My impression is that when a large company has a big scandal like this, a good practice is to do some investigation like you describe.
It seems safe to spend time and money just getting a really good handle on what happened, and who else might have been responsible.
I feel kind of sad that you, the author, feels worried posting this. I think that “suggesting that EA do good practiced of the business world” should be a very low bar for what we should be comfortable with.
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(Aside, On Conflicts of Interest)
I’d note that in our situation, this will be messier that if we were all one large organization. All the non-OP orgs you mentioned above are financially dependent on Open Philanthropy (especially now with FTX out of the picture), and many of their board members are dependent on OP.
I’m a board member of Rethink Priorities, and my own org is likely dependent on Open Philanthropy in the future.
All this to say, the most obvious people to lead this, are the leaders and board members at Open Philanthropy. Others could come in, but do keep in mind that many members would likely not be a position to be objective of issues around Open Philanthropy at least.
It’s like, if we were in a big company, and the CFO were have found to commit fraud—the people responsible to lead an investigation would be company board members—not really employees. Employees would have conflicts of interest. They could help out and provide evidence, but I assume their help would be limited.
I would be interested in the other main funders (maybe LongView and Jaan Tallinn) helping out. They might be the least dependent groups on OP around.
That said, I could imagine help from orgs like RP and CEA being pretty useful, but I’d probably lean more to groups without as much of an affiliation to OP.
I’m updating towards the view that there are two different tasks—first, a fact-finding exercise and second, decisions about how to respond.
It doesn’t seem appropriate to me that Open Philanthropy directly conducts the fact-finding exercise—it seems important to have an independent person(s) who are able to receive confidential feedback. It does seem appropriate to me, though, for Open Phil to commission that investigation/inquiry though.
I don’t know how EA should decide how to decide how to respond. I’m not sure that the financial dependence on OP is as much of an issue in this context, but agree it’s probably worth addressing.
Thanks for posting this!
My impression is that when a large company has a big scandal like this, a good practice is to do some investigation like you describe.
It seems safe to spend time and money just getting a really good handle on what happened, and who else might have been responsible.
I feel kind of sad that you, the author, feels worried posting this. I think that “suggesting that EA do good practiced of the business world” should be a very low bar for what we should be comfortable with.
----
(Aside, On Conflicts of Interest)
I’d note that in our situation, this will be messier that if we were all one large organization. All the non-OP orgs you mentioned above are financially dependent on Open Philanthropy (especially now with FTX out of the picture), and many of their board members are dependent on OP.
I’m a board member of Rethink Priorities, and my own org is likely dependent on Open Philanthropy in the future.
All this to say, the most obvious people to lead this, are the leaders and board members at Open Philanthropy. Others could come in, but do keep in mind that many members would likely not be a position to be objective of issues around Open Philanthropy at least.
It’s like, if we were in a big company, and the CFO were have found to commit fraud—the people responsible to lead an investigation would be company board members—not really employees. Employees would have conflicts of interest. They could help out and provide evidence, but I assume their help would be limited.
I would be interested in the other main funders (maybe LongView and Jaan Tallinn) helping out. They might be the least dependent groups on OP around.
That said, I could imagine help from orgs like RP and CEA being pretty useful, but I’d probably lean more to groups without as much of an affiliation to OP.
I’m updating towards the view that there are two different tasks—first, a fact-finding exercise and second, decisions about how to respond.
It doesn’t seem appropriate to me that Open Philanthropy directly conducts the fact-finding exercise—it seems important to have an independent person(s) who are able to receive confidential feedback. It does seem appropriate to me, though, for Open Phil to commission that investigation/inquiry though.
I don’t know how EA should decide how to decide how to respond. I’m not sure that the financial dependence on OP is as much of an issue in this context, but agree it’s probably worth addressing.