I understand that it’s been at most 9 months since this purchase occurred.
As I’ve said in other contexts, requiring immediate public disclosure of decisions is a standard not applied anywhere else—banks and public companies have to report some things quarterly, as the linked comment suggests CEA should do, but that’s not a reasonable standard anywhere else, given the amount of extra accounting and other work needed. The charitable groups that score highly on transparency report yearly, and all of the groups involved in this do, in fact, regularly report their grants. I’d be shocked if any charity issued quarterly reconciliations publicly. It’s incredibly expensive in terms of personnel and time to report things immediately, and both CEA and OpenPhil are actually amazingly transparent—both formally, with their reports, and informally, with many senior people responding to questions and criticism on the forum, on facebook, and on twitter.
Given that, I think it’s especially weird to say EVF hasn’t said anything while linking to an explanation by the board member who was most involved. (If you want to criticize CEA for failing on transparency, people could ask why they haven’t done an annual review post in 2 years, as I did in earlier discussions. But it seems they just fixed that.)
I am still concerned that EVF seems to have lots of less transparent pieces, and it’s unclear what gets reported where, since this isn’t part of CEA, so it wasn’t reported by them—but in the case of Wytham Abbey, I think OpenPhil, as the actual donor, is the one that needs to talk about why it made that decision—and no, it still isn’t on their grants page.
I acknowledge that transparency is complex, that there are trade-offs and that it isn’t clear what the correct amount of transparency is. I also acknowledge that it is normal that regular grants are published with a delay. So I’m not making a general claim or demand that everything needs to be public (I even explicitly say that). What I say is that a) I’m in favour of valuing transparency highly by default. b) I feel in this specific case more communication would have helped
My intuition is that Open Phil overall is quite transparent. I was less sure about EVF, given that there are a relevant number of comments and posts on the forum criticising them for lack of transparency. But my data point is mostly this one where I feel more openness would have been helpful plus reading other people’s comments.
Given that, I think it’s especially weird to say EVF hasn’t said anything while linking to an explanation by the board member who was most involved.
I feel that characterisation is a bit uncharitable. I said
So far CEA/EVF hasn’t come out explaining their rationale in detail (albeit some of those involved in the decision have commented under an EA Forum Post asking about the decision and shared their perspectives)
At the time when Émile posted on Twitter, this was definitely true. And even today I find it fair to say that Owen’s response was not a detailed explanation by CEA/EVF (maybe you’re right and it’s Open Phil that should do the explaining, but that is not the main point). Owen’s comment was a response to a question / criticism by someone else, was a comment under a post by someone else and felt mostly like a personal account to me. And he doesn’t give much information on the assumptions involved, from his post it wasn’t even clear where the money came from. To be clear: I’m glad he posted his thoughts. But I think it’s also fair to say that this isn’t the kind of official announcement or detailed explanation targeted to convince someone who isn’t already mostly convinced that the decision was reasonable.
I understand that it’s been at most 9 months since this purchase occurred.
As I’ve said in other contexts, requiring immediate public disclosure of decisions is a standard not applied anywhere else—banks and public companies have to report some things quarterly, as the linked comment suggests CEA should do, but that’s not a reasonable standard anywhere else, given the amount of extra accounting and other work needed. The charitable groups that score highly on transparency report yearly, and all of the groups involved in this do, in fact, regularly report their grants. I’d be shocked if any charity issued quarterly reconciliations publicly. It’s incredibly expensive in terms of personnel and time to report things immediately, and both CEA and OpenPhil are actually amazingly transparent—both formally, with their reports, and informally, with many senior people responding to questions and criticism on the forum, on facebook, and on twitter.
Given that, I think it’s especially weird to say EVF hasn’t said anything while linking to an explanation by the board member who was most involved. (If you want to criticize CEA for failing on transparency, people could ask why they haven’t done an annual review post in 2 years, as I did in earlier discussions. But it seems they just fixed that.)
I am still concerned that EVF seems to have lots of less transparent pieces, and it’s unclear what gets reported where, since this isn’t part of CEA, so it wasn’t reported by them—but in the case of Wytham Abbey, I think OpenPhil, as the actual donor, is the one that needs to talk about why it made that decision—and no, it still isn’t on their grants page.
I acknowledge that transparency is complex, that there are trade-offs and that it isn’t clear what the correct amount of transparency is. I also acknowledge that it is normal that regular grants are published with a delay. So I’m not making a general claim or demand that everything needs to be public (I even explicitly say that). What I say is that
a) I’m in favour of valuing transparency highly by default.
b) I feel in this specific case more communication would have helped
My intuition is that Open Phil overall is quite transparent. I was less sure about EVF, given that there are a relevant number of comments and posts on the forum criticising them for lack of transparency. But my data point is mostly this one where I feel more openness would have been helpful plus reading other people’s comments.
I feel that characterisation is a bit uncharitable. I said
At the time when Émile posted on Twitter, this was definitely true. And even today I find it fair to say that Owen’s response was not a detailed explanation by CEA/EVF (maybe you’re right and it’s Open Phil that should do the explaining, but that is not the main point). Owen’s comment was a response to a question / criticism by someone else, was a comment under a post by someone else and felt mostly like a personal account to me. And he doesn’t give much information on the assumptions involved, from his post it wasn’t even clear where the money came from. To be clear: I’m glad he posted his thoughts. But I think it’s also fair to say that this isn’t the kind of official announcement or detailed explanation targeted to convince someone who isn’t already mostly convinced that the decision was reasonable.
Yeah, I think we basically agree on all of the points here, and I apologize that my characterization of your claim was, in fact, uncharitable.