For instance, when I read a book of physics, I don’t expect the author to cater to my folk definitions of “work”, “energy”, “power”, “momentum”
Since you assume that physics book authors won’t cater to the laymen’s ordinary definition of the physics terms of art you may be surprised then reading most books on classical physics. The authors go to painstaking effort to make their content accessible to laypersons. I have not yet read a textbook on classical physics that didn’t take the time to explain that “work” in a physics context means Force x Distance and only refers to what you do at your day job if you’re pushing a cart around or lifting a tray of food. I know this because I was a computer science undergrad who took a few physics courses as electives and was surprised at how accessible the textbooks were given that they were of course designed for physics undergrads.
Also no physicist claims that their definitions are the “correct technical” ones or are somehow better or more useful than the ordinary definitions. Many physicists I know feel that physics terms which share a spelling with colloquial terms should be changed on the physics side of things to prevent confusion. Or at the very minimum the distinction should be kept clear.
This is honestly really weird and typical of what I expect from the people who spend their time being business-side community members in EA.
I don’t think you understand just what this means. You’re paying your sources to contribute to muckraking.
Nonlinear seems like the standard rationalist org that does weird stuff commercially, hires weird people, and has weird rules about social and sexual stuff. The disgruntled, former friend-employee was sleeping with one of the bosses. Like, why should I care that one of the other bosses told stupid stories about what a badass negotiator he is? Once your workplace devolves into the employees sleeping with the bosses, the regular standards of workplace decorum are out the window.
I think in general, the sense I get from this post is just that, you’re applying a regular standard of workplace decorum to a clearly unusual and non-standard workplace. Like what’s really weird to me is how little play the whole “intern is sleeping with the head boss’s brother and the boss’s girlfriend is maybe trying to sleep with the same intern” situation gets from this post. It’s very clearly like, totally insane and anyone normal hearing about a workplace like this would instantly recognize that there’ going to be a million other weird and BAD things going on.
Yes if I was a working professional who worked in financial regulation compliance at some $10k/month office building with my own office and my boss asked me to clean up his cereal it would be fucking weird. I would get out of there. But I’m not. I’m some person who’s willingly working for next to no pay, traveling around the world with my boss, living in the same home as them, doing illegal drugs with them, sleeping with them, etc. Being asked to: clean up their cereal/drive without a license/not hang out with low value people/eat meat is just one more thing that is consistent with the office environment. Then someone else hears about all the stupid shit that went on in my workplace and decides it’s worth $5,000 and a blog post.
Good on the employees for leaving, maybe they were un-corrupted pure youth who were swayed by the mighty lies and persuasive ability of Woods and the Emersons.