Who are these people? What makes them so responsible? Did they agree to that or did we just kind of decide we want someone to be responsible and they’re there? Have we considered that maybe nobody is responsible here?
letting SBF stay in the EA community
Is “not letting someone stay in the EA community” an action that people can take? The most serious such incidents that I know of a) came after multiple documented examples of serious wrongdoing, b) amounted to being banned from the EA Forum and EA conferences (i.e. venues controlled by a specific org, CEA) for a while. SBF didn’t post on the EA forum or go to EA conferences. So what, specifically, do you think people should have done?
Who are these people? What makes them so responsible? Did they agree to that or did we just kind of decide we want someone to be responsible and they’re there? Have we considered that maybe nobody is responsible here?
SBF didn’t post on the EA forum or go to EA conferences. So what, specifically, do you think people should have done?
Disowned him (publicly). Not laud him as a paragon of virtue in earning-to-give. Not invite him to speak at EA conferences. (As I say, I get that there might’ve been a failure of communication amongst people in the know, but it looks pretty bad that it was known to at least some influential people that Sam was not someone to be trusted.)
The first group of people are not the people who took the latter group of actions.
I’m being picky here, but my point is that people are being very wooly about this idea of “EA Leadership”. The FTX Foundation team and the 80k team are different people, not arms of the amorphous “EA Leadership”. So maybe the FTX Foundation team shouldn’t have lauded SBF—but they didn’t, that was someone else.
This is again where being specific matters. “The FTX Foundation team should have done more due diligence before agreeing to work with SBF” is at least a reasonable, specific, criticism that relates to the specific responsibilities those people might have. “Why did EA Leadership not Do Something?” is not.
Yes, the (former) Future Fund team are specific people. Regarding the happenings in 2018 around Alameda, it’s hard to know who the specific people are because we haven’t heard much about who whew what. It seems reasonable to suppose that people at CEA (perhaps including the executives) knew about it (given SBF and Tara Mac Aulay both worked there prior to Alameda), but also possible that due to fear of reprisals or possible NDAs, no one in any position of responsibility knew about it.
“EA leadership” is a set of very specific people—those who control the money, and those who control the brand. That means the boards of OpenPhil and EV, and the Future Fund team when that was still a thing. If CEA and 80k have their own boards (I think they don’t?), then they too.
Who are these people? What makes them so responsible? Did they agree to that or did we just kind of decide we want someone to be responsible and they’re there? Have we considered that maybe nobody is responsible here?
Is “not letting someone stay in the EA community” an action that people can take? The most serious such incidents that I know of a) came after multiple documented examples of serious wrongdoing, b) amounted to being banned from the EA Forum and EA conferences (i.e. venues controlled by a specific org, CEA) for a while. SBF didn’t post on the EA forum or go to EA conferences. So what, specifically, do you think people should have done?
Someone should have done something, is not IMO a helpful thing to say. I strongly endorse https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aHPhh6GjHtTBhe7cX/proposals-for-reform-should-come-with-detailed-stories
People in charge of granting $100Ms-$Bs of EA money. See my link to: Why didn’t the FTX Foundation secure its bag?
Disowned him (publicly). Not laud him as a paragon of virtue in earning-to-give. Not invite him to speak at EA conferences. (As I say, I get that there might’ve been a failure of communication amongst people in the know, but it looks pretty bad that it was known to at least some influential people that Sam was not someone to be trusted.)
The first group of people are not the people who took the latter group of actions.
I’m being picky here, but my point is that people are being very wooly about this idea of “EA Leadership”. The FTX Foundation team and the 80k team are different people, not arms of the amorphous “EA Leadership”. So maybe the FTX Foundation team shouldn’t have lauded SBF—but they didn’t, that was someone else.
This is again where being specific matters. “The FTX Foundation team should have done more due diligence before agreeing to work with SBF” is at least a reasonable, specific, criticism that relates to the specific responsibilities those people might have. “Why did EA Leadership not Do Something?” is not.
Yes, the (former) Future Fund team are specific people. Regarding the happenings in 2018 around Alameda, it’s hard to know who the specific people are because we haven’t heard much about who whew what. It seems reasonable to suppose that people at CEA (perhaps including the executives) knew about it (given SBF and Tara Mac Aulay both worked there prior to Alameda), but also possible that due to fear of reprisals or possible NDAs, no one in any position of responsibility knew about it.
“EA leadership” is a set of very specific people—those who control the money, and those who control the brand. That means the boards of OpenPhil and EV, and the Future Fund team when that was still a thing. If CEA and 80k have their own boards (I think they don’t?), then they too.