I hesitate to weigh in here but I really don’t think this is a good way of thinking about it.
I’m certainly not trying to “bully” Bostrom and I don’t view the author of this post as trying to “bully” Bostrom either. If Bostrom were to step down as Director, I don’t see that as somehow a “win” for “bullying”, whatever that means.
I do agree that being able to come up with important and useful ideas requires feelings of safety and for this reason and others I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt when they express themselves. Moreover, I understand that in a social movement made up of thousands of people, you are not going to be able to find common agreement on every issue and in order to make progress we need to find some way to deal with that. So I am pretty sympathetic to the view that Bostrom deserves some form of generalized protection even if he’s said colossally stupid things.
But—to be clear—no one I know is trying to get Bostrom fired or expelled or cancelled or jailed or anything. He still could have a very cushy, high status, independent non-cancelled life as a “FHI senior researcher”, even if he weren’t Director. The question is—should he be Director?
My understanding of the view of the author of this post is that:
(1) FHI is probably useful and important and does good things for the world,
(2) FHI would probably be more useful and more important and do more good things for the world if it had a really great Director,
and (3) Bostrom is not a really great Director (at least going forward in expectation).
The alleged “significant mismanagement” seems like great evidence for (3). This is just basic consequentialist reasoning that I think all orgs—especially those that claim to be affiliated with effective altruism—engage in. I’d happily welcome people write “Peter Wildeford should step down as Co-CEO of Rethink Priorities” if there indeed were good reasons for me to do so.
So I certainly find it overdramatic at best to take “here are a few reasons why Bostrom would not be the ideal leader of FHI going forward” and convert it to “all original thinkers have a Sword of Damocles hanging over their head, knowing they might be denounced and fired if that became politically expedient”. Being a good leader means things like being able to communicate well and understand when your actions will have predictably bad consequences, avoid making everyone really uncomfortable about working with you, and avoid getting your organization to the point where you can’t hire anyone and your operations staff and other key leadership quit. To be frank—a lot of Bostrom’s research is great and I’m very grateful to him for a lot of it, but this benchmark is just something Bostrom isn’t accomplishing and I think independent researcher life would suit him better and be a win-win for everyone.
I hesitate to weigh in here but I really don’t think this is a good way of thinking about it.
I’m certainly not trying to “bully” Bostrom and I don’t view the author of this post as trying to “bully” Bostrom either. If Bostrom were to step down as Director, I don’t see that as somehow a “win” for “bullying”, whatever that means.
I do agree that being able to come up with important and useful ideas requires feelings of safety and for this reason and others I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt when they express themselves. Moreover, I understand that in a social movement made up of thousands of people, you are not going to be able to find common agreement on every issue and in order to make progress we need to find some way to deal with that. So I am pretty sympathetic to the view that Bostrom deserves some form of generalized protection even if he’s said colossally stupid things.
But—to be clear—no one I know is trying to get Bostrom fired or expelled or cancelled or jailed or anything. He still could have a very cushy, high status, independent non-cancelled life as a “FHI senior researcher”, even if he weren’t Director. The question is—should he be Director?
My understanding of the view of the author of this post is that:
(1) FHI is probably useful and important and does good things for the world,
(2) FHI would probably be more useful and more important and do more good things for the world if it had a really great Director,
and (3) Bostrom is not a really great Director (at least going forward in expectation).
The alleged “significant mismanagement” seems like great evidence for (3). This is just basic consequentialist reasoning that I think all orgs—especially those that claim to be affiliated with effective altruism—engage in. I’d happily welcome people write “Peter Wildeford should step down as Co-CEO of Rethink Priorities” if there indeed were good reasons for me to do so.
So I certainly find it overdramatic at best to take “here are a few reasons why Bostrom would not be the ideal leader of FHI going forward” and convert it to “all original thinkers have a Sword of Damocles hanging over their head, knowing they might be denounced and fired if that became politically expedient”. Being a good leader means things like being able to communicate well and understand when your actions will have predictably bad consequences, avoid making everyone really uncomfortable about working with you, and avoid getting your organization to the point where you can’t hire anyone and your operations staff and other key leadership quit. To be frank—a lot of Bostrom’s research is great and I’m very grateful to him for a lot of it, but this benchmark is just something Bostrom isn’t accomplishing and I think independent researcher life would suit him better and be a win-win for everyone.
Do you think there is a way we could score FHI in a way that would be comparable in the worlds with and without Bostrom?
If so, this really does seem like a place for prediction markets.