We’re happy to sink hundreds of hours into fun “criticism of EA” contests, but when the biggest disaster in EA’s history manifests, we aren’t willing to pay even one investigator to review what happened so we can get the facts straight, begin to rebuild trust, and see if there’s anything we should change in response?
I disagree with this framing.
Something that I believe I got wrong pre-FTX was base rates/priors: I had assumed that if a company was making billions of dollars, had received investment from top-tier firms, complied with a bunch of regulations, etc. then the chance of serious misconduct was fairly low.
It’s hard to measure this, but at least anecdotally some other people (including in “EA leadership” positions) tell me that they were updated by this work and think that they similarly had incorrect priors.
I think what you are calling an “investigation” is fine/good, but it is not the only way to “get the facts straight” or “see if there’s anything we should change in response”.
Fair! I definitely don’t want to imply that there’s been zero reflection or inquiry in the wake of FTX. I just think “what actually happened within EA networks, and could we have done better with different processes or norms?” is a really large and central piece of the puzzle.
I disagree with this framing.
Something that I believe I got wrong pre-FTX was base rates/priors: I had assumed that if a company was making billions of dollars, had received investment from top-tier firms, complied with a bunch of regulations, etc. then the chance of serious misconduct was fairly low.
I have now spent a fair amount of time documenting that this is not true, in data sets of YCombinator companies and major philanthropists.
It’s hard to measure this, but at least anecdotally some other people (including in “EA leadership” positions) tell me that they were updated by this work and think that they similarly had incorrect priors.
I think what you are calling an “investigation” is fine/good, but it is not the only way to “get the facts straight” or “see if there’s anything we should change in response”.
Fair! I definitely don’t want to imply that there’s been zero reflection or inquiry in the wake of FTX. I just think “what actually happened within EA networks, and could we have done better with different processes or norms?” is a really large and central piece of the puzzle.