I’ll respond to the second set of questions here (we’ll respond to comments from the other post there).
I can’t speak to the external investigation since I’m not involved (it’s going through the board so as to be external to my team).
In terms of our internal investigation, since I don’t currently know the form it will take there’s not much I can precommit to, but I definitely think we should publicly say new processes or other changes we’re putting in place (or if none, that it’s none), so that people know how we’re planning to approach things in the future.
I think the categories you’ve laid out are good ones though I don’t yet know if those will end up being exactly the categories I end up using as Ben and I go through this—appreciate you writing them up and flagging them. My strong guess is that relevant categories will include (as I noted in things I wanted to keep in mind during reflection) conflicts of interest and powerful people in EA.
I want to also address some elephant-in-the-room feeling (which may not be relevant to you, but feels important to say), which is that as I go into this only knowing what I learned recently, it feels important that before an investigation is finished to be able to “split and commit”. I want to hold onto multiple hypotheses, including
that we made serious mistakes and should change a lot
that our processes need serious change
that with the information they had at the time, people acted reasonably
that people didn’t act reasonably but that the processes are basically fine, since no process is going to yield no mistakes.
I don’t put equal weight on all those hypotheses, but I do want to be able to hold them, and at the end of the investigation, to say publicly what conclusions I’ve come to about those things.
Thanks for your comment and kind words.
I’ll respond to the second set of questions here (we’ll respond to comments from the other post there).
I can’t speak to the external investigation since I’m not involved (it’s going through the board so as to be external to my team).
In terms of our internal investigation, since I don’t currently know the form it will take there’s not much I can precommit to, but I definitely think we should publicly say new processes or other changes we’re putting in place (or if none, that it’s none), so that people know how we’re planning to approach things in the future.
I think the categories you’ve laid out are good ones though I don’t yet know if those will end up being exactly the categories I end up using as Ben and I go through this—appreciate you writing them up and flagging them. My strong guess is that relevant categories will include (as I noted in things I wanted to keep in mind during reflection) conflicts of interest and powerful people in EA.
I want to also address some elephant-in-the-room feeling (which may not be relevant to you, but feels important to say), which is that as I go into this only knowing what I learned recently, it feels important that before an investigation is finished to be able to “split and commit”. I want to hold onto multiple hypotheses, including
that we made serious mistakes and should change a lot
that our processes need serious change
that with the information they had at the time, people acted reasonably
that people didn’t act reasonably but that the processes are basically fine, since no process is going to yield no mistakes.
I don’t put equal weight on all those hypotheses, but I do want to be able to hold them, and at the end of the investigation, to say publicly what conclusions I’ve come to about those things.