I think you (and lots of other EAs who feel the same way you do) are totally correct that you don’t deserve the response you’ve been seeing to the FTX situation. You deserve a huge pat on the back for doing so much for the world.
Separately, I also agree with these paragraphs Oliver wrote a few days ago, and I’m (tentatively) glad that there’s been more criticism than usual on the forum right now (even if it’s ultimately unrelated to FTX):
I do think it is indeed really sad that people fear reprisal for disagreement. I think this is indeed a pretty big problem, not really because EA is worse here than the rest of the world, but because I think the standard for success is really high on this dimension, and there is a lot of value in encouraging dissent and pushing back against conformity, far into the tails of the distribution here.
I expect the community health team to have discussed this extensively (like, I have discussed it with them for many hours). There are lots of things attempted to help with this over the years. We branded one EAG after “keeping EA weird”, we encouraged formats like whiteboard debates at EAG to show that disagreement among highly-engaged people is common, we added things like disagree-voting in addition to normal upvoting and downvoting to encourage a culture where it’s normal and expected that someone can write something that many people disagree with, without that thing being punished.
My sense is this all isn’t really enough, and we still kind of suck at it, but I also don’t think it’s an ignored problem in the space. I also think this problem gets harder and harder the more you grow, and larger communities trying to take coordinated action require more conformity to function, and this sucks, and is I think one of the strongest arguments against growth.
I know it may feel like someone “curb stomping you while you’re on your knees”. But in many cases I think a better model is (a) people doing public soul-searching or (b) people who were previously self-censoring no longer doing so.
I want a world where people feel appreciated for hard work, and (simultaneously) people feel comfortable in attempting constructive criticism, safe in the knowledge that their criticism won’t have the sort of negative career repercussions your post implies. Here’s my attempt to reconcile those two objectives; this goes out to all the EAs who are feeling burnt out right now:
It sounds like you’ve been working really hard at a job you hate, doing a lot of good. Maybe sometimes you think about taking a vacation or searching for a job that’s more fun, but avoid it because of opportunity costs.
If you’ve been doing that, I want to push back. You deserve a vacation. A nice long sabbatical, even. Not only do you deserve it, it seems justified on consequentialist grounds—I think the opportunity cost of your vacation will be less than the cost of the ingroup-hardening process you describe in your post. (Convenient that consequentialism sometimes calls for vacations, isn’t it?)
In conclusion, please know that your work is appreciated, and please take care of yourself!
Thanks for all your hard work in EA!
I think you (and lots of other EAs who feel the same way you do) are totally correct that you don’t deserve the response you’ve been seeing to the FTX situation. You deserve a huge pat on the back for doing so much for the world.
Separately, I also agree with these paragraphs Oliver wrote a few days ago, and I’m (tentatively) glad that there’s been more criticism than usual on the forum right now (even if it’s ultimately unrelated to FTX):
I know it may feel like someone “curb stomping you while you’re on your knees”. But in many cases I think a better model is (a) people doing public soul-searching or (b) people who were previously self-censoring no longer doing so.
I want a world where people feel appreciated for hard work, and (simultaneously) people feel comfortable in attempting constructive criticism, safe in the knowledge that their criticism won’t have the sort of negative career repercussions your post implies. Here’s my attempt to reconcile those two objectives; this goes out to all the EAs who are feeling burnt out right now:
It sounds like you’ve been working really hard at a job you hate, doing a lot of good. Maybe sometimes you think about taking a vacation or searching for a job that’s more fun, but avoid it because of opportunity costs.
If you’ve been doing that, I want to push back. You deserve a vacation. A nice long sabbatical, even. Not only do you deserve it, it seems justified on consequentialist grounds—I think the opportunity cost of your vacation will be less than the cost of the ingroup-hardening process you describe in your post. (Convenient that consequentialism sometimes calls for vacations, isn’t it?)
In conclusion, please know that your work is appreciated, and please take care of yourself!