I’m analogizing Peter Singer and classical Givewell-style EA to Novik.
What about the parts of EA that isn’t Peter Singer and classical GiveWell-style EA? If those parts of EA were somewhat responsible, would it be reasonable to call that EA as well?
I don’t think the analogy is helpful. Naomi Novik presumably does not claim to emphasize the importance of understanding tail risks. Naomi presumably didn’t meet Caroline and encourage her to earn a lot of money so she can donate to fantasy authors, nor did Caroline say “I’m earning all of this money so I can fund Naomi Novik’s fantasy writing”. Naomi Novik did not have Caroline on her website as a success story of “this is why you should earn money to buy fantasy books or support other fantasy writers”. Naomi didn’t have a “Fantasy writer’s fund” with the FTX brand on it.
I think it’s reasonable to preach patience if you think people are jumping too quickly to blame themselves. I think it’s reasonable to think that EA is actually less responsible than the current state of discourse on the forum. And I’m not making a claim about the extent EA is in fact responsible for the events. But the analogy as written is pretty poor, and doesn’t really make a good case for saying EA has zero responsibility here (emphasis added):
Who’s at fault for FTX’s wrongdoing?
FTX.
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer.
You have no right to blame yourself any more than that. You weren’t that important.
I agree that if I, personally, had steered SBF into crypto, and uncharacteristically failed to add on a lot of “hey but please don’t scam people, only do this if you find a kind of crypto you can feel good about” I might consider myselfmore at fault. I even think that the Singer side of EA in fact does less talking about deontology, less writing of fiction that exemplifies the feelings and reasoning behind that deontology, less cautioning of people against twisting up their brains by chasing good ideas; on my view, the Singer side explicitly starts by trying to twist people’s brains up internally, and at some point we should all maybe have a conversation about that.
The thing is, if you want to be sane about this sort of thing, even so and regardless I think Peter Singer himself would not have approved this, would obviously not have approved this. When somebody goes that far off the rails, I just don’t see how you could reasonably hold responsible people who didn’t tell them to do that and would’ve obviously not wanted them to do that.
I agree that if I, personally, had steered SBF into crypto, and uncharacteristically failed to add on a lot of “hey but please don’t scam people, only do this if you find a kind of crypto you can feel good about” I might consider myself more at fault.
Given how big of a role EA apparently had in the origin of Alameda (Singh says in the Sequoia puff piece that it wouldn’t have started without EA), there very likely are many members of the community who offered more encouragement and/or didn’t give as many warnings as they should have.
I don’t know what point that fault transcends the individual and attributes to the community, but at the very least, adding up other individuals’ culpabilities in steering SBF to crypto without appropriate caution would seem to put a lot of the blame you say you personally avoid on EA as a whole.
What about the parts of EA that isn’t Peter Singer and classical GiveWell-style EA? If those parts of EA were somewhat responsible, would it be reasonable to call that EA as well?
I don’t think the analogy is helpful. Naomi Novik presumably does not claim to emphasize the importance of understanding tail risks. Naomi presumably didn’t meet Caroline and encourage her to earn a lot of money so she can donate to fantasy authors, nor did Caroline say “I’m earning all of this money so I can fund Naomi Novik’s fantasy writing”. Naomi Novik did not have Caroline on her website as a success story of “this is why you should earn money to buy fantasy books or support other fantasy writers”. Naomi didn’t have a “Fantasy writer’s fund” with the FTX brand on it.
I think it’s reasonable to preach patience if you think people are jumping too quickly to blame themselves. I think it’s reasonable to think that EA is actually less responsible than the current state of discourse on the forum. And I’m not making a claim about the extent EA is in fact responsible for the events. But the analogy as written is pretty poor, and doesn’t really make a good case for saying EA has zero responsibility here (emphasis added):
I agree that if I, personally, had steered SBF into crypto, and uncharacteristically failed to add on a lot of “hey but please don’t scam people, only do this if you find a kind of crypto you can feel good about” I might consider myself more at fault. I even think that the Singer side of EA in fact does less talking about deontology, less writing of fiction that exemplifies the feelings and reasoning behind that deontology, less cautioning of people against twisting up their brains by chasing good ideas; on my view, the Singer side explicitly starts by trying to twist people’s brains up internally, and at some point we should all maybe have a conversation about that.
The thing is, if you want to be sane about this sort of thing, even so and regardless I think Peter Singer himself would not have approved this, would obviously not have approved this. When somebody goes that far off the rails, I just don’t see how you could reasonably hold responsible people who didn’t tell them to do that and would’ve obviously not wanted them to do that.
Given how big of a role EA apparently had in the origin of Alameda (Singh says in the Sequoia puff piece that it wouldn’t have started without EA), there very likely are many members of the community who offered more encouragement and/or didn’t give as many warnings as they should have.
I don’t know what point that fault transcends the individual and attributes to the community, but at the very least, adding up other individuals’ culpabilities in steering SBF to crypto without appropriate caution would seem to put a lot of the blame you say you personally avoid on EA as a whole.