Recently, Ben Pace wrote a well-intentioned blog post mostly based on complaints from 2 (of 21) Nonlinear employees who 1) wanted more money, 2) felt socially isolated, and 3) felt persecuted/oppressed.

Of relevance, one has accused the majority of her previous employers, and 28 people of abuse - that we know of.

She has accused multiple people of threatening to kill her and literally accused an ex-employer of murder. Within three weeks of joining us, she had accused five separate people of abuse: not paying her what was promised, controlling her romantic life, hiring stalkers, and other forms of persecution.

We have empathy for her. Initially, we believed her too. We spent weeks helping her get her “nefarious employer to finally pay her” and commiserated with her over how badly they mistreated her.

Then she started accusing us of strange things.

You’ve seen Ben's evidence, which [...]

---

Outline:

(02:20) Short summary overview table

(04:04) This post is long, so if you read just one illustrative story, read this one

(08:40) What is going on? Why did they say so many misleading things? How did Ben get so much wrong?

(12:16) Ben admitted in his post that he was warned in private by multiple of his own sources that Alice was untrustworthy and told outright lies. One credible person told Ben Alice makes things up.

(20:38) Alice has similarities to Kathy Forth, who, according to Scott Alexander, was “a very disturbed person” who, multiple people told him, “had a habit of accusing men she met of sexual harassment. They all agreed she wasnt malicious, just delusional.” As a community, we do not have good mechanisms in place to protect people from false accusations.

(23:43) Why didn’t Ben do basic fact-checking to see if their claims were true? I mean, multiple people warned him?

(25:11) Longer summary table

(26:43) To many EAs, this would have been a dream job

(37:41) Sharing Information on Ben Pace

(47:35) So how do we learn from this to make our community better? How can we make EA antifragile?

(51:50) Conclusion: a story with no villains

(57:44) If you are disturbed by what happened here, here are some ways you can help

(59:22) Acknowledgments

---

First published:
December 12th, 2023

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/q4MXBzzrE6bnDHJbM/nonlinear-s-evidence-debunking-false-and-misleading-claims

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Nonlinear’s Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims” by KatWoods

LessWrong (30+ Karma)