I’m placing myself on a ban because I’m not my best self right now but briefly: 1. “EA has this slightly weird, very opaque and untransparent, sort of unaccountable leadership which we trustwith a lot of power. We treat them, in many ways, like “philosopher-kings” of the community.” I don’t think very many people treat him like this (certainly not the majority- literally, no one I know defers to him in this way and this strikes me as a super weird interpretation of his role in EA). But treating this as true how is this Will’s fault? At no point do I personally remember Will standing on a podium of What We Owe The Future, screaming “I am your leader bow to me, peasants!” I think I would have remembered that. Sounds like a hoot. Instead, the, and so help me I don’t know why I have to emphasize this, *living, breathing human being with feelings* is a philosopher and an academic who had an idea and promoted it because he thought it would make the world a better place. This resulted in a community and organizations inspired by his ideas—not -- governed by him. It’s a handful of organizations with distinct leaders and a handful of individuals with their own interpretations of his and other people’s work. Maybe people who deferred to Will should be the ones who are pondering their own epistemics. 2. On Lantern Ventures: There is a big difference between not wanting to work with someone because you don’t like their ethics (looking at you Kerry) and thinking they are going to commit the century’s worst fraud. Also, she’s getting death threats. Do you not reckon she’s suffering enough without her community adding their voices to the mob of people saying she should have known or that she could have prevented this? I remember when this stuff happened, it was on the periphery of EA at best. I literally don’t think I thought about it for longer than around 10 minutes and I had friends personally involved at the time. My take was “Wow! Sam sounds like a bad manager” not “Uhoh best nail down the furniture.” 3. On Dancer, and a handful of other people being kind while being critical: Thank you. You can stay. ;)
I don’t want to get into debates around object-level criticisms this early but I keep being puzzled by this assertion: ”This resulted in a community and organizations inspired by his ideas—not -- governed by him. It’s a handful of organizations with distinct leaders and a handful of individuals with their own interpretations of his and other people’s work.”
There was also a similar quote elsewhere: ”But Will is not the CEO of EA! He’s a philosopher who writes books about EA and has received a bunch of funding to do PR stuff.”
I don’t think this conception of “people loosely connected together in various ways” really captures the correct level of accountability here. There is a legal entity named Effective Ventures, which is the umbrella organisation of CEA, 80000 Hours, GWWC etc. and Will is the president of Effective Ventures as well as CEA. The people in the community volunteer their time and credibility by referring these organisations(and their literature) to their social circles. Many also do donate money to these organisations.
I refuse to have a verdict on FTX related criticisms until the dust settles, and most of the non-FTX related criticisms seem unreasonable to me, but this argument of “no one is the leader of EA really” strikes me as quite odd. I suspect CEA might even be the official copyright owner for “Effective Altruism” brand as I don’t see any organisation that has “Effective Altruism” in its name despite not being approved by CEA. Please inform me on this if I’m wrong. EA is much more centralised than “Socialism” or “Feminism”.
I like your comment- thank you. I am really confused by the opposite view. I don’t quite understand where Will as governor of EA comes from. There are influential organizations and thinkers in EA for sure but ownership and ultimate responsibility particularly cosmic responsibility for bad actors feels very different… I think something is obviously going on here which is important and once things are less awful we should try and dissect calmly, kindly, and deliberately.
There is a big difference between not wanting to work with someone because you don’t like their ethics (looking at you Kerry) and thinking they are going to commit the century’s worst fraud.
I don’t think anyone asking for more information about what people knew believes that central actors knew anything about fraud. If that is what you think, then maybe therein lies the rub. It is more that strong signs of bad ethics are important signals and your example of Kerry is perhaps a good one. Imagine if people had concerns with someone on the level of what they had with Kerry (plausible in the case of SBF—that is what it important to find out) and despite that promoted Kerry to be one of the few faces of the movement. That would be problematic and it is important to figure out what happened. That’s not a witch hunt.
Also, it is very surprising to me that you don’t hold the belief that many people treat e.g. Will as a central figure to defer to. Given what you’ve written it sounds like you are quite central so maybe get exposed to different people who have more eye-to-eye contact with Will, but it is certainly my experience that most people confer star power on Will. You are right that that doesn’t make it Will’s fault. I am just trying to claim that I don’t think you claim that people don’t treat him like a philosopher king hasn’t been my experience at all.
I’m placing myself on a ban because I’m not my best self right now but briefly:
1. “EA has this slightly weird, very opaque and untransparent, sort of unaccountable leadership which we trust with a lot of power. We treat them, in many ways, like “philosopher-kings” of the community.”
I don’t think very many people treat him like this (certainly not the majority- literally, no one I know defers to him in this way and this strikes me as a super weird interpretation of his role in EA). But treating this as true how is this Will’s fault? At no point do I personally remember Will standing on a podium of What We Owe The Future, screaming “I am your leader bow to me, peasants!” I think I would have remembered that. Sounds like a hoot. Instead, the, and so help me I don’t know why I have to emphasize this, *living, breathing human being with feelings* is a philosopher and an academic who had an idea and promoted it because he thought it would make the world a better place. This resulted in a community and organizations inspired by his ideas—not -- governed by him. It’s a handful of organizations with distinct leaders and a handful of individuals with their own interpretations of his and other people’s work. Maybe people who deferred to Will should be the ones who are pondering their own epistemics.
2. On Lantern Ventures:
There is a big difference between not wanting to work with someone because you don’t like their ethics (looking at you Kerry) and thinking they are going to commit the century’s worst fraud. Also, she’s getting death threats. Do you not reckon she’s suffering enough without her community adding their voices to the mob of people saying she should have known or that she could have prevented this? I remember when this stuff happened, it was on the periphery of EA at best. I literally don’t think I thought about it for longer than around 10 minutes and I had friends personally involved at the time. My take was “Wow! Sam sounds like a bad manager” not “Uhoh best nail down the furniture.”
3. On Dancer, and a handful of other people being kind while being critical:
Thank you. You can stay. ;)
I don’t want to get into debates around object-level criticisms this early but I keep being puzzled by this assertion:
”This resulted in a community and organizations inspired by his ideas—not -- governed by him. It’s a handful of organizations with distinct leaders and a handful of individuals with their own interpretations of his and other people’s work.”
There was also a similar quote elsewhere:
”But Will is not the CEO of EA! He’s a philosopher who writes books about EA and has received a bunch of funding to do PR stuff.”
I don’t think this conception of “people loosely connected together in various ways” really captures the correct level of accountability here. There is a legal entity named Effective Ventures, which is the umbrella organisation of CEA, 80000 Hours, GWWC etc. and Will is the president of Effective Ventures as well as CEA. The people in the community volunteer their time and credibility by referring these organisations(and their literature) to their social circles. Many also do donate money to these organisations.
I refuse to have a verdict on FTX related criticisms until the dust settles, and most of the non-FTX related criticisms seem unreasonable to me, but this argument of “no one is the leader of EA really” strikes me as quite odd.
I suspect CEA might even be the official copyright owner for “Effective Altruism” brand as I don’t see any organisation that has “Effective Altruism” in its name despite not being approved by CEA.Please inform me on this if I’m wrong. EA is much more centralised than “Socialism” or “Feminism”.Correction: No one owns “Effective Altruism” as a trademark. More detailed information here.
I like your comment- thank you. I am really confused by the opposite view. I don’t quite understand where Will as governor of EA comes from. There are influential organizations and thinkers in EA for sure but ownership and ultimate responsibility particularly cosmic responsibility for bad actors feels very different… I think something is obviously going on here which is important and once things are less awful we should try and dissect calmly, kindly, and deliberately.
I don’t think anyone asking for more information about what people knew believes that central actors knew anything about fraud. If that is what you think, then maybe therein lies the rub. It is more that strong signs of bad ethics are important signals and your example of Kerry is perhaps a good one. Imagine if people had concerns with someone on the level of what they had with Kerry (plausible in the case of SBF—that is what it important to find out) and despite that promoted Kerry to be one of the few faces of the movement. That would be problematic and it is important to figure out what happened. That’s not a witch hunt.
Also, it is very surprising to me that you don’t hold the belief that many people treat e.g. Will as a central figure to defer to. Given what you’ve written it sounds like you are quite central so maybe get exposed to different people who have more eye-to-eye contact with Will, but it is certainly my experience that most people confer star power on Will. You are right that that doesn’t make it Will’s fault. I am just trying to claim that I don’t think you claim that people don’t treat him like a philosopher king hasn’t been my experience at all.