At a gut-level, this feels like an influential member of the EA community deciding to ‘defect’ and leave when the going gets tough. It’s like deciding to ‘walk away from Omelas’ when you had a role in the leadership of the city and benefitted from that position. In contrast, I think the right call is to stay and fight for EA ideas in the ‘Third Wave’ of EA.
I’m sure you mean this in good faith, but I think we should probably try to consider and respond meaningfully to criticism, as opposed to making ad hominem style rebuttals that accuse betrayal. It seems to me to be serious epistemic error to target those who wish to leave a community or those who make criticism of it, especially by saying something akin to “you’re not allowed to criticize us if you’ve gained something from us.” This doesn’t mean at all that we shouldn’t analyze, understand, and respond to this phenomenon of “EA distancing”—just that we should do it with a less caustic approach that centers on trends and patterns, not criticism of individuals.
I appreciate the pushback anormative, but I kinda stand by what I said and don’t think your criticisms land for me. I fundamentally reject with your assessment of what I wrote/believe as ‘targeting those who wish to leave’, or saying people ‘aren’t allowed to criticise us’ in any way.
Maybe your perception of ‘accusation of betrayal’ came from the use of ‘defect’ which was maybe unfortunate on my part. I’m trying to use it in a game theory ‘co-operate/defect’ framing. See Matthew Reardon from 80k here.[1]
I’m not against Ben leaving/disassociating (he can do whatever he wants), but I am upset/concerned that formerly influential people disassociating from EA leaves the rest of the EA community, who are by and large individuals with a lot less power and influence, to become bycatch.[2]
I think a load-bearing point for me is Ben’s position and history in the EA Community.
If an ‘ordinary EA’ were to post something similar, I’d feel sad but feel no need to criticise them individually (I might gather arguments that present a broader trend and respond to them, as you suggest).
I think there is some common-sense/value-ethics intuition I feel fairly strongly that being a good leader means being a leader when things are tough and not just when times are good.
I think it is fair to characterise Ben as an EA Leader: Ben was a founder of 80,000 Hours, one of the leading sources of Community growth and recruitment. He was likely a part of the shift from the GH&D/E2G version of 80k to the longtermist/x-risk focused version, a move that was followed by the rest of EA. He was probably invited to attend (though I can’t confirm if he did or not) the EA Leadership/Meta Co-ordination Forum for multiple years.
If the above is true, then Ben had a much more significant role shaping the EA Community than almost all other members of it.
To the extent Ben thinks that Community is bad/harmful/dangerous, the fact that he contributed to it implies some moral responsibility for correcting it. This is what I was trying to get at the with ‘Omelas’ reference in my original quick take.
As for rebuttals, Ben mentions that he has criticisms of the community but doesn’t shared them to an extent they can be rebutted. When he does I look forward to reading and analysing them.[3] Even in the original tweets Ben himself mentions this “looks a lot like following vibes”, and he’s right, it does.
Like Helen Toner might have disassociated/distanced herself from the EA Community or EA publicly, but her actions around the OpenAI board standoff have had massively negative consequences for EA imo
I expect I’ll probably agree with a lot of his criticisms, but disagree that they apply to ‘the EA Community’ as a whole as opposed to specific individuals/worldviews who identify with EA
I’m sure you mean this in good faith, but I think we should probably try to consider and respond meaningfully to criticism, as opposed to making ad hominem style rebuttals that accuse betrayal. It seems to me to be serious epistemic error to target those who wish to leave a community or those who make criticism of it, especially by saying something akin to “you’re not allowed to criticize us if you’ve gained something from us.” This doesn’t mean at all that we shouldn’t analyze, understand, and respond to this phenomenon of “EA distancing”—just that we should do it with a less caustic approach that centers on trends and patterns, not criticism of individuals.
I appreciate the pushback anormative, but I kinda stand by what I said and don’t think your criticisms land for me. I fundamentally reject with your assessment of what I wrote/believe as ‘targeting those who wish to leave’, or saying people ‘aren’t allowed to criticise us’ in any way.
Maybe your perception of ‘accusation of betrayal’ came from the use of ‘defect’ which was maybe unfortunate on my part. I’m trying to use it in a game theory ‘co-operate/defect’ framing. See Matthew Reardon from 80k here.[1]
I’m not against Ben leaving/disassociating (he can do whatever he wants), but I am upset/concerned that formerly influential people disassociating from EA leaves the rest of the EA community, who are by and large individuals with a lot less power and influence, to become bycatch.[2]
I think a load-bearing point for me is Ben’s position and history in the EA Community.
If an ‘ordinary EA’ were to post something similar, I’d feel sad but feel no need to criticise them individually (I might gather arguments that present a broader trend and respond to them, as you suggest).
I think there is some common-sense/value-ethics intuition I feel fairly strongly that being a good leader means being a leader when things are tough and not just when times are good.
I think it is fair to characterise Ben as an EA Leader: Ben was a founder of 80,000 Hours, one of the leading sources of Community growth and recruitment. He was likely a part of the shift from the GH&D/E2G version of 80k to the longtermist/x-risk focused version, a move that was followed by the rest of EA. He was probably invited to attend (though I can’t confirm if he did or not) the EA Leadership/Meta Co-ordination Forum for multiple years.
If the above is true, then Ben had a much more significant role shaping the EA Community than almost all other members of it.
To the extent Ben thinks that Community is bad/harmful/dangerous, the fact that he contributed to it implies some moral responsibility for correcting it. This is what I was trying to get at the with ‘Omelas’ reference in my original quick take.
As for rebuttals, Ben mentions that he has criticisms of the community but doesn’t shared them to an extent they can be rebutted. When he does I look forward to reading and analysing them.[3] Even in the original tweets Ben himself mentions this “looks a lot like following vibes”, and he’s right, it does.
and here—which is how I found out about the original tweets in the first place
Like Helen Toner might have disassociated/distanced herself from the EA Community or EA publicly, but her actions around the OpenAI board standoff have had massively negative consequences for EA imo
I expect I’ll probably agree with a lot of his criticisms, but disagree that they apply to ‘the EA Community’ as a whole as opposed to specific individuals/worldviews who identify with EA