To add to folks disagreeing with the “size of numbers”, from my perspective:
Most respondents to Rethink’s survey hadn’t encountered EA. Of those who had (233), only 18 (1.1% of total respondents) referred to FTX/SBF explicitly or obliquely when asked what they think effective altruism means or where and when they first heard of it.
I think that number is importantly 7.7% of all the people who had heard of EA, which seems not that small to me (though way smaller than my immersed-all-the-time-in-meta/FTX-stuff brain might have generated on its own when that was where my head was at).
And neither “what they think effective altruism means or where and when they first heard of it” is likely to capture all—or perhaps even most—respondents whose opinion of EA has been downgraded by the scandal, or who haven’t heard about FTX yet but will downgrade once SBF’s trial gives another big round of publicity.
More probative would be responses to something like: “Do you have any concerns or negative opinions about EA, and if so what are they?”
Thanks for pointing this out – this makes me realize I actually put the wrong number in. 18 people referred to FTX/SBF, but only 13 of them had encountered EA. So the relevant ratio is 13⁄233 = 5.6% (which maybe is still high).
To add to folks disagreeing with the “size of numbers”, from my perspective:
I think that number is importantly 7.7% of all the people who had heard of EA, which seems not that small to me (though way smaller than my immersed-all-the-time-in-meta/FTX-stuff brain might have generated on its own when that was where my head was at).
And neither “what they think effective altruism means or where and when they first heard of it” is likely to capture all—or perhaps even most—respondents whose opinion of EA has been downgraded by the scandal, or who haven’t heard about FTX yet but will downgrade once SBF’s trial gives another big round of publicity.
More probative would be responses to something like: “Do you have any concerns or negative opinions about EA, and if so what are they?”
Thanks for pointing this out – this makes me realize I actually put the wrong number in. 18 people referred to FTX/SBF, but only 13 of them had encountered EA. So the relevant ratio is 13⁄233 = 5.6% (which maybe is still high).
I have updated the post.