EV doesn’t see itself in this way, and it includes projects that don’t consider themselves to be part of the EA movement or engaged in EA movement-building (such as Centre for the Governance of AI, Longview Philanthropy, and Wytham Abbey.)
I see EV as an EA organization, historically, by name (“effective”), by its board composition and by some of its own statements, especially its mission.[1] If an org doesn’t want to be perceived as part of the EA movement and potentially entangled with it in other ways, should they be housed by EV?
We’re committed to making a positive difference by providing world-class support to some of the most impactful organisations in the effective altruism and longtermism communities.
Yes I was very surprised to hear the suggestion that Longview, Wytham or the Gov.ai were not EA projects! This is also contradicted by previous statements from the board of EVF:
EVF UK and EVF US together act as hosts and fiscal sponsors of many key projects in effective altruism, including the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), 80,000 Hours (80k), Longview Philanthropy, etc. [my emphasis]
and again:
EVF UK and EVF US together act as hosts and fiscal sponsors of many of the key projects in effective altruism. EVF currently operates the following discrete “projects” (colloquially known as orgs):
I feel like orgs don’t get many benefits from being “publicly EA”, but they get some costs.
The narrow EA community seems good at knowing which projects are “basically EA”.
I think to non-EAs, the EA brand might be more of a liability for many orgs than a plus. (It also can be a liability for EA, in that if the org does poorly, EA could be blamed, like with FTX)
They probably get the benefit that they are more likely to get a lot of money from EA. I don’t think the “brand” is well known enough to be that much of a cost.
Maybe what’s going on here is vagueness, and me being unclear.
Jeff’s clarification is helpful. I could have just dropped “part of the EA movement or” and the sentence would have been clearer and better.
The key thing I was meaning in this context is: “Is a project engaging in EA movement-building, such that it would make sense that they at least potentially have obligations or responsibilities towards the EA movement as a whole?” The answer is clearly “no” for LEEP (for example), and “yes” for CEA. On that question, I would say “no” for GovAI, Longview or Wytham, though I’ll caveat I don’t lead any of those projects so that’s just my perception.
“To make it even more clear, many of these projects used to be part of CEA.”
If you mean CEA-the-project (not CEA-the-former-legal-entity), that’s true of EA Funds and GWWC (though GWWC predates CEA and was separate from it prior to merging and then separating again), but not the others.
If you mean CEA-the-legal-entity, the name change from CEA UK and US → Effective Ventures UK and US was when the legal entity started housing more projects that aren’t focused on EA movement-building, and was done in part so that a project’s being housed at EV UK or EV US wouldn’t be understood to mean it was engaged in EA movement-building. (Clearly we should have communicated better about this, as it’s led to a lot of confusion.)
The phrasing “don’t consider themselves to be part of the EA movement or engaged in EA movement-building” is ambiguous on whether both are true. If they mean it in the sense that “not all are both” then, for example, the claim that LV, WA, and GAI are not engaged in EA community building, and GAI is additionally not part of the EA movement would be consistent with your EV quotations.
Are we saying that LV is not engaged-in-EA-community-building and also not part-of-the-EA-movement, and also WA is not engaged-in-EA-community-building and also not part-of-the-EA-movement, and also GAI is not engaged-in-EA-community-building and also not part-of-the-EA-movement...or that for each project one or both apply (so that, say, LV could be part-of-the-EA-movement but not engaged-in-EA-community-building).
I guess there’s a fine line between “projects that don’t consider themselves to be part of the EA movement or engaged in EA movement-building” and “projects in effective altruism” e.g. IIRC Open Phil has been treading that line for years.
Also, if they don’t want to be part of the EA movement, should they limit the amount of (or share of their) funding they take from large EA funders like Open Phil and EA Funds, limit their attendance to EA events like EA Global, limit hiring of EA community members (including and especially the board) and maybe even limit personal relationships with members of the EA community? (I don’t know that they do or don’t.)
I mean there are other reasons for orgs to want to be housed under EV and their general marketing doesn’t mention EV (e.g. I didn’t know Centre for the Governance of AI was housed under EV until I read this post).
I see EV as an EA organization, historically, by name (“effective”), by its board composition and by some of its own statements, especially its mission.[1] If an org doesn’t want to be perceived as part of the EA movement and potentially entangled with it in other ways, should they be housed by EV?
Yes I was very surprised to hear the suggestion that Longview, Wytham or the Gov.ai were not EA projects! This is also contradicted by previous statements from the board of EVF:
and again:
To make it even more clear, many of these projects used to be part of CEA.
I feel like orgs don’t get many benefits from being “publicly EA”, but they get some costs.
The narrow EA community seems good at knowing which projects are “basically EA”.
I think to non-EAs, the EA brand might be more of a liability for many orgs than a plus. (It also can be a liability for EA, in that if the org does poorly, EA could be blamed, like with FTX)
They probably get the benefit that they are more likely to get a lot of money from EA. I don’t think the “brand” is well known enough to be that much of a cost.
Maybe what’s going on here is vagueness, and me being unclear.
Jeff’s clarification is helpful. I could have just dropped “part of the EA movement or” and the sentence would have been clearer and better.
The key thing I was meaning in this context is: “Is a project engaging in EA movement-building, such that it would make sense that they at least potentially have obligations or responsibilities towards the EA movement as a whole?” The answer is clearly “no” for LEEP (for example), and “yes” for CEA. On that question, I would say “no” for GovAI, Longview or Wytham, though I’ll caveat I don’t lead any of those projects so that’s just my perception.
“To make it even more clear, many of these projects used to be part of CEA.”
If you mean CEA-the-project (not CEA-the-former-legal-entity), that’s true of EA Funds and GWWC (though GWWC predates CEA and was separate from it prior to merging and then separating again), but not the others.
If you mean CEA-the-legal-entity, the name change from CEA UK and US → Effective Ventures UK and US was when the legal entity started housing more projects that aren’t focused on EA movement-building, and was done in part so that a project’s being housed at EV UK or EV US wouldn’t be understood to mean it was engaged in EA movement-building. (Clearly we should have communicated better about this, as it’s led to a lot of confusion.)
The phrasing “don’t consider themselves to be part of the EA movement or engaged in EA movement-building” is ambiguous on whether both are true. If they mean it in the sense that “not all are both” then, for example, the claim that LV, WA, and GAI are not engaged in EA community building, and GAI is additionally not part of the EA movement would be consistent with your EV quotations.
I didn’t find it ambiguous. I interpreted it as “not (A or B)”, which is the same as “neither A nor B”, and “not A and not B”.
Not for multiple X.
Are we saying that LV is not engaged-in-EA-community-building and also not part-of-the-EA-movement, and also WA is not engaged-in-EA-community-building and also not part-of-the-EA-movement, and also GAI is not engaged-in-EA-community-building and also not part-of-the-EA-movement...or that for each project one or both apply (so that, say, LV could be part-of-the-EA-movement but not engaged-in-EA-community-building).
I guess there’s a fine line between “projects that don’t consider themselves to be part of the EA movement or engaged in EA movement-building” and “projects in effective altruism” e.g. IIRC Open Phil has been treading that line for years.
Also, if they don’t want to be part of the EA movement, should they limit the amount of (or share of their) funding they take from large EA funders like Open Phil and EA Funds, limit their attendance to EA events like EA Global, limit hiring of EA community members (including and especially the board) and maybe even limit personal relationships with members of the EA community? (I don’t know that they do or don’t.)
I mean there are other reasons for orgs to want to be housed under EV and their general marketing doesn’t mention EV (e.g. I didn’t know Centre for the Governance of AI was housed under EV until I read this post).