I’ve updated my original comment in the first forum post to link to this post and FAQ, and I’ve included some retractions where I think I made factual claims/implications that have now been shown to be false. I think this excerpt from FLI’s FAQ is an excellent response to the affair:
“We would like to emphatically state that FLI finds groups or ideologies espousing antisemitism, white supremacy, or racism despicable and would never knowingly support any such group… Our due diligence worked, but not as early as it should have. We deeply regret that we may have inadvertently compromised the confidence of our community and constituents. We are reviewing how we can amend and improve our procedures.”
I would also like to extend my sincerest condolences to Max himself for the personal circumstances that would have made responding to this whole affair even more difficult.
II.
Looking back on my post, I think it was still a net positive for the forum that brought more context on the issue to light. Emotional reactions can still be valuable, and my emotions matched my assessment (and still do) of the seriousness of the issue. I think I included the kind of caveats that Rob talks about in this post, and I didn’t make any assumptions of heinous intent from FLI, or demand an imminent timeline for FLI to respond.
Nevertheless, to the extent my comment instead contributed to a poor forum response that made both posters and FLI staff members hurt and upset, I apologise.
I think that my post could have been improved if I had stated my priors on FLI, which are positive and would have made me more disposed to seeing an ‘ignorance’/mistake explanation reasonable (basically following on from another post by Rob here). I would have likely extended more charity to FLI and perhaps framed the discussion more clearly about the fact that the optics of EA matter rather than leading to people questioning the motives/allegiances of individuals.
III.
Finally, I do think that there is a risk of updating too quickly the other way. Back on the original post, some users have responded this comment saying that it’s ‘entirely correct’[1], but I don’t think it’s reasonable to view Expo’s piece a ‘major misrepresentation’ of what happened—their reporting on the case seems to have been accurate. While ‘Option 1’ seems to be what happened there is still a question of how the grant made it to stage 5 out of 7 on FLI’s grant-making procedure. It’s not the major scandal we feared, but it’s ramifications are more than being ‘mildly embarrassing’.
The letter of intent itself is also proof that this proposal was not rejected straight away but made it a fair way through the grant-making process. FLI recognise in their FAQ that their decisions and actions in this case could have been improved on, which I welcome. There are still some questions around what happened here, even if our worst fears won’t be realised.
Finally, I do think that there is a risk of updating too quickly the other way. Back on the original post, some users have responded this comment saying that it’s ‘entirely correct’[1], but I don’t think it’s reasonable to view Expo’s piece a ‘major misrepresentation’ of what happened—their reporting on the case seems to have been accurate. While ‘Option 1’ seems to be what happened there is still a question of how the grant made it to stage 5 out of 7 on FLI’s grant-making procedure. It’s not the major scandal we feared, but it’s ramifications are more than being ‘mildly embarrassing’.
Similarly, I think EA’s response to the first apology was reasonable, because FLI and Tegmark gave a terrible apology, essentially amounting to a non-apology. It was at least reasonable to suspect that they didn’t actually have much of a problem with Nazism.
Now, a better apology has been produced, but it almost certainly required the criticism of FLI to stick.
I.
I’ve updated my original comment in the first forum post to link to this post and FAQ, and I’ve included some retractions where I think I made factual claims/implications that have now been shown to be false. I think this excerpt from FLI’s FAQ is an excellent response to the affair:
“We would like to emphatically state that FLI finds groups or ideologies espousing antisemitism, white supremacy, or racism despicable and would never knowingly support any such group… Our due diligence worked, but not as early as it should have. We deeply regret that we may have inadvertently compromised the confidence of our community and constituents. We are reviewing how we can amend and improve our procedures.”
I would also like to extend my sincerest condolences to Max himself for the personal circumstances that would have made responding to this whole affair even more difficult.
II.
Looking back on my post, I think it was still a net positive for the forum that brought more context on the issue to light. Emotional reactions can still be valuable, and my emotions matched my assessment (and still do) of the seriousness of the issue. I think I included the kind of caveats that Rob talks about in this post, and I didn’t make any assumptions of heinous intent from FLI, or demand an imminent timeline for FLI to respond.
Nevertheless, to the extent my comment instead contributed to a poor forum response that made both posters and FLI staff members hurt and upset, I apologise.
I think that my post could have been improved if I had stated my priors on FLI, which are positive and would have made me more disposed to seeing an ‘ignorance’/mistake explanation reasonable (basically following on from another post by Rob here). I would have likely extended more charity to FLI and perhaps framed the discussion more clearly about the fact that the optics of EA matter rather than leading to people questioning the motives/allegiances of individuals.
III.
Finally, I do think that there is a risk of updating too quickly the other way. Back on the original post, some users have responded this comment saying that it’s ‘entirely correct’[1], but I don’t think it’s reasonable to view Expo’s piece a ‘major misrepresentation’ of what happened—their reporting on the case seems to have been accurate. While ‘Option 1’ seems to be what happened there is still a question of how the grant made it to stage 5 out of 7 on FLI’s grant-making procedure. It’s not the major scandal we feared, but it’s ramifications are more than being ‘mildly embarrassing’.
The letter of intent itself is also proof that this proposal was not rejected straight away but made it a fair way through the grant-making process. FLI recognise in their FAQ that their decisions and actions in this case could have been improved on, which I welcome. There are still some questions around what happened here, even if our worst fears won’t be realised.
And also some insinuation that looks a lot like EA-Forum ‘subtweeting’, which I didn’t have a good reaction to.
Similarly, I think EA’s response to the first apology was reasonable, because FLI and Tegmark gave a terrible apology, essentially amounting to a non-apology. It was at least reasonable to suspect that they didn’t actually have much of a problem with Nazism.
Now, a better apology has been produced, but it almost certainly required the criticism of FLI to stick.