My guess is that some people may come away thinking something like “Will, Toby, Beckstead, Owen, and other people who remain senior in EA executed things like the CEA-GWWC merger.”
Will was I think still CEO when the decision was made and was directly involved in the decision. Beckstead was board member but I think was quite checked out. A lot of the momentum came from Tara, and Kerry was also pretty involved.
Agree that it matters that some people were more like victims. I do think Will meaningfully contributed to the atmosphere, and do think Nick sure failed to play his role as a board member. I don’t think Owen played much of a role. I had a number of interactions with Toby that made me also not trust him (when I organized EA Global 2015 he invited his wife to change the program substantially to be more in line with a bunch of social justice considerations because she seemed to care about it, and she also leveraged her connection with him to violate a bunch of rules at EAG about not having loud children present in sessions that was one of the top complaints we got that year at the Oxford conference, and when we asked her to please be less loud or leave she was like “I am Toby’s wife, you don’t get to tell me what to do”).
There things were substantially less severe, but it did feel like a pretty straightforward abuse of power, and has generally made me not trust Toby very much. I’ve also never brought this up with him, so it’s pretty plausible he would have taken reasonable action if he had known.
In any case, I don’t think there was really anyone I interfaced with at CEA who struck me as high-integrity who was involved in the leadership. I think Nick Beckstead was probably the best and I’ve generally respected him a good amount over the years. I also trust Owen a good amount, though he was just starting to get involved with stuff at the time. Julia Wise also seems like a high-integrity person, but always intentionally avoided being directly involved in leadership.
I think CEA after Open Phil stepped in and fired a bunch of people has been much less of a deceptive environment, though still quite dysfunctional, and still not very high-integrity (but definitely with less egregious lying and deception and backstabbing).
Will was I think still CEO when the decision was made and was directly involved in the decision. Beckstead was board member but I think was quite checked out. A lot of the momentum came from Tara, and Kerry was also pretty involved.
Agree that it matters that some people were more like victims. I do think Will meaningfully contributed to the atmosphere, and do think Nick sure failed to play his role as a board member. I don’t think Owen played much of a role. I had a number of interactions with Toby that made me also not trust him (when I organized EA Global 2015 he invited his wife to change the program substantially to be more in line with a bunch of social justice considerations because she seemed to care about it, and she also leveraged her connection with him to violate a bunch of rules at EAG about not having loud children present in sessions that was one of the top complaints we got that year at the Oxford conference, and when we asked her to please be less loud or leave she was like “I am Toby’s wife, you don’t get to tell me what to do”).
There things were substantially less severe, but it did feel like a pretty straightforward abuse of power, and has generally made me not trust Toby very much. I’ve also never brought this up with him, so it’s pretty plausible he would have taken reasonable action if he had known.
In any case, I don’t think there was really anyone I interfaced with at CEA who struck me as high-integrity who was involved in the leadership. I think Nick Beckstead was probably the best and I’ve generally respected him a good amount over the years. I also trust Owen a good amount, though he was just starting to get involved with stuff at the time. Julia Wise also seems like a high-integrity person, but always intentionally avoided being directly involved in leadership.
I think CEA after Open Phil stepped in and fired a bunch of people has been much less of a deceptive environment, though still quite dysfunctional, and still not very high-integrity (but definitely with less egregious lying and deception and backstabbing).