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!)
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!)