I’ve had quite a few disagreements with other EA’s about this, but I will repeat it here, and maybe get more downvotes. But I’ve worked for 20 years in a multinational and I know how companies deal with potential reputational damage, and I think we need to at least ask ourselves if it would be wise for us to do differently.
EA is part of a real world which isn’t necessarily fair and logical. Our reputation in this real world is vitally important to the good work we plan to do—it impacts our ability to get donations, to carry out projects, to influence policy.
We all believe we’re willing to make sacrifices to help EA succeed.
Here’s the hard part: Sometimes the sacrifice we have to make is to go against our own natural desire to do what feels right.
It feels right that Will and other people from EA should make public statements about how bad we feel about FTX and how we’ll try to do better in future and so on.
But the legal advice Will got was correct, and was also what was best for EA.
There was zero chance that the FTX scandal could reflect positively on EA. But there were steps Will and others could take to minimise the damage to the EA movement.
The most important of these is to distance ourselves from the crimes that SBF committed. He committed those crimes. Not EA. Not Will. SBF caused massive harm to EA and to Will.
I see a lot of EA’s soul-searching and asking what we could have done differently. Which is good in a way. But we need to be very careful. Admitting that we (EA movement) should have done better is tantamount to admitting that we did something wrong, which is quickly conflated in public opinion with “SBF and EA are closely intertwined, one and the same.” (Remember how low public awareness of EA is in general).
The communication needs to be: EA was defrauded by SBF. He has done us massive harm. We want to make sure nobody will ever do that to EA again. We need to ensure that any public communication puts SBF on one side, and EA on the other side, a victim of his crimes just like the millions of investors.
The fact that he saw himself as an EA is not the point. Nobody in EA encouraged him to commit fraud. People in EA may have been a bit naive, but nobody in EA was guilty of defrauding millions of investors. That was SBF.
So Will’s legal advice was spot on. Any immediate statement would have seemed defensive, as if he had something to feel guilty about, which would have resulted in more harm to the public perception of EA because of association with SBF.
SBF committed crimes.
Will or EA did not commit crimes, or contribute to SBF’s crimes.
SBF defrauded and harmed millions of investors.
SBF also defrauded and harmed the EA movement.
The EA movement is angry with SBF. We want to make sure that nobody ever does that to us again.
As “good people”, we all want to look back and ask if there was something we could have done differently that would have prevented Sam from harming those millions of innocent investors. It is natural to wonder, the same way we see any tragedy and wonder if we could have prevented it. But we need to be very careful about the PR aspects of this (and yes, we all hate PR, but it is reality—read Pirandello if you don’t believe me!). If we start making statements that suggest that we did something wrong, we’re just going to be directing some of the public anger away from SBF and towards EA. I don’t think that’s helpful.
There is one caveat: if someone acting on behalf on an EA organisation truly did something wrong which contributed to this fraud, then obviously we need to investigate that. But I am not aware of any evidence to suggest that happened.
There is one caveat: if someone acting on behalf on an EA organisation truly did something wrong which contributed to this fraud, then obviously we need to investigate that. But I am not aware of any evidence to suggest that happened.
I tend to think EA did. Back in September 2023, I argued:
EA contributed to a vast financial fraud, through its:
People. SBF was the best-known EA, and one of the earliest 1%. FTX’s leadership was mostly EAs. FTXFF was overwhelmingly run by EAs, including EA’s main leader, and another intellectual leader of EA.
Resources. FTX had some EA staff and was funded by EA investors.
PR. SBF’s EA-oriented philosophy on giving, and purported frugality served as cover for his unethical nature.
Ideology. SBF apparently had an RB ideology, as a risk-neutral act-utilitarian, who argued a decade ago why stealing was not in-principle wrong, on Felicifia. In my view, his ideology, at least as he professed it, could best be understood as an extremist variant of EA.
Of course, you can argue that contributing (point 1) people-time and (2) resources is consistent with us having just been victims, although I think that glosses over the extent to which EA folks at FTX had bought into Sam’s vision, and folks at FTXFF might have more mildly lapsed in judgment. And we could regard (3) the PR issue as minor. But even so, (4) the ideology is important. FTX wasn’t just any scam. It was one that a mostly-EA group was motivated to commit, to some degree or other, based on EA-style/consequentialist reasoning. There were several other instances of crypto-related crimes in and around the EA community. And the FTX implosion shared some characteristics with those events, and with other EA scandals. As I argued:
Other EA scandals, similarly, often involve multiple of these elements:
[Person #1]: past sexual harassment issues, later reputation management including Wiki warring and misleading histories. (norm-violation, naive conseq.) [Person #2]: sexual harassment (norm-violation? naive conseq?) [Person #3] [Person #4] [Person #5]: three more instances of crypto crimes (scope sensitivity? Norm-violation, naive conseq.? naivete?) Intentional Insights: aggressive PR campaigns (norm-violation, naive conseq., naivete?) Leverage Research, including partial takeover of CEA (risk appetite, norm-violation, naive conseq, unilateralism, naivete) (We’ve seen major examples of sexual misbehaviour and crypto crimes in the rationalist community too.)
You could argue still that some of these elements are things that are shared with all financial crime. But then why have EAs committed >10% of the largest financial frauds of all-time, while consisting of about one millionth of the world’s population, and less than 0.1% and perhaps 0.01% of its startups? You can suppose that we were just unlucky, but I don’t find this particularly convincing.
I think that at this point, you should want to concede that EA appears to have contributed to FTX in quite a number of ways, and not all of them can be dismissed easily. That’s why I think a more thorough investigation is needed.
As for PR, I simply think that shouldn’t be the primary focus, and that it far from the most important consideration on the current margin. First, we need to get the facts in order. And then we need to describe the strategy. And then based on what kind of future EA deserves to have, we could decide how and whether to try to defend its image.
The communication needs to be: EA was defrauded by SBF. He has done us massive harm. We want to make sure nobody will ever do that to EA again. We need to ensure that any public communication puts SBF on one side, and EA on the other side, a victim of his crimes just like the millions of investors.
Upvoted.
But a problem is: I don’t think many people outside of EA believe that, nor will they believe it merely because EA sources self-interestedly repeat it. They do not have priors to believe EA was not somehow responsible for what happened, and the publicly-available evidence (mainly the Time article) points in the direction of at least some degree of responsibility. The more EA proclaims its innocence without coughing up evidence that is credible to the broader world, the more guilty it looks.
But I’ve worked for 20 years in a multinational and I know how companies deal with potential reputational damage, and I think we need to at least ask ourselves if it would be wise for us to do differently.
Consistency in Following the Usual Playbook
The usual playbook, as I see it, includes shutting up and hope that people lose interest and move on. I accept that there’s a reasonable case for deploying the usual playbook. But I don’t think you can really pick and choose elements out of that playbook.
For example, one of the standard plays is to quickly throw out most people in the splash zone of the scandal without any real adjudication of their culpability. This serves in part as propitiation to the masses, as well as a legible signal that you’re taking the whole thing seriously. It obviates some of the need for a publicly-credible investigation, because you’ve already expelled anyone for whom there is a reasonable basis to believe culpability might exist. This is true even though the organization knows there is a substantial possibility that the sacrificed individuals were not culpable, or at least not culpable enough to warrant their termination/removal.
Under the standard playbook, at least Will and Nick would be rendered personae non grata very early in the story. Their work is thrown down the memory hole, and neither is spoken of positively for at least several years. None of that is particularly fair or truth-seeking, of course. But I don’t think you get to have it both ways—you can’t credibly decline to follow the playbook because it is not truth-seeking and is unfair to certain insiders, and then reject calls for a legible, truth-seeking investigation because it doesn’t line up with the playbook. Although people have resigned from boards, and the extent of their “soft power” has been diminished, I don’t think EA has followed the standard crisis-management playbook in this regard.
Who Judges the Organization’s Crisis Response?
For non-profits, often the judge of the organization’s crisis response is the donor base. In most cases, that donor base is much more diverse and less intertwined than it is at (say) EVF. Although donors are not necessarily well-aligned to broader public concerns, the practical requirement that organizations satisfy concerns of their donor base means that the standard playbook includes at least a proxy for taking actions to address public concerns. EVF has had, as far as I can tell, exactly one systematically important donor and that donor is also ~an insider. Compare to, e.g., universities facing heat over alleged antisemitism from various billionaire donors. There’s no suggestion that Ackman, Lauder, et al. are in an insider relationship to Penn, MIT, etc. in the same way Open Phil is to EVF. Thus, the standard playbook is generally used under circumstances where there is an baseline business requirement to be somewhat willing to take actions to address a proxy for public concerns.
As I see it, at least some (but not all) of the calls for transparency and investigation are related to a desire for some sort of broader accountability that most non-profits face much more than EA organizations. As far as I can tell, the most suitable analogue to “a medium-size group of donors” for other nonprofits may be “the EA community, many members of which are making large indirect donations in terms of salary sacrifice.” The challenge is that discussions with the EA community are public in a way that communications with a group of a few dozen key donors are not for many non-profits.
I’ve had quite a few disagreements with other EA’s about this, but I will repeat it here, and maybe get more downvotes. But I’ve worked for 20 years in a multinational and I know how companies deal with potential reputational damage, and I think we need to at least ask ourselves if it would be wise for us to do differently.
EA is part of a real world which isn’t necessarily fair and logical. Our reputation in this real world is vitally important to the good work we plan to do—it impacts our ability to get donations, to carry out projects, to influence policy.
We all believe we’re willing to make sacrifices to help EA succeed.
Here’s the hard part: Sometimes the sacrifice we have to make is to go against our own natural desire to do what feels right.
It feels right that Will and other people from EA should make public statements about how bad we feel about FTX and how we’ll try to do better in future and so on.
But the legal advice Will got was correct, and was also what was best for EA.
There was zero chance that the FTX scandal could reflect positively on EA. But there were steps Will and others could take to minimise the damage to the EA movement.
The most important of these is to distance ourselves from the crimes that SBF committed. He committed those crimes. Not EA. Not Will. SBF caused massive harm to EA and to Will.
I see a lot of EA’s soul-searching and asking what we could have done differently. Which is good in a way. But we need to be very careful. Admitting that we (EA movement) should have done better is tantamount to admitting that we did something wrong, which is quickly conflated in public opinion with “SBF and EA are closely intertwined, one and the same.” (Remember how low public awareness of EA is in general).
The communication needs to be: EA was defrauded by SBF. He has done us massive harm. We want to make sure nobody will ever do that to EA again. We need to ensure that any public communication puts SBF on one side, and EA on the other side, a victim of his crimes just like the millions of investors.
The fact that he saw himself as an EA is not the point. Nobody in EA encouraged him to commit fraud. People in EA may have been a bit naive, but nobody in EA was guilty of defrauding millions of investors. That was SBF.
So Will’s legal advice was spot on. Any immediate statement would have seemed defensive, as if he had something to feel guilty about, which would have resulted in more harm to the public perception of EA because of association with SBF.
SBF committed crimes.
Will or EA did not commit crimes, or contribute to SBF’s crimes.
SBF defrauded and harmed millions of investors.
SBF also defrauded and harmed the EA movement.
The EA movement is angry with SBF. We want to make sure that nobody ever does that to us again.
As “good people”, we all want to look back and ask if there was something we could have done differently that would have prevented Sam from harming those millions of innocent investors. It is natural to wonder, the same way we see any tragedy and wonder if we could have prevented it. But we need to be very careful about the PR aspects of this (and yes, we all hate PR, but it is reality—read Pirandello if you don’t believe me!). If we start making statements that suggest that we did something wrong, we’re just going to be directing some of the public anger away from SBF and towards EA. I don’t think that’s helpful.
There is one caveat: if someone acting on behalf on an EA organisation truly did something wrong which contributed to this fraud, then obviously we need to investigate that. But I am not aware of any evidence to suggest that happened.
I tend to think EA did. Back in September 2023, I argued:
Of course, you can argue that contributing (point 1) people-time and (2) resources is consistent with us having just been victims, although I think that glosses over the extent to which EA folks at FTX had bought into Sam’s vision, and folks at FTXFF might have more mildly lapsed in judgment. And we could regard (3) the PR issue as minor. But even so, (4) the ideology is important. FTX wasn’t just any scam. It was one that a mostly-EA group was motivated to commit, to some degree or other, based on EA-style/consequentialist reasoning. There were several other instances of crypto-related crimes in and around the EA community. And the FTX implosion shared some characteristics with those events, and with other EA scandals. As I argued:
You could argue still that some of these elements are things that are shared with all financial crime. But then why have EAs committed >10% of the largest financial frauds of all-time, while consisting of about one millionth of the world’s population, and less than 0.1% and perhaps 0.01% of its startups? You can suppose that we were just unlucky, but I don’t find this particularly convincing.
I think that at this point, you should want to concede that EA appears to have contributed to FTX in quite a number of ways, and not all of them can be dismissed easily. That’s why I think a more thorough investigation is needed.
As for PR, I simply think that shouldn’t be the primary focus, and that it far from the most important consideration on the current margin. First, we need to get the facts in order. And then we need to describe the strategy. And then based on what kind of future EA deserves to have, we could decide how and whether to try to defend its image.
Upvoted.
But a problem is: I don’t think many people outside of EA believe that, nor will they believe it merely because EA sources self-interestedly repeat it. They do not have priors to believe EA was not somehow responsible for what happened, and the publicly-available evidence (mainly the Time article) points in the direction of at least some degree of responsibility. The more EA proclaims its innocence without coughing up evidence that is credible to the broader world, the more guilty it looks.
Consistency in Following the Usual Playbook
The usual playbook, as I see it, includes shutting up and hope that people lose interest and move on. I accept that there’s a reasonable case for deploying the usual playbook. But I don’t think you can really pick and choose elements out of that playbook.
For example, one of the standard plays is to quickly throw out most people in the splash zone of the scandal without any real adjudication of their culpability. This serves in part as propitiation to the masses, as well as a legible signal that you’re taking the whole thing seriously. It obviates some of the need for a publicly-credible investigation, because you’ve already expelled anyone for whom there is a reasonable basis to believe culpability might exist. This is true even though the organization knows there is a substantial possibility that the sacrificed individuals were not culpable, or at least not culpable enough to warrant their termination/removal.
Under the standard playbook, at least Will and Nick would be rendered personae non grata very early in the story. Their work is thrown down the memory hole, and neither is spoken of positively for at least several years. None of that is particularly fair or truth-seeking, of course. But I don’t think you get to have it both ways—you can’t credibly decline to follow the playbook because it is not truth-seeking and is unfair to certain insiders, and then reject calls for a legible, truth-seeking investigation because it doesn’t line up with the playbook. Although people have resigned from boards, and the extent of their “soft power” has been diminished, I don’t think EA has followed the standard crisis-management playbook in this regard.
Who Judges the Organization’s Crisis Response?
For non-profits, often the judge of the organization’s crisis response is the donor base. In most cases, that donor base is much more diverse and less intertwined than it is at (say) EVF. Although donors are not necessarily well-aligned to broader public concerns, the practical requirement that organizations satisfy concerns of their donor base means that the standard playbook includes at least a proxy for taking actions to address public concerns. EVF has had, as far as I can tell, exactly one systematically important donor and that donor is also ~an insider. Compare to, e.g., universities facing heat over alleged antisemitism from various billionaire donors. There’s no suggestion that Ackman, Lauder, et al. are in an insider relationship to Penn, MIT, etc. in the same way Open Phil is to EVF. Thus, the standard playbook is generally used under circumstances where there is an baseline business requirement to be somewhat willing to take actions to address a proxy for public concerns.
As I see it, at least some (but not all) of the calls for transparency and investigation are related to a desire for some sort of broader accountability that most non-profits face much more than EA organizations. As far as I can tell, the most suitable analogue to “a medium-size group of donors” for other nonprofits may be “the EA community, many members of which are making large indirect donations in terms of salary sacrifice.” The challenge is that discussions with the EA community are public in a way that communications with a group of a few dozen key donors are not for many non-profits.