The thing that most keenly worries me about this is the lack of openness and accountability of this. We are a social movement, so of course we will have power dynamics and leadership. But with no transparency or accountability, how can anyone know how to make change?
I think its wrong to say there’s no transparency or accountability (this isn’t to say we should just assume all checks now are enough, but I don’t think we should conclude that none so far exist). Obviously for anything actually criminal then proper whistleblowing paths exist and should be used! At the moment, I think even checks like this discussion are far more effective than in most other communities because EA is still quite small, so it hasn’t got the issues of scale that other institutions or communities may experience.
On transparency: Transparency is a part of honesty, but has costs and I don’t think its at all clear in this instance that that cost was remotely required to be paid. Again, this will only cause future discussions to be slower, more guarded and less honest—the community response to this will similarly decide how much we should guard ourselves when talking with other EAs. As a side point: its also the case that this instance isn’t actual “transparency” but fed lines to a journalist, then selectively quoted and given back to us.
The cost of transparency in every discussion at a high-level of leadership (for example) is that the cost of new ideas becomes prohibitively high as everyone can pick you apart, weigh in, misrepresent or re-direct discussion entirely. Compare e.g. local council meetings with the public and those without, and decisions made in committee vs those made by individual founders. Again transparency is a part of honesty but I can put my trust in you—for example—without needing you to be transparent about every conversation you have about me. If, however, the norm is that we expect total transparency of information and constant leaks—then we should expect a community of paranoia, dishonest conversation and continuous misrepresentations of one another.
I think you may be assuming what I am calling for here is much more wide-ranging. There still doesn’t seem to be good justification for not knowing who is in the coordination forum or on these leadership slack channels. Making the structures that actually exist apparent to community members would probably not come at such a prohibitively high cost as you suggest
The thing that most keenly worries me about this is the lack of openness and accountability of this. We are a social movement, so of course we will have power dynamics and leadership. But with no transparency or accountability, how can anyone know how to make change?
I think its wrong to say there’s no transparency or accountability (this isn’t to say we should just assume all checks now are enough, but I don’t think we should conclude that none so far exist). Obviously for anything actually criminal then proper whistleblowing paths exist and should be used! At the moment, I think even checks like this discussion are far more effective than in most other communities because EA is still quite small, so it hasn’t got the issues of scale that other institutions or communities may experience.
On transparency: Transparency is a part of honesty, but has costs and I don’t think its at all clear in this instance that that cost was remotely required to be paid. Again, this will only cause future discussions to be slower, more guarded and less honest—the community response to this will similarly decide how much we should guard ourselves when talking with other EAs. As a side point: its also the case that this instance isn’t actual “transparency” but fed lines to a journalist, then selectively quoted and given back to us.
The cost of transparency in every discussion at a high-level of leadership (for example) is that the cost of new ideas becomes prohibitively high as everyone can pick you apart, weigh in, misrepresent or re-direct discussion entirely. Compare e.g. local council meetings with the public and those without, and decisions made in committee vs those made by individual founders. Again transparency is a part of honesty but I can put my trust in you—for example—without needing you to be transparent about every conversation you have about me. If, however, the norm is that we expect total transparency of information and constant leaks—then we should expect a community of paranoia, dishonest conversation and continuous misrepresentations of one another.
I think you may be assuming what I am calling for here is much more wide-ranging. There still doesn’t seem to be good justification for not knowing who is in the coordination forum or on these leadership slack channels. Making the structures that actually exist apparent to community members would probably not come at such a prohibitively high cost as you suggest
Yes, I don’t know what I think of that, but you’re right that I implied you were thinking of something much more wide reaching.