As a first poster here I note the posting advice to be kind. I try and perhaps I fail. I think that the article to which this is a comment is too kind to everyone involved.
There is a fundamental underlying moral and ethical problem here which has nothing specifically to do with EA. Can one do definite small harm for potential big benefit? Can one be a little evil to perhaps be more good?
There are numerous philosophers (and religions) who’ve thought deeply about this question and concluded you cannot do so. I think generally one should be most reluctant to do this trade off. I think much more often than not one’s good intention does not have a good outcome and if the good intention involves embracing anything questionable then it often happens that intention is not followed thru or the result is not good but you’re left with the consequences of the bad prerequisites to your action.
Consequentialism can be very bad. The idea that one can let someone suffer today to perhaps prevent two suffering in years to come is arrogant. How does one know one will be successful? How can one step over the sick person today? Yet I read in the latest accounts of the Centre for Effective Altruism UK charity that it withheld £7million+ in reserves justified in great part (read it for yourself) by the possibility of reputational damage or the possible loss of a donor! How could that happen? By a journalist reading and reporting this comment, perhaps. Instead that £7million should be spent on today’s problems, it shouldn’t be saved for free beer for (and the very high salaries of) “effective” “altruists” should the funding dry up because the donors come to think like me. https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/5026843
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I want to place the following on record so that temptation is removed from me and so that perhaps some others are similarly emboldened. I will not accept the 5* hotel and fine dining Bahamas week with business class flights and expenses to attend some supposedly “effective” “altruism” event. Neither will I accept the more local Bracknell 2* weekend with pizza and 2nd class rail refund.
(I found myself at a London event recently which had an EA component. I made sure to pay for my “free” beer.)
I’m unlikely to attend such event because (1) I will feel personally sullied by it all and despite that might out of politeness not speak out, and (2) you won’t invite me because maybe I might eschew politeness and speak out, and (3) there is much better use for the money.
If anyone accepts such a Bahamas bribe then they really are allowing themselves and others to smugly not be saving eyesight and callously not be buying malaria nets while they stuff themselves with caviar and snooze poolside with 500 thread Egyptian cotton towels. And that’s true for Bracknell burgers too, it’s just a question of degree.
I’m not saying one must wear sackcloth and eat drool. There really is a difference between giving oneself a treat, and doing so pretending one is doing good. When honesty with oneself is compromised everything else soon follows. When one is living comfortably enough accepting food and drink and accommodation from charitable funds is just wrong.
I don’t mean to be rude in the common sense, but I do mean to be rude in the sense of being startlingly abrupt. I am being judgemental. But the behaviour I criticise here evidently needs an emperor’s new clothes approach. Whether I’m pure enough to deliver it is a different matter. Doubtless this has been said already by others better than me, and better than I do.
I support people sharing their unfiltered reactions to issues, and think this is particularly valuable on a contentious topic like this one. Critical reactions are likely undersupplied, and so I especially value hearing about those.
However, I strong-downvoted your comment because I think it is apt to misleading readers by making statement that can be construed as descriptions of actual EA programs (such as the FTX EA Fellowships on the Bahamas) despite being substantively inaccurate. For instance:
I don’t think that “fine dining” is an appropriate description for the food options covered for the FTX EA Fellows. I would say it was fine but lower in both quality and ‘fanciness’ than food typically provided at, say, EA events in the UK. (Though it’s possible it was more expensive because many things in the Bahamas that are targeted at tourists are overpriced.)
I’m fairly sure that eating caviar is not a typical activity among EAs working from the Bahamas.
I doubt that traveling business class is common among EAs visiting the Bahamas. I didn’t. (I do think that in some cases the cost and increased climate impact of flying business class can be well justified by adding several counterfactual work hours.)
I don’t know what a 500-thread Egyptian cotton towel is, but the towels I saw in the Bahamas looked fairly normal to me.
As far as I can tell from googling, the hotel in which most FTX EA Fellows stayed was not a five-star hotel.
I’m aware that some of your statements might have been intended as satirical, but I think to readers the line between satire and implied factual claims will at the very least be ambiguous, which seems like a recipe for misinforming readers.
I also have no idea what you’re referring to when mentioning an “UK Effective Altruism charity that [...] withheld £7million+ in reserves”. I don’t know whether or not this is accurate, but I think it’s bad practice to make incriminating claims without providing information that is sufficiently specific for readers to be able to form their own views on the matter.
(I generally support thoughtful public discussion of the issue raised by the OP, and think it made several good points, though I don’t necessarily agree with everything.)
I think it depends on the baseline. If I compare it to staying in a hostel like I would do when backpacking or a trip with friends, then it was definitely fancy. If I compare it to the hotel that a mid-sized German consulting firm used for a recruiting event I attended about five years ago, then I would say it was overall less fancy (though it depends on the criteria – e.g., in the Bahamas I think the rooms were relatively big while everything else [food, ‘fanciness’ as opposed to size of the rooms, etc.] was less fancy).
Huh. My impression is that the hotel I stayed at in my Google offsite (c.2019) was overall less fancy. The rooms were similarly nice but my Google offsite had 2 people to a room, and worse views.
(My understanding is that there were logistics reasons that made it hard for FTX to host a large contingent of people in a place that’s less fancy, but more cheaply. And this isn’t a big priority for them compared to making and donating billions of dollars. And of course Google has built up way more ops capacity over the decades to save resources while still delivering a good experience)
I guess Google is more reasonable than German consulting firms :)
FWIW, my sense is that for business trips that last several weeks it is uncommon for companies to host several people in one hotel room, but I only have few data points on this, and maybe there is a US-Europe difference here.
(It is worth noting that one of my data points is about a part of the German federal bureaucracy which otherwise has fairly strict regulation regarding travel/accommodation expenses. There is literally a federal law about this, which may also be an interesting baseline more generally. It is notable that it allows first-class train rides for trips exceeding two hours, and while economy-class flights are mandated as default it does allow business class flights when there are specific “work-related reasons” for them.)
(To be clear, I do think that “running a fellowship in the Bahamas predictably leads to incurring higher costs for accommodation than you would in a place with a larger supply” is a fair point, and I would be sad if all EA events worldwide used that level of fanciness in accommodation for participants while ignoring available alternatives that may be cheaper without a commensurate loss in productivity/impact.
I just don’t think it’s a decisive argument against the Bahamas fellowship having been a good idea. Like I expect it’s among the top 5–10 but very likely not the top 1–3 considerations one would need to look at whether the Bahamas fellowship was overall worth it.
I expect the two of us are roughly on the same page about this.)
I just don’t think it’s a decisive argument against the Bahamas fellowship having been a good idea. Like I expect it’s among the top 5–10 but very likely not the top 1–3 considerations one would need to look at whether the Bahamas fellowship was overall worth it.
I expect the two of us are roughly on the same page about this.)
Yeah I agree with this. To be more specific, I think the biggest reasons the high costs/fanciness can be bad are as the OP says optics and epistemics (or more descriptively, “losing the spartan character of earlier EA is bad for our soul or something”), though the opportunity cost of the money is also non-trivial in absolute terms.
I regret damaging my argument by perhaps unrecognisable satire. And I meant to [satirically] allege 500 thread count sheets, not towels. Whether or not the flights were business class it’s that vs Zoom. And look, the hotel had a pool, yes? And fine dining means different things to different people, but the cost of the meals were likely about the same as the Michelin starred restaurant near me which I must start to frequent so I can think better how to be effectively altruistic. If that is satire I hope it’s hard hitting.
I am sorry to improperly or ambiguously identify the “charity”. It’s the Centre for Effective Altruism [UK 1149828]. I’ve amended my post to make that clear.
Thank you, I appreciate the clarification (and therefore upvoted your most recent comment).
(And yes, I think the hotel had a pool.)
Regarding the meals, I’m not sure if I ever ate in a Michelin-starred restaurant, but I looked up the prices at a Michelin-starred restaurant near Oxford (where I live), and it seems like a main course there is about twice as expensive as one in the restaurant attached to the relevant Bahamas hotel. (If I remember correctly, I had about two meals in that restaurant over the course of ~3 weeks. The other meals were catered office food of in my view lower ‘fanciness’ than what you get at the main EA office in Oxford or PlennyBars that I had brought from home.)
More broadly, it seems like we have pretty strong empirical and perhaps also value-based disagreements about when spending money can increase future impact sufficiently to be worth it.
I was not criticising any one particular event or any one person’s conduct. Indeed, I gave two examples of sponsorhip/bribe I would not accept.
One was a Bahamas Business-Class 5-star Fine Dining. I’m amazed that something like this actually occurs, the repudiation of this example of mine is that “it wasn’t quite as nice as that” but it was pretty damn fine.
The second example was the Bracknell 2nd-Class rail 2*star hotel pizza restaurant. Accepting a charity’s money for that is also unacceptable. It does seem the real Bahamas event which actually happened was almost as expensive as I posited (within a factor of 2, anyway) and much much more expensive (10 times?) than my Bracknell example, but such comparison is not made by anyone here other than me.
Michelin stars are awarded for fine dining, not on menu pricing. There are plenty of hotels which are nowhere near 5-star standard with restaurant prices exceeding those of my local Michelin starred restaurant. The point being made is that eating at such a place does not improve the effectiveness of one’s altruism. Indeed, it must have a negative impact, because mid-priced or more expensive that’s a charity’s money your accepting for fois gras instead of that money being spent on mosquito nets.
Such is the tone here that I expect the mention of fois gras to be the one that provokes response rather than the similarly forced feeding of the similarly willing [the geese volunteer too] EA bribe takers.
That my comments are voted down so heavily here shows maybe the ineptitude and rudeness of my writings, or it shows something else. Too many people want to be on this gravy train and are not being self-critical.
For what it’s worth, as someone that donates most of his income and is really uncomfortable around free-spending and fancy events, I think there are indeed some important concerns around this topic. I am grateful for parts of your comments.
But your focus on factually wrong examples, and even more so the very judgemental/aggressive wording in this comment (the worst one yet), is really hurting the argument and making it impossible to have a conversation :(
Could you try to tone it down and make it less emotionally charged, focusing more on your main point than on insults and arguments about Michelin-starred restaurants that no one is dining at?
I was right[, almost]. The issue becomes not the misuse of funds, it’s me saying [not “fois gras” but] “Michelin”.
Again, the examples were never meant to be read as what actually occurred any one event. But that my deliberately hyperbolic example is identified so very closely with a real actual event just makes my point even more strongly. OK, I got the colour of the wallpaper wrong, sorry, but there really was an all expenses paid luxury jolly to the Bahamas. It’s a scandal.
I note no one complains about the other factually wrong (because it too was made up) example about the much much cheaper 2-star plus pizza Bracknell event.
Again: I said there were two styles of event I would not be bribed to attend. Not only would I not attend the fine dining etc etc event, I would not attend the pizza etc etc one either. The response: “I wouldn’t call the [actual] Bahamas event fine dining.” “The towels weren’t unusually fine.” “I didn’t travel Business Class.”
Frankly it seems I don’t know anywhere near the extent of all this abuse of funds. This is just the tip of the iceberg. This is what happens to money you (if the cap fits etc) solicit from me.
Some people are uncomfortable being associated in any way with this. What is the behaviour modification required? Mine! How about a more general expression of discomfort from more people about this so-called effective so-called altruism? Silence is acquiescence.
So it’s absolutely not money that was solicited from donors, or that someone donated thinking it would go to other causes.
I understand your shock and rage if you thought it was money donated for malaria bednets being misused, but that’s definitely not the case. The negative/adversarial language definitely did not help clearing this earlier.
I agree with basically all you are saying here, Max, and thanks a lot for the thoughtful and detailed response to a not very constructive comment.
Just to clarify that it seems the claim that psb777 made on a “UK Effective Altruism charity that [...] withheld £7million+ in reserves” seems to be factually correct. This is likely CEA and looking at their public accounts they definitively have something like that (not sure where the exact 7mn figure comes from) in their unrestricted reserves funds.
A reserve fund like this is critical for operating any entity. Without it, you can’t really hire or make agreements or even perform basic planning responsibly.
It’s unfair, wild really, that this would be used rhetorically in the way it was.
The extra £7million+ retained is about half of the Centre for Effective Altruism’s incoming funds in the year ending mid-2020. I’ve run a commercial concern with a similar staff size and with far less income, and with practically zero on-going reserves, at least in comparison. “A reserve fund like this is” NOT “critical for operating any entity.” At the level of ongoing fixed expense, salaries and rental, that is 4 years existence guaranteed from these new reserves even if income was to become zero, and all staff retained.
Sitting on funds of this magnitude for the reasons stated in the annual report is incorrect behaviour. People are dying. Such comment is neither “unfair” nor [solely] “rhetorical” . The whole damned point of donations is that the funds taken must be used constructively, not retained for no other reason than to maintain the “charity” should funding dry up. Lack of funding should be the reason to fold, to recognise one has failed, not reason to use one’s reserves! Let me indulge in “unfair” rhetoric again, I only wish I could do it better: People are dying while these reserves are being sat on.
A non-profit does not have the same cash flow or sources of income and this may require a different size reserve fund.
Not trying to “trip you up”, but you said your org had “far less income”—surely you know that reserve size is inherently correlated with income.
Under the current circumstances, many EA organizations are larger in scope (and I think more important) than they appear. For CEA, for example, there’s over 100 community groups to operationally/financially support! This growth is recent.
There’s probably more going on too that can’t easily be written about—CEA recently returned ~$50M (in expected? cashflow) to a major funder.
All this produces a soup on the books. Accounting is important and powerful but to amateurs or prejudice, I think it’s easy to produce noise.
The truth is that it’s hard to determine whether you are correct or not.
However, in what I think is a neutral statement, that is neither friendly nor unfriendly to you: based on your other comments, I’m skeptical of your judgement and attitude.
Maybe what is motivating you is principled negatives views on CEA’s activities. If that is the case, maybe it might work better to make that case directly (maybe with a new throwaway).
P.S : Uh, “patient Longtermism” might be a little upsetting to you.
CEA recently returned ~$50M (in expected? cashflow) to a major funder.
Is there anything publicly accessible about this? I’m really interested in the current funding landscape, and how that would impact the marginal value of donations in vs outside of EA
I’m really interested in the current funding landscape, and how that would impact the marginal value of donations in vs outside of EA
So first of all, it’s good to tap the brakes here on my comments I’m making in this thread. It’s not clear I’m remotely informed or know anything about EA, much less informed about CEA.
For all we know, I got rejected from the recent EAG and there’s pictures of me on the security booth to make sure I didn’t sneak in.
Is there anything publicly accessible about this?
So, yes! I think this is a great question. I’m referring to this:
This post describes a CEA university program that was discontinued.
So below is my guess of the context or background of what happened:
This $50M program was one specific (and promising) instance of major effort on college campuses that would have brought on generations of new EA leaders, future donors, who would go to into altruism instead of say, Wall Street or corporate.
This is a larger program and in a natural way, requires a discrete commitment of money, up to $50M in one vision or phase. (Note that this money wasn’t necessarily transferred, but it seems that the dependencies of this or similar programs could change in reserve fund levels, which is why I mentioned it).
So what happened? The involved CEA team is really talented and working on a huge number of projects. At the same time, outside of CEA, at the moment, there happens to be talented EAs working on related projects. So at this particular time, for this particular program, the CEA staff decided that other people in EA could do this right now.
So they gave back the money for this program, voluntarily, instead of just using it to get more headcount, make themselves look bigger or something.
I think that, no matter what the actual need of funds that CEA has, this act of giving back the money and deciding others can do the program it is exactly what you want to see.
It’s unclear if this indicates anything about CEA’s funding or any funding situation in EA—but seems to suggest good governance and use of money at CEA.
I think that, no matter what the actual need of funds that CEA has, this act of giving back the money and deciding others can do the program it is exactly what you want to see.
Strongly agree!
It’s not clear I’m remotely informed or know anything about EA, much less informed about CEA.
You clearly know much more than I do. Even if things were more transparent it would still be hard to keep up with everything, so thank you for sharing your perspective and what you happen to know!
Retaining funds without charitable intent [for survival in the case of potential unknown reputational damage, for the potential loss of a donor] where those funds are beyond the reserves actually necessary is what I criticised about the UK charity CEA. That the related but separately run and separately managed USA CEA seems not to do that is something I too would applaud.
I don’t know what the correct level would be other than the current level feels very wrong. They themselves give summary reasons for the very high reserves which seem unacceptable.
(1) The possible but unknown reputational damage they can’t really expect, or if they do so expect they ought not to build a fighting fund from my (potential*) charitable donations. Or if they’re expecting reputational damage a better strategy would be to change their behaviour.
(2) The potential loss of a big donor. When they lose a big donor that is the time to cut back on their funding of projects and their staff costs. High paid workers (and they are, this organisation) should not be protecting from losing their jobs in a downturn more than some commercial enterprise workers would be. Instead they take my (potential*) donations and set them aside for this purpose.
You’ll all be aware of the matching funds concept in charitable giving. If I give £10 then someone else guarantees to match this. Effectively my altruism is DOUBLED. This is a great concept and has encouraged me to give in the past. Lets see what’s happening here. The UK CEA takes half of it’s donations and sits on it. If I gave £10 to the UK CEA in 2020 only £5 is used. We’re not even talking about the necessary admin and infrastructure costs here. Effectively my altruism is HALVED.
___ (*) Why am I here? Thru hard work and luck I find myself with surplus assets and I thought I would give some of it away now, and some later. I wanted to do so constructively and was so pleased to find the EA crowd! I had already typed the (UK) CEA’s name and charity number into my draft will before I decided to properly check the hype for myself. I think I might be better off donating to OXFAM, their failings are distressing but the failings are human, they are not policy, and they’re embarrassed by them.
I’m uncomfortable criticising so anonymously. I’ve tried to find out how properly to identify myself here. I cannot edit my psb777 id and there seems to be nowhere to type in my name. I’ll stick it in the bio notes. Meanwhile I’m Paul Beardsell if you’re looking for whom to avoid.
GiveWell’s Maximum Impact Fund https://www.givewell.org/maximum-impact-fund is probably what you were looking for in the first place, it distributes 100% of the money to projects with the highest direct impact, and its employees are funded by external funds.
As far as I understand, the CEA “mission is to build a community of students and professionals acting on the principles of effective altruism, by creating and sustaining high-quality discussion spaces”. So indeed they probably do “fancy” events (the Bahamas thing is completely unrelated, see other comment). Which is probably something you do not find as valuable as more direct work. (And I personally would agree with you, and donated to New Incentives last year).
Don’t worry about criticizing “anonymously”, your name is the first thing that shows up when you Google “psb777″ anyway. If you want an admin to edit your visible name you can ask for help by clicking in the bottom right.
But please try to be more polite, everyone here is doing their best, if you don’t like how the CEA is using their money you should donate to a recommended charity indeed. Keep in mind that Oxfam seems to have similar salaries and ~15M£ in assets so, if this is something important to you, charities like the Against Malaria Foundation could be a better choice.
Not trying to “trip you up”, but you said your org had “far less income”—surely you know that reserve size is inherently correlated with income.
I don’t feel tripped up. Surely you know (your phraseology) that massive increase in reserves can only come from massive income, and that assessing the size of a necessary reserve has little to do with income but lots to do with fixed outgoings. I’m asserting the reserves are being kept for reasons stated in their own report which are not justifiable by a charity. The reserves are excessive. My point was to counter the false assertion above that such degree of reserves is necessary by any organisation.
A reserve fund like this [of this size relative to expenditure] is critical for operating any entity.
Not critical. Not even usual. Not any entity. Not at 4+ years fixed operating expenses even if no further income ever arose and all staff were retained.
What motivates me is a horror of people making and accepting large expenses from charitable funds. That people accept large salaries to work in the charitable sector because perhaps they could earn as much elsewhere is a different question, it’s the expenses entertainment travel accommodation paid for and accepted instead of the mosquitto nets etc which is very distasteful.
The CEA was merely a prominent example of charitable funds being retained for non-charitable purposes. But I may take up your suggestion in that regard, thanks.
But your headline point, that I seemingly don’t understand “patient longtermism” is I think unwarranted. Two major reasons given by the CEA for the retention of massive reserves are (1) survival in the case of reputational damage and (2) the loss of a major donor.
Neither of these are good examples of “patient longtermism”. They’re bad examples.
What motivates me is a horror of people making and accepting large expenses from charitable funds. That people accept large salaries to work in the charitable sector because perhaps they could earn as much elsewhere is a different question, it’s the expenses entertainment travel accommodation paid for and accepted instead of the mosquitto nets etc which is very distasteful.
I’m not sure I understand this position. Money is fungible. If you think it’s morally acceptable for EA charities to offer high salaries so people take less of a paycut to work in them, then it should also be acceptable for EA charities to offer other perks (directly financial or otherwise) to make their organizations more appealing to work for. (Alternatively, perhaps neither is morally acceptable). At any rate, I’m not sure why catered meals or flights is categorically different from high salaries here, and in the case of in-office meals and flights there’s at least a plausible business justification for them.
I also think this comment from someone else with experience in the (non-EA) charitable sector is illuminating:
I’ve spent time in the non-EA nonprofit sector, and the “standard critical story” there is one of suppressed anger among the workers. To be clear, this “standard critical story” is not always fair, accurate, or applicable. By and large, I also think that, when it is applicable, most of the people involved are not deliberately trying to play into this dynamic. It’s just that, when people are making criticisms, this is often the story I’ve heard them tell, or seen for myself.
It goes something like this:
[Non-EA] charities are also primarily funded by millionaires and billionaires. But they’re also run by independently wealthy people, who do it for the PR or for the fuzzies. They underpay, overwork, and ignore the ideas of their staff. They’re burnout factories.
Any attempts to “measure the impact” of the charity are subverted by carelessness and the undirected dance of incentives to improve the optics of their organization to keep the donations flowing. Lots of attention on gaming the stats, managing appearances, and sweeping failures under the rug.
Missions are thematic, and there’s lots of “we believe in the power of...”-type storytelling motivating the work. Sometimes, the storytelling is explicitely labeled as such, serving to justify charities that are secular, yet ultimately faith-based.
Part of the core EA thesis is that we want to have a different relationship with money and labor: pay for impact, avoid burnout, money is good, measure what you’re doing, trust the argument and evidence rather than the optics. I expect that anybody reading this comment is very familiar with this thesis.
It’s not a thesis that’s optimized for optics or for warm fuzzies. So it should not be surprising that it’s easy to make it look bad, or that it provokes anxiety.
This is unfortunate, though, because appearances and bad feelings are heuristics we rely on to avoid getting sucked into bad situations.
I don’t understand why this comment is so heavily downvoted: While the tone of the comment might not be ideal and I don’t agree with many elements of the argument and I also don’t agree with the (implied) conclusion, I think it makes a generally valid point of criticism (that I assume lots of other outside people would share) that the EA community should acknowledge and take seriously rather than ignore.
As a first poster here I note the posting advice to be kind. I try and perhaps I fail. I think that the article to which this is a comment is too kind to everyone involved.
There is a fundamental underlying moral and ethical problem here which has nothing specifically to do with EA. Can one do definite small harm for potential big benefit? Can one be a little evil to perhaps be more good?
There are numerous philosophers (and religions) who’ve thought deeply about this question and concluded you cannot do so. I think generally one should be most reluctant to do this trade off. I think much more often than not one’s good intention does not have a good outcome and if the good intention involves embracing anything questionable then it often happens that intention is not followed thru or the result is not good but you’re left with the consequences of the bad prerequisites to your action.
Consequentialism can be very bad. The idea that one can let someone suffer today to perhaps prevent two suffering in years to come is arrogant. How does one know one will be successful? How can one step over the sick person today? Yet I read in the latest accounts of the Centre for Effective Altruism UK charity that it withheld £7million+ in reserves justified in great part (read it for yourself) by the possibility of reputational damage or the possible loss of a donor! How could that happen? By a journalist reading and reporting this comment, perhaps. Instead that £7million should be spent on today’s problems, it shouldn’t be saved for free beer for (and the very high salaries of) “effective” “altruists” should the funding dry up because the donors come to think like me. https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/5026843
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I want to place the following on record so that temptation is removed from me and so that perhaps some others are similarly emboldened. I will not accept the 5* hotel and fine dining Bahamas week with business class flights and expenses to attend some supposedly “effective” “altruism” event. Neither will I accept the more local Bracknell 2* weekend with pizza and 2nd class rail refund.
(I found myself at a London event recently which had an EA component. I made sure to pay for my “free” beer.)
I’m unlikely to attend such event because (1) I will feel personally sullied by it all and despite that might out of politeness not speak out, and (2) you won’t invite me because maybe I might eschew politeness and speak out, and (3) there is much better use for the money.
If anyone accepts such a Bahamas bribe then they really are allowing themselves and others to smugly not be saving eyesight and callously not be buying malaria nets while they stuff themselves with caviar and snooze poolside with 500 thread Egyptian cotton towels. And that’s true for Bracknell burgers too, it’s just a question of degree.
I’m not saying one must wear sackcloth and eat drool. There really is a difference between giving oneself a treat, and doing so pretending one is doing good. When honesty with oneself is compromised everything else soon follows. When one is living comfortably enough accepting food and drink and accommodation from charitable funds is just wrong.
I don’t mean to be rude in the common sense, but I do mean to be rude in the sense of being startlingly abrupt. I am being judgemental. But the behaviour I criticise here evidently needs an emperor’s new clothes approach. Whether I’m pure enough to deliver it is a different matter. Doubtless this has been said already by others better than me, and better than I do.
(Comment in personal capacity only.)
I support people sharing their unfiltered reactions to issues, and think this is particularly valuable on a contentious topic like this one. Critical reactions are likely undersupplied, and so I especially value hearing about those.
However, I strong-downvoted your comment because I think it is apt to misleading readers by making statement that can be construed as descriptions of actual EA programs (such as the FTX EA Fellowships on the Bahamas) despite being substantively inaccurate. For instance:
I don’t think that “fine dining” is an appropriate description for the food options covered for the FTX EA Fellows. I would say it was fine but lower in both quality and ‘fanciness’ than food typically provided at, say, EA events in the UK. (Though it’s possible it was more expensive because many things in the Bahamas that are targeted at tourists are overpriced.)
I’m fairly sure that eating caviar is not a typical activity among EAs working from the Bahamas.
I doubt that traveling business class is common among EAs visiting the Bahamas. I didn’t. (I do think that in some cases the cost and increased climate impact of flying business class can be well justified by adding several counterfactual work hours.)
I don’t know what a 500-thread Egyptian cotton towel is, but the towels I saw in the Bahamas looked fairly normal to me.
As far as I can tell from googling, the hotel in which most FTX EA Fellows stayed was not a five-star hotel.
I’m aware that some of your statements might have been intended as satirical, but I think to readers the line between satire and implied factual claims will at the very least be ambiguous, which seems like a recipe for misinforming readers.
I also have no idea what you’re referring to when mentioning an “UK Effective Altruism charity that [...] withheld £7million+ in reserves”. I don’t know whether or not this is accurate, but I think it’s bad practice to make incriminating claims without providing information that is sufficiently specific for readers to be able to form their own views on the matter.
(I generally support thoughtful public discussion of the issue raised by the OP, and think it made several good points, though I don’t necessarily agree with everything.)
This may well be literally true, but it is unusually fancy still (I also tried Googling it and couldn’t figure out how many stars it has).
I think it depends on the baseline. If I compare it to staying in a hostel like I would do when backpacking or a trip with friends, then it was definitely fancy. If I compare it to the hotel that a mid-sized German consulting firm used for a recruiting event I attended about five years ago, then I would say it was overall less fancy (though it depends on the criteria – e.g., in the Bahamas I think the rooms were relatively big while everything else [food, ‘fanciness’ as opposed to size of the rooms, etc.] was less fancy).
Huh. My impression is that the hotel I stayed at in my Google offsite (c.2019) was overall less fancy. The rooms were similarly nice but my Google offsite had 2 people to a room, and worse views.
(My understanding is that there were logistics reasons that made it hard for FTX to host a large contingent of people in a place that’s less fancy, but more cheaply. And this isn’t a big priority for them compared to making and donating billions of dollars. And of course Google has built up way more ops capacity over the decades to save resources while still delivering a good experience)
I guess Google is more reasonable than German consulting firms :)
FWIW, my sense is that for business trips that last several weeks it is uncommon for companies to host several people in one hotel room, but I only have few data points on this, and maybe there is a US-Europe difference here.
(It is worth noting that one of my data points is about a part of the German federal bureaucracy which otherwise has fairly strict regulation regarding travel/accommodation expenses. There is literally a federal law about this, which may also be an interesting baseline more generally. It is notable that it allows first-class train rides for trips exceeding two hours, and while economy-class flights are mandated as default it does allow business class flights when there are specific “work-related reasons” for them.)
(To be clear, I do think that “running a fellowship in the Bahamas predictably leads to incurring higher costs for accommodation than you would in a place with a larger supply” is a fair point, and I would be sad if all EA events worldwide used that level of fanciness in accommodation for participants while ignoring available alternatives that may be cheaper without a commensurate loss in productivity/impact.
I just don’t think it’s a decisive argument against the Bahamas fellowship having been a good idea. Like I expect it’s among the top 5–10 but very likely not the top 1–3 considerations one would need to look at whether the Bahamas fellowship was overall worth it.
I expect the two of us are roughly on the same page about this.)
Yeah I agree with this. To be more specific, I think the biggest reasons the high costs/fanciness can be bad are as the OP says optics and epistemics (or more descriptively, “losing the spartan character of earlier EA is bad for our soul or something”), though the opportunity cost of the money is also non-trivial in absolute terms.
I regret damaging my argument by perhaps unrecognisable satire. And I meant to [satirically] allege 500 thread count sheets, not towels. Whether or not the flights were business class it’s that vs Zoom. And look, the hotel had a pool, yes? And fine dining means different things to different people, but the cost of the meals were likely about the same as the Michelin starred restaurant near me which I must start to frequent so I can think better how to be effectively altruistic. If that is satire I hope it’s hard hitting.
I am sorry to improperly or ambiguously identify the “charity”. It’s the Centre for Effective Altruism [UK 1149828]. I’ve amended my post to make that clear.
Thank you, I appreciate the clarification (and therefore upvoted your most recent comment).
(And yes, I think the hotel had a pool.)
Regarding the meals, I’m not sure if I ever ate in a Michelin-starred restaurant, but I looked up the prices at a Michelin-starred restaurant near Oxford (where I live), and it seems like a main course there is about twice as expensive as one in the restaurant attached to the relevant Bahamas hotel. (If I remember correctly, I had about two meals in that restaurant over the course of ~3 weeks. The other meals were catered office food of in my view lower ‘fanciness’ than what you get at the main EA office in Oxford or PlennyBars that I had brought from home.)
More broadly, it seems like we have pretty strong empirical and perhaps also value-based disagreements about when spending money can increase future impact sufficiently to be worth it.
I was not criticising any one particular event or any one person’s conduct. Indeed, I gave two examples of sponsorhip/bribe I would not accept.
One was a Bahamas Business-Class 5-star Fine Dining. I’m amazed that something like this actually occurs, the repudiation of this example of mine is that “it wasn’t quite as nice as that” but it was pretty damn fine.
The second example was the Bracknell 2nd-Class rail 2*star hotel pizza restaurant. Accepting a charity’s money for that is also unacceptable. It does seem the real Bahamas event which actually happened was almost as expensive as I posited (within a factor of 2, anyway) and much much more expensive (10 times?) than my Bracknell example, but such comparison is not made by anyone here other than me.
Michelin stars are awarded for fine dining, not on menu pricing. There are plenty of hotels which are nowhere near 5-star standard with restaurant prices exceeding those of my local Michelin starred restaurant. The point being made is that eating at such a place does not improve the effectiveness of one’s altruism. Indeed, it must have a negative impact, because mid-priced or more expensive that’s a charity’s money your accepting for fois gras instead of that money being spent on mosquito nets.
Such is the tone here that I expect the mention of fois gras to be the one that provokes response rather than the similarly forced feeding of the similarly willing [the geese volunteer too] EA bribe takers.
That my comments are voted down so heavily here shows maybe the ineptitude and rudeness of my writings, or it shows something else. Too many people want to be on this gravy train and are not being self-critical.
For what it’s worth, as someone that donates most of his income and is really uncomfortable around free-spending and fancy events, I think there are indeed some important concerns around this topic. I am grateful for parts of your comments.
But your focus on factually wrong examples, and even more so the very judgemental/aggressive wording in this comment (the worst one yet), is really hurting the argument and making it impossible to have a conversation :(
Could you try to tone it down and make it less emotionally charged, focusing more on your main point than on insults and arguments about Michelin-starred restaurants that no one is dining at?
I was right[, almost]. The issue becomes not the misuse of funds, it’s me saying [not “fois gras” but] “Michelin”.
Again, the examples were never meant to be read as what actually occurred any one event. But that my deliberately hyperbolic example is identified so very closely with a real actual event just makes my point even more strongly. OK, I got the colour of the wallpaper wrong, sorry, but there really was an all expenses paid luxury jolly to the Bahamas. It’s a scandal.
I note no one complains about the other factually wrong (because it too was made up) example about the much much cheaper 2-star plus pizza Bracknell event.
Again: I said there were two styles of event I would not be bribed to attend. Not only would I not attend the fine dining etc etc event, I would not attend the pizza etc etc one either. The response: “I wouldn’t call the [actual] Bahamas event fine dining.” “The towels weren’t unusually fine.” “I didn’t travel Business Class.”
Frankly it seems I don’t know anywhere near the extent of all this abuse of funds. This is just the tip of the iceberg. This is what happens to money you (if the cap fits etc) solicit from me.
Some people are uncomfortable being associated in any way with this. What is the behaviour modification required? Mine! How about a more general expression of discomfort from more people about this so-called effective so-called altruism? Silence is acquiescence.
I think there was an unfortunate misunderstanding. There was indeed an event in the Bahamas that had already been somewhat criticized, and people assumed you were referring to it.
I don’t know the details, but it was funded by the Bahamas billionaire Sam_Bankman-Fried FTX foundation, https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sdjcH7KAxgB328RAb/ftx-ea-fellowships
So it’s absolutely not money that was solicited from donors, or that someone donated thinking it would go to other causes.
I understand your shock and rage if you thought it was money donated for malaria bednets being misused, but that’s definitely not the case. The negative/adversarial language definitely did not help clearing this earlier.
Am I reading the situation correctly?
I agree with basically all you are saying here, Max, and thanks a lot for the thoughtful and detailed response to a not very constructive comment.
Just to clarify that it seems the claim that psb777 made on a “UK Effective Altruism charity that [...] withheld £7million+ in reserves” seems to be factually correct. This is likely CEA and looking at their public accounts they definitively have something like that (not sure where the exact 7mn figure comes from) in their unrestricted reserves funds.
A reserve fund like this is critical for operating any entity. Without it, you can’t really hire or make agreements or even perform basic planning responsibly.
It’s unfair, wild really, that this would be used rhetorically in the way it was.
The extra £7million+ retained is about half of the Centre for Effective Altruism’s incoming funds in the year ending mid-2020. I’ve run a commercial concern with a similar staff size and with far less income, and with practically zero on-going reserves, at least in comparison. “A reserve fund like this is” NOT “critical for operating any entity.” At the level of ongoing fixed expense, salaries and rental, that is 4 years existence guaranteed from these new reserves even if income was to become zero, and all staff retained.
Sitting on funds of this magnitude for the reasons stated in the annual report is incorrect behaviour. People are dying. Such comment is neither “unfair” nor [solely] “rhetorical” . The whole damned point of donations is that the funds taken must be used constructively, not retained for no other reason than to maintain the “charity” should funding dry up. Lack of funding should be the reason to fold, to recognise one has failed, not reason to use one’s reserves! Let me indulge in “unfair” rhetoric again, I only wish I could do it better: People are dying while these reserves are being sat on.
Some considerations:
A non-profit does not have the same cash flow or sources of income and this may require a different size reserve fund.
Not trying to “trip you up”, but you said your org had “far less income”—surely you know that reserve size is inherently correlated with income.
Under the current circumstances, many EA organizations are larger in scope (and I think more important) than they appear. For CEA, for example, there’s over 100 community groups to operationally/financially support! This growth is recent.
There’s probably more going on too that can’t easily be written about—CEA recently returned ~$50M (in expected? cashflow) to a major funder.
All this produces a soup on the books. Accounting is important and powerful but to amateurs or prejudice, I think it’s easy to produce noise.
The truth is that it’s hard to determine whether you are correct or not.
However, in what I think is a neutral statement, that is neither friendly nor unfriendly to you: based on your other comments, I’m skeptical of your judgement and attitude.
Maybe what is motivating you is principled negatives views on CEA’s activities. If that is the case, maybe it might work better to make that case directly (maybe with a new throwaway).
P.S : Uh, “patient Longtermism” might be a little upsetting to you.
Is there anything publicly accessible about this? I’m really interested in the current funding landscape, and how that would impact the marginal value of donations in vs outside of EA
So first of all, it’s good to tap the brakes here on my comments I’m making in this thread. It’s not clear I’m remotely informed or know anything about EA, much less informed about CEA.
For all we know, I got rejected from the recent EAG and there’s pictures of me on the security booth to make sure I didn’t sneak in.
So, yes! I think this is a great question. I’m referring to this:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xTWhXX9HJfKmvpQZi/cea-is-discontinuing-its-focus-university-programming
This post describes a CEA university program that was discontinued.
So below is my guess of the context or background of what happened:
This $50M program was one specific (and promising) instance of major effort on college campuses that would have brought on generations of new EA leaders, future donors, who would go to into altruism instead of say, Wall Street or corporate.
This is a larger program and in a natural way, requires a discrete commitment of money, up to $50M in one vision or phase. (Note that this money wasn’t necessarily transferred, but it seems that the dependencies of this or similar programs could change in reserve fund levels, which is why I mentioned it).
So what happened? The involved CEA team is really talented and working on a huge number of projects. At the same time, outside of CEA, at the moment, there happens to be talented EAs working on related projects. So at this particular time, for this particular program, the CEA staff decided that other people in EA could do this right now.
So they gave back the money for this program, voluntarily, instead of just using it to get more headcount, make themselves look bigger or something.
I think that, no matter what the actual need of funds that CEA has, this act of giving back the money and deciding others can do the program it is exactly what you want to see.
It’s unclear if this indicates anything about CEA’s funding or any funding situation in EA—but seems to suggest good governance and use of money at CEA.
Thanks!
Strongly agree!
You clearly know much more than I do. Even if things were more transparent it would still be hard to keep up with everything, so thank you for sharing your perspective and what you happen to know!
Retaining funds without charitable intent [for survival in the case of potential unknown reputational damage, for the potential loss of a donor] where those funds are beyond the reserves actually necessary is what I criticised about the UK charity CEA. That the related but separately run and separately managed USA CEA seems not to do that is something I too would applaud.
What amount of runway would you agree is justifiable?
I assume one year would be ok, at that scale?
I don’t know what the correct level would be other than the current level feels very wrong. They themselves give summary reasons for the very high reserves which seem unacceptable.
(1) The possible but unknown reputational damage they can’t really expect, or if they do so expect they ought not to build a fighting fund from my (potential*) charitable donations. Or if they’re expecting reputational damage a better strategy would be to change their behaviour.
(2) The potential loss of a big donor. When they lose a big donor that is the time to cut back on their funding of projects and their staff costs. High paid workers (and they are, this organisation) should not be protecting from losing their jobs in a downturn more than some commercial enterprise workers would be. Instead they take my (potential*) donations and set them aside for this purpose.
You’ll all be aware of the matching funds concept in charitable giving. If I give £10 then someone else guarantees to match this. Effectively my altruism is DOUBLED. This is a great concept and has encouraged me to give in the past. Lets see what’s happening here. The UK CEA takes half of it’s donations and sits on it. If I gave £10 to the UK CEA in 2020 only £5 is used. We’re not even talking about the necessary admin and infrastructure costs here. Effectively my altruism is HALVED.
___
(*) Why am I here? Thru hard work and luck I find myself with surplus assets and I thought I would give some of it away now, and some later. I wanted to do so constructively and was so pleased to find the EA crowd! I had already typed the (UK) CEA’s name and charity number into my draft will before I decided to properly check the hype for myself. I think I might be better off donating to OXFAM, their failings are distressing but the failings are human, they are not policy, and they’re embarrassed by them.
I’m uncomfortable criticising so anonymously. I’ve tried to find out how properly to identify myself here. I cannot edit my psb777 id and there seems to be nowhere to type in my name. I’ll stick it in the bio notes. Meanwhile I’m Paul Beardsell if you’re looking for whom to avoid.
I agree that based on what you’re posting so far, there are definitely better choices for you than UK CEA. Here are two lists by EA related projects:
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/best-charities-to-donate-to-2022/#donate-to-reputable-and-effective-charities
https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/best-charities/ (this one includes Oxfam!)
There is a lot of diversity of opinions in the EA movement on what’s exactly best to donate to, depending on each individual’s unique values.
GiveWell’s Maximum Impact Fund https://www.givewell.org/maximum-impact-fund is probably what you were looking for in the first place, it distributes 100% of the money to projects with the highest direct impact, and its employees are funded by external funds.
As far as I understand, the CEA “mission is to build a community of students and professionals acting on the principles of effective altruism, by creating and sustaining high-quality discussion spaces”.
So indeed they probably do “fancy” events (the Bahamas thing is completely unrelated, see other comment).
Which is probably something you do not find as valuable as more direct work. (And I personally would agree with you, and donated to New Incentives last year).
Don’t worry about criticizing “anonymously”, your name is the first thing that shows up when you Google “psb777″ anyway. If you want an admin to edit your visible name you can ask for help by clicking in the bottom right.
But please try to be more polite, everyone here is doing their best, if you don’t like how the CEA is using their money you should donate to a recommended charity indeed. Keep in mind that Oxfam seems to have similar salaries and ~15M£ in assets so, if this is something important to you, charities like the Against Malaria Foundation could be a better choice.
I don’t feel tripped up. Surely you know (your phraseology) that massive increase in reserves can only come from massive income, and that assessing the size of a necessary reserve has little to do with income but lots to do with fixed outgoings. I’m asserting the reserves are being kept for reasons stated in their own report which are not justifiable by a charity. The reserves are excessive. My point was to counter the false assertion above that such degree of reserves is necessary by any organisation.
Not critical. Not even usual. Not any entity. Not at 4+ years fixed operating expenses even if no further income ever arose and all staff were retained.
What motivates me is a horror of people making and accepting large expenses from charitable funds. That people accept large salaries to work in the charitable sector because perhaps they could earn as much elsewhere is a different question, it’s the expenses entertainment travel accommodation paid for and accepted instead of the mosquitto nets etc which is very distasteful.
The CEA was merely a prominent example of charitable funds being retained for non-charitable purposes. But I may take up your suggestion in that regard, thanks.
But your headline point, that I seemingly don’t understand “patient longtermism” is I think unwarranted. Two major reasons given by the CEA for the retention of massive reserves are (1) survival in the case of reputational damage and (2) the loss of a major donor.
Neither of these are good examples of “patient longtermism”. They’re bad examples.
I’m not sure I understand this position. Money is fungible. If you think it’s morally acceptable for EA charities to offer high salaries so people take less of a paycut to work in them, then it should also be acceptable for EA charities to offer other perks (directly financial or otherwise) to make their organizations more appealing to work for. (Alternatively, perhaps neither is morally acceptable). At any rate, I’m not sure why catered meals or flights is categorically different from high salaries here, and in the case of in-office meals and flights there’s at least a plausible business justification for them.
I also think this comment from someone else with experience in the (non-EA) charitable sector is illuminating:
I don’t understand why this comment is so heavily downvoted: While the tone of the comment might not be ideal and I don’t agree with many elements of the argument and I also don’t agree with the (implied) conclusion, I think it makes a generally valid point of criticism (that I assume lots of other outside people would share) that the EA community should acknowledge and take seriously rather than ignore.