I respectfully disagree. A decision to not help others in a specific way is more or less problematic depending on the actual alternative chosen. When that alternative is something as aimed at making EAs and rich westerners enjoy themselves as buying a “castle” to host them in, it puts the funders’ judgment in a very different light.
It’s not that I’m convinced that buying a conference venue is actually that terrible a decision. But to justify this, OpenPhil and EVF need to work much harder than saying they’ll use it to host a vague collection of conferences and workshops, and explain why they even think all these events are really impactful enough, and how they’re sure no self-serving bias came into the decision.
I respectfully disagree. A decision to not help others in a specific way is more or less problematic depending on the actual alternative chosen. When that alternative is something as aimed at making EAs and rich westerners enjoy themselves as buying a “castle” to host them in, it puts the funders’ judgment in a very different light.
It’s not that I’m convinced that buying a conference venue is actually that terrible a decision. But to justify this, OpenPhil and EVF need to work much harder than saying they’ll use it to host a vague collection of conferences and workshops, and explain why they even think all these events are really impactful enough, and how they’re sure no self-serving bias came into the decision.