By the end, the line between genuine scientific inquiry and activistic âresearchâ got quite blurry at FHI. I donât think papers such as: âProposal for a New UK National Institute for Biological Securityâ, belong in an academic institution, even if I agree with the conclusion.
For the disagree voters (I didnât agreevote either way) -- perhaps a more neutral way to phrase this is might be:
Oxford and/âor its philosophy department apparently decided that continuing to be affiliated with FHI wasnât in its best interests. It seems this may have developed well before the Bostrom situation. Given that, and assuming EA may want to have orgs affiliated with other top universities, what lessons might be learned from this story? To the extent that keeping the university happy might limit the orgâs activities, when is accepting that compromise worth it?
I also didnât vote but would be very surprised if that particular paperâa policy proposal for a biosecurity institute in the context of a pandemicâwas an example of the sort of thing Oxford would be concerned about affiliating with (I can imagine some academics being more sceptical of some of the FHIâs other research topics). Social science faculty academics write papers making public policy recommendations on a routine basis, many of them far more controversial.
The postmortem doc says âseveral times we made serious missteps in our communications with other parts of the university because we misunderstood how the message would be receivedâ which suggests it might be internal messaging that lost them friends and alienated people. Itâd be interesting if there are any specific lessons to be learned, but it might well boil down to academics being rude to each other, and the FHI seems to want to emphasize it was more about academic politics than anything else.
I think Iâm sympathetic to Oxfordâs decision.
By the end, the line between genuine scientific inquiry and activistic âresearchâ got quite blurry at FHI. I donât think papers such as: âProposal for a New UK National Institute for Biological Securityâ, belong in an academic institution, even if I agree with the conclusion.
For the disagree voters (I didnât agreevote either way) -- perhaps a more neutral way to phrase this is might be:
Oxford and/âor its philosophy department apparently decided that continuing to be affiliated with FHI wasnât in its best interests. It seems this may have developed well before the Bostrom situation. Given that, and assuming EA may want to have orgs affiliated with other top universities, what lessons might be learned from this story? To the extent that keeping the university happy might limit the orgâs activities, when is accepting that compromise worth it?
I also didnât vote but would be very surprised if that particular paperâa policy proposal for a biosecurity institute in the context of a pandemicâwas an example of the sort of thing Oxford would be concerned about affiliating with (I can imagine some academics being more sceptical of some of the FHIâs other research topics). Social science faculty academics write papers making public policy recommendations on a routine basis, many of them far more controversial.
The postmortem doc says âseveral times we made serious missteps in our communications with other parts of the university because we misunderstood how the message would be receivedâ which suggests it might be internal messaging that lost them friends and alienated people. Itâd be interesting if there are any specific lessons to be learned, but it might well boil down to academics being rude to each other, and the FHI seems to want to emphasize it was more about academic politics than anything else.