Trying to write a response quickly before work starts at the end of long week (working on dem races, being EA-ish), so open to being too hasty or needing to flesh out these ideas. Two immediate reactions:
I am concerned about the tone and timing, and so optics of this post. We’re in a moment where SBF seems to quite plausibly have fraudulently financially ruined people to fund EA ventures, including political ones- not certain of course, but that is a current (potentially most reasonable!) narrative. We’re also worried about a potential backlash, where EAs are perceived as much too willing to believe that “ends justify the means” and we will have more critical eyes on the community. Given this, I think your tone should much more clearly reflect the somberness here, clearly reject what SBF may have done unethically, and be doing more to do everything it can to anticipate how this could be taken (potentially extremely!) the wrong way. To be clear, not making any claims about what your underlying stance is here and I’m guessing you’re just trying to be action oriented in a tough moment , just thinking an edit to clarify that might be prudent.
More broadly, I think any “politics coming out of EA” group you start needs to pretty seriously consider how you will manage such genuine issues and optics to be at all effective. Happy to talk more about this, but the “let’s all coordinate in private about our longterm political plans where our special interest money has declined” tone here feels incredibly concerning to intuitions as a dem political organizer.
A last quick clarifying thought- my claim isn’t just “external people looking might be concerned”, it’s “this is not the tone we should bring to doing politics as a community”.
Trying to write a response quickly before work starts at the end of long week (working on dem races, being EA-ish), so open to being too hasty or needing to flesh out these ideas. Two immediate reactions:
I am concerned about the tone and timing, and so optics of this post. We’re in a moment where SBF seems to quite plausibly have fraudulently financially ruined people to fund EA ventures, including political ones- not certain of course, but that is a current (potentially most reasonable!) narrative. We’re also worried about a potential backlash, where EAs are perceived as much too willing to believe that “ends justify the means” and we will have more critical eyes on the community. Given this, I think your tone should much more clearly reflect the somberness here, clearly reject what SBF may have done unethically, and be doing more to do everything it can to anticipate how this could be taken (potentially extremely!) the wrong way. To be clear, not making any claims about what your underlying stance is here and I’m guessing you’re just trying to be action oriented in a tough moment , just thinking an edit to clarify that might be prudent.
More broadly, I think any “politics coming out of EA” group you start needs to pretty seriously consider how you will manage such genuine issues and optics to be at all effective. Happy to talk more about this, but the “let’s all coordinate in private about our longterm political plans where our special interest money has declined” tone here feels incredibly concerning to intuitions as a dem political organizer.
A last quick clarifying thought- my claim isn’t just “external people looking might be concerned”, it’s “this is not the tone we should bring to doing politics as a community”.