Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong

The New York Times Picture a scene: the New York Times is releasing an article on Effective Altruism (EA) with an express goal to dig up every piece of negative information they can find. They contact Émile Torres, David Gerard, and Timnit Gebru, collect evidence about Sam Bankman-Fried, the OpenAI board blowup, and Pasek's Doom, start calling Astral Codex Ten (ACX) readers to ask them about rumors they'd heard about affinity between Effective Altruists, neoreactionaries, and something called TESCREAL. They spend hundreds of hours over six months on interviews and evidence collection, paying Émile and Timnit for their time and effort. The phrase "HBD" is muttered, but it's nobody's birthday. A few days before publication, they present key claims to the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), who furiously tell them that many of the claims are provably false and ask for a brief delay to demonstrate the falsehood of [...]The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: December 19th, 2023 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2vNHiaTb4rcA8PgXQ/effective-aspersions-how-the-nonlinear-investigation-went --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.