A series of failure by the community this year, including the Carrick Flynn campaign and now the FTX scandal has shattered my confidence in this group.
I’m really surprised anyone is even super confident that the Carrick Flynn campaign made major mistakes (or was a major mistake to attempt), much less that anyone thinks of the campaign as “a confidence-shattering failure” about EA as a whole. I feel like I must be missing something very basic that’s in other people’s models. Or maybe a lot of people were just very emotionally invested in that primary race?
There are probably things that could have been done better in the campaign, especially with the benefit of hindsight and experience. But getting members of a weird new niche academic philosophy elected to the US House of Representatives isn’t the sort of thing I expect to have a >50% success rate, even if we try our hardest. And Flynn did pretty well in the polls, and would have won the primary if he’d peeled off ~5500 votes (9% of all votes cast) from Salinas.
That’s a good enough showing that I expect there are a lot of nearby worlds where Flynn wins, and I’d happily give it another attempt if I could travel back in time, even if I could only make mild tweaks to the campaign strategy. There’s just a lot of contingency and unpredictability in political campaigns, and the EV seems good to me, especially taking into account the information value of “try something very new and see what happens”.
(Also, plenty of other EA campaigns and political efforts have succeeded, even if they weren’t as widely discussed as Carrick’s campaign. This is a big part of what makes the “Carrick losing was a total catastrophe” narrative seem strange to me.)
On Flynn Campaign: I don’t know if it’s “a catastrophe” but I think it is maybe an example of overconfidence and naivete. As someone who has worked on campaigns and follows politics, I thought the campaign had a pretty low chance of success because of the fundamentals (and asked about it at the time) and that other races would have been better to donate to (either state house races to build the bench or congressional candidates with better odds like Maxwell Frost, a local activist who ran for the open seat previously held by Val Demings, listed pandemic prevention as a priority, and won. Then again, Maxwell raised a ton of money, more than all the other candidates combined, so maybe he didn’t need those funds as much as other candidates). Salinas was a popular, progressive, woman of color with local party support who already represented much of the district at the state level and helped draw the new one. So, it seemed pretty unlikely to me that she would lose to someone who had not lived in the state for years, did not have strong local connections, and had never run a campaign before, even with a massive money advantage. And from what I understand, the people in the district were oversaturated with ads to the point of many being annoyed. So I think of this as probably being an example where EAs would have benefitted from relying on more outside experts for which races to pick and how to run a campaign. There were a lot of congressional retirements this year, and there were probably better seats to try to win. Of course, nothing is going to guarantee a win though.
On FTX: And it seems like if anyone had thought to ask to look at FTX’s balance sheets, things might have been different? At least, considering what a mess those balance sheets are (or whatever records make sense, I’m not a financial expert)? If FTX refused or if they shared something that didn’t make sense, maybe that would have been a warning sign. So that seems like another example of where more outside expertise could have maybe been beneficial and saved a lot of headaches. Individually, maybe no one has an incentive to vet FTX even if they get a grant from them. But if we care about the EA ecosystem as a whole, and hundreds of millions suddenly start pouring in from a new source, maybe someone with the relevant financial and accounting expertise should at least request to look at the balance sheets of the new megafunder, especially when it comes from an industry full of crashes and scams. I’m not sure if this would have changed things but the fact that it doesn’t seem to have happened means there are probably many other things that we are missing. Things that people with relevant expertise are more likely to see. And I know people have said “well look all these other VCs missed it, they never looked into it” but EA sort of prides itself on NOT just doing what everyone else does but using reason and evidence to be more effective. We could have had a process for investigating any new megafunder a bit more thoroughly, perhaps with the help of outside experts. Not just donating to the same charities or picking the same career paths or volunteering for the same organizations just because other people do but being effective. So why would we think this is a good reason for failing to attempt better due diligence with respect to movement finances? We can’t change the past, but surely we can change some things going forward.
In the first example, you complain that EA neglected typical experts and “EA would have benefited from relying on more outside experts” but in the second example, you say that EA “prides itself on NOT just doing what everyone else does but using reason and evidence to be more effective”, so should have realised the possible failure of FTX. These complaints seem exactly opposite to one another, so any actual errors made must be more subtle.
Actually, they are the same type of error. EA prides itself on using evidence and reason rather than taking the assessments of others at face value. So the idea that others did not sufficiently rely on experts who could obtain better evidence and reasoning to vet FTX is less compelling to me as an after-the-fact explanation to justify EA as a whole not doing so. I think probably just no one really thought much about the possibility and looking for this kind of social proof helps us feel less bad.
The campaign team flew EA community organisers from across the world to knock on doors, and ended up paying over a thousand dollars per vote. This happened in the USA, which has a political system tailored to facilitate the purchasing of elections. It was bad.
The campaign team flew EA community organisers from across the world to knock on doors, and ended up paying over a thousand dollars per vote.
Would you consider $1000 per vote worthwhile if it resulted in Carrick winning? Also, if EA has a similar opportunity in the future, in an election with a similar number of voters (around 60,000), what’s the maximum number of dollars spent per vote that you’d consider justifiable?
This happened in the USA, which has a political system tailored to facilitate the purchasing of elections.
Is that true? This is not my area of expertise, but my sense was that “buying elections” is often impossible or inordinately expensive, outside of races against nobodies with very little money. (I’ve heard ad-spending worked really well in competitive races in the recent midterm, but this is noteworthy exactly because it’s somewhat unusual.)
Isn’t the point with the Carrick thing not only that it failed, but that we shouldn’t have been doing that kind of thing? It seemed like a pretty big break from previous approaches which were to stay out of politics
I’m really surprised anyone is even super confident that the Carrick Flynn campaign made major mistakes (or was a major mistake to attempt), much less that anyone thinks of the campaign as “a confidence-shattering failure” about EA as a whole. I feel like I must be missing something very basic that’s in other people’s models. Or maybe a lot of people were just very emotionally invested in that primary race?
There are probably things that could have been done better in the campaign, especially with the benefit of hindsight and experience. But getting members of a weird new niche academic philosophy elected to the US House of Representatives isn’t the sort of thing I expect to have a >50% success rate, even if we try our hardest. And Flynn did pretty well in the polls, and would have won the primary if he’d peeled off ~5500 votes (9% of all votes cast) from Salinas.
That’s a good enough showing that I expect there are a lot of nearby worlds where Flynn wins, and I’d happily give it another attempt if I could travel back in time, even if I could only make mild tweaks to the campaign strategy. There’s just a lot of contingency and unpredictability in political campaigns, and the EV seems good to me, especially taking into account the information value of “try something very new and see what happens”.
(Also, plenty of other EA campaigns and political efforts have succeeded, even if they weren’t as widely discussed as Carrick’s campaign. This is a big part of what makes the “Carrick losing was a total catastrophe” narrative seem strange to me.)
On Flynn Campaign: I don’t know if it’s “a catastrophe” but I think it is maybe an example of overconfidence and naivete. As someone who has worked on campaigns and follows politics, I thought the campaign had a pretty low chance of success because of the fundamentals (and asked about it at the time) and that other races would have been better to donate to (either state house races to build the bench or congressional candidates with better odds like Maxwell Frost, a local activist who ran for the open seat previously held by Val Demings, listed pandemic prevention as a priority, and won. Then again, Maxwell raised a ton of money, more than all the other candidates combined, so maybe he didn’t need those funds as much as other candidates). Salinas was a popular, progressive, woman of color with local party support who already represented much of the district at the state level and helped draw the new one. So, it seemed pretty unlikely to me that she would lose to someone who had not lived in the state for years, did not have strong local connections, and had never run a campaign before, even with a massive money advantage. And from what I understand, the people in the district were oversaturated with ads to the point of many being annoyed. So I think of this as probably being an example where EAs would have benefitted from relying on more outside experts for which races to pick and how to run a campaign. There were a lot of congressional retirements this year, and there were probably better seats to try to win. Of course, nothing is going to guarantee a win though.
On FTX: And it seems like if anyone had thought to ask to look at FTX’s balance sheets, things might have been different? At least, considering what a mess those balance sheets are (or whatever records make sense, I’m not a financial expert)? If FTX refused or if they shared something that didn’t make sense, maybe that would have been a warning sign. So that seems like another example of where more outside expertise could have maybe been beneficial and saved a lot of headaches. Individually, maybe no one has an incentive to vet FTX even if they get a grant from them. But if we care about the EA ecosystem as a whole, and hundreds of millions suddenly start pouring in from a new source, maybe someone with the relevant financial and accounting expertise should at least request to look at the balance sheets of the new megafunder, especially when it comes from an industry full of crashes and scams. I’m not sure if this would have changed things but the fact that it doesn’t seem to have happened means there are probably many other things that we are missing. Things that people with relevant expertise are more likely to see. And I know people have said “well look all these other VCs missed it, they never looked into it” but EA sort of prides itself on NOT just doing what everyone else does but using reason and evidence to be more effective. We could have had a process for investigating any new megafunder a bit more thoroughly, perhaps with the help of outside experts. Not just donating to the same charities or picking the same career paths or volunteering for the same organizations just because other people do but being effective. So why would we think this is a good reason for failing to attempt better due diligence with respect to movement finances? We can’t change the past, but surely we can change some things going forward.
In the first example, you complain that EA neglected typical experts and “EA would have benefited from relying on more outside experts” but in the second example, you say that EA “prides itself on NOT just doing what everyone else does but using reason and evidence to be more effective”, so should have realised the possible failure of FTX. These complaints seem exactly opposite to one another, so any actual errors made must be more subtle.
Actually, they are the same type of error. EA prides itself on using evidence and reason rather than taking the assessments of others at face value. So the idea that others did not sufficiently rely on experts who could obtain better evidence and reasoning to vet FTX is less compelling to me as an after-the-fact explanation to justify EA as a whole not doing so. I think probably just no one really thought much about the possibility and looking for this kind of social proof helps us feel less bad.
The campaign team flew EA community organisers from across the world to knock on doors, and ended up paying over a thousand dollars per vote. This happened in the USA, which has a political system tailored to facilitate the purchasing of elections. It was bad.
Would you consider $1000 per vote worthwhile if it resulted in Carrick winning? Also, if EA has a similar opportunity in the future, in an election with a similar number of voters (around 60,000), what’s the maximum number of dollars spent per vote that you’d consider justifiable?
Is that true? This is not my area of expertise, but my sense was that “buying elections” is often impossible or inordinately expensive, outside of races against nobodies with very little money. (I’ve heard ad-spending worked really well in competitive races in the recent midterm, but this is noteworthy exactly because it’s somewhat unusual.)
Isn’t the point with the Carrick thing not only that it failed, but that we shouldn’t have been doing that kind of thing? It seemed like a pretty big break from previous approaches which were to stay out of politics