I appreciate the honesty. [Note the rest of this is not directed at Khorton; more to the people upvoting her comment]. But I’m disheartened by the fact that this comment has got high karma. It looks pretty bad from an outside perspective that such selfish use of a windfall is celebrated by effective altruists. And also from an inside perspective—it makes me wonder how altruistic most EAs actually are. I mean, I hope most of us would at least give the standard GWWC 10% away (and maybe that is implicit, but it isn’t to an outsider reading this—and a lot of outsiders probably are reading this given the attention that the FTX Future Fund is getting).
Where are the comments saying “I’d fund X”, ”..start Y”, ”..do independent research on Z”!? Maybe it’s just that no one is taking this seriously—and I get it, it was meant partly as an amusing play on the crypto airdrop phenomenon—but it’s still a bit sad to see such cynicism around altruism being promoted on the EA Forum.
If EAs can’t be expected to do EA things with large unexpected windfalls without there being strings attached, then I question the integrity of the movement.
You might argue that EA is no longer funding constrained (so therefore it’s fine to be selfish), but funding saturation is not evenly distributed.
Khorton buying a nice house and meeting her GWWC pledge seem perfectly compatible, and suggesting that her planning to do this casts significant doubt on the integrity of the movement seems both over the top and unkind, and I don’t think the ‘I’m directing my complaining at upvoters not khorton’ does much to mitigate that.
For the record, I’m not saying that “house + GWWC pledge” is lacking in integrity, I’m saying that “house” alone is (for an EA) (and that’s what it looks like to an outsider who won’t know about Khorton taking the GWWC pledge).
I doubt the people who upvoted this comment are encouraging me (although maybe they are!). I think it’s more likely that they think it was a valuable piece of information.
I guess I’m reading more into it. To me it looks something like: “Haha, Greg is so naive to think that rank and file EAs can be trusted to do good things if we give them free money, no strings attached. See, this is the kind of thing we should expect.” Possibly with the additional: “And why not? EA is no longer funding constrained, and there isn’t much that non-expert, small-to-medium donors can do with money now” [both quotes would come with more courteous, careful phrasing, and caveats, in real life of course. I’ve written it how I have because I’m somewhat emotionally invested; my apologies.].
And outsiders looking on might be thinking “See, these so-called ‘effective altruists’ are no different than the rest of us when it really comes down to it. The most upvoted comment on a thread about an airdrop is one about spending the cash on a house!”
I appreciate the honesty. [Note the rest of this is not directed at Khorton; more to the people upvoting her comment]. But I’m disheartened by the fact that this comment has got high karma. It looks pretty bad from an outside perspective that such selfish use of a windfall is celebrated by effective altruists. And also from an inside perspective—it makes me wonder how altruistic most EAs actually are. I mean, I hope most of us would at least give the standard GWWC 10% away (and maybe that is implicit, but it isn’t to an outsider reading this—and a lot of outsiders probably are reading this given the attention that the FTX Future Fund is getting).
Where are the comments saying “I’d fund X”, ”..start Y”, ”..do independent research on Z”!? Maybe it’s just that no one is taking this seriously—and I get it, it was meant partly as an amusing play on the crypto airdrop phenomenon—but it’s still a bit sad to see such cynicism around altruism being promoted on the EA Forum.
If EAs can’t be expected to do EA things with large unexpected windfalls without there being strings attached, then I question the integrity of the movement.
You might argue that EA is no longer funding constrained (so therefore it’s fine to be selfish), but funding saturation is not evenly distributed.
Khorton buying a nice house and meeting her GWWC pledge seem perfectly compatible, and suggesting that her planning to do this casts significant doubt on the integrity of the movement seems both over the top and unkind, and I don’t think the ‘I’m directing my complaining at upvoters not khorton’ does much to mitigate that.
For the record, I’m not saying that “house + GWWC pledge” is lacking in integrity, I’m saying that “house” alone is (for an EA) (and that’s what it looks like to an outsider who won’t know about Khorton taking the GWWC pledge).
I doubt the people who upvoted this comment are encouraging me (although maybe they are!). I think it’s more likely that they think it was a valuable piece of information.
I guess I’m reading more into it. To me it looks something like: “Haha, Greg is so naive to think that rank and file EAs can be trusted to do good things if we give them free money, no strings attached. See, this is the kind of thing we should expect.” Possibly with the additional: “And why not? EA is no longer funding constrained, and there isn’t much that non-expert, small-to-medium donors can do with money now” [both quotes would come with more courteous, careful phrasing, and caveats, in real life of course. I’ve written it how I have because I’m somewhat emotionally invested; my apologies.].
And outsiders looking on might be thinking “See, these so-called ‘effective altruists’ are no different than the rest of us when it really comes down to it. The most upvoted comment on a thread about an airdrop is one about spending the cash on a house!”