I agree that in many cases, when bad-faith critics say “EA should not do X” and we stop doing X, the world would actually become worse off.
But making SBF the face of the EA movement was a really bad decision. Especially given that he was unilaterally gambling with the whole EA movement’s credibility.
There are robust lessons to be learned in this saga, which will allow us EAs to course-correct and prevent future catastrophic outcomes (to our movement and in general).
But making SBF the face of the EA movement was a really bad decision. Especially given that he was unilaterally gambling with the whole EA movement’s credibility.
This might not be too big of a thing to flag, but my guess now is that SBF basically unilaterally decided to promote himself publicly as an EA, likely for marketing purposes.
That said, I think no one else pushed back too much (in part because he was one of the main funders), and that that shows a systematic failure, which is still pretty bad.
I agree that in many cases, when bad-faith critics say “EA should not do X” and we stop doing X, the world would actually become worse off.
But making SBF the face of the EA movement was a really bad decision. Especially given that he was unilaterally gambling with the whole EA movement’s credibility.
There are robust lessons to be learned in this saga, which will allow us EAs to course-correct and prevent future catastrophic outcomes (to our movement and in general).
This might not be too big of a thing to flag, but my guess now is that SBF basically unilaterally decided to promote himself publicly as an EA, likely for marketing purposes.
That said, I think no one else pushed back too much (in part because he was one of the main funders), and that that shows a systematic failure, which is still pretty bad.