Given that I have been encouraging lots of people to write more about the FTX situation, I want to clarify that I have a dispreference for posts like this.
(Speaking for myself) I’m pretty confused why you think this post is net negative (which I interpret “dispreference” to mean). I think the additional informational value the post has in the first paragraph is low, while the rest of the post clearly has a lot more content that’s salient to collaborators/funders/future employees etc, as well as help people unaffiliated with RP orient on things that’s less related to the failures of FTX itself (e.g. in terms of risk management).
I’m not disputing that the post might be net negative (consequentialist morality is hard), I’m just surprised that all of your evidence seems to come from one paragraph (and in my opinion, the least interesting one).
Sorry, I think the key thing to evaluate is the counterfactual (like, I can say “I have a dispreference for food like this”, which means I would prefer other food more, while also not thinking it’s worth cooking completely new food, and would definitely prefer it over no food at all).
I think the post is net-positive compared to no post at all from Rethink, and I think the information is helpful.
I think it’s easy to improve the post by a lot by being more careful with words. I also separately think (even outside of situations like this, but even more so in this situation) that large co-authored “statements” have pretty broad distortionary effects and I think often say things that nobody really believes (by introducing a new, not clearly defined, “we”), and I have a longer-running policy to encourage people to use more “I” statements, so I do think there is a decently large negative component here.
(Speaking for myself) I’m pretty confused why you think this post is net negative (which I interpret “dispreference” to mean). I think the additional informational value the post has in the first paragraph is low, while the rest of the post clearly has a lot more content that’s salient to collaborators/funders/future employees etc, as well as help people unaffiliated with RP orient on things that’s less related to the failures of FTX itself (e.g. in terms of risk management).
I’m not disputing that the post might be net negative (consequentialist morality is hard), I’m just surprised that all of your evidence seems to come from one paragraph (and in my opinion, the least interesting one).
Sorry, I think the key thing to evaluate is the counterfactual (like, I can say “I have a dispreference for food like this”, which means I would prefer other food more, while also not thinking it’s worth cooking completely new food, and would definitely prefer it over no food at all).
I think the post is net-positive compared to no post at all from Rethink, and I think the information is helpful.
I think it’s easy to improve the post by a lot by being more careful with words. I also separately think (even outside of situations like this, but even more so in this situation) that large co-authored “statements” have pretty broad distortionary effects and I think often say things that nobody really believes (by introducing a new, not clearly defined, “we”), and I have a longer-running policy to encourage people to use more “I” statements, so I do think there is a decently large negative component here.