In CEA’s case in particular, it doesn’t seem like they deal with biohazards or AI safety at a level necessitating high security
Agreed.
Regarding some of the specific points you’ve made:
• I agree that it would be great to get the community more involved in thinking through what the forum should look like. • Wytham Abbey was an independently run project that they just fiscally sponsored. • I agree that funding sources should be public (although perhaps not individual donations below a certain amount). • Unsurprised PELTIV backfired. • I would love to see regular community office hours, though if these end up seeing low demand, or it’s just the same folks over and over, I think it would be reasonable for them to decide to discontinue this.
Regarding some of the other things, I honestly don’t see them as the highest priority, especially right now.
I wouldn’t say they’re all top priority right now either fwiw. What I’d like is some kind of public commitment to stuff like this as at least nice-to-haves, rather than something they seem to feel no obligation about at all. That’s all any of these ‘principles’ can be—a directional statement about culture. But CEA has been around for over a decade, with an average annual budget that must be well into the millions, so even ‘not top priority’ concerns could easily have been long since addressed if they’d had a historical interest in doing so.
I’m not sure I agree with that characterisation of Wytham Abbey. It was orchestrated by one of the trustees of the org on behalf of the org, with intended beneficiaries being more or less a subset of the org’s proxy beneficiaries. And this was done under their current moniker, which per agb/Jason’s comment elsewhere in this discussion, is highly misleading—especially when they’re involved in projects like this. Consequently, when Wytham Abbey became a PR disaster, it helped bring the whole movement into disrepute. Arguably the main lesson was just ‘don’t use the public face of EA for black box projects’, but I think the backup lesson was ‘if you do, at least show enough of your working to prove to reasonable critical observers that it isn’t a backdoor way of giving the trustees a summer home.’
I guess I want CEA to focus very heavily on figuring out their overall strategy, including community engagement and then communicating their overall decisions.
Conference cost breakdowns feels like an unnecessary distraction at this point, so long as they satisfy the auditor.
Agreed.
Regarding some of the specific points you’ve made:
• I agree that it would be great to get the community more involved in thinking through what the forum should look like.
• Wytham Abbey was an independently run project that they just fiscally sponsored.
• I agree that funding sources should be public (although perhaps not individual donations below a certain amount).
• Unsurprised PELTIV backfired.
• I would love to see regular community office hours, though if these end up seeing low demand, or it’s just the same folks over and over, I think it would be reasonable for them to decide to discontinue this.
Regarding some of the other things, I honestly don’t see them as the highest priority, especially right now.
I wouldn’t say they’re all top priority right now either fwiw. What I’d like is some kind of public commitment to stuff like this as at least nice-to-haves, rather than something they seem to feel no obligation about at all. That’s all any of these ‘principles’ can be—a directional statement about culture. But CEA has been around for over a decade, with an average annual budget that must be well into the millions, so even ‘not top priority’ concerns could easily have been long since addressed if they’d had a historical interest in doing so.
I’m not sure I agree with that characterisation of Wytham Abbey. It was orchestrated by one of the trustees of the org on behalf of the org, with intended beneficiaries being more or less a subset of the org’s proxy beneficiaries. And this was done under their current moniker, which per agb/Jason’s comment elsewhere in this discussion, is highly misleading—especially when they’re involved in projects like this. Consequently, when Wytham Abbey became a PR disaster, it helped bring the whole movement into disrepute. Arguably the main lesson was just ‘don’t use the public face of EA for black box projects’, but I think the backup lesson was ‘if you do, at least show enough of your working to prove to reasonable critical observers that it isn’t a backdoor way of giving the trustees a summer home.’
I guess I want CEA to focus very heavily on figuring out their overall strategy, including community engagement and then communicating their overall decisions.
Conference cost breakdowns feels like an unnecessary distraction at this point, so long as they satisfy the auditor.