I agreed with you a few months ago; it does seem like FHI has suffered significant mismanagement, though as Sean suggests maybe a strong co-director would work also.
However, after recent events I think the case for him staying on is actually stronger, because it is important to set a precedent that we support people genuinely thinking for themselves and do not give in to bullying. I don’t see how we can hope to build an inclusive community of original thinkers if everyone has a Sword of Damocles hanging over their head, knowing they might be denounced and fired if that became politically expedient. For more details on this I recommend Cinera’s excellent post.
I also think you have significantly overstated your case in various places. For example, while CEA did condemn him, their statement was widely criticized and they ended up issuing a partial apology for it. You mention funding, but don’t provide any evidence this will prevent FHI from fundraising; any funder that wants to promote a diverse and inclusive group of intellectuals producing novel work will have to accept that they will sometimes strongly disagree with grantees. Similarly, freedom of speech is a major concern for the english government right now, and it is currently passing a law to help combat cancel culture and defend academic freedom against pressure from university administrators.
Finally, I’m not sure what you’re referring to by ‘discredited race science’. As I discussed with Habiba, Bostrom’s views are not very different from those of scientifically informed leading anti-racism campaigners. They simply use slightly different wording.
Combining these two views, I think the best approach might be for him to step down or take on a strong co-director after a sufficiently long period has passed to make it clear he wasn’t just giving in to pressure.
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.
If you previously thought he should step down, and then we received no positive news about his suitability for the role, I think it’s indefensible to keep him on just to prove a point. It’s an important job! We really need to ensure that the person in the role is capable of it! To say that you think that Bostrom is not fit for it and yet should stay in it IMO shows a lack of respect for the actual research work that FHI does.
No, saying that we should do X rather than Y does not mean you disrespect Y. It could just be you respect X even more, or disagree “respect” is the right framing, or think that X is required for Y.
In any case I think Cinera’s argument that Bostrom’s behavior was actually a positive update is somewhat credible.
I agreed with you a few months ago; it does seem like FHI has suffered significant mismanagement, though as Sean suggests maybe a strong co-director would work also.
However, after recent events I think the case for him staying on is actually stronger, because it is important to set a precedent that we support people genuinely thinking for themselves and do not give in to bullying. I don’t see how we can hope to build an inclusive community of original thinkers if everyone has a Sword of Damocles hanging over their head, knowing they might be denounced and fired if that became politically expedient. For more details on this I recommend Cinera’s excellent post.
I also think you have significantly overstated your case in various places. For example, while CEA did condemn him, their statement was widely criticized and they ended up issuing a partial apology for it. You mention funding, but don’t provide any evidence this will prevent FHI from fundraising; any funder that wants to promote a diverse and inclusive group of intellectuals producing novel work will have to accept that they will sometimes strongly disagree with grantees. Similarly, freedom of speech is a major concern for the english government right now, and it is currently passing a law to help combat cancel culture and defend academic freedom against pressure from university administrators.
Finally, I’m not sure what you’re referring to by ‘discredited race science’. As I discussed with Habiba, Bostrom’s views are not very different from those of scientifically informed leading anti-racism campaigners. They simply use slightly different wording.
Combining these two views, I think the best approach might be for him to step down or take on a strong co-director after a sufficiently long period has passed to make it clear he wasn’t just giving in to pressure.
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.
If you previously thought he should step down, and then we received no positive news about his suitability for the role, I think it’s indefensible to keep him on just to prove a point. It’s an important job! We really need to ensure that the person in the role is capable of it! To say that you think that Bostrom is not fit for it and yet should stay in it IMO shows a lack of respect for the actual research work that FHI does.
No, saying that we should do X rather than Y does not mean you disrespect Y. It could just be you respect X even more, or disagree “respect” is the right framing, or think that X is required for Y.
In any case I think Cinera’s argument that Bostrom’s behavior was actually a positive update is somewhat credible.