I’ve had a similar awful experience although with less direct negative feedback. Without going to to too much detail, I have deep domain expertise in a top EA cause area. While some of the EAs I’ve met working on this problem are brilliant, some are dangerously naive and overconfident to the point of likely causing immense harm over their careers. Unfortunately some of these people work for funders. I have tried to get excited about doing more in the EA community for years but just couldn’t overlook these seemingly obvious errors in judgement.
Side note: not everyone talks openly about their wealth and there are many people who could be medium-major donors who EA regularly burns through these bad professional interactions. There are a lot of people like me who are highly sympathetic to the EA worldview with ~tens of millions of net worth that could plausibly become EA donors or at least % pledgers. The hubris around these two highly volatile illiquid funding sources has been astonishing to witness as an outsider.
I’ve definitely seen well-meaning people mess up interactions without realizing it in my area (non-EA related). This seems like a really important point and your experience seems very relevant given all the recent talk about boards and governance. Would love to hear more of your thoughts either here or privately.
I’ve had a similar awful experience although with less direct negative feedback. Without going to to too much detail, I have deep domain expertise in a top EA cause area. While some of the EAs I’ve met working on this problem are brilliant, some are dangerously naive and overconfident to the point of likely causing immense harm over their careers. Unfortunately some of these people work for funders. I have tried to get excited about doing more in the EA community for years but just couldn’t overlook these seemingly obvious errors in judgement.
Side note: not everyone talks openly about their wealth and there are many people who could be medium-major donors who EA regularly burns through these bad professional interactions. There are a lot of people like me who are highly sympathetic to the EA worldview with ~tens of millions of net worth that could plausibly become EA donors or at least % pledgers. The hubris around these two highly volatile illiquid funding sources has been astonishing to witness as an outsider.
I’ve definitely seen well-meaning people mess up interactions without realizing it in my area (non-EA related). This seems like a really important point and your experience seems very relevant given all the recent talk about boards and governance. Would love to hear more of your thoughts either here or privately.