Thanks for writing this! I would find it helpful if you tabooâd EA should. e.g. âSpecific recommendation: donât allow a billionaire to become a âfaceâ of EAââwhat specifically should have been done differently?
E.g. My recollection from Going Infinite is that the billboards you criticize werenât even endorsed by Sam, they were done by some marketing agency who was summarily fired after Sam realized what they had done. And, like you say, they didnât contain the phrase âeffective altruismâ or something where anyone could plausibly be said to have a trademark. So what mechanism are you imagining which could have prevented them from going up?
I think there are steps which could be taken to limit peopleâs ability to identify as EAs. For example: CEA could exercise authoritarian control over the effective altruism trademark and sue anyone who self describes as an EA without jumping through whatever hoops we put in place. I think this is not a crazy idea, but it has clear downsides, and Iâm not sure if this is actually what you are suggesting.
On the Clearer Thinking podcast MacAskill (in a tone of regret) discusses three things:
Mentioning Bankman-Fried in podcasts and interviews as a role model;
Bankman-Fried appearing on the 80,000 Hours podcast; and
Feeling apprehensive for a bit about Bankman-Fried talking a lot about EA. See eg:
00:58:10 Spencer Greenberg
When you saw him being interviewed by really major media companies about EA. And seeing that a huge number of people were hearing about effective altruism for the first time through Samâs voice, how did that make you feel? Was that exciting to see you being pushed out there? Or were you kind of apprehensive because you wouldnât necessarily chosen him as the person to promote EA? Yeah. What was your feeling about it at the time?
00:58:28 Will MacAskill
Yeah. I mean, I think initially I was apprehensive again, not because of any attitude to Sam, but just him being a crypto billionaire. You know, crypto has a very mixed reputation. Billionaires do not have a great reputation. And then the thing that surprised me was just the coverage seemed so positive. The media were really like fawning over him. The pieces were just kind of uniformly uniformly, very positive. And that certainly kind of took away my apprehension. So it certainly wasnât the case that I was thinking. Oh, this isâlikeâterrible that Sam is becoming so famous and and and pushing against him.
So just avoiding those three things with any future billionaires would be good.
Prominent spokespeople for the community (like MacAskill) shouldnât repeatedly highlight them as role models,
They perhaps shouldnât be interviewed on popular EA podcasts like 80,000 Hours (as far as I can tell Moskovitz or Tuna have never been on); and
The whole community, especially those at CEA or those that work professionaly in communications, should be wary if some billionaire starts talking a lot about EA in media interviews/âpuff-pieces, and shilling for their consumer-facing company in the same breath as promoting EA etc.
This is definitely do-able. As I noted, Moskovitz & Tuna and Buterin are large donors with a public platform, but are not the âfaceâ of EA.
They perhaps shouldnât be interviewed on popular EA podcasts like 80,000 Hours (as far as I can tell Moskovitz or Tuna have never been on)
I personally would be pretty interested to hear an interview with Moskovitz, Tuna, or Buterin and would feel sad if 80k felt prohibited from talking to them. I donât remember being that excited about Buterinâs 2019 interview (I recall it mostly being about block chain stuff which I wasnât that interested in), so I guess thatâs some sign that prohibiting interviews with him wouldnât cost that much, but Iâm interested to hear some of his answers to these questions.
I do expect on priors that there is a decent chance that Buterin will be revealed to have committed some type of serious misconduct, and if that does happen I wouldnât be surprised to see a headline like âyet another EA billionaire is a criminal.â A blanket prohibition on inviting him to the 80k podcast feels like throwing the baby out with the bath water though.
A thing that would update me here is evidence that engagement with a community/âset of ideas by billionaires is on expectation negative. My sense is that EAâs involvement with SBF was toward the tail of the distribution of how bad engagement with billionaires goes, but I could be wrong about that, and if it is closer to the median case then a blanket prohibition feels more warranted.
Thanks for writing this! I would find it helpful if you tabooâd EA should. e.g. âSpecific recommendation: donât allow a billionaire to become a âfaceâ of EAââwhat specifically should have been done differently?
E.g. My recollection from Going Infinite is that the billboards you criticize werenât even endorsed by Sam, they were done by some marketing agency who was summarily fired after Sam realized what they had done. And, like you say, they didnât contain the phrase âeffective altruismâ or something where anyone could plausibly be said to have a trademark. So what mechanism are you imagining which could have prevented them from going up?
I think there are steps which could be taken to limit peopleâs ability to identify as EAs. For example: CEA could exercise authoritarian control over the effective altruism trademark and sue anyone who self describes as an EA without jumping through whatever hoops we put in place. I think this is not a crazy idea, but it has clear downsides, and Iâm not sure if this is actually what you are suggesting.
Fair point.
On the Clearer Thinking podcast MacAskill (in a tone of regret) discusses three things:
Mentioning Bankman-Fried in podcasts and interviews as a role model;
Bankman-Fried appearing on the 80,000 Hours podcast; and
Feeling apprehensive for a bit about Bankman-Fried talking a lot about EA. See eg:
So just avoiding those three things with any future billionaires would be good.
Prominent spokespeople for the community (like MacAskill) shouldnât repeatedly highlight them as role models,
They perhaps shouldnât be interviewed on popular EA podcasts like 80,000 Hours (as far as I can tell Moskovitz or Tuna have never been on); and
The whole community, especially those at CEA or those that work professionaly in communications, should be wary if some billionaire starts talking a lot about EA in media interviews/âpuff-pieces, and shilling for their consumer-facing company in the same breath as promoting EA etc.
This is definitely do-able. As I noted, Moskovitz & Tuna and Buterin are large donors with a public platform, but are not the âfaceâ of EA.
I personally would be pretty interested to hear an interview with Moskovitz, Tuna, or Buterin and would feel sad if 80k felt prohibited from talking to them. I donât remember being that excited about Buterinâs 2019 interview (I recall it mostly being about block chain stuff which I wasnât that interested in), so I guess thatâs some sign that prohibiting interviews with him wouldnât cost that much, but Iâm interested to hear some of his answers to these questions.
I do expect on priors that there is a decent chance that Buterin will be revealed to have committed some type of serious misconduct, and if that does happen I wouldnât be surprised to see a headline like âyet another EA billionaire is a criminal.â A blanket prohibition on inviting him to the 80k podcast feels like throwing the baby out with the bath water though.
A thing that would update me here is evidence that engagement with a community/âset of ideas by billionaires is on expectation negative. My sense is that EAâs involvement with SBF was toward the tail of the distribution of how bad engagement with billionaires goes, but I could be wrong about that, and if it is closer to the median case then a blanket prohibition feels more warranted.
Thanks! I appreciate the concrete suggestions.