I just wanted to chip in to say that this does indeed seem like this has been a very stressful period for the team.
I cannot read their minds but it certainly seems possible to me that part of the reason some folks could find a situation like this stressful is precisely because they felt that some of the objections and critical comments were reasonable.
The statement says in point 8 of the FAQ (my emphasis)
The way we see it, we rejected a grant proposal that deserved to be rejected, and challenging, reasonable questions have been asked as to why we initially considered it and didn’t reject it earlier. We deeply regret that we may have inadvertently compromised the confidence of our community and constituents. This causes us huge distress, as does the idea that FLI or its personnel would somehow align with ideologies to which we are fundamentally opposed. We are 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.
Maybe this is a super weird thing to say but, were I a staff member at a place affected by this kind of thing, my distress would have been because: I was shocked / upset myself that grant seemed to have nearly been given and I would have been really hurt and shaken by that, confused about what had happened given senior leadership were not able to respond and frustrated I couldn’t get a sooner reply, really disappointed / angry about the initial response from Max Tegmark which seemed poor and didn’t represent the values of an organisation I wanted to work for etc. etc.
I’m absolutely not claiming that anyone at FLI feels like this! But I just wanted to say that just because something was hard for staff, doesn’t necessarily mean it was hard because the critical comments were wrong/misguided.
Strong agree with “just because something was hard for staff, doesn’t necessarily mean it was hard because the critical comments were wrong/misguided.”, though I think “part of the reason some folks could find a situation like this stressful is precisely because they felt that some of the objections and critical comments were reasonable” doesn’t differentiate between different worlds—I think there would be a lot of flurry and frenzy and stress basically independently of reasonableness of critique (within some bounds).
I just wanted to chip in to say that this does indeed seem like this has been a very stressful period for the team.
I cannot read their minds but it certainly seems possible to me that part of the reason some folks could find a situation like this stressful is precisely because they felt that some of the objections and critical comments were reasonable.
The statement says in point 8 of the FAQ (my emphasis)
Maybe this is a super weird thing to say but, were I a staff member at a place affected by this kind of thing, my distress would have been because: I was shocked / upset myself that grant seemed to have nearly been given and I would have been really hurt and shaken by that, confused about what had happened given senior leadership were not able to respond and frustrated I couldn’t get a sooner reply, really disappointed / angry about the initial response from Max Tegmark which seemed poor and didn’t represent the values of an organisation I wanted to work for etc. etc.
I’m absolutely not claiming that anyone at FLI feels like this! But I just wanted to say that just because something was hard for staff, doesn’t necessarily mean it was hard because the critical comments were wrong/misguided.
Strong agree with “just because something was hard for staff, doesn’t necessarily mean it was hard because the critical comments were wrong/misguided.”, though I think “part of the reason some folks could find a situation like this stressful is precisely because they felt that some of the objections and critical comments were reasonable” doesn’t differentiate between different worlds—I think there would be a lot of flurry and frenzy and stress basically independently of reasonableness of critique (within some bounds).