Nathan—thanks for sharing the Time article excerpts, and for trying to promote a constructive and rational discussion.
For now, I don’t want to address any of the specific issues around SBF, FTX, or EA leadership. I just want to make a meta-comment about the mainstream media’s feeding frenzy around EA, and its apparently relentless attempts to discredit EA.
There’s a classic social/moral psychology of ‘comeuppance’ going on here: any ‘moral activists’ who promote new and higher moral standards (such as the EA movement) can make ordinary folks (including journalists) feel uncomfortable, resentful, and inadequate. This can lead to a public eagerness to detect any forms of moral hypocrisy, moral failings, or bad behavior in the moral activist groups. If any such moral failings are detected, they get eagerly embraced, shared, signal-amplified, and taken as gospel. This makes it easier to dismiss the moral activists’ legitimate moral innovations (e.g. focusing on scope-sensitivity, tractability, neglectedness, long-termism), and allows a quicky, easy return to the status quo ante (e.g. national partisan politics + scope-insensitive charity as usual).
We see this ‘psychology of comeuppance’ in the delight that mainstream media took when televangelists who acted greedy, lustful, and/or mendacious suffered various falls from grace over the last few decades. We see it in the media’s focus on the (relatively minor) moral mis-steps and mis-statements of ‘enemy politicians’ (i.e. those in whatever party the journalists don’t like), compared to the (relatively major) moral harms done by bad government policies. We see it throughout cancel culture, which is basically the psychology of comeuppance weaponized through social media to attack ideological enemies.
I’m not positing an organized conspiracy among mainstream journalists to smear EA. Rather, I’m pointing out a widespread human psychological propensity to take delight in any moral failings of any activist groups that make people feel morally inadequate. This propensity may be especially strong among journalists, since it motivates a lot of their investigative reporting (sometimes in the legitimate public interest, sometimes not).
I think it’s useful to recognize the ‘comeuppance psychology’ when it’s happening, because it often overshoots, and amplifies moderately bad moral errors into looking like they’re super-bad moral errors. When a lot of credible, influential media sources are all piling onto a moral activist group (like EA), it can be extremely stressful, dispiriting, and toxic for the group. It can lead the group to doubt their own valid ideas and values, to collapse into schisms and recriminations, to over-correct its internal moral norms in an overly puritanical direction, and to ostracize formerly valued leaders and colleagues.
I’ve seen EA do a lot of soul-searching over the last few months. Some of it has been useful, valid, and constructive. Some of it has been self-flagellating, guilt-stricken, and counter-productive. I think we should take the Time article seriously, learn what we can from it, and update some of our views of issues and people. But I think our reactions should be tempered and contextualized by understanding that the media’s ‘comeuppance psychology’ can also lead to hasty, reactive, over-corrections.
Thanks for sharing this, I already knew about the phenomena and had vague thoughts this might be a significant contributor, but appreciate you spelling it out.
I’m suspecting that the comeuppance-related behavior is not only about EA being a movement emphasizing ethical innovation, but also about EA recently gaining a lot in more visible influence and social status, e.g. via more public outreach campaigns leading to features in cover stories. My impression is that the distribution of social status of public actors and social movements is fairly zero sum (actually probably even negative sum because of the incentives to invest in and stick to defensive PR). This, combined with the public discourse being relatively scatterbrained and not very optimized for truth-seeking leads to a lot of distorted publications that aim more at lowering the social standing of an actor than giving a clear impression of what is really going on.
MaxRa—I agree this is also part of the mainstream media’s anti-EA mind-set: a zero-sum view of influence, prestige, and power. There are many vested interests (e.g. traditional political institutions, charities, think tanks, media outlets) that are deeply threatened by EA, because they simply don’t care about scope-sensitivity, tractability, neglectedness, or long-termism. Indeed, these EA values directly challenge their day-to-day partisanship and virtue-signaling.
The EA movement may have naively under-estimated the strength of these vested interests, and their willingness to play dirty (through negative PR campaigns) to protect their influence.
What “organization” do you currently have evidence is “running” a negative PR campaign against us because we directly threaten its interests? We’re not a threat to TIME magazine in any way I can see.
David—TIME magazine for decades has promoted standard left/liberal Democrat-aligned narratives that prioritize symbolic partisan issues over scope-sensitive impact.
From the viewpoint of their editors, EA represents an embarrassing challenge to their America-centric, anthropocentric, short-termist, politicized way of thinking about the world’s problems.
We may not be a direct threat to their subscription revenue, newsstand sales, or ad revenue.
But we are a threat to the ideology that their editors have strong interests in promoting—an ideology that may seem invisible if you agree with it, but which seems obviously biased if you don’t agree with it.
This is how partisan propaganda operates in the 21st century: it tries to discredit rival ideologies and world-views with a surprising ferocity and speed, once they sense a serious threat.
IMHO, EA needs to get a bit less naive about what people and institutions are willing to do to protect their world-views and political agendas.
I feel like an equally informative version of this is “people are more critical about the bad behavior of those they disagree with politically ”, and then it sounds relevant yes, but far less sinister and discrediting.
I think that’s a somewhat different point. It’s often true that people are more critical about bad behavior by their political opponents’.
But most of the news stories I read in mainstream media that are critical of EA go far beyond demonizing EA individuals. I sense that these editors & journalists are feeling a panicky, uneasy, defensive reaction to the EA movement’s epistemics and ethics, not just to EA individuals. It reminds me of the defensive, angry reactions that meat-eaters often show when they encounter compelling vegan arguments about animal welfare.
Admittedly this is a rather vague take, but I think we do under-estimate how much the EA perspective threatens many traditional world-views.
Are they issuing comeuppance because you’ve positioned yourselves above them morally and they’re waiting to pounce on any mistake, or are they issuing comeuppance because EA didn’t listen to anyone who warned them about obvious scams? I don’t think the only reason there is a widespread media attack on EA (which is not really even true), is because you’re simply more morally active than them and they are uncomfortable with that. Plenty of journalists are activists themselves who think EA isn’t even doing enough, so the witch hunt argument doesn’t really make sense does it?
Hm you say “EA didn’t listen to anyone who warned them about obvious scams”, but the article says:
None of the early Alameda employees who witnessed Bankman-Fried’s behavior years earlier say they anticipated this level of alleged criminal fraud. There was no “smoking gun,” as one put it, that revealed specific examples of lawbreaking. Even if they knew Bankman-Fried was dishonest and unethical, they say, none of them could have foreseen a fraud of this scope.
And
No one has alleged criminal behavior on the part of top EA figures. None of the people who raised concerns about Bankman-Fried to EA leaders in 2018 and 2019 say they warned about specific criminal activity, nor did they foresee the size and scope of the alleged fraud at the heart of the FTX collapse. In charging documents, federal prosecutors identify the start of Bankman-Fried’s alleged fraud as 2019.
So I’m not sure you can say there were warnings of “obvious scams”.
Also
Sometime [in 2019], the Centre for Effective Altruism did an internal investigation relating to CEA and Alameda, according to one person who was contacted during the investigation, and who said it was was conducted in part by MacAskill. Bankman-Fried left the board of the organization in 2019. The Centre for Effective Altruism did not respond to repeated requests from TIME to discuss the circumstances leading to his departure; MacAskill and others declined multiple opportunities to answer questions about those events.
So I’m not sure it is accurate to say that “EA didn’t listen to” the warnings which were given. I’m certainly curious about the quality of the internal investigation by CEA. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were gaps/it was of low quality. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was of expected/good quality given the nature of the complaints made. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Sam would have fooled a non-EA, commissioned investigation too, enough that non-EA nonprofits would have felt comfortable taking his money. I mean, I assume Sam would have refused to give internal financial documents to independent investigators, and such a refusal to engage thoroughly from Alameda (“Um, no you can’t see our internal documents? Who do you think you are..?”) would be so normal for an investment firm that it can’t even be seen as a red flag.
I’m not surprised that CEA is refusing to comment til after the commissioned independent investigation is complete, whether or not their 2019 internal investigation was of high, decent, or low quality. I’m not sure which it was yet. I guess I’ll wait to see.
[Edit: In general I’m against pushing to make others responsible for the sins of others without a lot of proof. Especially when the “sinners” had dark triad traits who could have been trying to manipulate the others. I know the general population and journalists don’t think that way or have as much patience in that regard, but I’d like it if EAs did. Judge leadership for competence, and replace them if needed, sure, but comeuppance here is still likely to be punishment for trying and failing. And I think punishment should be reserved for the actual sinners themselves. I’m not at all sure anyone who didn’t work directly with SBF at Alameda “sinned” here. And if they didn’t, EA itself and EA leaders don’t “deserve” comeuppance, IMO.
I find comeuppance as journalistic motivation plausible, but I also admit that comeuppance might not be the journalist’s intention with this article, even subconsciously. But it sounds like you are also arguing that comeuppance would be warranted for other reasons here, and I just don’t think so. Comeuppance is moral punishment. I’ll reiterate that it would be fine to push that leadership should be changed (after the investigation). But let the actual sinners, and the sinners alone, be punished for their sins. [[I don’t want to suppress discussion, so sure, place your bets, but please don’t assume moral fault yet.]]
Finally, I agree with you that many journalists are activists themselves. But I’ll also note that when journalists and others say that “EA isn’t doing enough”, they are still potentially using another way to shame moral actors who otherwise appear to be doing more than them. It is a frame that EA has more agency and privilege than them (perhaps unjustly given), but still has less actual goodness and merit than them. So I still find it very plausible that the recent journalists are (consciously or unconsciously) doling out extra blame and shame to put aspiring altruists in their place. And if it is not the journalists themselves doing this, perhaps, as a business, they are catering to the many, many readers who click for and revel in “comeuppance”.]
Nathan—thanks for sharing the Time article excerpts, and for trying to promote a constructive and rational discussion.
For now, I don’t want to address any of the specific issues around SBF, FTX, or EA leadership. I just want to make a meta-comment about the mainstream media’s feeding frenzy around EA, and its apparently relentless attempts to discredit EA.
There’s a classic social/moral psychology of ‘comeuppance’ going on here: any ‘moral activists’ who promote new and higher moral standards (such as the EA movement) can make ordinary folks (including journalists) feel uncomfortable, resentful, and inadequate. This can lead to a public eagerness to detect any forms of moral hypocrisy, moral failings, or bad behavior in the moral activist groups. If any such moral failings are detected, they get eagerly embraced, shared, signal-amplified, and taken as gospel. This makes it easier to dismiss the moral activists’ legitimate moral innovations (e.g. focusing on scope-sensitivity, tractability, neglectedness, long-termism), and allows a quicky, easy return to the status quo ante (e.g. national partisan politics + scope-insensitive charity as usual).
We see this ‘psychology of comeuppance’ in the delight that mainstream media took when televangelists who acted greedy, lustful, and/or mendacious suffered various falls from grace over the last few decades. We see it in the media’s focus on the (relatively minor) moral mis-steps and mis-statements of ‘enemy politicians’ (i.e. those in whatever party the journalists don’t like), compared to the (relatively major) moral harms done by bad government policies. We see it throughout cancel culture, which is basically the psychology of comeuppance weaponized through social media to attack ideological enemies.
I’m not positing an organized conspiracy among mainstream journalists to smear EA. Rather, I’m pointing out a widespread human psychological propensity to take delight in any moral failings of any activist groups that make people feel morally inadequate. This propensity may be especially strong among journalists, since it motivates a lot of their investigative reporting (sometimes in the legitimate public interest, sometimes not).
I think it’s useful to recognize the ‘comeuppance psychology’ when it’s happening, because it often overshoots, and amplifies moderately bad moral errors into looking like they’re super-bad moral errors. When a lot of credible, influential media sources are all piling onto a moral activist group (like EA), it can be extremely stressful, dispiriting, and toxic for the group. It can lead the group to doubt their own valid ideas and values, to collapse into schisms and recriminations, to over-correct its internal moral norms in an overly puritanical direction, and to ostracize formerly valued leaders and colleagues.
I’ve seen EA do a lot of soul-searching over the last few months. Some of it has been useful, valid, and constructive. Some of it has been self-flagellating, guilt-stricken, and counter-productive. I think we should take the Time article seriously, learn what we can from it, and update some of our views of issues and people. But I think our reactions should be tempered and contextualized by understanding that the media’s ‘comeuppance psychology’ can also lead to hasty, reactive, over-corrections.
Thanks for sharing this, I already knew about the phenomena and had vague thoughts this might be a significant contributor, but appreciate you spelling it out.
I’m suspecting that the comeuppance-related behavior is not only about EA being a movement emphasizing ethical innovation, but also about EA recently gaining a lot in more visible influence and social status, e.g. via more public outreach campaigns leading to features in cover stories. My impression is that the distribution of social status of public actors and social movements is fairly zero sum (actually probably even negative sum because of the incentives to invest in and stick to defensive PR). This, combined with the public discourse being relatively scatterbrained and not very optimized for truth-seeking leads to a lot of distorted publications that aim more at lowering the social standing of an actor than giving a clear impression of what is really going on.
MaxRa—I agree this is also part of the mainstream media’s anti-EA mind-set: a zero-sum view of influence, prestige, and power. There are many vested interests (e.g. traditional political institutions, charities, think tanks, media outlets) that are deeply threatened by EA, because they simply don’t care about scope-sensitivity, tractability, neglectedness, or long-termism. Indeed, these EA values directly challenge their day-to-day partisanship and virtue-signaling.
The EA movement may have naively under-estimated the strength of these vested interests, and their willingness to play dirty (through negative PR campaigns) to protect their influence.
What “organization” do you currently have evidence is “running” a negative PR campaign against us because we directly threaten its interests? We’re not a threat to TIME magazine in any way I can see.
David—TIME magazine for decades has promoted standard left/liberal Democrat-aligned narratives that prioritize symbolic partisan issues over scope-sensitive impact.
From the viewpoint of their editors, EA represents an embarrassing challenge to their America-centric, anthropocentric, short-termist, politicized way of thinking about the world’s problems.
We may not be a direct threat to their subscription revenue, newsstand sales, or ad revenue.
But we are a threat to the ideology that their editors have strong interests in promoting—an ideology that may seem invisible if you agree with it, but which seems obviously biased if you don’t agree with it.
This is how partisan propaganda operates in the 21st century: it tries to discredit rival ideologies and world-views with a surprising ferocity and speed, once they sense a serious threat.
IMHO, EA needs to get a bit less naive about what people and institutions are willing to do to protect their world-views and political agendas.
That doesn’t seem to match with EA being a front cover story last year, and being shown in a positive light.
I feel like an equally informative version of this is “people are more critical about the bad behavior of those they disagree with politically ”, and then it sounds relevant yes, but far less sinister and discrediting.
I think that’s a somewhat different point. It’s often true that people are more critical about bad behavior by their political opponents’.
But most of the news stories I read in mainstream media that are critical of EA go far beyond demonizing EA individuals. I sense that these editors & journalists are feeling a panicky, uneasy, defensive reaction to the EA movement’s epistemics and ethics, not just to EA individuals. It reminds me of the defensive, angry reactions that meat-eaters often show when they encounter compelling vegan arguments about animal welfare.
Admittedly this is a rather vague take, but I think we do under-estimate how much the EA perspective threatens many traditional world-views.
Are they issuing comeuppance because you’ve positioned yourselves above them morally and they’re waiting to pounce on any mistake, or are they issuing comeuppance because EA didn’t listen to anyone who warned them about obvious scams? I don’t think the only reason there is a widespread media attack on EA (which is not really even true), is because you’re simply more morally active than them and they are uncomfortable with that. Plenty of journalists are activists themselves who think EA isn’t even doing enough, so the witch hunt argument doesn’t really make sense does it?
Hm you say “EA didn’t listen to anyone who warned them about obvious scams”, but the article says:
And
So I’m not sure you can say there were warnings of “obvious scams”.
Also
So I’m not sure it is accurate to say that “EA didn’t listen to” the warnings which were given. I’m certainly curious about the quality of the internal investigation by CEA. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were gaps/it was of low quality. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was of expected/good quality given the nature of the complaints made. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Sam would have fooled a non-EA, commissioned investigation too, enough that non-EA nonprofits would have felt comfortable taking his money. I mean, I assume Sam would have refused to give internal financial documents to independent investigators, and such a refusal to engage thoroughly from Alameda (“Um, no you can’t see our internal documents? Who do you think you are..?”) would be so normal for an investment firm that it can’t even be seen as a red flag.
I’m not surprised that CEA is refusing to comment til after the commissioned independent investigation is complete, whether or not their 2019 internal investigation was of high, decent, or low quality. I’m not sure which it was yet. I guess I’ll wait to see.
[Edit: In general I’m against pushing to make others responsible for the sins of others without a lot of proof. Especially when the “sinners” had dark triad traits who could have been trying to manipulate the others. I know the general population and journalists don’t think that way or have as much patience in that regard, but I’d like it if EAs did. Judge leadership for competence, and replace them if needed, sure, but comeuppance here is still likely to be punishment for trying and failing. And I think punishment should be reserved for the actual sinners themselves. I’m not at all sure anyone who didn’t work directly with SBF at Alameda “sinned” here. And if they didn’t, EA itself and EA leaders don’t “deserve” comeuppance, IMO.
I find comeuppance as journalistic motivation plausible, but I also admit that comeuppance might not be the journalist’s intention with this article, even subconsciously. But it sounds like you are also arguing that comeuppance would be warranted for other reasons here, and I just don’t think so. Comeuppance is moral punishment. I’ll reiterate that it would be fine to push that leadership should be changed (after the investigation). But let the actual sinners, and the sinners alone, be punished for their sins. [[I don’t want to suppress discussion, so sure, place your bets, but please don’t assume moral fault yet.]]
Finally, I agree with you that many journalists are activists themselves. But I’ll also note that when journalists and others say that “EA isn’t doing enough”, they are still potentially using another way to shame moral actors who otherwise appear to be doing more than them. It is a frame that EA has more agency and privilege than them (perhaps unjustly given), but still has less actual goodness and merit than them. So I still find it very plausible that the recent journalists are (consciously or unconsciously) doling out extra blame and shame to put aspiring altruists in their place. And if it is not the journalists themselves doing this, perhaps, as a business, they are catering to the many, many readers who click for and revel in “comeuppance”.]
There are so many parallels to the Christian church