This seems fine to me—I expect that attending this is not a large fraction of most attendee’s impact on EA, and that some who didn’t want to be named would have not come if they needed to be on a public list, so barring such people seems silly (I expect there’s some people who would tolerate being named as the cost of coming too, of course). I would be happy to find some way to incentivise people being named.
And really, I don’t think it’s that important that a list of attendees be published. What do you see as the value here?
With all the scandals we’ve seen in the last few years, I think it should be very evident how important transparency is. See also my explanation from last year.
...some who didn’t want to be named would have not come if they needed to be on a public list, so barring such people seems silly...
How is it silly? It seems perfectly acceptable, and even preferable, for people to be involved in shaping EA only if they agree for their leadership to be scrutinized.
The EA movement absolutely cannot carry on with the “let’s allow people to do whatever without any hindrance, what could possibly go wrong?” approach.
How is it silly? It seems perfectly acceptable, and even preferable, for people to be involved in shaping EA only if they agree for their leadership to be scrutinized.
My argument is that barring them doesn’t stop them from shaping EA, just mildly inconveniences them, because much of the influence happens outside such conferences
With all the scandals we’ve seen in the last few years, I think it should be very evident how important transparency is
Which scandals do you believe would have been avoided with greater transparency, especially transparency of the form here (listing the names of those involved, with no further info)? I can see an argument that eg people who have complaints about bad behaviour (eg Owen’s, or SBF/Alameda’s) should make them more transparently (though that has many downsides), but that’s a very different kind of transparency.
I think in some generality scandals tend to be “because things aren’t transparent enough”, since greater transparency would typically have meant issues people would be unhappy with would have tended to get caught and responded to earlier. (My case had elements of “too transparent”, but also definitely had elements of “not transparent enough”.)
Anyway I agree that this particular type of transparency wouldn’t help in most cases. But it doesn’t seem hard to imagine cases, at least in the abstract, where it would kind of help? (e.g. imagine EA culture was pushing a particular lifestyle choice, and then it turned out the owner of the biggest manufacturer in that industry got invited to core EA events)
There’s a trade-off here, but I think some attendees who can provide valuable input wouldn’t attend if their name was shared publicly and that would make the event less valuable for the community.
That said, perhaps one thing we can do is emphasise the benefits of sharing their name (increases trust in the event/leadership, greater visibility for the community about direction/influence) when they RSVP for the event, I’ll note that for next time as an idea.
Just a reminder that I think it’s the wrong choice to allow attendees to leave their name off the published list.
This seems fine to me—I expect that attending this is not a large fraction of most attendee’s impact on EA, and that some who didn’t want to be named would have not come if they needed to be on a public list, so barring such people seems silly (I expect there’s some people who would tolerate being named as the cost of coming too, of course). I would be happy to find some way to incentivise people being named.
And really, I don’t think it’s that important that a list of attendees be published. What do you see as the value here?
With all the scandals we’ve seen in the last few years, I think it should be very evident how important transparency is. See also my explanation from last year.
How is it silly? It seems perfectly acceptable, and even preferable, for people to be involved in shaping EA only if they agree for their leadership to be scrutinized.
The EA movement absolutely cannot carry on with the “let’s allow people to do whatever without any hindrance, what could possibly go wrong?” approach.
My argument is that barring them doesn’t stop them from shaping EA, just mildly inconveniences them, because much of the influence happens outside such conferences
Which scandals do you believe would have been avoided with greater transparency, especially transparency of the form here (listing the names of those involved, with no further info)? I can see an argument that eg people who have complaints about bad behaviour (eg Owen’s, or SBF/Alameda’s) should make them more transparently (though that has many downsides), but that’s a very different kind of transparency.
I think in some generality scandals tend to be “because things aren’t transparent enough”, since greater transparency would typically have meant issues people would be unhappy with would have tended to get caught and responded to earlier. (My case had elements of “too transparent”, but also definitely had elements of “not transparent enough”.)
Anyway I agree that this particular type of transparency wouldn’t help in most cases. But it doesn’t seem hard to imagine cases, at least in the abstract, where it would kind of help? (e.g. imagine EA culture was pushing a particular lifestyle choice, and then it turned out the owner of the biggest manufacturer in that industry got invited to core EA events)
Thanks for resurfacing this take, Guy.
There’s a trade-off here, but I think some attendees who can provide valuable input wouldn’t attend if their name was shared publicly and that would make the event less valuable for the community.
That said, perhaps one thing we can do is emphasise the benefits of sharing their name (increases trust in the event/leadership, greater visibility for the community about direction/influence) when they RSVP for the event, I’ll note that for next time as an idea.