I think the EA community can, should, and will be judged by how we deal with bad behaviour like fraud, discrimination, abuse, and cultishness within the community.
Who knew what about Sam Bankman-Fried’s crimes when? As I understand it, an investigation is still underway and, as far as I know, nobody who enabled or associated with SBF has yet stepped down from their leadership positions in EA organizations. Not necessarily saying anyone should, but I’m not sure I see enough of a reckoning or enough accountability with regard to the FTX/Alameda fraud.
Has the EA community done enough to rebuke Nick Bostrom’s racism? The reaction seems dishearteningly mixed.
What will the EA community ultimately do about the allegations of abuse surrounding Nonlinear, once the organization posts its much-awaited response to those allegations? This is something to watch.
There are disturbing accounts of Leverage Research and, to a lesser extent, CFAR functioning much like cults. That’s pretty weird. How many communities have two, or one and a half, cults pop up inside them? What are the structural reasons this might be happening? Has anything been done that might prevent another EA-adjacent cult from arising again?
I’m not trying to be negative. I’m just trying to give constructive suggestions about what would improve EA’s reputation. I think there are a lot of lovely people and organizations in the EA sphere. But we will — and should — be judged based on how we deal with the minority of bad actors.
I’m not making a claim here whether these were the ‘right’ outcomes or whether it’s ‘enough’, but there have been consequences including at ‘leading’ EA organisations
I was unaware of these resignations! Why did Will resign? Was it because of his association with SBF? Will doesn’t say why he resigned in the source you linked. He links to a post that’s extremely long and I couldn’t immediately find a statement.
The stated reason is the same as Nick’s: since the FTX collapse he’s been reused from too much board business for staying on the board to make sense:
Since last November, I’ve been recused from the board on all matters associated with FTX and related topics, which has ended up being a large proportion of board business. (This is because the recusal affected not just decisions that were directly related to the collapse of FTX, but also many other decisions for which the way EV UK has been affected by the collapse of FTX was important context.) I know I initially said that I’d wait for there to be more capacity, but trustee recruitment has moved more slowly than I’d anticipated, and with the ongoing recusal I didn’t expect to add much capacity for the foreseeable future, so it felt like a natural time to step down.
I think the EA community can, should, and will be judged by how we deal with bad behaviour like fraud, discrimination, abuse, and cultishness within the community.
Who knew what about Sam Bankman-Fried’s crimes when? As I understand it, an investigation is still underway and, as far as I know, nobody who enabled or associated with SBF has yet stepped down from their leadership positions in EA organizations. Not necessarily saying anyone should, but I’m not sure I see enough of a reckoning or enough accountability with regard to the FTX/Alameda fraud.
Has the EA community done enough to rebuke Nick Bostrom’s racism? The reaction seems dishearteningly mixed.
What will the EA community ultimately do about the allegations of abuse surrounding Nonlinear, once the organization posts its much-awaited response to those allegations? This is something to watch.
There are disturbing accounts of Leverage Research and, to a lesser extent, CFAR functioning much like cults. That’s pretty weird. How many communities have two, or one and a half, cults pop up inside them? What are the structural reasons this might be happening? Has anything been done that might prevent another EA-adjacent cult from arising again?
I’m not trying to be negative. I’m just trying to give constructive suggestions about what would improve EA’s reputation. I think there are a lot of lovely people and organizations in the EA sphere. But we will — and should — be judged based on how we deal with the minority of bad actors.
Just a quick point of order:
I think Will resigning from his position of the EV UK board and Nick resigning from both the UK and US boards would count for this
I’m not making a claim here whether these were the ‘right’ outcomes or whether it’s ‘enough’, but there have been consequences including at ‘leading’ EA organisations
I was unaware of these resignations! Why did Will resign? Was it because of his association with SBF? Will doesn’t say why he resigned in the source you linked. He links to a post that’s extremely long and I couldn’t immediately find a statement.
The stated reason is the same as Nick’s: since the FTX collapse he’s been reused from too much board business for staying on the board to make sense: