Essentially if there’s someone and you think there’s a 20% chance they just make catastrophically bad decisions, I don’t know why you’d want them involved in the sorts of things they make catastrophically bad decisions about, even if there’s an 80% chance that they’re fine.
I’m struggling to articulate what I disagree with here. This is one of those things where in a sense, yes, it’s totally reasonable to use this kind of statistical reasoning to make inferences about people (“many people who are in a situation like that did make some bad judgements, so I’m going to increase my expectation that you made bad judgements despite not having direct evidence”), but I feel like we often have norms against doing this partly because it can be very unfair. We can have the situation where something bad happens to or around you, and then people add insult to injury by treating you as if it might have been your fault.
I don’t quite know where I’m going here, but I think there’s something there.
I think the crux is that I just don’t think the question of who should be on the EVF board is a matter of fairness. I think it’s a matter of what maximizes the likelihood that EVF achieves its objectives in the light of various risk.
To be clear I still think Will and Nick are great people and I want them to be a part of the EA community, potentially even still in roles of great power and influence. Casting them out of EA entirely on statistical reasoning would be unfair and I think that’s a matter of where the fairness matters. I just don’t think EVF Board is the right place for them right now.
I’m struggling to articulate what I disagree with here. This is one of those things where in a sense, yes, it’s totally reasonable to use this kind of statistical reasoning to make inferences about people (“many people who are in a situation like that did make some bad judgements, so I’m going to increase my expectation that you made bad judgements despite not having direct evidence”), but I feel like we often have norms against doing this partly because it can be very unfair. We can have the situation where something bad happens to or around you, and then people add insult to injury by treating you as if it might have been your fault.
I don’t quite know where I’m going here, but I think there’s something there.
I think the crux is that I just don’t think the question of who should be on the EVF board is a matter of fairness. I think it’s a matter of what maximizes the likelihood that EVF achieves its objectives in the light of various risk.
To be clear I still think Will and Nick are great people and I want them to be a part of the EA community, potentially even still in roles of great power and influence. Casting them out of EA entirely on statistical reasoning would be unfair and I think that’s a matter of where the fairness matters. I just don’t think EVF Board is the right place for them right now.