I think I agree with Hypothetical EA that we basically know the broad picture.
Probably nobody was actually complicit or knew there was fraud; and
Various people made bad judgement calls and/or didn’t listen to useful rumours about Sam
I guess I’m just… satisfied with that? You say:
But there are plenty of people, both within EA and outside of it, who legitimately just want to know what happened, and will be very reassured to have a clearer picture of the basic sequence of events, which orgs did a better or worse job, which processes failed or succeeded.
.. why? None of this seems that important to me? Most of it seems like a matter for the person/org in question to reflect/improve on. Why is it important for “plenty of people” to learn this stuff, given we already know the broad picture above?
I would sum up my personal position as:
We got taken for a ride, so we should take the general lesson to be more cautious of charismatic people with low scruples, especially bearing large sums of money.
If you or your org were specifically taken for a ride you should reflect on why that happened to you and why you didn’t listen to the people who did spot what was going on.
EA is compelling insofar as it is about genuinely making the world a better place, ie we care about the actual consequences. Just because there are probably no specific people/processes to blame, doesn’t mean we should be satisfied with how things are.
There is now decent evidence that EA might cause considerable harm in the world, so we should be strongly motivated to figure out how to change that. Maybe EA’s failures are just the cost of ambition and agency, and come along with the good it does, but I think that’s both untrue and worryingly defeatist.
I care about the end result of all of this, and the fact that we’re okay with some serious Ls happening (and not being willing to fix the root cause of those errors) is concerning.
Maybe we should—after this question of investigation or not has been discussed in more detail—organize community-wide vote on whether there should be an investigation or not?
Knowing what people think is useful, especially if it’s a non-anonymous poll aimed at sparking conversations, questions, etc. (One thing that might help here is to include a field for people to leave a brief explanation of their vote, if the polling software allows for it.)
Anonymous polls are a bit trickier, since random people on the Internet can easily brigade such a poll. And I wouldn’t want to assume that something’s a good idea just because most EAs agree with it; I’d rather focus on the arguments for and against.
“Just focus on the arguments” isn’t a decision-making algorithm, but I think informal processes like “just talk about it and individually do what makes sense” perform better than rigid algorithms in cases like this.
If we want something more formal, I tend to prefer approaches like “delegate the question to someone trustworthy who can spend a bunch of time carefully weighing the arguments” or “subsidize a prediction market to resolve the question” over “just run an opinion poll and do whatever the majority of people-who-see-the-poll vote for, without checking how informed or wise the respondents are”.
The question of a community-wide vote, on any level, about whether there should be such an investigation might at this point be moot. I have personally offered to begin conducting significant parts of such an investigation myself. Since I made that initial comment, I’ve now read several more providing arguments against the need or desirability for such an investigation. Having found them unconvincing, I now intend privately contact at least several private individuals—both in and around the EA movement, as well as some outside of or who no longer participate in the EA community—to pursue that end. Something like a community-wide vote, or some proxy like even dozens of effective altruists trying to talk me out of that, would be unlikely to convice me to not do so.
I disagree, and in this case I don’t think the forum team should have a say in the matter. Each user has their own interpretation of the upvote/downvote button and that’s ok. Personally I don’t use it as “I disagree” but rather as “this comment shouldn’t have been written”, but there’s certainly a correlation. For instance, I both disagree-voted and downvoted your comment (since I dislike the attempt to police this).
I think I agree with Hypothetical EA that we basically know the broad picture.
Probably nobody was actually complicit or knew there was fraud; and
Various people made bad judgement calls and/or didn’t listen to useful rumours about Sam
I guess I’m just… satisfied with that? You say:
.. why? None of this seems that important to me? Most of it seems like a matter for the person/org in question to reflect/improve on. Why is it important for “plenty of people” to learn this stuff, given we already know the broad picture above?
I would sum up my personal position as:
We got taken for a ride, so we should take the general lesson to be more cautious of charismatic people with low scruples, especially bearing large sums of money.
If you or your org were specifically taken for a ride you should reflect on why that happened to you and why you didn’t listen to the people who did spot what was going on.
EA is compelling insofar as it is about genuinely making the world a better place, ie we care about the actual consequences. Just because there are probably no specific people/processes to blame, doesn’t mean we should be satisfied with how things are.
There is now decent evidence that EA might cause considerable harm in the world, so we should be strongly motivated to figure out how to change that. Maybe EA’s failures are just the cost of ambition and agency, and come along with the good it does, but I think that’s both untrue and worryingly defeatist.
I care about the end result of all of this, and the fact that we’re okay with some serious Ls happening (and not being willing to fix the root cause of those errors) is concerning.
Random idea:
Maybe we should—after this question of investigation or not has been discussed in more detail—organize community-wide vote on whether there should be an investigation or not?
It’s easy to vote for something you don’t have to pay for. If we do anything like this, an additional fundraiser to pay for it might be appropriate.
Knowing what people think is useful, especially if it’s a non-anonymous poll aimed at sparking conversations, questions, etc. (One thing that might help here is to include a field for people to leave a brief explanation of their vote, if the polling software allows for it.)
Anonymous polls are a bit trickier, since random people on the Internet can easily brigade such a poll. And I wouldn’t want to assume that something’s a good idea just because most EAs agree with it; I’d rather focus on the arguments for and against.
“Just focus on the arguments” isn’t a decision-making algorithm, but I think informal processes like “just talk about it and individually do what makes sense” perform better than rigid algorithms in cases like this.
If we want something more formal, I tend to prefer approaches like “delegate the question to someone trustworthy who can spend a bunch of time carefully weighing the arguments” or “subsidize a prediction market to resolve the question” over “just run an opinion poll and do whatever the majority of people-who-see-the-poll vote for, without checking how informed or wise the respondents are”.
The question of a community-wide vote, on any level, about whether there should be such an investigation might at this point be moot. I have personally offered to begin conducting significant parts of such an investigation myself. Since I made that initial comment, I’ve now read several more providing arguments against the need or desirability for such an investigation. Having found them unconvincing, I now intend privately contact at least several private individuals—both in and around the EA movement, as well as some outside of or who no longer participate in the EA community—to pursue that end. Something like a community-wide vote, or some proxy like even dozens of effective altruists trying to talk me out of that, would be unlikely to convice me to not do so.
People, the downvote button is not a disagree button. That’s not really what it should be used for.
Thanks
Maybe quite some people don’t like random ideas being shared on the Forum?
I disagree, and in this case I don’t think the forum team should have a say in the matter. Each user has their own interpretation of the upvote/downvote button and that’s ok. Personally I don’t use it as “I disagree” but rather as “this comment shouldn’t have been written”, but there’s certainly a correlation. For instance, I both disagree-voted and downvoted your comment (since I dislike the attempt to police this).