I think some critiques of GVF/āOP in this comments section could have been made more warmly and charitably.
The main funder of a movementās largest charitable foundation is spending hours seriously engaging with community membersā critiques of this strategic update. For most movements, no such conversation would occur at all.
Some critics in the comments are practicing rationalist discussion norms (high decoupling & reasoning transparency) and wish OPās communications were more like that too. However, it seems thereās a lot we donāt know about what caused GFV/āOP leadership to make this update. Dustin seems very concerned about GFV/āOPās attack surface and conserving the bandwidth of their non-monetary resources. Heās written at length about how he doesnāt endorse rationalist-level decoupling as a rule of discourse. Given all of this, itās understandable that from Dustinās perspective, he has good reasons for not being as legible as he could be. Dishonest outside actors could quote statements or frame actions far more uncharitably than anything weād see on the EA Forum.
Dustin is doing the best he can to balance between explaining his reasoning and adhering to legibility constraints we donāt know about in order to engage with the rest of the community. We should be grateful for that.
I generally agree with the spirit of empathy in this comment, but I also think you may be misinterpreting Dustin in a similar way to how others are. My understanding is that Dustin is not primarily driven by how other actors might use his funding /ā public comments against him. Instead, it is something like the following:
āDustin doesnāt want to be continually funding stuff that he doesnāt endorse, because he thinks that doing things well and being responsible for the consequences of your actions is intrinsically important. He is a virtue ethicist and not a utilitarian in this regard. He feels that OP has funded things he doesnāt endorse enough times in enough areas to not want to extend blanket trust, and thus feels more responsibility than before to evaluate cases himself, to make sure that both individual grants and higher-level funding strategies are aligned with his values. He believes in doing fewer things well than more things poorly, which is why some areas are being cut.ā
Obviously this could be wrong and I donāt want Dustin to feel any obligation to confirm/ānot confirm it. Iām writing it because Iām fairly confident that itās at least more right than the prevailing narrative currently in the comments, and because the reasoning makes a fair amount of sense to me (and much more sense than the PR-based narrative that many are currently projecting).
(I donāt want to spend too much time psychologizing here, though I do think a root cause analysis is useful, so I will comment a bit, but will bow out if this gets too much)
I feel like this doesnāt really match with Dustinās other comments about repeatedly emphasizing non-financial concrete costs. I think Dustinās model is closer to āevery time I fund something I donāt endorse, I lose important forms of social capital, political capital, and feel a responsibility to defend and explain my choices towards others, for which I only have limited bandwidth and donāt have time or energy for. As a result, I am restricting my giving to things that I feel excited to stand behind, which is a smaller set, and where I feel good about the tradeoffs of financial and non-financial costsā.
Re: attack surface in my early comment, I actually meant attacks from EAs. People want to debate the borders, quite understandably. I have folks in my DMs as well as in the comments. Q: āWhy did we not communicate more thoroughly on the forumā A: āBecause weāve communicated on the forum beforeā
I donāt think endorse vs. not endorse describes everything here, but it describes some if it. I do think I spend some energy on ~every cause area, and if I am lacking conviction, that is a harder expenditure from a resource I consider finite.
An example of a non-monetary cost where I have conviction: anxiety about potential retribution from our national political work. This is arguably not even EA (and not new), but it is a stressful side hustle we have this year. I had hoped it wouldnāt be a recurring thing, but here we are.
An example of a non-monetary cost where I have less conviction: the opportunity cost of funding insect welfare instead of chicken, cow, or pig welfare. I think I could be convinced, but I havenāt been yet and Iāve been thinking about it a long time! Iād much prefer to just see someone who actually feels strongly about that take the wheel. It is not a lot of $s in itself, but it keeps building, and there are an increasing number of smaller FAW areas like this.
I failed to forecast this issue for myself well when we were in an expansionary mindset, and I found that the further we went, the more each area on the margin had some element of this problem. I deferred for a really long time, until it became too much. Concurrently, I saw the movement becoming less and less appealing to other funders, and I believe these are related issues.
Thatās brilliant Ariel and you articulate this far better and more forum-appropriate than my attempt at similar! I think in discussion whatever our own norms and preferences, we are likely to get more meaningful discussion if we bend at least somewhat towards those of the person we are talking with.
I think some critiques of GVF/āOP in this comments section could have been made more warmly and charitably.
The main funder of a movementās largest charitable foundation is spending hours seriously engaging with community membersā critiques of this strategic update. For most movements, no such conversation would occur at all.
Some critics in the comments are practicing rationalist discussion norms (high decoupling & reasoning transparency) and wish OPās communications were more like that too. However, it seems thereās a lot we donāt know about what caused GFV/āOP leadership to make this update. Dustin seems very concerned about GFV/āOPās attack surface and conserving the bandwidth of their non-monetary resources. Heās written at length about how he doesnāt endorse rationalist-level decoupling as a rule of discourse. Given all of this, itās understandable that from Dustinās perspective, he has good reasons for not being as legible as he could be. Dishonest outside actors could quote statements or frame actions far more uncharitably than anything weād see on the EA Forum.
Dustin is doing the best he can to balance between explaining his reasoning and adhering to legibility constraints we donāt know about in order to engage with the rest of the community. We should be grateful for that.
I generally agree with the spirit of empathy in this comment, but I also think you may be misinterpreting Dustin in a similar way to how others are. My understanding is that Dustin is not primarily driven by how other actors might use his funding /ā public comments against him. Instead, it is something like the following:
āDustin doesnāt want to be continually funding stuff that he doesnāt endorse, because he thinks that doing things well and being responsible for the consequences of your actions is intrinsically important. He is a virtue ethicist and not a utilitarian in this regard. He feels that OP has funded things he doesnāt endorse enough times in enough areas to not want to extend blanket trust, and thus feels more responsibility than before to evaluate cases himself, to make sure that both individual grants and higher-level funding strategies are aligned with his values. He believes in doing fewer things well than more things poorly, which is why some areas are being cut.ā
Obviously this could be wrong and I donāt want Dustin to feel any obligation to confirm/ānot confirm it. Iām writing it because Iām fairly confident that itās at least more right than the prevailing narrative currently in the comments, and because the reasoning makes a fair amount of sense to me (and much more sense than the PR-based narrative that many are currently projecting).
(I donāt want to spend too much time psychologizing here, though I do think a root cause analysis is useful, so I will comment a bit, but will bow out if this gets too much)
I feel like this doesnāt really match with Dustinās other comments about repeatedly emphasizing non-financial concrete costs. I think Dustinās model is closer to āevery time I fund something I donāt endorse, I lose important forms of social capital, political capital, and feel a responsibility to defend and explain my choices towards others, for which I only have limited bandwidth and donāt have time or energy for. As a result, I am restricting my giving to things that I feel excited to stand behind, which is a smaller set, and where I feel good about the tradeoffs of financial and non-financial costsā.
Re: attack surface in my early comment, I actually meant attacks from EAs. People want to debate the borders, quite understandably. I have folks in my DMs as well as in the comments. Q: āWhy did we not communicate more thoroughly on the forumā
A: āBecause weāve communicated on the forum beforeā
I donāt think endorse vs. not endorse describes everything here, but it describes some if it. I do think I spend some energy on ~every cause area, and if I am lacking conviction, that is a harder expenditure from a resource I consider finite.
An example of a non-monetary cost where I have conviction: anxiety about potential retribution from our national political work. This is arguably not even EA (and not new), but it is a stressful side hustle we have this year. I had hoped it wouldnāt be a recurring thing, but here we are.
An example of a non-monetary cost where I have less conviction: the opportunity cost of funding insect welfare instead of chicken, cow, or pig welfare. I think I could be convinced, but I havenāt been yet and Iāve been thinking about it a long time! Iād much prefer to just see someone who actually feels strongly about that take the wheel. It is not a lot of $s in itself, but it keeps building, and there are an increasing number of smaller FAW areas like this.
I failed to forecast this issue for myself well when we were in an expansionary mindset, and I found that the further we went, the more each area on the margin had some element of this problem. I deferred for a really long time, until it became too much. Concurrently, I saw the movement becoming less and less appealing to other funders, and I believe these are related issues.
Thatās brilliant Ariel and you articulate this far better and more forum-appropriate than my attempt at similar! I think in discussion whatever our own norms and preferences, we are likely to get more meaningful discussion if we bend at least somewhat towards those of the person we are talking with.