I think Nathan is right about the prior. If we’re unsure bout whether they made severe ex ante mistakes, we should remove them.
Same question as to Nathan: why? Mostly because of optics?
I think in order to be on EVF’s board it’s a mandatory job requirement you to maintain the trust of the community and removing people over this makes sense.
I think you can flip this around. “Hey, we don’t have any concrete evidence that you did anything wrong, but there’s just a general sentiment going around that you’re tainted now, so we’re getting rid of you.” That sits badly with me.
Though I don’t think that we should always do what a traditional board would do, it strikes me that EA in general is lacking in good governance best practice and would benefit from going in the traditional direction at least on some axes
I think I agree with this, where there is a good argument for doing it the traditional way. I think just saying “well, traditional folks do it so maybe it’s good” is not an argument I want to endorse in generality. And I don’t see the actual argument here.
To be clear, I do think that them recusing themselves was sensible, I’m unconvinced that doing more is justified except for optics.
Optics is one reason and it is a good reason. Optics matters and I don’t think we should be so dismissive towards optics concerns.
Another related reason I mentioned is the trust element—regardless of whether it sits badly, it still is a fact of the matter that community trust is needed to do this job, and while Will + Nick are presumably good people they are lacking in the trust department at the moment, which suggests they should find a different job. I imagine there’s a lot of very useful things for them to do in the EA movement and I’m not suggesting by any means casting them out of EA entirely. Just really doubtful they are the right people for the EVF board at this moment. This kind of reasoning happens all the time in all sorts of boards.
However, the element I worry much more about is that of bad decision making and basic risk management. 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.
Although it’s difficult to know, especially without inside knowledge, I also suspect that Nick and Will leaving the board (plus bringing in some people with more nonprofit administration experience in their stead) would reduce the risk of more intrusive and distracting involvement by the Charity Commission over the medium run. Appeasement of one’s regulator is a valid reason for asking a board member to resign and is not “optics.”
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.
The “traditional way” of corporate governance is in significant part based on lessons learned from past mistakes, so I think at least a weak presumption in favor of following that approach is warranted. Otherwise, the only way to learn those lessons will be to make the same painful mistakes. If we only follow the traditional approach when we would independently reach that outcome via reasoning, we’re not assigning any weight to that body of experience.
2022 definitely seemed to be a big year for EA making some painful mistakes in order to learn why some parts of the traditional scheme are the way they are. In more ways than just SBF/FTX unfortunately. I think 2023 is the year we pay the price for that, but hopefully we will learn and be stronger.
Same question as to Nathan: why? Mostly because of optics?
I think you can flip this around. “Hey, we don’t have any concrete evidence that you did anything wrong, but there’s just a general sentiment going around that you’re tainted now, so we’re getting rid of you.” That sits badly with me.
I think I agree with this, where there is a good argument for doing it the traditional way. I think just saying “well, traditional folks do it so maybe it’s good” is not an argument I want to endorse in generality. And I don’t see the actual argument here.
To be clear, I do think that them recusing themselves was sensible, I’m unconvinced that doing more is justified except for optics.
Optics is one reason and it is a good reason. Optics matters and I don’t think we should be so dismissive towards optics concerns.
Another related reason I mentioned is the trust element—regardless of whether it sits badly, it still is a fact of the matter that community trust is needed to do this job, and while Will + Nick are presumably good people they are lacking in the trust department at the moment, which suggests they should find a different job. I imagine there’s a lot of very useful things for them to do in the EA movement and I’m not suggesting by any means casting them out of EA entirely. Just really doubtful they are the right people for the EVF board at this moment. This kind of reasoning happens all the time in all sorts of boards.
However, the element I worry much more about is that of bad decision making and basic risk management. 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.
Although it’s difficult to know, especially without inside knowledge, I also suspect that Nick and Will leaving the board (plus bringing in some people with more nonprofit administration experience in their stead) would reduce the risk of more intrusive and distracting involvement by the Charity Commission over the medium run. Appeasement of one’s regulator is a valid reason for asking a board member to resign and is not “optics.”
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.
The “traditional way” of corporate governance is in significant part based on lessons learned from past mistakes, so I think at least a weak presumption in favor of following that approach is warranted. Otherwise, the only way to learn those lessons will be to make the same painful mistakes. If we only follow the traditional approach when we would independently reach that outcome via reasoning, we’re not assigning any weight to that body of experience.
2022 definitely seemed to be a big year for EA making some painful mistakes in order to learn why some parts of the traditional scheme are the way they are. In more ways than just SBF/FTX unfortunately. I think 2023 is the year we pay the price for that, but hopefully we will learn and be stronger.