I think that many EA community members have a view of the EA community that makes it seem much more important than many current decision makers do.
Interesting, I actually feel that I have the alternative view. In my mind people who are decision makers in EA severely overestimate the true impact of the movement, and by extension their own impact, which makes them more comfortable with keeping EA small and insular. Happy to expand here if you’re curious.
Growth comes with a lot of costs. I think that recent EA failures have highlighted issues that come from trying to grow really quickly.
Would you mind throwing in a couple of examples? To my mind, the whole SBF/FTX fiasco was a result of EA’s focus on elite people who presented as having ‘high quality epistemics.’
Many people outside the rat sphere in my life think the whole FTX debacle, for instance, is ridiculous because they don’t find SBF convincing at all. SBF managed to convince so many people in the movement of his importance because of his ability to expound and rationalize his opinions on many different topics very quickly. This type of communication doesn’t get you very far with normal, run of the mill folks.
Leverage Research gets attention here. I believe there were a few cases of sexual harassment and similar (depressingly common when you have a lot of people together). There were several projects I know of that were just done poorly and needed to get bailed out or similar. CEA went through a very tough time for its first ~5 years or so (it went through lots of EDs)
This type of communication doesn’t get you very far with normal, run of the mill folks.
I don’t see it that way. Lots of relatively normal folks put money into FTX. Journalists and VCs were very positive about SBF/FTX.
Wasn’t the Leverage issue back around 2016? Also that doesn’t strike me as a growing too fast cost. From my recollection the issue was Leverage was extremely secretive and a lot of the psychological abuse was justified with the idea that they were saving the world.
I’d argue that elitist thinking and strange beliefs the public would never accept are dangerous, and usually improved by more scrutiny. If we can make our messaging internally more palatable to the public, we will avoid fiascos like Leverage.
With regards to FTX, as I mentioned below the millions who put money in were speculating. EA folks who helped SBF were trying to do good. It’s an important distinction.
If you are an individual engaging in a speculative bet you can afford, you don’t really need to worry about optics or the impact of potential failure. If someone was gambling on the success of FTX with a bet they couldn’t afford to pay, I don’t think they would be someone we should defend in our community anyway.
However people at the top of the EA movement made gigantic bets on FTX working out, at least with regards to their social capital.
I don’t see it that way. Lots of relatively normal folks put money into FTX. Journalists and VCs were very positive about SBF/FTX.
This. I do think that blaming rationalist culture is mostly a distraction, primarily because way too much normie stuff promoted SBF.
I had a very different opinion of the whole crypto train (that is, crypto needs to at least stop having real money, if not flat out banned altogether.)
Yes, EA failed. But let’s be more careful about suggesting that normies didn’t fail here.
Many people outside the rat sphere in my life think the whole FTX debacle, for instance, is ridiculous because they don’t find SBF convincing at all. SBF managed to convince so many people in the movement of his importance because of his ability to expound and rationalize his opinions on many different topics very quickly. This type of communication doesn’t get you very far with normal, run of the mill folks.
I ignored SBF and the crypto crowd, however I disagree with this primarily because I think this is predictably overrating how much you wouldn’t fall for a scam. We need to remember that before SBF collapsed, 1 million at the least decided to go on the FTX train, and the mainstream financial media was fawning SBF. So while I do think EA failed here, IMO the real failure is crypto until November was treated as though it was legitimate, when it isn’t.
Your comment minimizes EA’s role in getting SBF as far as he got. If you read the now-deleted Sequoia article it’s clear that the whole reason he was able to take advantage of the Japan crypto arbitrage is because he knew and could convince people in the movement to help him.
Most of the million who hopped on the crypto/SBF train were blatantly speculating and trying to make money. I see those in EA who fell for it as worse because they were ostensibly trying to do good.
If I were to extract generalizable lessons from the FTX, the major changes I would make are:
EA should stay out of crypto, until and unless the situation improves to the extent that it doesn’t have to rely on speculators. One big failure is EAs thought they could invest in winner stocks more than other investors.
Good Governance matters. By and large, EA failed at basic governance tasks, and I think governance needs to be improved. My thoughts are similar to this post:
Interesting, I actually feel that I have the alternative view. In my mind people who are decision makers in EA severely overestimate the true impact of the movement, and by extension their own impact, which makes them more comfortable with keeping EA small and insular. Happy to expand here if you’re curious.
Would you mind throwing in a couple of examples? To my mind, the whole SBF/FTX fiasco was a result of EA’s focus on elite people who presented as having ‘high quality epistemics.’
Many people outside the rat sphere in my life think the whole FTX debacle, for instance, is ridiculous because they don’t find SBF convincing at all. SBF managed to convince so many people in the movement of his importance because of his ability to expound and rationalize his opinions on many different topics very quickly. This type of communication doesn’t get you very far with normal, run of the mill folks.
Leverage Research gets attention here. I believe there were a few cases of sexual harassment and similar (depressingly common when you have a lot of people together). There were several projects I know of that were just done poorly and needed to get bailed out or similar. CEA went through a very tough time for its first ~5 years or so (it went through lots of EDs)
I don’t see it that way. Lots of relatively normal folks put money into FTX. Journalists and VCs were very positive about SBF/FTX.
Wasn’t the Leverage issue back around 2016? Also that doesn’t strike me as a growing too fast cost. From my recollection the issue was Leverage was extremely secretive and a lot of the psychological abuse was justified with the idea that they were saving the world.
I’d argue that elitist thinking and strange beliefs the public would never accept are dangerous, and usually improved by more scrutiny. If we can make our messaging internally more palatable to the public, we will avoid fiascos like Leverage.
With regards to FTX, as I mentioned below the millions who put money in were speculating. EA folks who helped SBF were trying to do good. It’s an important distinction.
If you are an individual engaging in a speculative bet you can afford, you don’t really need to worry about optics or the impact of potential failure. If someone was gambling on the success of FTX with a bet they couldn’t afford to pay, I don’t think they would be someone we should defend in our community anyway.
However people at the top of the EA movement made gigantic bets on FTX working out, at least with regards to their social capital.
This. I do think that blaming rationalist culture is mostly a distraction, primarily because way too much normie stuff promoted SBF.
I had a very different opinion of the whole crypto train (that is, crypto needs to at least stop having real money, if not flat out banned altogether.)
Yes, EA failed. But let’s be more careful about suggesting that normies didn’t fail here.
I ignored SBF and the crypto crowd, however I disagree with this primarily because I think this is predictably overrating how much you wouldn’t fall for a scam. We need to remember that before SBF collapsed, 1 million at the least decided to go on the FTX train, and the mainstream financial media was fawning SBF. So while I do think EA failed here, IMO the real failure is crypto until November was treated as though it was legitimate, when it isn’t.
Your comment minimizes EA’s role in getting SBF as far as he got. If you read the now-deleted Sequoia article it’s clear that the whole reason he was able to take advantage of the Japan crypto arbitrage is because he knew and could convince people in the movement to help him.
Most of the million who hopped on the crypto/SBF train were blatantly speculating and trying to make money. I see those in EA who fell for it as worse because they were ostensibly trying to do good.
I agree that EA failed pretty hard here. My big disagreements are probably on why EA failed, not that EA failed to prevent harm.
What would you say caused EA to fail?
If I were to extract generalizable lessons from the FTX, the major changes I would make are:
EA should stay out of crypto, until and unless the situation improves to the extent that it doesn’t have to rely on speculators. One big failure is EAs thought they could invest in winner stocks more than other investors.
Good Governance matters. By and large, EA failed at basic governance tasks, and I think governance needs to be improved. My thoughts are similar to this post:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sEpWkCvvJfoEbhnsd/the-ftx-crisis-highlights-a-deeper-cultural-problem-within
These are the biggest changes I would make on the margin, IMO.