Feelings: I do not feel good reading this. I guess I feel defensive.
This is interesting. My general view is as follows:
I would recommend GiveWell take money from anyone who has finished earning it. GiveWell’s work seems pretty inflexible and if the person is done with their activities then it’s just making the world better.
I would recommend caution in regard to big donors. I think (though hard nosed friends disagree) that a major error in regard to EA and SBF was that many EAs happily let him use the brand without asking if they were trading something away. This is hard to think about. The counter is something like “people can call themselves what they want and people can take ideas that they want”. But personally I think there was an assumption that we had vetted SBF (not least because I think we thought we had).
I would be more cautious in smaller orgs, more flexible orgs. If I were to be regularly taking money from a russian oligarch who had retired, it feels like this might cause me to me more relaxed towards his former harm. My reasons for being a vegan are roughly this—I find i think more clearly about animal welfare when I am not eating them. And I like thinking clearly. Just as honesty has big costs that may be worth it, I wouldn’t be suprised if $100mns were not worth becoming sloppy about the damage of fraud.
I would not want any EA orgs to take money from someone who was still doing their crime. To me, that clearly looks like we are justifying or incentivising more of it.
We should be happy to call out their crimes. I would be wary of an EA that isn’t capable of talking about billionaire crime for fear of upsetting billionaires. The rule of law is really important and I’ve heard Google, Amazon, Musk all doing pretty immoral and defecty things in order to make parts of their fortunes. Even if most are still positive on net, ill gotten gains should be fined off them, regardless of their giving.
So I think that perhaps GiveWell, GiveDirectly, etc should happily take money from these poeple regardless, but other orgs should be more careful. And if you find you can’t say true things about someone for fear or not getting their money, I would be concerned about that.
Feelings: I do not feel good reading this. I guess I feel defensive.
This is interesting. My general view is as follows:
I would recommend GiveWell take money from anyone who has finished earning it. GiveWell’s work seems pretty inflexible and if the person is done with their activities then it’s just making the world better.
I would recommend caution in regard to big donors. I think (though hard nosed friends disagree) that a major error in regard to EA and SBF was that many EAs happily let him use the brand without asking if they were trading something away. This is hard to think about. The counter is something like “people can call themselves what they want and people can take ideas that they want”. But personally I think there was an assumption that we had vetted SBF (not least because I think we thought we had).
I would be more cautious in smaller orgs, more flexible orgs. If I were to be regularly taking money from a russian oligarch who had retired, it feels like this might cause me to me more relaxed towards his former harm. My reasons for being a vegan are roughly this—I find i think more clearly about animal welfare when I am not eating them. And I like thinking clearly. Just as honesty has big costs that may be worth it, I wouldn’t be suprised if $100mns were not worth becoming sloppy about the damage of fraud.
I would not want any EA orgs to take money from someone who was still doing their crime. To me, that clearly looks like we are justifying or incentivising more of it.
We should be happy to call out their crimes. I would be wary of an EA that isn’t capable of talking about billionaire crime for fear of upsetting billionaires. The rule of law is really important and I’ve heard Google, Amazon, Musk all doing pretty immoral and defecty things in order to make parts of their fortunes. Even if most are still positive on net, ill gotten gains should be fined off them, regardless of their giving.
So I think that perhaps GiveWell, GiveDirectly, etc should happily take money from these poeple regardless, but other orgs should be more careful. And if you find you can’t say true things about someone for fear or not getting their money, I would be concerned about that.