Thanks a lot for writing this up and sharing this. I have little context beyond following the story around CARE and reading this post, but based on the information I have, these seem like highly concerning allegations, and ones I would like to see more discussion around. And I think writing up plausible concerns like this clearly is a valuable public service.
Out of all these, I feel most concerned about the aspects that reflect on ACE as an organisation, rather than that which reflect the views of ACE employees. If ACE employees didn’t feel comfortable going to CARE, I think it is correct for ACE to let them withdraw. But I feel concerned about ACE as an organisation making a public statement against the conference. And I feel incredibly concerned if ACE really did downgrade the rating of Anima International as a result.
That said, I feel like I have fairly limited information about all this, and have an existing bias towards your position. I’m sad that a draft of this wasn’t run by ACE beforehand, and I’d be keen to hear their perspective. Though, given the content and your desire to remain anonymous, I can imagine it being unusually difficult to hear ACE’s thoughts before publishing.
Personally, I consider the epistemic culture of EA to be one of its most valuable aspects, and think it’s incredibly important to preserve the focus on truth-seeking, people being free to express weird and controversial ideas, etc. I think this is an important part of EA finding neglected ways to improve the world, identifying and fixing its mistakes, and keeping a focus on effectiveness. To the degree that the allegations in this post are true, and that this represents an overall trend in the movement, I find this extremely concerning, and expect this to majorly harm the movement’s ability to improve the world.
I agree with your distinction between the views of individual employees at an organisation being totally fine to be whatever (although I wouldn’t ignore it entirely, I also wouldn’t overgeneralise from a couple of people in an org having epistemically-lacking views, maybe depending a bit on their position), and the decisions/statements an organisation makes as an org, being an important one.
Thanks a lot for writing this up and sharing this. I have little context beyond following the story around CARE and reading this post, but based on the information I have, these seem like highly concerning allegations, and ones I would like to see more discussion around. And I think writing up plausible concerns like this clearly is a valuable public service.
Out of all these, I feel most concerned about the aspects that reflect on ACE as an organisation, rather than that which reflect the views of ACE employees. If ACE employees didn’t feel comfortable going to CARE, I think it is correct for ACE to let them withdraw. But I feel concerned about ACE as an organisation making a public statement against the conference. And I feel incredibly concerned if ACE really did downgrade the rating of Anima International as a result.
That said, I feel like I have fairly limited information about all this, and have an existing bias towards your position. I’m sad that a draft of this wasn’t run by ACE beforehand, and I’d be keen to hear their perspective. Though, given the content and your desire to remain anonymous, I can imagine it being unusually difficult to hear ACE’s thoughts before publishing.
Personally, I consider the epistemic culture of EA to be one of its most valuable aspects, and think it’s incredibly important to preserve the focus on truth-seeking, people being free to express weird and controversial ideas, etc. I think this is an important part of EA finding neglected ways to improve the world, identifying and fixing its mistakes, and keeping a focus on effectiveness. To the degree that the allegations in this post are true, and that this represents an overall trend in the movement, I find this extremely concerning, and expect this to majorly harm the movement’s ability to improve the world.
I agree with your distinction between the views of individual employees at an organisation being totally fine to be whatever (although I wouldn’t ignore it entirely, I also wouldn’t overgeneralise from a couple of people in an org having epistemically-lacking views, maybe depending a bit on their position), and the decisions/statements an organisation makes as an org, being an important one.