In principle, I think giving this money back would be a very good thing if it means getting money back to those who are owed it. However, this is very complicated if either A: you’ve already spent the money, or B: you need the money to survive. For instance, I’m an FTX grantee, and I’m using the money to pay rent and other living expenses (I don’t have a job otherwise at the moment, so the loss of income would be a big problem for me).
Strong disagree. If you are doing high EV work enabled by funding, were not complicit in fraud or other wrongdoing, and are not legally required to, you should not return the funds.
Counterfactually, the funds might have gone to another high EV organization, so you would probably be doing harm by having received the funds and not using it for your high EV purpose.
If you are doing important work, please do not keep that from being done for want of funding where you are not legally required to. EA grantees empowered by funds do incredibly important work and should not defund themselves unnecessarily.
I’m sorry I just disagree. We are an applied ethics movement. Maybe the only one in the world. We should hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards. And yet we benefitted from a scheme that, legal or not, ruined a lot of people’s lives. Utilitarianism or not, we need to do everything we can to atone. If we don’t, it could ruin our psyches, our ethical standards, our perception and our trajectory.
We estimate that several thousands of dollars saves a life with Global Health and Development charities… Many of these grantees are exploring potentially transformative areas that EAs consider higher EV than these GH&D charities… To unnecessarily defund them is what is immoral.
These grantees did not participate in fraud. They do not need to atone. Perhaps SBF and some other actors engaged in criminal or fraudulent activity and they should be dealt with accordingly. The movement is not compromised by innocent grantees retaining benefits for important work.
We are an applied ethics movement… And the right thing to do here is not to disempower what we have identified as extremely promising efforts to make a better today and tomorrow.
I think what jeopardizes us is if we do not value the work we do. Reflexively neutering our projects without good reason is the path to a worse world.
If we’re perceived as benefiting from fraud and too accepting of instrumental harm, we may push away many people who might otherwise contribute to our community and projects, and could be looked at more skeptically when engaging politically and with institutions. We’ll lose some public trust, and perhaps rightfully so, since we’ll be less worthy of it.
In principle, I think giving this money back would be a very good thing if it means getting money back to those who are owed it. However, this is very complicated if either A: you’ve already spent the money, or B: you need the money to survive. For instance, I’m an FTX grantee, and I’m using the money to pay rent and other living expenses (I don’t have a job otherwise at the moment, so the loss of income would be a big problem for me).
Strong disagree. If you are doing high EV work enabled by funding, were not complicit in fraud or other wrongdoing, and are not legally required to, you should not return the funds.
Counterfactually, the funds might have gone to another high EV organization, so you would probably be doing harm by having received the funds and not using it for your high EV purpose.
If you are doing important work, please do not keep that from being done for want of funding where you are not legally required to. EA grantees empowered by funds do incredibly important work and should not defund themselves unnecessarily.
I’m sorry I just disagree. We are an applied ethics movement. Maybe the only one in the world. We should hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards. And yet we benefitted from a scheme that, legal or not, ruined a lot of people’s lives. Utilitarianism or not, we need to do everything we can to atone. If we don’t, it could ruin our psyches, our ethical standards, our perception and our trajectory.
We estimate that several thousands of dollars saves a life with Global Health and Development charities… Many of these grantees are exploring potentially transformative areas that EAs consider higher EV than these GH&D charities… To unnecessarily defund them is what is immoral.
These grantees did not participate in fraud. They do not need to atone. Perhaps SBF and some other actors engaged in criminal or fraudulent activity and they should be dealt with accordingly. The movement is not compromised by innocent grantees retaining benefits for important work.
We are an applied ethics movement… And the right thing to do here is not to disempower what we have identified as extremely promising efforts to make a better today and tomorrow.
I think what jeopardizes us is if we do not value the work we do. Reflexively neutering our projects without good reason is the path to a worse world.
If we’re perceived as benefiting from fraud and too accepting of instrumental harm, we may push away many people who might otherwise contribute to our community and projects, and could be looked at more skeptically when engaging politically and with institutions. We’ll lose some public trust, and perhaps rightfully so, since we’ll be less worthy of it.