Sharing a conversation between Oliver Habryka and an anonymous person from December, in response to the FTX implosion:
Anonymous: Actually, not clear if it’s obvious to you, but everyone is reluctant to say ANYTHING public right now [in the wake of FTX]. Downside risk is extremely extremely high. What’s your story of higher upside?
[Note from Anonymous: I meant from upthread context to talk about “downside risk [to an org that isn’t overtly EA]”, and not downside risk [to individual EAs] or [to EA leadership orgs] or [to the median person considering speaking up]. But we cleared that up later downthread and here Oli is replying more generally. I like what he’s saying and thanks Robbie for asking to post this.]
Oliver Habryka: I mean, it is very obvious to me, as trust in my ecosystem is collapsing because nobody is around to steer the ship and I am standing in front of an empty parliament chanting “reform” while the leadership is cowering and absent
But to be less poetic, I do think the downside of not saying anything are huge. I think trust in most things we built is collapsing very quickly (including with me), and the actual downside is talking is maybe on the order of $1BB-$2BB, which seems much lower than the costs.
I think it’s quite unlikely that saying anything right now will cost you much more than the money that you or people around you might have received from FTX. And like, I think indeed it is probably ethical to give most of that money back, so the marginal cost seems relatively low
Sharing a conversation between Oliver Habryka and an anonymous person from December, in response to the FTX implosion: