Ideally, the questions this investigation would seek to answer would be laid out and published ahead of time.
Not sure I buy this, on principle—surely the investigation should have remit to add questions as it goes if they’re warranted by information it’s turned up? Maybe if the questions for this purpose are more broad principles than specific factual ones it would make sense to me.
Would also be good to pre-publish the principles that would determine what information would be redacted or kept confidential from public communication around findings.
This checks out to me.
As things stand, my low-conviction take is that [headhunting for investigators] would be a reasonable thing for the new non-OP connected EV board members to take on, or perhaps the community health team.
Have you directly asked these people if they’re interested (in the headhunting task)? It’s sort of a lot to just put something like this on someone’s plate (and it doesn’t feel to me like a-thing-they’ve-implicitly-signed-up-for-by-taking-their-role).
In general my instinct would be more like “work out who feels motivated to have an investigation happen, and then get one (or more) of them to take responsibility for the headhunting”.
surely the investigation should have remit to add questions as it goes if they’re warranted by information it’s turned up?
Yeah, absolutely. What I had in mind when I wrote this was this excerpt from an outstanding comment from Jason on the Mintz investigation; I’d hope these ideas could help inform the structure of a future investigation:
How The Investigation Could Have Actually Rebuilt Lost Trust and Confidence
There was a more transparent / credible way to do this. EVF could have released, in advance, an appropriate range of specific questions upon which the external investigator was being asked to make findings of fact—as well as a set of possible responses (on a scale of “investigation rules this out with very high confidence” to “investigation shows this is almost certain”). For example—and these would probably have several subquestions each—one could announce in advance that the following questions were in scope and that the investigator had committed to providing specific answers:
Did anyone associated with EVF ever raise concerns about SBF being engaged in fraudulent activity? Did they ever receive any such concerns?
Did anyone associated with EVF discourage, threaten, or seek to silence any person who had concerns about illegal, unethical, or fraudulent conduct by SBF? (cf. the “Will basically threatened Tara” report).
When viewed against the generally-accepted norms for donor vetting in nonprofits, was anyone associated with EVF negligent, grossly negligent, or reckless in evaluating SBF’s suitability as a donor, failing to raise concerns about his suitability, or choosing not to conduct further investigation?
That kind of pre-commitment would have updated my faith in the process, and my confidence that the investigation reached all important topics. If EVF chose not to release the answers to those questions, it would have known that we could easily draw the appropriate inferences. Under those circumstances—but not the actual circumstances—I would view willingness to investigate as a valuable signal.
Have you directly asked these people if they’re interested (in the headhunting task)? It’s sort of a lot to just put something like this on someone’s plate (and it doesn’t feel to me like a-thing-they’ve-implicitly-signed-up-for-by-taking-their-role).
I have not. While nobody in EA leadership has weighed in on this explicitly, the general vibe I get is “we don’t need an investigation, and in any case it’d be hard to conduct and we’d need to fund it somehow.” So I’m focusing on arguing the need for an investigation, because without that the other points are moot. And my assumption is that if we build sufficient consensus on the need for an investigation, we could sort out the other issues. If leaders think an investigation is warranted but the logistical problems are insurmountable, they should make that case and then we can get to work on seeing if we can actually solve those logistical problems.
Hmm, I think perhaps I have different takes on the basic mechanisms that make sense here?
Here’s a scattershot of background takes:
It makes sense to first check for consensus
People’s sense of “need for an investigation” isn’t binary
Lots of people may think “all else equal that would be nice to have” (as they think about many things), without it ever rising to the top of their internal importance-stack
Probably people who were closer to things generally feel less need for investigation
(since they’re more likely to think they understand the basic dynamics)
If there isn’t consensus on how important this is, I don’t expect it to be easy to reach one
Since presumably one driver of different views is different people having access to different information (exactly the kind of thing an investigation might help with)
In general things go best when they’re done by people who feel the need for them
… and then given those, my position is that if you want it to happen, the right step is less like “try to create a consensus that it should happen” and more like “try to find/make an alliance of people who want it, and then make sure there’s someone taking responsibility for the specific unblocking steps”. (I guess this view is not very much about the investigation, and more like my generic take on how to make things happen.)
Honestly my view of how important it is that the whole project happen will also be somewhat mediated by whether it can find a decently strong lead and can attract some moderate amount of funding. Since these would be indicative of “people really want answers”, and I think the whole project is more valuable if that demand exists.
Not sure I buy this, on principle—surely the investigation should have remit to add questions as it goes if they’re warranted by information it’s turned up? Maybe if the questions for this purpose are more broad principles than specific factual ones it would make sense to me.
This checks out to me.
Have you directly asked these people if they’re interested (in the headhunting task)? It’s sort of a lot to just put something like this on someone’s plate (and it doesn’t feel to me like a-thing-they’ve-implicitly-signed-up-for-by-taking-their-role).
In general my instinct would be more like “work out who feels motivated to have an investigation happen, and then get one (or more) of them to take responsibility for the headhunting”.
Yeah, absolutely. What I had in mind when I wrote this was this excerpt from an outstanding comment from Jason on the Mintz investigation; I’d hope these ideas could help inform the structure of a future investigation:
I have not. While nobody in EA leadership has weighed in on this explicitly, the general vibe I get is “we don’t need an investigation, and in any case it’d be hard to conduct and we’d need to fund it somehow.” So I’m focusing on arguing the need for an investigation, because without that the other points are moot. And my assumption is that if we build sufficient consensus on the need for an investigation, we could sort out the other issues. If leaders think an investigation is warranted but the logistical problems are insurmountable, they should make that case and then we can get to work on seeing if we can actually solve those logistical problems.
Hmm, I think perhaps I have different takes on the basic mechanisms that make sense here?
Here’s a scattershot of background takes:
It makes sense to first check for consensus
People’s sense of “need for an investigation” isn’t binary
Lots of people may think “all else equal that would be nice to have” (as they think about many things), without it ever rising to the top of their internal importance-stack
Probably people who were closer to things generally feel less need for investigation
(since they’re more likely to think they understand the basic dynamics)
If there isn’t consensus on how important this is, I don’t expect it to be easy to reach one
Since presumably one driver of different views is different people having access to different information (exactly the kind of thing an investigation might help with)
In general things go best when they’re done by people who feel the need for them
… and then given those, my position is that if you want it to happen, the right step is less like “try to create a consensus that it should happen” and more like “try to find/make an alliance of people who want it, and then make sure there’s someone taking responsibility for the specific unblocking steps”. (I guess this view is not very much about the investigation, and more like my generic take on how to make things happen.)
Honestly my view of how important it is that the whole project happen will also be somewhat mediated by whether it can find a decently strong lead and can attract some moderate amount of funding. Since these would be indicative of “people really want answers”, and I think the whole project is more valuable if that demand exists.