There’s an angry top-level post about evaporative cooling of group beliefs in EA that I haven’t written yet, and won’t until it would no longer be an angry one. That might mean that the best moment has passed, which will make me sad for not being strong enough to have competently written it earlier. You could describe this as my having been chilled out of the discourse, but I would instead describe it as my politely waiting until I am able and ready to explain my concerns in a collected and rational manner.
I am doing this because I care about carefully articulating what I’m worried about, because I think it’s important that I communicate it clearly. I don’t want to cause people to feel ambushed and embattled; I don’t want to draw battle lines between me and the people who agree with me on 99% of everything. I don’t want to engender offense that could fester into real and lasting animosity, in the very same people who if approached collaboratively would pull with me to solve our mutual problem out of mutual respect and love for the people who do good.
I don’t want to contribute to the internal divisions growing in EA. To the extent that it is happening, we should all prefer to nip the involution in the bud—if one has ever been on team Everyone Who Logically Tries To Do The Most Good, there’s nowhere to go but down.
I think that if I wrote an angry top-level post, it would deserve to be downvoted into oblivion, though I’m not sure it would be.
I think on the margin I’m fine with posts that will start fights being chilled. Angry infighting and polarization are poisonous to what we’re trying to do.
I barely give a gosh-guldarn about FLI or Tegmark outside of their (now reduced) capacity to reduce existential risk.
Obviously I’d rather bad things not happen to people and not happen to good people in particular, but I don’t specifically know anyone from FLI and they are a feather on the scales next to the full set of strangers who I care about.
If Tegmark or FLI was wronged in the way your comments and others imply, you are correct and justified in your beliefs. But if the apology or the current facts do not make that status clear, there’s an object level problem and it’s bad to be angry that they are wronged, or build further arguments on that belief.
I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that Tegmark and FLI was seriously wronged, but I barely care about any wrong done to them and am largely uninterested in the question of whether it was wildly disproportionate or merely sickeningly disproportionate.
I care about the consequences of what we’ve done to them.
I care about how, in order to protect themselves from this community, the FLI is
working hard to continue improving the structure and process of our grantmaking processes, including more internal and (in appropriate cases) external review. For starters, for organizations not already well-known to FLI or clearly unexceptionable (e.g. major universities), we will request and evaluate more information about the organization, its personnel, and its history before moving on to additional stages.
I care about how everyone who watched this happen will also realize the need to protect themselves from us by shuffling along and taking their own pulses. I care about the new but promising EAs who no one will take a chance on, the moonshots that won’t be funded even though they’d save lives in expectation, the good ideas with “bad optics” that won’t be acted on because of fear of backdraft on this forum. I care about the lives we can save if we don’t rush to conclusions, rush to anger, if we can give each other the benefit of the doubt for five freaking minutes and consider whether it’d make any sense whatsoever for the accusation de jour to be what it looks like.
If what happened was that Max Tegmark or FLI gets many dubious grant applications, and this particular application made it a few steps through FLI’s processes before it was caught, expo.se’s story and the negative response you object to on the EA forum would be bad, destructive and false. If this was what happened, it would absolutely deserve your disapproval and alarm.
I don’t think this isn’t true. What we know is:
An established (though hostile) newspaper gave an account with actual quotes from Tegmark that contradict his apparent actions
The bespoke funding letter, signed by Tegmark, explicitly promising funding, “approved a grant” conditional on registration of the charity
The hiring of the lawyer by Tegmark
When Tegmark edited his comment with more content, I’m surprised by how positive the reception of this edit got, which simply disavowed funding extremist groups.
I’m further surprised by the reaction and changing sentiment on the forum in reaction of this post, which simply presents an exonerating story. This story itself is directly contradicted by the signed statement in the letter itself.
Contrary to the top level post, it is false that it is standard practice to hand out signed declarations of financial support, with wording like “approved a grant” if substantial vetting remains. Also, it’s extremely unusual for any non-profit to hire a lawyer to explain that a prospective grantee failed vetting in the application process. We also haven’t seen any evidence that FLI actually communicated a rejection. Expo.se seems to have a positive record—even accepting the aesthetic here that newspapers or journalists are untrustworthy, it’s costly for an outlet to outright lie or misrepresent facts.
There’s other issues with Tegmark’s/FLI statements (e.g. deflections about the lack of direct financial benefit to his brother, not addressing the material support the letter provided for registration/the reasonable suspicion this was a ploy to produce the letter).
There’s much more that is problematic that underpin this. If I had more time, I would start a long thread explaining how funding and family relationships could interact really badly in EA/longtermism for several reasons, and another about Tegmark’s insertions into geopolitical issues, which are clumsy at best.
Another comment said the EA forum reaction contributed to actual harm to Tegmark/FLI in amplifying the false narrative. I think a look at Twitter, or how the story, which continues and has been picked up in Vice, suggests to me this isn’t this is true. Unfortunately, I think the opposite is true.
There’s an angry top-level post about evaporative cooling of group beliefs in EA that I haven’t written yet, and won’t until it would no longer be an angry one. That might mean that the best moment has passed, which will make me sad for not being strong enough to have competently written it earlier. You could describe this as my having been chilled out of the discourse, but I would instead describe it as my politely waiting until I am able and ready to explain my concerns in a collected and rational manner.
I am doing this because I care about carefully articulating what I’m worried about, because I think it’s important that I communicate it clearly. I don’t want to cause people to feel ambushed and embattled; I don’t want to draw battle lines between me and the people who agree with me on 99% of everything. I don’t want to engender offense that could fester into real and lasting animosity, in the very same people who if approached collaboratively would pull with me to solve our mutual problem out of mutual respect and love for the people who do good.
I don’t want to contribute to the internal divisions growing in EA. To the extent that it is happening, we should all prefer to nip the involution in the bud—if one has ever been on team Everyone Who Logically Tries To Do The Most Good, there’s nowhere to go but down.
I think that if I wrote an angry top-level post, it would deserve to be downvoted into oblivion, though I’m not sure it would be.
I think on the margin I’m fine with posts that will start fights being chilled. Angry infighting and polarization are poisonous to what we’re trying to do.
I think you are upset because FLI or Tegmark was wronged. Would you consider hearing another perspective about this?
I barely give a gosh-guldarn about FLI or Tegmark outside of their (now reduced) capacity to reduce existential risk.
Obviously I’d rather bad things not happen to people and not happen to good people in particular, but I don’t specifically know anyone from FLI and they are a feather on the scales next to the full set of strangers who I care about.
If Tegmark or FLI was wronged in the way your comments and others imply, you are correct and justified in your beliefs. But if the apology or the current facts do not make that status clear, there’s an object level problem and it’s bad to be angry that they are wronged, or build further arguments on that belief.
I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that Tegmark and FLI was seriously wronged, but I barely care about any wrong done to them and am largely uninterested in the question of whether it was wildly disproportionate or merely sickeningly disproportionate.
I care about the consequences of what we’ve done to them.
I care about how, in order to protect themselves from this community, the FLI is
I care about how everyone who watched this happen will also realize the need to protect themselves from us by shuffling along and taking their own pulses. I care about the new but promising EAs who no one will take a chance on, the moonshots that won’t be funded even though they’d save lives in expectation, the good ideas with “bad optics” that won’t be acted on because of fear of backdraft on this forum. I care about the lives we can save if we don’t rush to conclusions, rush to anger, if we can give each other the benefit of the doubt for five freaking minutes and consider whether it’d make any sense whatsoever for the accusation de jour to be what it looks like.
Getting to one object level issue:
If what happened was that Max Tegmark or FLI gets many dubious grant applications, and this particular application made it a few steps through FLI’s processes before it was caught, expo.se’s story and the negative response you object to on the EA forum would be bad, destructive and false. If this was what happened, it would absolutely deserve your disapproval and alarm.
I don’t think this isn’t true. What we know is:
An established (though hostile) newspaper gave an account with actual quotes from Tegmark that contradict his apparent actions
The bespoke funding letter, signed by Tegmark, explicitly promising funding, “approved a grant” conditional on registration of the charity
The hiring of the lawyer by Tegmark
When Tegmark edited his comment with more content, I’m surprised by how positive the reception of this edit got, which simply disavowed funding extremist groups.
I’m further surprised by the reaction and changing sentiment on the forum in reaction of this post, which simply presents an exonerating story. This story itself is directly contradicted by the signed statement in the letter itself.
Contrary to the top level post, it is false that it is standard practice to hand out signed declarations of financial support, with wording like “approved a grant” if substantial vetting remains. Also, it’s extremely unusual for any non-profit to hire a lawyer to explain that a prospective grantee failed vetting in the application process. We also haven’t seen any evidence that FLI actually communicated a rejection. Expo.se seems to have a positive record—even accepting the aesthetic here that newspapers or journalists are untrustworthy, it’s costly for an outlet to outright lie or misrepresent facts.
There’s other issues with Tegmark’s/FLI statements (e.g. deflections about the lack of direct financial benefit to his brother, not addressing the material support the letter provided for registration/the reasonable suspicion this was a ploy to produce the letter).
There’s much more that is problematic that underpin this. If I had more time, I would start a long thread explaining how funding and family relationships could interact really badly in EA/longtermism for several reasons, and another about Tegmark’s insertions into geopolitical issues, which are clumsy at best.
Another comment said the EA forum reaction contributed to actual harm to Tegmark/FLI in amplifying the false narrative. I think a look at Twitter, or how the story, which continues and has been picked up in Vice, suggests to me this isn’t this is true. Unfortunately, I think the opposite is true.