Between the organizational conflation of CEA and EVF, and multiple EVF Trustees working in multiple capacities, I don’t even understand who is supposed to be subject to criticism.
I think both Owen and Claire have stuck their necks out on the line, and have opened themselves up to criticisms. I think if you believe their actions have not benefited the good, you should feel encouraged to sharply criticize their professional decisions for it (within typical discussion norms of not being extremely mean, avoiding personal attacks, etc).
There’s also a case to be made for criticizing their funders (Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna). I feel slightly bad about the implied incentive mechanism (“if you give lots of money to EA stuff, then any time a loud fraction of EAs disagree with the donations made by your team, you’d be loudly criticized for it”). However, given that insufficient criticism of EA funders was identified as a large, potentially catastrophic, mistake in the past, I tentatively feel better about erring a lot in the direction of more criticism of funders.
I think it’s helpful in discussion sometimes not to focus on who is subject to criticism. Even if there are one or two or a handful of people who might have made the critical decision, perhaps in some cases it’s better to discuss the pros and cons of the issues at hand, rather than pinpointing who exactly might be responsible.
I think both Owen and Claire have stuck their necks out on the line, and have opened themselves up to criticisms. I think if you believe their actions have not benefited the good, you should feel encouraged to sharply criticize their professional decisions for it (within typical discussion norms of not being extremely mean, avoiding personal attacks, etc).
There’s also a case to be made for criticizing their funders (Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna). I feel slightly bad about the implied incentive mechanism (“if you give lots of money to EA stuff, then any time a loud fraction of EAs disagree with the donations made by your team, you’d be loudly criticized for it”). However, given that insufficient criticism of EA funders was identified as a large, potentially catastrophic, mistake in the past, I tentatively feel better about erring a lot in the direction of more criticism of funders.
I think it’s helpful in discussion sometimes not to focus on who is subject to criticism. Even if there are one or two or a handful of people who might have made the critical decision, perhaps in some cases it’s better to discuss the pros and cons of the issues at hand, rather than pinpointing who exactly might be responsible.