Yeah… I’ve been part of another community where a few hundred people were scammed out of some $500+ and left stranded in Nevada. (Well, Las Vegas, but Nevada sounds more dramatic.) Hundreds of other people in the community spang into action within hours, donated and coordinated donation efforts, and helped the others at least get back home.
Only Nonlinear attempted something similar in the EA community. (But I condemn exploitative treatment of employees of course!) Open Phil picked up an AI safety prize contest, and I might miss a few cases. I was very disappointed by how little of this sort happened. Then again I could’ve tried to start such an effort myself. I don’t have the network, so I’m pretty sure I would’ve failed. I was also in bed with Covid for the first month.
I suppose it really makes more sense to model EA not as a community but as a scientific discipline. I have a degree in CS, but I wasn’t disappointed that the CS community didn’t support their own after the FTX collapse because I never had the expectation that that is something that could happen. EA seems to me is better understood within that reference class. (Unfortunately – not because there’s something wrong with scientific disciplines but because I would’ve loved to be part of a real community too.)
I’ve been part of another community where a few hundred people were scammed out of some $500+ and left stranded in Nevada. (Well, Las Vegas, but Nevada sounds more dramatic.) Hundreds of other people in the community spang into action within hours, donated and coordinated donation efforts, and helped the others at least get back home.
I think if this happened with, say, a conference you would see this kind of response within EA. A group of people stuck in a specific place is very different from the FTX collapse.
Maybe now is a good time to review that response and figure out what could’ve been done better. For example, maybe some person or organization could’ve made a point of reaching out individually to each and every FTX grantee.
For me, the OP resonates well beyond just the FTX stuff though. There’s an element of making personal sacrifices for the greater good that exists in EA, which doesn’t exist in the same way for an academic discipline. I myself found the lack of supportiveness in EA very alienating, and it’s a major reason why I’m not very involved these days.
One idea is something like a “Basefund for mental health”, to provide free or low-cost therapy for EAs—possibly group therapy. EAs have already made the argument that mental health could be an effective cause area. If that’s true, “mental health for EAs” could be a doubly effective cause area. Beyond the first-order benefit of improving someone’s mental health, you can improve someone’s mental health in a way that enables them to do good.
Oh true! I was only thinking of financial support for struggling projects and project developers, but those kinds of support are also super valuable!
Rethink Wellbeing is definitely on board with mental health for EAs being an important cause area.
I don’t think personal identity makes too much sense, so preventing the extinction of EA-related values (or maybe even some wider set of prosocial, procivilizational values) could be an underexplored cause area. Some sort of EA crisis fund could be a way to achieve that, but also archival of important insights and such.
Yeah… I’ve been part of another community where a few hundred people were scammed out of some $500+ and left stranded in Nevada. (Well, Las Vegas, but Nevada sounds more dramatic.) Hundreds of other people in the community spang into action within hours, donated and coordinated donation efforts, and helped the others at least get back home.
Only Nonlinear attempted something similar in the EA community. (But I condemn exploitative treatment of employees of course!) Open Phil picked up an AI safety prize contest, and I might miss a few cases. I was very disappointed by how little of this sort happened. Then again I could’ve tried to start such an effort myself. I don’t have the network, so I’m pretty sure I would’ve failed. I was also in bed with Covid for the first month.
I suppose it really makes more sense to model EA not as a community but as a scientific discipline. I have a degree in CS, but I wasn’t disappointed that the CS community didn’t support their own after the FTX collapse because I never had the expectation that that is something that could happen. EA seems to me is better understood within that reference class. (Unfortunately – not because there’s something wrong with scientific disciplines but because I would’ve loved to be part of a real community too.)
I think if this happened with, say, a conference you would see this kind of response within EA. A group of people stuck in a specific place is very different from the FTX collapse.
There was a supportive response, to some degree, in the wake of FTX:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BesfLENShzSMeb7Xi/community-support-given-ftx-situation
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7PqmnrBhSX4yCyMCk/effective-peer-support-network-in-ftx-crisis-update
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gbjxQuEhjAYsgWz8T/a-job-matching-service-for-affected-ftxff-grantees
Maybe now is a good time to review that response and figure out what could’ve been done better. For example, maybe some person or organization could’ve made a point of reaching out individually to each and every FTX grantee.
For me, the OP resonates well beyond just the FTX stuff though. There’s an element of making personal sacrifices for the greater good that exists in EA, which doesn’t exist in the same way for an academic discipline. I myself found the lack of supportiveness in EA very alienating, and it’s a major reason why I’m not very involved these days.
One idea is something like a “Basefund for mental health”, to provide free or low-cost therapy for EAs—possibly group therapy. EAs have already made the argument that mental health could be an effective cause area. If that’s true, “mental health for EAs” could be a doubly effective cause area. Beyond the first-order benefit of improving someone’s mental health, you can improve someone’s mental health in a way that enables them to do good.
Oh true! I was only thinking of financial support for struggling projects and project developers, but those kinds of support are also super valuable!
Rethink Wellbeing is definitely on board with mental health for EAs being an important cause area.
I don’t think personal identity makes too much sense, so preventing the extinction of EA-related values (or maybe even some wider set of prosocial, procivilizational values) could be an underexplored cause area. Some sort of EA crisis fund could be a way to achieve that, but also archival of important insights and such.
openphil did some lost wages stuff after FTXsplosion, but I think evaluated case by case and some people may have been left behind.