash salary of $75,000 or that it’s the same as a $75,000 cash salary, then they made the same mistake that Chloe seems to have made. Chloe kept on saying that we offered to pay her something equivalent to a $75,000 cash salary. We were saying that this was worth around $70,000. I think her interpreting it this way led to a lot of suffering. We tried to explain it to her a bunch of times that that was not what we were saying but she did not seem to be able to update. I do think people seem to struggle with this a lot.
I think the main thing though, and the way I think about it at least, is as a consequentialist. I don’t think in terms of how much money is it worth etc. I tend to think of it as are you getting your needs met? What about your preferences? And I think the key is that she was living an exceptionally comfortable lifestyle. She was living the almost exactly the same lifestyle as myself.
She also had plenty of freedom and options. She publicly says she had savings and we covered everything so well that, as far as we can tell, all of her stipend went into savings as well. She got her dream job 2 and ¹⁄₂ months after she quit. And she could have gotten a regular dev job far faster if she wanted.
I don’t know how she would have spent the money otherwise, But that seems irrelevant. It seems like if somebody got a scholarship that included room and board, and then they get upset, because they would have spent it on a different house. If they accept the scholarship, then that is how they would spend it. They would spend it on that house and that food, because that is what they chose. They could have just tried to get a different scholarship or a job. In fact, if you accept that scholarship, and then speak to the people who gave you it and say that you would prefer cash instead and they say yes, that is exceptionally generous and way outside the norm of what is expected.
If a scholarship/fellowship/job offered you room and board and you accepted and then later asked for cash instead I suspect that 98% of them would say no.
She is trying to make it sound like a hardship and us being unreasonable when it is incredibly unreasonable to ask for your compensation package to be changed so quickly after you accepted it.
Most people do not ask for changes in compensation until they’ve been working for at least a year.
Most people if they’re offered room and board + stipend never get the option of switching to cash only.
Most people don’t accept a compensation package and then later say they would have preferred a different compensation package and therefore they were financially controlled.
Most people don’t go to the EA Hotel and say that they’re being financially controlled because they got room and board and a stipend and couldn’t choose to spend the money on something else.
Most people don’t say that a scholarship offering to pay for room and board is somehow bad because the student could have used that money to spend less on a room or paid for a different room.
Sure, everybody would prefer that. But they are not entitled to that.
Sure, some people might misinterpret a compensation package being estimated to be worth $X as being the same as a cash salary of $X. But as long as you clearly communicate what they’re signing up for and they have other options and they choose the compensation package, then nothing wrong was done. If they later change their mind and want something different, they have to ask or quit and find a job that meets their criteria. They can’t make a choice, later want to make a different choice, then try to pillory an person for not reading their mind and giving them everything they ask for right away.
People can’t say “They told me I’d get paid $X and I got paid $X but I think $Y would be better, therefore we have to warn the community about the ‘predator’ in our midst, ‘chewing up and spitting out’ the youth of the community.”
They can say “They offered me $X and I got paid $X, and I would have preferred $Y, and when I asked for $Y, I got $Y.”
They can say “They offered me $X and I got paid $X. I would have preferred $Y, but I never asked for $Y and that made me sad. I guess I should learn from this and get better at asking people for things instead of expecting mind-reading and getting everything that I want immediately without asking.”
What links here?
- Elizabeth's comment on Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims by Kat Woods (EA Forum; 24 Dec 2023 22:05 UTC; 16 points)
- KatWoods's comment on Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims by KatWoods (18 Dec 2023 16:25 UTC; 3 points)

KatWoods 18 Dec 2023 11:21 UTC
7 points
1
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
She was interviewed three times and was told about compensation during the second interview.

We only mentioned the “equivalent to” thing once in an offhand manner. Every single other communication that we have on record is just talking about all expenses paid plus a stipend. [Edit: it was actually two places we found. The other was on the job ad, saying “Compensation: $60,000 - $100,000″]

And the compensation did not actually cost $70,000, like we said in that conversation. It cost more!

We added up everything and shared it with her. She knew and didn’t tell Ben. Worse, she told Ben the opposite. She told Ben no accounting had been done for that and showed him her own accounting that she knew was incomplete and thus inaccurate.

KatWoods 17 Dec 2023 3:13 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
First introduced to me in the draft.

KatWoods 16 Dec 2023 20:59 UTC
6 points
0
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
then they asked us for an additional week
Where are you getting the idea that Ben gave us a week? The draft was sent to us on the same day Ben said he was going to publish it. On a day Ben knew we were traveling and wouldn’t be able to respond properly (sketchy/no internet, chaos of traveling, etc).
We spoke to Ben 60 hours before he published, and he only told us a subset of all the accusations. A quick re-reading of the post and I found 14 allegations that were new that Ben hadn’t discussed on the call. And I only got a short way through re-reading the post (maybe a 20%?) because I find reading it extremely painful.
What links here?
- Jeff Kaufman's comment on Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims by Kat Woods (EA Forum; 19 Dec 2023 14:43 UTC; 52 points)

KatWoods 15 Dec 2023 15:22 UTC
13 points
3
in reply to: TracingWoodgrains’s comment on: Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims
I would change the text. He gave us less than 24 hours.
He sent us the draft in the middle of the night, filled with many accusations we hadn’t even heard of, on a day he knew we were traveling and wouldn’t be able to respond properly. He said he’d publish it that very day (aka <24 hours)
He ended up publishing it the next day at a time where we normally would have been asleep, except that we’d asked a friend to call us and wake us up if Ben was posting. We ended up having to respond to that post on a fraction of the sleep we usually get.
You could try to save he gave us 60 hours if you count from the time he spoke to us to the time he published. However, when we spoke to him, we thought he would wait to see our evidence. He also didn’t tell us many of the accusations he was going to publish, so I think this is an unfair characterization of the time they gave us
He did not promise to look at the evidence before publishing, so he was consistent in that regard, but we thought he would wait since he explicitly said in a follow up email: “FYI I did update from things you shared that Alice’s reports are less reliable than I had thought, and I do expect you’ll be able to show a bunch of the things you said.”
He did not wait to see the evidence. The evidence he’d already seen had, in his own words, made him realize that Alice was less reliable than he thought, and he knew we were sending him things like interview transcripts and screenshots providing concrete evidence that they’d told him falsehoods and misleading claims.
And he published anyways.
I think it would be good to share that with your journalist friends.
Here’s the relevant section explaining the whole timeline.
What links here?

KatWoods 10 Sep 2023 8:35 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Sorry. It was night time when this came out and I’m swamped with comments and trying to gather evidence. Responded to it as soon as I could. You can see my response here.

KatWoods 10 Sep 2023 8:34 UTC
27 points
3
in reply to: Zach Stein-Perlman’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
Ah, sorry. I think what happened is that I was remembering the post from the draft he sent us just before it went live. At least from the post on WebArchive, the things I remember having been changed happened last minute between the draft and it going live. Only one of the changes I remember happened between the web archive shot and now.
To be fair, I think that change is large and causing a lot of problems (for example, burgergate, people thinking she was working for us at the time, instead of just a friend). However, it does look like I was wrong about that, and I retract my statement.
I’ll edit the comment where I said that. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Thanks for looking into it.
What links here?

KatWoods 9 Sep 2023 12:58 UTC
34 points
19
in reply to: Irenicon’s comment on: Sharing Information About Nonlinear
The claim in the post was “Alice claims she was sick with covid in a foreign country, with only the three Nonlinear cofounders around, but nobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan food, so she barely ate for 2 days.”. (Bolding added)
If you look at the chat messages, you’ll see we have screenshots demonstrating that:
1. There was vegan food in the house, which we offered her.
2. I personally went out, while I was sick myself, to buy vegan food for her (mashed potatoes) and cooked it for her and brought it to her.
I would be fine if she told people that she was hungry when she was sick, and she felt sad and stressed. Or that she was hungry but wasn’t interested in any of the food we had in the house and we didn’t get her Burger King.
But I think that there’s a big difference between telling everyone “I didn’t get the food I wanted, but they did get/offer to cook me vegan food, and I told them it was ok!” and “they refused to get me vegan food and I barely ate for 2 days”
I have sympathy for Alice. She was hungry (because of her fighting with a boyfriend [not Drew] in the morning and having a light breakfast) and she was sick. That sucks, and I feel for her. And that’s why I tried (and succeeded) in getting her vegan food.
In summary. “Alice claims she was sick with covid in a foreign country, with only the three Nonlinear cofounders around, but nobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan food, so she barely ate for 2 days.”. (Bolding added) This makes us sound like terrible people.
What actually happened: she was sick and hungry, and we offered to cook or bring over the vegan options in the house, then went out and bought and cooked her vegan food. We tried to take care of our sick friend (she wasn’t working for us at the time), and we fed her while she was sick.
I encourage you to read the full post here, where I’m trying to add more details and address more points as they come up.

KatWoods 8 Sep 2023 16:53 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: A quick update from Nonlinear
I did go out to get the potatoes. When I was sick myself.
It was very hard to find vegan food in the area, and I read through all of the different products in the store, looking to make sure they didn’t have any sneaky non-vegan ingredients, like whey.