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Thrasymachus comments on Help Fund Lukeprog at SIAI - Less Wrong
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Saying "the rationality minicamp was highly successful" before you have analyzed the data you have gathered to assess the success of the rationality minicamp is irrational.
If success at the minicamp is important - suggested by it listed first on Eliezer's recommendation - why not wait until you CAN analyze the data, to see whether it really was successful, before you recommend hiring Luke? Doing so means a) you can make a more persuasive case to donors, and b) if the minicamp WASN'T successful, then one can reconsider the hire.
The fact this plug happened before the analysis signals Eliezer is committed to recommending Luke's hire regardless of whether analysis shows the minicamp as successful or not. And if HE doesn't think the minicamp success is relevant to the merits of hiring Luke, why is he using it to persuade us?
Disclaimer: I think Luke has added lots of value to this site, and I would be unsurprised if later transparent analysis showed the minicamp to be highly successful. But the OP (as well comments switching various reasons/excuses for failing to present data, etc. etc.) is suggestive of irrational salesmanship. Perhaps a salutatory lesson that rationality experts still succumb to bias?
I am in the mind of Einstein's Arrogance here. The people involved in the camps received a lot of evidence that (obviously) isn't available to us, because we weren't there. They might have enough evidence to be convinced that it worked already - but of course, they also set up data-gathering mechanisms so that they could have enough evidence to convince people who necessarily don't have access to the the physical experience of the camp that it worked.
I expect that this is the case, and Eliezer sees absolutely no problem with citing this as something in favour of Luke's hire.
What do you mean by unsurprised? Some words don't communicate as well as we feel they do.
My sentence was trash, sorry!
What I should have said:
"I have a 0.5ish estimate of the minicamps success, with big error bars. The suspicious behaviour is no more than minute confirmation for it being a failure."
Or something like that.
I was at the camp. It was spectacularly awesome in my judgement, too, and Luke was a big part of that. \end{soft.bayesian.evidence}
Specifically, the camp is tied for the title of the most life-altering workshop-like event of my life, and I've been to many such events, inside and outside academia (~3 per year for the past 10 years). The tie is with the workshop that got me onto my PhD topic (graphical causal modelling), so that's saying something.