This discussion here made me curious, so I went to Zoe’s twitter to check out what she’s posted recently. (Maybe she also said things in other places, in which case I lack info.) The main thing I see her taking credit for (by retweeting other people’s retweets saying Zoe “called it”) is this tweet from last August:
EA is to me to be unwilling to implement institutional safeguards against fuck-ups. They mostly happily rely on a self-image of being particularly well-intentioned, intelligent, precautious. That’s not good enough for an institution that prizes itself in understanding tail-risk.
That seems legitimate to me. (We can debate whether institutional safeguards would have been the best action against FTX in particular, but the more general point of “EAs have a blind spot around tail risks due to an elated self-image of the movement” seems to have gotten a “+1″ score with the FTX collapse (and EAs not having seen it coming despite some concerning signs).
There’s also a tweet by a journalist that she retweeted:
3) Critics (eg @CarlaZoeC@LukaKemp) warned that EA should decentralize funding so it doesn’t become a closed validation loop where the people in SBF’s inner circle get millions to promote his & their vision for EA while others don’t. But EA funding remained overcentralized.
That particular wording sounds suspiciously like it was tailored to the events with hindsight, in which case retweeting without caveats is potentially slightly suboptimal. But knowing what we know now, I’d indeed be worried about a hypothetical world where FTX hadn’t collapsed! Where Sam’s vision of things and his attitude to risks gets to have such a huge degree of influence within EA. (That said, it’s not like we can just wish money into existence from diversified sources of funding – in Zoe’s document, I saw very little discussion of the costs of cutting down on “centralized” funding.)
In any case, I agree with Jan’s point that it would be a massive overreaction to now consider all of Zoe’s criticisms vindicated. In fact, without a more detailed analysis, I think it would even be premature to say that she got some important details exactly right (especially when it comes to suggestions for change).
Even so, I think it’s important to concede that Zoe gets significant credit here at least directionally, and that’s an argument for people to (re-)engage with her suggestions if they haven’t already done so or if there’s a chance they may have been a bit closed off to them the last time.
(My own view remains skeptical, though, as I explained here.)
3) Critics (eg @CarlaZoeC@LukaKemp) warned that EA should decentralize funding so it doesn’t become a closed validation loop where the people in SBF’s inner circle get millions to promote his & their vision for EA while others don’t. But EA funding remained overcentralized
I think the FTX regranting program was the single biggest push to decentralize funding EA has ever seen, and it’s crazy to me that anyone could look at what FTX Foundation was doing and say that the key problem is that the funding decisions were getting more, rather than less, centralized. (I would be interested in hearing from those who had some insight into the program whether this seems incorrect or overstated.)
That said, first, I was a regrantor, so I am biased, and even aside from the tremendous damage caused by the foundation needing to back out and the possibility of clawbacks, the fact that at least some of the money which was being regranted was stolen makes the whole thing completely unacceptable. However, it was unacceptable in ways that have nothing to do with being overly centralized.
This seems right within longtermism, but, AFAIK, the vast majority of FTX’s grantmaking was longtermist. This decision to focus on longtermism seemed very centralized and might otherwise have shaped the direction and composition of EA disproportionately towards longtermism.
If FTX’s decentralised model had been proven successful for long-termism, I suspect it would have influenced the way funding was handled for other cause areas as well.
In case my wording was confusing, I meant that a community shift towards longtermism seems to have been decided by a small number of individuals (FTX founders). I’m not talking about centralization within causes, but centralization in deciding prioritization between causes.
Also, I’m skeptical that global health and poverty or animal welfare would shift towards very decentralized regranting without a massive increase in available funding first, because
some of the large cost-effective charities that get funded are still funding-constrained, and so the bars to beat seem better defined, and
there already are similar experiments on a smaller scale through the EA Funds.
Yeah, I got that, I was just mentioning an effect that might have partially offset it.
I agree that a small number of individuals decided that the funds should focus on long-terminal, although this is partially offset by how the EA movement was shifting that direction anyway.
I think you lack part of the context where Zoe seems to claim to media the suggested reforms would help
- this Economist piece, mentioning Zoe about 19 times - WP - this New Yorker piece, with Zoe explaining “My recommendations were not intended to catch a specific risk, precisely because specific risks are hard to predict” but still saying … “But, yes, would we have been less likely to see this crash if we had incentivized whistle-blowers or diversified the portfolio to be less reliant on a few central donors? I believe so.” -this twitter thread
- this New Yorker piece, with Zoe explaining “My recommendations were not intended to catch a specific risk, precisely because specific risks are hard to predict” but still saying … “But, yes, would we have been less likely to see this crash if we had incentivized whistle-blowers or diversified the portfolio to be less reliant on a few central donors? I believe so.””My recommendations were not intended to catch a specific risk, precisely because specific risks are hard to predict” but still saying … “But, yes, would we have been less likely to see this crash if we had incentivized whistle-blowers or diversified the portfolio to be less reliant on a few central donors? I believe so.”
To be fair, this seems like a reasonable statement on Zoe’s part:
If we had incentivised whistle-blowers to come forward around shady things happening at FTX, would we have known about FTX fraud sooner and been less reliant on FTX funding? Very plausibly yes. She says “likely” which is obviously not particularly specific, but this would fit my definition of likely.
If EA had diversified our portfolio to be less reliant on a few central donors, this would have also (quite obviously) mean the crash had less impact on EA overall, so this also seems true.
Basically, as othercomments have stated, you do little to actually say why these proposed reforms are, as you initially said, bad or would have no impact. I think if you’re going to make a statement like:
“it seems clear proposed reforms would not have prevented or influenced the FTX fiasco”
You need to actually provide some evidence or reasoning for this, as clearly lots of people don’t believe it’s clear. Additionally, if it feels unfair to call Zoe “not epistemically virtuous” when you’re making quite bold claims, without any reasoning laid out, then saying it would be too time-intensive to explain your thinking.
For example, you say here that you’re concerned about what democratisation actually looks like, which is a fair point and useful object-level argument, but this seems more like a question of implementation rather than the actual idea is necessarily bad.
If we had incentivised whistle-blowers to come forward around shady things happening at FTX, would we have known about FTX fraud sooner and been less reliant on FTX funding? Very plausibly yes. She says “likely” which is obviously not particularly specific, but this would fit my definition of likely.
Why do you think so? Whistleblowers inside of FTX would have been protected under US law, and US institution like SEC offer them multi-million dollar bounties. Why would EA scheme create stronger incentive?
Also: even if the possible whistleblowers inside of FTX were EAs, whistleblowing about fraud at FTX not directed toward authorities like SEC, but toward some EA org scheme, would have been particularly bad idea. The EA scheme would not be equipped to deal with this and would need to basically immediately forward it to authorities, leading to immediate FTX collapse. Main difference would be putting EAs in the centre of the happenings?
If EA had diversified our portfolio to be less reliant on a few central donors, this would have also (quite obviously) mean the crash had less impact on EA overall, so this also seems true.
I think the ‘diversified our portfolio’ frame is subtly misleading, because it’s usually associated with investments or holdings, but here it is applied to ‘donors’. You can’t diversify donations the same way. Also: assume you recruit donors uniformly, no matter how wealthy they are. Most of the wealth will be with the wealthiest minority , basically because how the wealth distribution looks like. Attempt to diversify donation portfolio toward smaller donors … would look like GWWC?
Only real option how to have much less FTX money in EA was to not accept that much FTX funding. Which was a tough call at the time, in part because FTX FF seemed like the biggest step toward decentralized distribution of funding, and a big step toward diversifying from OP.
Only real option how to have much less FTX money in EA was to not accept that much FTX funding. Which was a tough call at the time, in part because FTX FF seemed like the biggest step toward decentralized distribution of funding, and a big step toward diversifying from OP.
And even then, decisions about accepting funding are made by individuals and individual organizations. Would there be someone to kick you out of EA if you accept “unapproved” funding? The existing system is, in a sense, fairly democratic in that everyone gets to decide whether they want to take the money or not. I don’t see how Cremer’s proposal could be effective without a blacklist to enforce community will against anyone who chose to take the money anyway, and that gives whoever maintains the blacklist great power (which is contrary to Cremer’s stated aims).
The reality, perhaps unfortunate, is that charities need donors more than donors need specific charities or movements.
Also: assume you recruit donors uniformly, no matter how wealthy they are. Most of the wealth will be with the wealthiest minority , basically because how the wealth distribution looks like. Attempt to diversify donation portfolio toward smaller donors … would look like GWWC?
It depends on how you define wealthiest minority, but if you mean billionaires, the majority of philanthropy is not from billionaires. EA has been unusually successful with billionaires. That means if EA mean reverts, perhaps by going mainstream, the majority of EA funding will not be from billionaires. CEA deprioritized GWWC for several years-I think if they had continued to prioritize it, funding would have gotten at least somewhat more diversified. Also, I find that talking with midcareer professionals it’s much easier to mention donations rather than switching their career. So I think that more emphasis on donations from people of modest means could help EA diversify with respect to age.
If we had incentivised whistle-blowers to come forward around shady things happening at FTX, would we have known about FTX fraud sooner and been less reliant on FTX funding? Very plausibly yes. She says “likely” which is obviously not particularly specific, but this would fit my definition of likely.
Why do you believe this? To me, FTX fits more in the reference class of financial firms than EA orgs, and I don’t see how EA whistleblower protections would have helped FTX employees whistleblow (I believe that most FTX employees were not EAs, for example). And it seems much more likely to me that an FTX employee would be able to whistle-blow than an EA at a non-FTX org.
Also, my current best guess is that only the top 4 at FTX/Alameda knew about the fraud, and I have not come across anyone who seems like they might have been a whistleblower (I’d love to be corrected on this though!)
This discussion here made me curious, so I went to Zoe’s twitter to check out what she’s posted recently. (Maybe she also said things in other places, in which case I lack info.) The main thing I see her taking credit for (by retweeting other people’s retweets saying Zoe “called it”) is this tweet from last August:
That seems legitimate to me. (We can debate whether institutional safeguards would have been the best action against FTX in particular, but the more general point of “EAs have a blind spot around tail risks due to an elated self-image of the movement” seems to have gotten a “+1″ score with the FTX collapse (and EAs not having seen it coming despite some concerning signs).
There’s also a tweet by a journalist that she retweeted:
That particular wording sounds suspiciously like it was tailored to the events with hindsight, in which case retweeting without caveats is potentially slightly suboptimal. But knowing what we know now, I’d indeed be worried about a hypothetical world where FTX hadn’t collapsed! Where Sam’s vision of things and his attitude to risks gets to have such a huge degree of influence within EA. (That said, it’s not like we can just wish money into existence from diversified sources of funding – in Zoe’s document, I saw very little discussion of the costs of cutting down on “centralized” funding.)
In any case, I agree with Jan’s point that it would be a massive overreaction to now consider all of Zoe’s criticisms vindicated. In fact, without a more detailed analysis, I think it would even be premature to say that she got some important details exactly right (especially when it comes to suggestions for change).
Even so, I think it’s important to concede that Zoe gets significant credit here at least directionally, and that’s an argument for people to (re-)engage with her suggestions if they haven’t already done so or if there’s a chance they may have been a bit closed off to them the last time.
(My own view remains skeptical, though, as I explained here.)
I think the FTX regranting program was the single biggest push to decentralize funding EA has ever seen, and it’s crazy to me that anyone could look at what FTX Foundation was doing and say that the key problem is that the funding decisions were getting more, rather than less, centralized. (I would be interested in hearing from those who had some insight into the program whether this seems incorrect or overstated.)
That said, first, I was a regrantor, so I am biased, and even aside from the tremendous damage caused by the foundation needing to back out and the possibility of clawbacks, the fact that at least some of the money which was being regranted was stolen makes the whole thing completely unacceptable. However, it was unacceptable in ways that have nothing to do with being overly centralized.
This seems right within longtermism, but, AFAIK, the vast majority of FTX’s grantmaking was longtermist. This decision to focus on longtermism seemed very centralized and might otherwise have shaped the direction and composition of EA disproportionately towards longtermism.
If FTX’s decentralised model had been proven successful for long-termism, I suspect it would have influenced the way funding was handled for other cause areas as well.
In case my wording was confusing, I meant that a community shift towards longtermism seems to have been decided by a small number of individuals (FTX founders). I’m not talking about centralization within causes, but centralization in deciding prioritization between causes.
Also, I’m skeptical that global health and poverty or animal welfare would shift towards very decentralized regranting without a massive increase in available funding first, because
some of the large cost-effective charities that get funded are still funding-constrained, and so the bars to beat seem better defined, and
there already are similar experiments on a smaller scale through the EA Funds.
Yeah, I got that, I was just mentioning an effect that might have partially offset it.
I agree that a small number of individuals decided that the funds should focus on long-terminal, although this is partially offset by how the EA movement was shifting that direction anyway.
Yes, that seems correct.
I think you lack part of the context where Zoe seems to claim to media the suggested reforms would help
- this Economist piece, mentioning Zoe about 19 times
- WP
- this New Yorker piece, with Zoe explaining “My recommendations were not intended to catch a specific risk, precisely because specific risks are hard to predict” but still saying … “But, yes, would we have been less likely to see this crash if we had incentivized whistle-blowers or diversified the portfolio to be less reliant on a few central donors? I believe so.”
-this twitter thread
To be fair, this seems like a reasonable statement on Zoe’s part:
If we had incentivised whistle-blowers to come forward around shady things happening at FTX, would we have known about FTX fraud sooner and been less reliant on FTX funding? Very plausibly yes. She says “likely” which is obviously not particularly specific, but this would fit my definition of likely.
If EA had diversified our portfolio to be less reliant on a few central donors, this would have also (quite obviously) mean the crash had less impact on EA overall, so this also seems true.
Basically, as other comments have stated, you do little to actually say why these proposed reforms are, as you initially said, bad or would have no impact. I think if you’re going to make a statement like:
You need to actually provide some evidence or reasoning for this, as clearly lots of people don’t believe it’s clear. Additionally, if it feels unfair to call Zoe “not epistemically virtuous” when you’re making quite bold claims, without any reasoning laid out, then saying it would be too time-intensive to explain your thinking.
For example, you say here that you’re concerned about what democratisation actually looks like, which is a fair point and useful object-level argument, but this seems more like a question of implementation rather than the actual idea is necessarily bad.
Why do you think so? Whistleblowers inside of FTX would have been protected under US law, and US institution like SEC offer them multi-million dollar bounties. Why would EA scheme create stronger incentive?
Also: even if the possible whistleblowers inside of FTX were EAs, whistleblowing about fraud at FTX not directed toward authorities like SEC, but toward some EA org scheme, would have been particularly bad idea. The EA scheme would not be equipped to deal with this and would need to basically immediately forward it to authorities, leading to immediate FTX collapse. Main difference would be putting EAs in the centre of the happenings?
I think the ‘diversified our portfolio’ frame is subtly misleading, because it’s usually associated with investments or holdings, but here it is applied to ‘donors’. You can’t diversify donations the same way. Also: assume you recruit donors uniformly, no matter how wealthy they are. Most of the wealth will be with the wealthiest minority , basically because how the wealth distribution looks like. Attempt to diversify donation portfolio toward smaller donors … would look like GWWC?
Only real option how to have much less FTX money in EA was to not accept that much FTX funding. Which was a tough call at the time, in part because FTX FF seemed like the biggest step toward decentralized distribution of funding, and a big step toward diversifying from OP.
And even then, decisions about accepting funding are made by individuals and individual organizations. Would there be someone to kick you out of EA if you accept “unapproved” funding? The existing system is, in a sense, fairly democratic in that everyone gets to decide whether they want to take the money or not. I don’t see how Cremer’s proposal could be effective without a blacklist to enforce community will against anyone who chose to take the money anyway, and that gives whoever maintains the blacklist great power (which is contrary to Cremer’s stated aims).
The reality, perhaps unfortunate, is that charities need donors more than donors need specific charities or movements.
It depends on how you define wealthiest minority, but if you mean billionaires, the majority of philanthropy is not from billionaires. EA has been unusually successful with billionaires. That means if EA mean reverts, perhaps by going mainstream, the majority of EA funding will not be from billionaires. CEA deprioritized GWWC for several years-I think if they had continued to prioritize it, funding would have gotten at least somewhat more diversified. Also, I find that talking with midcareer professionals it’s much easier to mention donations rather than switching their career. So I think that more emphasis on donations from people of modest means could help EA diversify with respect to age.
Why do you believe this? To me, FTX fits more in the reference class of financial firms than EA orgs, and I don’t see how EA whistleblower protections would have helped FTX employees whistleblow (I believe that most FTX employees were not EAs, for example). And it seems much more likely to me that an FTX employee would be able to whistle-blow than an EA at a non-FTX org.
Also, my current best guess is that only the top 4 at FTX/Alameda knew about the fraud, and I have not come across anyone who seems like they might have been a whistleblower (I’d love to be corrected on this though!)